Magic Shadow-Shapes
I HAVE an idea that my brother and I went to see Little Lord Fauntleroy about a year before we went to see Rip van Winkle. We went sedately with our father and mother. I can remember little about it — my first visit to the theatre — except that the seat was so wide that my feet stuck out straight in front of me, and my knees were so stiff at the end that they had to be rubbed into flexibility. I had read the story in Saint Nicholas, and the little Lord in his wide collars and long curls did not appeal to me strongly, — my memories of such collars and such curls were too fresh and too painful; yet it is curious that my first theatrical experience should have made so little impression upon me. Of the play itself, I can remember nothing; the vastness of the auditorium, the heavy carpets and plush seats, the silence, the lights which went and came, seem to have conspired to bewilder me into an insensibility that soon became confirmed in a long doze, punctuated by intervals of consciousness when the lights flashed up at the ends of acts. My brother, who was three years older, poked me persistently in the ribs with his elbow whenever any of the business of the stage aroused his enthusiasm; but I remember only the pokes.
When, next day, we came to discuss the play, his disgust at my supineness was boundless. I maintained that there was no excuse for having a girl play the part of a boy, and to this piece of acute criticism I clung desperately, — and have clung ever since. As it was the only piece of criticism, favorable or condemnatory, that I was able to think of, I made the most of it; but he snorted with contempt, holding that after one got used to her it made no difference. I stubbornly insisted that I had n’t got used to her; and that was true, for I had looked at her probably less than five minutes. To be truthful, like many an older critic before and since, I had fallen asleep in the grip of an unfavorable criticism.
On two subjects, however, I waxed enthusiastic. One was the man who sold tickets. To a boy who had trouble remembering what part of ten apples two apples are, there was something preternatural in a man who could make change with such jocund ease. I gaped at him in the lobby, heedless of the jostling crowd, until I was dragged sidewise, crab-like, through the door. Once in my seat, however, well toward the front of the parterre, the antics of the trombone player soon made me forget the prodigy of the box-office. I had been given the aisle seat so that I might be sure to see the stage. I had, therefore, a clear view of the musician as he sat behind the second violins, lengthening and shortening his remarkable horn, and blowing till the veins stood out on his neck. In vain my brother tried to divert my gaze to the painted curtain, the footlights, the boxes: my eyes returned willy-nilly to the trombone; and its owner, conscious at last, toward the end of the overture, of my fascinated gaze, without missing a beat, without impairing in the least the smooth slide of his hand as he took a very bass note, solemnly closed his nearer eye in a long, humorous, sympathetic wink. If that man had not left during the first act to seek refreshment, I should have stayed awrake.
In our critical retrospect next morning, therefore, I met all embarrassing appeals for opinion on the play by references to the trombonist, whom my brother had not even looked at. His rage at this inconsequential criticism did not affect me a whit, because I had the sweet recollection of the wink, — a personal touch which he could not parallel, that one touch of nature of which the poet sings. He gave me up as childish and low-minded, and vowed that the next time he took me to the theatre I’d know it. Although the lofty assumption of the remark was irritating, I did not worry. The desire to go again was not very strong in me. I felt that I could sleep much more comfortably in bed.
As I look back at that eccentric little boy, I feel an odd kind of envy of him, — not a sentimental make-me-a-boyagain-just-for-to-night kind of envy, but an envy of his intellectual independence, When we grown people buy a ticket for a play, we feel that in order to get the worth of our money we must look at the stage and must keep awake. If the plot is poor or the acting bad, if some of the mechanism creaks or if the scenery falls down, we feel that we have been cheated; and no ticketseller or trombone player can possibly compensate us. Habit is more insidious in our lives than we ever know. Having bought our ticket, we sit down four-square in our seat and steadfastly face the stage, as much as to say, We have paid two dollars for this chair and we expect to get two dollars’ worth of play. If we don’t get it, we’ll growl.
There is a tale in Hans Andersen entitled, I think, ‘What the Old Man Does is always Right.’ It tells how the Old Man takes a horse or a cow to market to barter it, and, after five or six exchanges, returns home to his wife with a peck of shriveled apples. Most husbands under such circumstances would never return home, but, like Hawthorne’s Wakefield, would take up their abode in another street. But, behold, this man’s paragon of a wife listens gleefully to his story of his successive dickerings, watches the horse shrink into a cow, a sheep, a goose, a hen, the peck of shriveled apples aforesaid, finds some unanticipated compensation in each new declension, and ends by calling him ‘my dear, good husband,’ and giving him a ‘sounding kiss.’
Now, I envy that boy because he seems to me to have achieved at a tender age — unconsciously, it must be admitted — the philosophy of that old woman. Not finding on the stage what he wanted, he sought and found it elsewhere; and, that failing in turn, he went to sleep. It has cost him many a long year to realize, weakly and spasmodically, the same philosophic wisdom.
As I have said, my brother, nevertheless, held my philosophy in such utter contempt that he rejected my future company at the theatre. This was not so cruel a deprivation for me, however, as might be supposed; for he never went himself until a year had elapsed, and then he relented.
He had thought now of a wonderful project that smacked of dare-deviltry. His plan was for us to save our money until we had fifty cents apiece and then go to the Academy of Music to see Joseph Jefferson in Rip van Winkle. To go alone, remember, alone, in the evening, riding the three miles to and fro in the horse-cars, and sitting in that gallery vulgarly known as the ‘peanut.’ I had not much opinion of Rip van Winkle as a tale (though I have to like it now); to my immature judgment it seemed a grain of story hid in three bushels of words, yet I felt that I could manage to sit through it for the sake of the adventure, and so I acquiesced.
For several weeks we saved our money by a novel method. We had each two or three hens which laid an egg now and then, when the weather was calm and their temperaments were unruffled; and this occasional egg we now sold to our mother for a cent. As she supplied the food for the hens, her investment could hardly have been a paying one, but she did not demur. For a time, at least, the chickens were regularly fed. We spent many hours sitting before the coops waiting for the cackle which proclaimed another accession to our hoard of pennies. On the principle of the watched pot, the hens were exasperatingly deliberate. They became hypercritical of the weather, they delighted in deluding us with false alarms, they seemed suddenly to have developed a Methodistical disapproval of the stage. The great week came, and with it Mr. Jefferson, and still we had only thirty-five cents apiece. Our case was desperate. Something had to be done, and we did it by selling two of our hens to our mother for pot-pie. It was no more than they deserved, though it was a little unfair to her as she had bought them for us in the first place.
We had enough, then, not only for our admission to the Academy, but for our car-fares; and on a Wednesday evening we set out under a shower of parting injunctions from the assembled family grouped on the ‘front stoop.' My brother, full of importance, patronized me after the manner of elder brothers, and made it very plain to me that without him I should never have dared to undertake the adventure. This I felt to be true; and, as it was, I was visited by obscure qualms that added zest to the occasion. All the way down town he told me how to behave, and criticized my facial expression, which was probably open to exception, and explained the system of seat-checks and ushers and so forth, all with the purpose of making evident to me my extreme youth. I listened, with mental reservations, but I could not keep my eyes from popping at the glare of the shop-windows and the roar of the elevated trains overhead, with their noisy little engines, and the flaring lights of the menders of the sewer, and the darting cabs, and the majestic policemen with their night-sticks. I remembered that my brother was afraid of policemen and called his attention to the fact, but he evaded the soft aspersion.
The inner doors of t he Academy were still closed when we arrived. We bought our tickets from a jocose box-office man who asked us if we were friends of the author, and we loitered on the steps and in the lobby trying to appear unconcerned, and were the first to climb the interminable stairs and to enter the steep incline of the family circle, as the ticker-seller had called it. There were no ushers up here, as every one sat where he could. We made our way down to where the gilded rail hung like ‘ the gold bar of Heaven ’ over the abyss, and innocently chose the two seats at the right end of the front row because they seemed nearest the stage. An awful emptiness confronted us, making our heads swim. I leaned far back on the wooden bench and gazed up at the myriad of gas-jets in the ceiling, trying to get courage to look down again.
When my brother said sarcastically, ‘There’s the trombone,’ I did look down, however, and eagerly. It did not occur to me that this could scarcely be the same player who had winked at me a year ago, and it was with regret that I realized that from where we sat a wink would be imperceptible. The dizziness had passed. Orchestra and galleries were filling rapidly. The enormous outer curtain rose majestically, disclosing the painted drop-scene. The musicians began their overture. The great building hummed and echoed and sang.
There in the upper aerial circles the music sounded very sweet, and warm smells arose that were subtly exhilarating. Little boy that I was, I felt the pulsations of pleasure that ran through the place. Gradually there stole over me the spell of the theatre, so full of enticement, whether beneficent or dangerous.
I was very wide-awake now. I tried to see everything at once. The crowds excited me, the gaudy gilding and paint and plush represented a kind of luxuriousness that seemed to my inexperience to have come out of a dream. All around us folk were talking and laughing unconcernedly, and just behind us an old man was telling anecdotes of Mr. Jefferson; but we sat holding tightly each other’s hand and turning now and then to stare mutely at each other with wide-open eyes. We could think of nothing to say. And then the curtain went up.
As the reader must perceive, I was by this time in a mood thoroughly to surrender to the sorcery of the stage. I wish that I could go on to tell how I lost all sense of actual time and space, and lived for three hours in an unreal world, wafted on the magic histrionic carpet to the heart of the Catskills a century and a half ago, going forth homeward in a dream, and so forth and so forth. An imaginative boy at his first play ought, according to all precedents, to have experienced this and more; but I did not. A certain hardheaded imp who has pursued me through life sat on my shoulder that night and kept whispering in my ear, It’s all a sham. What’s the use of crying over Rip’s woes when t he old gentleman behind you says that Mr. Jefferson is getting whole mints of money for being pathetic. Look at that door, for instance. It was supposed to slam, but it did n’t slam. It’s made of laths and canvas. You can see the panes flap.
There was no doubt that Mr. Jefferson saton a table and swung his feet very well indeed. His was good acting, but the point is that I never for an instant forgot that it was acting, that the stage was a stage, and the storm no storm at all, but a concatenation of pattering bird-shot, cannon-balls rolled in a trough, rattling sheet-iron, lycopodium powder, and electric flashes. I do not mean that I really thought of the sweating Jupiter Pluvius in overalls behind the scene, or knew the nature or extent of his activities; but I did know that somebody was making that storm, — manufacturing it, — and, while it could make me jump, it could not fool me.
The reader should not be deceived into supposing, however, that this rationalizing interfered with my enjoyment. It is one of the blessings of childhood to be able to pretend with conviction, and the logical and orderly pretending of the play won my unqualified approval and gave me endless delight.
It seems to me that the majority of adults have missed this talent in children entirely. They think, for example, that their children must either have perfect faith in Santa Claus or should hear nothing about him, not perceiving that their little boys and girls can get a great deal of fun out of the benevolent old gentleman even when they know that he is only a myth. My brother and I cherished an excellent working hypothesis of Santa Claus long after we had spent a chilly evening sitting on the stairs in our night-clothes listening to our parents conspiring as to the contents of our stockings. One summer some years ago I spent many hours during a vacation telling stories to a little girl. She brought her stool and sat at my feet, composed her hands in her lap, assumed an expression of polite interest, and demurely asked, ’Is it true?’ ‘No,’ I invariably replied; ‘only a story.’ And after this unchanging prelude, I proceeded to tell her the most blood-curdling tales that my fancy could conjure, while she followed each incident with absorption, mirroring in her face all the emotions of the narrative, the horror, the pity, the anguish, the terror, with the utmost accuracy. At last my conscience was roused. I became alarmed for the peace of mind of my audience. I went to her mother. ‘Am I doing wrong in telling her such stories?’ I asked guiltily. The good lady smiled serenely. ‘She has n’t lost any sleep over them so far,’ said she. ‘You see, as long as she knows they are n’t true, she is n’t frightened.’
It is generally conceded nowadays that it is detrimental to his acting for an actor to ‘lose himself in his part,’ that when his acting is best, it is conscious, careful, alert, strategic. But what of the audience? Does the observation hold of them? As for myself, I ought to have succumbed to the play that first night if I was ever to know the joys of disembodiment. If I was ever to lose myself in a play I should have done so then; but I did not, and have therefore been trying to do so ever since. As I sit in the theatre, I see all around me people who seem to experience the beatific state continuously for three hours, and to be as fresh emotionally at the end as at the beginning. Studying their faces, I see their spirits peep wildly out of their eyes. To watch them is fully worth the price of the admission, — that is some consolation,
— yet I, too, would like to laugh and weep and sigh and wriggle as they, living the play through in my own proper person. Knowing that, according to the social psychologist, emotion is contagious, I eye them covetously in the hope of catching it, as boardingschool boys view with envy one of their number who has had the good fortune to develop measles or chicken pox.
These lucky people, absorbed as they are in the play or opera, can listen without a grin to Cassius speaking with a brogue or to a French tenor impersonating a cowboy. When Elsa is too fat or Lohengrin’s swan-boat sticks (as it always does) or Juliet’s balcony wobbles, they care never a whit, — no such small matter can jar them out of their rapture. As for me, once more, still attended by the perverse imp before mentioned, and no longer fascinated by the mysterious art of stage-carpenter and property-man, one ‘such small matter’ can spoil a whole play.
Once in a long while, some actor has caught me unaware. For five minutes — or was it five seconds? — I have forgotten the world of trade and politics apd bills and taxes, the æsthetical technique of climax, suspense, and the rest; forgotten even the theatre and the seat on which I sat and the clothes I wore and the corporeal vesture of decay that I inhabited, and floated a disembodied spirit that laughed and cried regardless of decorum. But such moments come like shadows, so depart. Usually I. sit, ‘still nursing the unconquerable hope ’ that the illusion will come, but courting it in vain, just as a man who greatly desires to be hypnotized is the last to succumb.
I am not sure that many will understand this feeling, because it is not generally recognized that self-deception is one of the aims of life. I sometimes think that life is one gigantic struggle to deceive ourselves. To say that art and philosophy and religion and science are largely such a struggle, would seem irrational and perverse to most people; but then, most people are not rational, as any theatre audience will show.
But during these moralizings the curtain has risen, the first act has passed, the orchestra — with the trombone— has performed again, and the second act has begun. Rip is in the mountains; the storm still growls in the distance; the stage is dark, murky, spectral. Gradually the moon begins to touch the peaks, the bushes, the boulders, the lone figure of the vagabond hero. We know that it is time for the crew of Hendrick Hudson to appear.
I suppose that it was while searching the stage for any evidence of the presence of that uncanny brotherhood of antiquated nine-pin bowlers that I made a discovery. I perceived, first, that the bushes and boulders, like certain beautiful maidens in fairy-lore, were all front, the merest shams, thin flat façades of rocks and bushes, made of lath and paper; and, second, that behind each was plainly visible a square hole lighted from below. As I stared, I discerned in the middle of each hole a pointed cap, a head, shoulders, arms, a gnome-like figure, squatting on a little dumb-waiter or elevator, ascending from the depths below the stage. And behind sham bush or boulder the little figures crouched, plainly visible to us, while Rip, with transparent pretense, wandered hither and thither among them, unable to see them!
Probably from no other seats in the theatre could this phenomenon be seen; but I had had a glimpse at the ‘very pulse of the machine,’ and anything more delightful it would be hard to imagine. All the evening thus far I had felt the presence of contrivance and artifice, but now for the first time I actually saw them in operation. I felt some of the conceit of the scientist who, having discovered a new aphis or scale, considers it more important than the pageant of nature.
I have to confess that concerning the incidents of the last act my mind remains a blank. My brother was full of the question of the possibility of a man’s sleeping twenty years, and all the way home desired to discuss it. Once more I was not prepared to please him, because during Rip’s slumber and awakening I had been under the stage pulling at ropes, opening and shutting trap-doors, riding up and down on dumb-waiters. He was inclined to be angry at the ticket-seller for not warning us against those seats; the architect of the theatre for planning it so ill; the stage-carpenter and propertyman for arranging so clumsy a piece of deception. He lost all patience with me because I chirruped gleefully over the very circumstance which he considered a dark blemish upon an otherwise laudable production. Neither of us could get the other’s point of view; and so we rode home glumly enough, reserving our several ecstasies for the family, who at least would pretend to understand and sympathize. It seemed. to be my fate to misapply my enthusiasm, to find the romantic just where theoretically it did not exist. I do not blame my brother for setting me down as childish and low-minded.
Far from being sunk in humiliation, however, the very next day I set about organizing a dramatic club and writing a play. A gentleman up the street had fortunately built a chicken-house and then decided not to keep chickens; and this structure became our club-house. We papered, carpeted, and furnished it with material abstracted from family attics, drew up a constitution and bylaws, and began our weekly meetings under the mysterious name of the S. N. S. C., the significance of which initials I have forgotten. We were facetiously known in the neighborhood, however, as the Chicken-coop Club. As the only member who had made a profound study of stage-illusion, I was of course elected stage-manager; and, whatever my plays may have lacked of literary and dramatic value, they were always rich in surprising and terrifying stageeffects. We invariably had a storm with wind, thunder, and lightning; there were always ghosts, fairies, and gnomes popping into view at critical moments in the action. I had visions of a stage which I should build some day all trap-doors, elevators, pulleys, and wires; but my dream was not destined ever to come true. One rainy day when a bare quorum was present in the club-house, it was voted to expend the funds of the club for candy and ice-cream — a dastardly proceeding which precipitated a quarrel ending in a schism that never could be healed. The ice-cream was very good, but my histrionic activities were ended. Once more art had fallen a victim to the temptations of the flesh.
The Chicken-coop and the Academy have both long since burned down.