The Plattner Story, and Others

  THE SAD STORY OF A DRAMATIC CRITIC

  I was--you shall hear immediately why I am not now--Egbert CraddockCummins. The name remains. I am still (Heaven help me!) Dramatic Criticto the _Fiery Cross_. What I shall be in a little while I do not know.I write in great trouble and confusion of mind. I will do what I canto make myself clear in the face of terrible difficulties. You mustbear with me a little. When a man is rapidly losing his own identity,he naturally finds a difficulty in expressing himself. I will make itperfectly plain in a minute, when once I get my grip upon the story.Let me see--where _am_ I? I wish I knew. Ah, I have it! Dead self!Egbert Craddock Cummins!

  In the past I should have disliked writing anything quite so full of"I" as this story must be. It is full of "I's" before and behind, likethe beast in Revelation--the one with a head like a calf, I am afraid.But my tastes have changed since I became a Dramatic Critic and studiedthe masters--G.R.S., G.B.S., G.A.S., and the others. Everything haschanged since then. At least the story is about myself--so that thereis some excuse for me. And it is really not egotism, because, as Isay, since those days my identity has undergone an entire alteration.

  That past!... I was--in those days--rather a nice fellow, rathershy--taste for grey in my clothes, weedy little moustache, face"interesting," slight stutter which I had caught in early life froma schoolfellow. Engaged to a very nice girl, named Delia. Fairlynew, she was--cigarettes--liked me because I was human and original.Considered I was like Lamb--on the strength of the stutter, I believe.Father, an eminent authority on postage stamps. She read a greatdeal in the British Museum. (A perfect pairing ground for literarypeople, that British Museum--you should read George Egerton and JustinHuntly M'Carthy and Gissing and the rest of them.) We loved in ourintellectual way, and shared the brightest hopes. (All gone now.) Andher father liked me because I seemed honestly eager to hear aboutstamps. She had no mother. Indeed, I had the happiest prospects ayoung man could have. I never went to theatres in those days. My AuntCharlotte before she died had told me not to.

  Then Barnaby, the editor of the _Fiery Cross_, made me--in spiteof my spasmodic efforts to escape--Dramatic Critic. He is a fine,healthy man, Barnaby, with an enormous head of frizzy black hair anda convincing manner, and he caught me on the staircase going to seeWembly. He had been dining, and was more than usually buoyant. "Hullo,Cummins!" he said. "The very man I want!" He caught me by the shoulderor the collar or something, ran me up the little passage, and flung meover the waste-paper basket into the arm-chair in his office. "Pray beseated," he said, as he did so. Then he ran across the room and cameback with some pink and yellow tickets and pushed them into my hand."Opera Comique," he said, "Thursday; Friday, the Surrey; Saturday, theFrivolity. That's all, I think."

  "But"--I began.

  "Glad you're free," he said, snatching some proofs off the desk andbeginning to read.

  "I don't quite understand," I said.

  "_Eigh?_" he said, at the top of his voice, as though he thought I hadgone, and was startled at my remark.

  "Do you want me to criticise these plays?"

  "Do something with 'em.... Did you think it was a treat?"

  "But I can't."

  "Did you call me a fool?"

  "Well, I've never been to a theatre in my life."

  "Virgin soil."

  "But I don't know anything about it, you know."

  "That's just it. New view. No habits. No _cliches_ in stock. Ours is alive paper, not a bag of tricks. None of your clockwork professionaljournalism in this office. And I can rely on your integrity"--

  "But I've conscientious scruples"--

  He caught me up suddenly and put me outside his door. "Go and talk toWembly about that," he said. "He'll explain."

  As I stood perplexed, he opened the door again, said, "I forgot this,"thrust a fourth ticket into my hand (it was for that night--in twentyminutes' time), and slammed the door upon me. His expression was quitecalm, but I caught his eye.

  I hate arguments. I decided that I would take his hint and become (tomy own destruction) a Dramatic Critic. I walked slowly down the passageto Wembly. That Barnaby has a remarkably persuasive way. He has madefew suggestions during our very pleasant intercourse of four yearsthat he has not ultimately won me round to adopting. It may be, ofcourse, that I am of a yielding disposition; certainly I am too apt totake my colour from my circumstances. It is, indeed, to my unfortunatesusceptibility to vivid impressions that all my misfortunes are due.I have already alluded to the slight stammer I had acquired from aschoolfellow in my youth. However, this is a digression.... I went homein a cab to dress.

  I will not trouble the reader with my thoughts about the first-nightaudience, strange assembly as it is,--those I reserve for myMemoirs,--nor the humiliating story of how I got lost during the_entr'acte_ in a lot of red plush passages, and saw the third act fromthe gallery. The only point upon which I wish to lay stress was theremarkable effect of the acting upon me. You must remember I had liveda quiet and retired life, and had never been to the theatre before,and that I am extremely sensitive to vivid impressions. At the risk ofrepetition I must insist upon these points.

  The first effect was a profound amazement, not untinctured by alarm.The phenomenal unnaturalness of acting is a thing discounted in theminds of most people by early visits to the theatre. They get used tothe fantastic gestures, the flamboyant emotions, the weird mouthings,melodious snortings, agonising yelps, lip-gnawings, glaring horrors,and other emotional symbolism of the stage. It becomes at last a meredeaf-and-dumb language to them, which they read intelligently _paripassu_ with the hearing of the dialogue. But all this was new to me.The thing was called a modern comedy, the people were supposed to beEnglish and were dressed like fashionable Americans of the currentepoch, and I fell into the natural error of supposing that the actorswere trying to represent human beings. I looked round on my first-nightaudience with a kind of wonder, discovered--as all new Dramatic Criticsdo--that it rested with me to reform the Drama, and, after a supperchoked with emotion, went off to the office to write a column, piebaldwith "new paragraphs" (as all my stuff is--it fills out so) and purplewith indignation. Barnaby was delighted.

  But I could not sleep that night. I dreamt of actors--actors glaring,actors smiting their chests, actors flinging out a handful of extendedfingers, actors smiling bitterly, laughing despairingly, fallinghopelessly, dying idiotically. I got up at eleven with a slightheadache, read my notice in the _Fiery Cross_, breakfasted, and wentback to my room to shave. (It's my habit to do so.) Then an odd thinghappened. I could not find my razor. Suddenly it occurred to me that Ihad not unpacked it the day before.

  "Ah!" said I, in front of the looking-glass. Then "Hullo!"

  Quite involuntarily, when I had thought of my portmanteau, I had flungup the left arm (fingers fully extended) and clutched at my diaphragmwith my right hand. I am an acutely self-conscious man at all times.The gesture struck me as absolutely novel for me. I repeated it, formy own satisfaction. "Odd!" Then (rather puzzled) I turned to myportmanteau.

  After shaving, my mind reverted to the acting I had seen, and Ientertained myself before the cheval glass with some imitations ofJafferay's more exaggerated gestures. "Really, one might think it adisease," I said--"Stage-Walkitis!" (There's many a truth spoken injest.) Then, if I remember rightly, I went off to see Wembly, andafterwards lunched at the British Museum with Delia. We actually spokeabout our prospects, in the light of my new appointment.

  But that appointment was the beginning of my downfall. From that dayI necessarily became a persistent theatre-goer, and almost insensiblyI began to change. The next thing I noticed after the gesture aboutthe razor, was to catch myself bowing ineffably when I met Delia, andstooping in an old-fashioned, courtly way over her hand. Directly Icaught myself, I straightened myself up and became very uncomfortable.I remember she looked at me curiously. Then, in the office, I foundmyself doing "nervous business," fingers on teeth, when Barnaby askedme a question I could not very well answer. Then, i
n some triflingdifference with Delia, I clasped my hand to my brow. And I prancedthrough my social transactions at times singularly like an actor! Itried not to--no one could be more keenly alive to the arrant absurdityof the histrionic bearing. And I did!

  It began to dawn on me what it all meant. The acting, I saw, was toomuch for my delicately-strung nervous system. I have always, I know,been too amenable to the suggestions of my circumstances. Night afternight of concentrated attention to the conventional attitudes andintonation of the English stage was gradually affecting my speech andcarriage. I was giving way to the infection of sympathetic imitation.Night after night my plastic nervous system took the print of some newamazing gesture, some new emotional exaggeration--and retained it. Akind of theatrical veneer threatened to plate over and obliterate myprivate individuality altogether. I saw myself in a kind of vision.Sitting by myself one night, my new self seemed to me to glide,posing and gesticulating, across the room. He clutched his throat, heopened his fingers, he opened his legs in walking like a high-classmarionette. He went from attitude to attitude. He might have beenclockwork. Directly after this I made an ineffectual attempt toresign my theatrical work. But Barnaby persisted in talking about thePolywhiddle Divorce all the time I was with him, and I could get noopportunity of saying what I wished.

  And then Delia's manner began to change towards me. The ease of ourintercourse vanished. I felt she was learning to dislike me. Igrinned, and capered, and scowled, and posed at her in a thousand ways,and knew--with what a voiceless agony!--that I did it all the time. Itried to resign again, and Barnaby talked about "X" and "Z" and "Y" inthe _New Review_, and gave me a strong cigar to smoke, and so routedme. And then I walked up the Assyrian Gallery in the manner of Irvingto meet Delia, and so precipitated the crisis.

  "Ah!--_Dear!_" I said, with more sprightliness and emotion in my voicethan had ever been in all my life before I became (to my own undoing) aDramatic Critic.

  She held out her hand rather coldly, scrutinising my face as she didso. I prepared, with a new-won grace, to walk by her side.

  "Egbert," she said, standing still, and thought. Then she looked at me.

  I said nothing. I felt what was coming. I tried to be the old EgbertCraddock Cummins of shambling gait and stammering sincerity, whom sheloved, but I felt even as I did so that I was a new thing, a thingof surging emotions and mysterious fixity--like no human being thatever lived, except upon the stage. "Egbert," she said, "you are notyourself."

  "Ah!" Involuntarily I clutched my diaphragm and averted my head (as isthe way with them).

  "There!" she said.

  "_What do you mean?_" I said, whispering in vocal italics--you knowhow they do it--turning on her, perplexity on face, right hand down,left on brow. I knew quite well what she meant. I knew quite well thedramatic unreality of my behaviour. But I struggled against it in vain."What do you mean?" I said, and, in a kind of hoarse whisper, "I don'tunderstand!"

  She really looked as though she disliked me. "What do you keep onposing for?" she said. "I don't like it. You didn't use to."

  "Didn't use to!" I said slowly, repeating this twice. I glared up anddown the gallery, with short, sharp glances. "We are alone," I saidswiftly. "_Listen!_" I poked my forefinger towards her, and glared ather. "I am under a curse."

  I saw her hand tighten upon her sunshade. "You are under some badinfluence or other," said Delia. "You should give it up. I never knewanyone change as you have done."

  "Delia!" I said, lapsing into the pathetic. "Pity me. Augh! Delia!_Pit_--y me!"

  She eyed me critically. "_Why_ you keep playing the fool like this Idon't know," she said. "Anyhow, I really cannot go about with a man whobehaves as you do. You made us both ridiculous on Wednesday. Frankly,I dislike you, as you are now. I met you here to tell you so--as it'sabout the only place where we can be sure of being alone together"--

  "Delia!" said I, with intensity, knuckles of clenched hands white. "Youdon't mean"--

  "I do," said Delia. "A woman's lot is sad enough at the best of times.But with you"--

  I clapped my hand on my brow.

  "So, good-bye," said Delia, without emotion.

  "Oh, Delia!" I said. "Not _this_?"

  "Good-bye, Mr. Cummins," she said.

  By a violent effort I controlled myself and touched her hand. I triedto say some word of explanation to her. She looked into my working faceand winced. "I _must_ do it," she said hopelessly. Then she turned fromme and began walking rapidly down the gallery.

  Heavens! How the human agony cried within me! I loved Delia. Butnothing found expression--I was already too deeply crusted with myacquired self.

  "Good-baye!" I said at last, watching her retreating figure. How Ihated myself for doing it! After she had vanished, I repeated in adreamy way, "Good-baye!" looking hopelessly round me. Then, with a kindof heart-broken cry, I shook my clenched fists in the air, staggered tothe pedestal of a winged figure, buried my face in my arms, and made myshoulders heave. Something within me said "Ass!" as I did so. (I hadthe greatest difficulty in persuading the Museum policeman, who wasattracted by my cry of agony, that I was not intoxicated, but merelysuffering from a transient indisposition.)

  But even this great sorrow has not availed to save me from my fate.I see it, everyone sees it; I grow more "theatrical" every day.And no one could be more painfully aware of the pungent sillinessof theatrical ways. The quiet, nervous, but pleasing E. C. Cumminsvanishes. I cannot save him. I am driven like a dead leaf before thewinds of March. My tailor even enters into the spirit of my disorder.He has a peculiar sense of what is fitting. I tried to get a dull greysuit from him this spring, and he foisted a brilliant blue upon me,and I see he has put braid down the sides of my new dress trousers. Myhairdresser insists upon giving me a "wave."

  I am beginning to associate with actors. I detest them, but it is onlyin their company that I can feel I am not glaringly conspicuous. Theirtalk infects me. I notice a growing tendency to dramatic brevity, todashes and pauses in my style, to a punctuation of bows and attitudes.Barnaby has remarked it too. I offended Wembly by calling him "DearBoy" yesterday. I dread the end, but I cannot escape from it.

  The fact is, I am being obliterated. Living a grey, retired life allmy youth, I came to the theatre a delicate sketch of a man, a thingof tints and faint lines. Their gorgeous colouring has effaced mealtogether. People forget how much mode of expression, method ofmovement, are a matter of contagion. I have heard of stage-struckpeople before, and thought it a figure of speech. I spoke of itjestingly, as a disease. It is no jest. It _is_ a disease. And I havegot it bad! Deep down within me I protest against the wrong done to mypersonality--unavailingly. For three hours or more a week I have to goand concentrate my attention on some fresh play, and the suggestionsof the drama strengthen their awful hold upon me. My manners grow soflamboyant, my passions so professional, that I doubt, as I said at theoutset, whether it is really myself that behaves in such a manner. Ifeel merely the core to this dramatic casing, that grows thicker andpresses upon me--me and mine. I feel like King John's abbot in his copeof lead.

  I doubt, indeed, whether I should not abandon the strugglealtogether--leave this sad world of ordinary life for which I amso ill-fitted, abandon the name of Cummins for some professionalpseudonym, complete my self-effacement, and--a thing of tricks andtatters, of posing and pretence--go upon the stage. It seems my onlyresort--"to hold the mirror up to Nature." For in the ordinary life,I will confess, no one now seems to regard me as both sane and sober.Only upon the stage, I feel convinced, will people take me seriously.That will be the end of it. I _know_ that will be the end of it. Andyet ... I will frankly confess ... all that marks off your actorfrom your common man ... I _detest_. I am still largely of my AuntCharlotte's opinion, that playacting is unworthy of a pure-minded man'sattention, much more participation. Even now I would resign my dramaticcriticism and try a rest. Only I can't get hold of Barnaby. Lettersof resignation he never notices. He says it is against the etiquetteof journali
sm to write to your Editor. And when I go to see him, hegives me another big cigar and some strong whisky and soda, and thensomething always turns up to prevent my explanation.