The Waning Art of Making Believe

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB

I AM told concerning one of the plays now running in New York that the piano that appears upon the stage in the third act is a real one, that the silver service is marked sterling, and that the books on the shelves are the literature of the genuine library. I can see for myself that the children who scamper about the playroom in the first act are real children, and within a year or two of the age for which they are dressed. The acme of realism is achieved in the properties, and if the acting sometimes fails to convince, the background is irreproachable. For my part, I rather like this honest, downright method of creating atmosphere for a play, and I judge that most of my companions among theatregoers also like it. We have the feeling of the child whose Christmas doll turns out to have in its wardrobe an umbrella and a mackintosh, and a pair of bona fide rubbers to protect its impervious feet. We are conscious of a sense of superiority over our neighbor who attends plays in which wobbling walls are shaken by the slightest tap upon the equally uncertain door, in which the jewels are paste, and the silver is something worse than pewter. Thus it is that we are being trained by those who provide our pleasures to scorn shams and rejoice in the lovely truth. One doubt only is occasionally whispered by the still small voice of my mind in the presence of these aids to sincerity. Are we possibly in danger of losing thereby a very precious possession, our happy faculty for making believe? I remember a servant who came from the lower order of Irish peasantry, and who upon reaching this country was obliged to learn how to walk upstairs. The same atrophy of function has been discovered in children born in apartment houses, and raised and lowered by the public elevator. And then I recall the dolls of my childhood, made out of rags, with mouths indicated by a red cotton thread. They called forth all my power of transmuting prose of fact into poetry of feeling. They may be said to have prepared the way for my becoming in later life that most imaginative of writers, — a biographer. My fancy waxed as sturdy upon their uncompromising surfaces as the puppy gnawing at his pièce de résistance, a bone stripped of its meat. I learned from them to use the concrete as merely a symbol of the abstract, and to work with my mind upon the most uninspiring material. In those days all my world was a stage and I the only player. I composed theatrical performances after the manner of children, in which I was cast for the double rôle of actor and audience. I remember that the scene of one of my tragedies was laid in the arctic regions, and for iceberg and snowy plain I appropriated my grandmother’s parlor pier glass with a marble slab at its base. It was the most realistic of my properties.

In after years I went frequently to melodramatic performances, and I found that my practice in making believe stood me in excellent stead. It was nothing to me that the scenic backgrounds were as wrinkled as the brow of old Polonius, and that the solid earth rose and fell like the waves of the sea at any gust of air. The heroine’s cotton velvet gown was the emblem of elegance to my initiated mind. There was no disillusionment possible, as the illusion was supplied by my faithful and trained imagination.

Now all this has changed. I have not tried myself on dolls, but the other day after an interval of many years I went again to a melodrama. The theatre teemed with sad and sweet associations. I loved the signs upon the walls warning me that my seat ticket did not include a babe in arms, and that I must not whistle or hang my wraps on the balcony rail. When the good old curtain went up and I saw the noble-hearted sub-hero pacing the stage, inquiring in stentorian tones what he could do to save his friend, I could have wept in an ecstasy of reminiscence. But there for me it ended. As the play advanced I found myself lazy and listless, unwilling to take my part in the performance and translate the whole shabby and superficial show into sound reality and legitimate art. And the fault was not chiefly with the acting ; of that I am convinced.

The heroine had her moments of real passion and her expressions of sincerity. Certainly her poor young bones must have ached with the thumping ardor of the swoons which sent her crashing to the floor in every second scene. As for the hero, there were notes in his voice, forced elocutionary notes, that I had heard frequently enough in the little theatre of the piano and the solid silver service. But the “ business ” of the stage was so stupidly false to life that after a time I ceased even to be amused by it. The scenery was so tawdry that it bored me. The die cast by Irving in his splendid settings had spoiled for me the theatre of my youth. I was like the formal city guest at the friendly country table, — stiffly unaccustomed to reaching and passing, uncomfortably conscious of missing the luxury of service. Certain critics assure me that this is my good fortune, that my taste has been elevated, but I have my moments of indecision when I mourn my ancient knack at making believe.