The Arena. Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891

Lish. (Taking off mittens, cap, comforter, etc.) Whatcher got? Chicking? Waal, that’s good ‘nough. (Seats himself at table.) Say, Jack, d’ you know, you left a goose a-layin’ on Jim Adamses bar las’ night? I was goin’ to fetch it along but Jim said you gin it to him, swore you made him a present on it.

Mother. Jack Hepburn, did you give that goose—

Mary. (Interrupting her.) Have a cup of coffee, mother.

Lish. Jack, have you got the time o’ day? (Chuckles.) Here’s y’r new Waterbury. The boys wanted I should fetch her ‘round; ye went off las’ night without her.

Jack. Ye can take her back again; I don’t want her.

Mary. O Jack!

Jack. No, Mary, I don’t. I wish the durned ol’ Waterbury ‘d never been born.

Mary. The boys meant well, Jack; I wouldn’t send back their present.

Jack. All right, Mary, if you say so, I’ll take her. There’s one thing sure, every time I wind her up she’ll put me in mind how durn near I come to losin’ the best little wife in the whole world.

This play brought me to know Mr. and Mrs. Herne. It needed but an hour’s talk to convince me that I had met two of the most intellectual artists in the dramatic profession, and also to learn how great were the obstacles which lay in the way of producing a real play, each year adding to the insuperableness of the barriers. Mr. Herne was at that time (two years ago) working upon a new play, in some respects, notably in its theme, finer than Drifting Apart. It was the result of several summers spent on the coast of Maine, and is called Shore-Acres. The story is mainly that of two brothers, Nathaniel and Martin Berry, who own a fine “shore-acre” tract near a booming summer resort. An enterprising grocer in the little village gets Martin interested in booms and suggests that they form a company and cut the shore-acre tract up into lots and sell to summer residents.

Martin comes with the scheme to Nathaniel.

Martin. I’d like t’ talk to yeh, an’ I d’ know’s I’ll hev a better chance.

Uncle Nat. I d’ know’s yeh will.

Martin. (Hesitates, picks up a stick and whittles.) Mr. Blake’s ben here.

Uncle Nat. (Picks up a straw and chews it.) Hez ‘e?

Martin. Yes. He ‘lows thet we’d ought to cut the farm up inter buildin’ lots.

Uncle Nat. Dooze ‘e?

Martin. Yes. He says there’s a boom a-comin’ here, an’ thet the lan’s too valu’ble to work.

Uncle Nat. I want t’ know ‘f he dooze. Where d’s he talk o’ beginnin’?

Martin. Out there at the nothe eend o’ the shore pint?

Uncle Nat. Yeh don’t mean up yander? (Pointing with his thumb over his shoulder.)

Martin. (Slowly.) Y-e-s.

Uncle Nat. Dooze ‘e calkalate t’ take in the knoll thet looks out t’ Al’gator Reef?

Martin. I reck’n he dooze.

Uncle Nat. Did yeh tell him thet mother’s berried there?

Martin. He knows thet ‘s well ‘s you do. (Sulkily.)

Uncle Nat. What’s he calkalate t’ do with mother?

Martin. He advises puttin’ her in a cimitry up to Bangor.

Uncle Nat. She’d never sleep comfort’ble in no cimitry, mother wouldn’t.

Martin. He says thet’s the choice lot o’ the hull pass’ll.

Uncle Nat. Then who’s got so good a right to it as mother hez? It was all her’n once. Thet’s the only piece she ast t’ keep. Yeh don’t begrutch it to her, do yeh, Martin?

Martin. I don’t begrutch her nothin’, only he says folks hain’t a-goin’ to pay fancy prices ‘thout they hev ther pick.

Uncle Nat. D’ye think any fancy price hed ought to buy mother’s grave?

Martin. Yeh seem to kinder shameface me fer thinkin’ o’ partin’ with it.

Uncle Nat. Didn’t mean to. Law sakes! who’m I thet I should set my face agin improvemints, I’d like t’ know? Go ahead, an’ sell, ‘n build, an’ git rich, an’ move t’ Bangor, unly don’t sell thet! Leave me jes’ thet leetle patch, an’ I’ll stay an’ take keer th’ light, keep the grass cut over yander, an’ sort o’ watch eout fer things gin’rally….

Ann. Sakes alive! Martin Berry, bean’t you a-comin’ to your dinner t’day? Come, Nathan’l, y’r dinner’ll be stun cold. I say yer dinner’ll be stun cold. ‘T won’t be fit f’r a hawg t’eat.

Little Mildred. (Going to Nat, looks up into his face.) He’s cryin’, momma.

This estrangement, and the results that flow from it, form the simple basis of Shore-Acres, a play full of character studies, and permeated by that peculiar flavor of sea and farm, which the New England coast abounds with. The theme is the best and truest of all Mr. Herne’s plays of humble life.

Mr. and Mrs. Herne have lived for twelve years in Ashmont, a suburb of Boston. They have a comfortable and tasteful home, with three children, Julie, Crystal, and Dorothy [aged ten, eight, and five], to give them welcome when they come back from their seasons on the road. Mr. Herne is very domestic and lives a very simple and quiet life. And he enjoys his pretty home as only a man can whose life is spent so largely in fatiguing travel. He is fond of the fields which lie near his home, and very many are the long walks we have taken together. He is very fond of wild flowers, especially daisies and clover blossoms, and in their season is never without a bunch of them upon his desk. Books are all about him. He writes at a flat-top desk in the room he calls his, but his terrific orders to be left alone are calmly ignored by the three children who invade this “study,” and throw themselves upon him at the slightest provocation. He is much tyrannized over by Dorothy, whose dolls he is forced to mend, no matter what other apparently important work is going forward.

Mrs. Herne is a woman of extraordinary powers, both of acquired knowledge and natural insight, and her suggestions and criticisms have been of the greatest value to her husband in his writing, and she had large part in the inception as well as in the production of Margaret Fleming. Her knowledge of life and books, like that of her husband, is self-acquired, but I have met few people in any walk of life with the same wide and thorough range of thought. In their home oft-quoted volumes of Spencer, Darwin, Fiske, Carlyle, Ibsen, Valdes, Howells, give evidence that they not only keep abreast but ahead of the current thought of the day. Spencer is their philosopher, and Howells is their novelist, but Dickens and Scott have large space on their shelves. All this does not prevent Mr. Herne from being an incorrigible joker, and a wonderfully funny story-teller. All dialects come instantly and surely to his tongue. The sources of his power as a dramatist are evident in his keen observation and retentive memory. Mrs. Herne’s poet is Sidney Lanier, and she knows his principal poems by heart. “Sunrise” is her especial delight. But to see her radiant with intellectual enthusiasm, one has but to start a discussion of the nebular hypothesis, or to touch upon the atomic theory, or doubt the inconceivability of matter. She is perfectly oblivious to space and time if she can get someone to discuss Flammarion’s supersensuous world of force, Mr. George’s theory of land-holding, or Spencer’s law of progress.

Her enthusiasms bear fruit not only in her own phenomenal development, but in her power over others, both as an artist and friend. Wherever she goes she carries the magnetic influence of one who lives and thinks on high planes. Her earnestness is tremendous.

They are both individualists in the sense of being for the highest and purest type of man, and the elimination of governmental control. “Truth, Liberty, and Justice,” form the motto over their door. Mr. Herne has won great distinction as a powerful and ready advocate of the single tax theory, and they are both personal valued friends of Mr. George. It is Ibsen’s individualism as well as his truth that appeals so strongly to both Mr. and Mrs. Herne. They are in deadly earnest like Ibsen, and Margaret Fleming sprang directly from their radicalism on the woman question. The home of these extraordinary people is a charged battery radiating the most advanced thought. As one friend said: “No one ever leaves this house as he came. We all go away with something new and vital to think about.”

I give these personal impressions in order that those who saw them in Margaret Fleming may know that its power was certainly a reflection of the high thought and purity of moral conviction and life which Mr. and Mrs. Herne brought to its production and its performance. It voices their love of truth in art, and freedom in life, and specifically their position on the woman question.

The story of Margaret Fleming is briefly:—

Philip Fleming is a fairly successful business man in a town near Boston. He has a devoted wife, a child just reaching its first year’s birthday. The first scene develops the situation by a conversation between Fleming and his family physician. Fleming offers a cigar which Dr. Larkin refuses.

Philip. You used to respect my cigars. (Laughing.)

Doctor. I used to respect you….

Philip. Why not, for heaven’s sake?

Doctor. Because you’ve no more moral nature than Joe Fletcher has.

Philip. Oh! come now, Doctor, that’s rather—

Doctor. (Looking sternly at him.) At two o’clock last night, Lena Schmidt gave birth to a child.

Philip. (His eyes meet those of the Doctor, then drop to the floor.) How in God’s name did they come to send for you?

. . . . . . . . 

Doctor. I don’t believe she’ll ever leave that bed alive.

Philip. Well, I’ve done all I can to—

Doctor. Yeh have, eh?

Philip. She’s had all the money she needed…. If she’d a’ done as I wanted her to, this never’d a’ happened. I tried to get her away six months ago, but she wouldn’t go. She was as obstinate as a mule.

Doctor. Strange that she should want to be near you, aint it? If she’d got tired of you and wanted to go, you wouldn’t have let her.

Philip. (With a sickly smile.) You must think I’m—

Doctor. I don’t think anything about it. I know just what such animals as you are.

Philip. Why, I haven’t seen her for a—

Doctor. Haven’ t yeh! well, then, suppose you go and see her to-day.

Philip. (Alarmed.) No, I won’t. I can’t do that!

Doctor. You will do just that.

Philip. (Showing temper.) I won’t go near her.

Doctor. (Quietly.) Yes, you will. She sha’n’t lie there and die like a dog.

Philip. You wouldn’t dare—to tell—

Doctor. I want you to go and see this girl! (They face each other.) Will yeh or won’t yeh?

Philip. (After a pause subdued.) What d’ ye want me to say to her?

Fleming had been unfaithful to his wife at the time when he should have been most devoted. The next two scenes show us Margaret in her lovely home with the baby crowing about her. Fleming, with the easy shift of such natures, has thrown off his depression, and is in good spirits the following morning. Dr. Larkin calls to warn Fleming that he had better take Margaret away at once. She has trouble with her eyes which a nervous shock might intensify. He promises to do so, but the act closes with Margaret’s departure to visit Lena Schmidt, who has sent for her. The third act takes place in Mrs. Burton’s cottage, where the girl is dying. Dr. Larkin enters, finds Mrs. Burton holding the babe in her arms. I quote the conversation as a fine example of its truth and suggestion.

Mrs. Burton. O Doctor! I didn’t hear ye knawk. Did I keep y’ waitin’?

Doctor. No. How’re the sick folks?

Mrs. Burton. Haven’t y’ seen Dr. Taylor! Didn’t he tell yeh?

Doctor. Haven’t seen him. I suppose you mean—

Mrs. Burton. Yes.

Doctor. Humph! When’d she die?

Mrs. B. ‘Bout half an hour ago.

Doctor. I had two calls on my way here. When did the change come?

Mrs. B. Ther’ wa’n’t no change t’ speak ‘f. About two hours ago, she et a nice cup o’ grule, and asked me to fix the pillers so’s her head ‘d be higher. I done it. Then she asked f’r a pensul ‘n paper, an’ she writ f’r quite some time. After that she shet her eyes an’ I thought she was asleep. She never moved till the Doctor come, then she opened her eyes ‘n smiled at him. He asked how she felt, an’ she gave a l-o-n-g sigh—an’ that was all there was to it.

. . . . . . . . 

Margaret comes in and Dr. Larkin, horrified, tries in vain to get her to return. Maria, the dead girl’s sister, comes out of the bedroom, with a letter in her hand, and with barbaric ferocity turns upon Margaret. A scene of great dramatic power follows, and under the stress of her suffering, Margaret goes blind. It all ends in the flight of Fleming, and the destruction of their home. Several years later a chain of events brings wife and husband together in the office of the Boston Inspector of Police. Joe Fletcher, a street pedler, and husband of Maria, the sister of Lena Schmidt, was the means of bringing them together again. Fleming runs across Joe on the Common, and Joe takes him to see Maria. Margaret has found Maria and her child, which Maria had taken. Philip’s altercation with Maria brings them into the police office. After explanations, the inspector turns to the husband and wife, and voicing conventional morality, advises them to patch it up. “When you want me, ring that bell,” he says, and leaves them alone. There is a hush of suspense, and then Fleming, seeing the work he had wrought in the blind face before him, speaks.

Philip. Margaret!

Margaret. Well!

Philip. This is terrible

Marg. You heard the inspector. He calls it a “common case.”

Philip. Yes. I was wondering whether he meant that or only said it.

Marg. I guess he meant it, Philip. We’ll be crowded out of his thoughts before he goes to bed to-night.

. . . . . . . . 

Marg. Ah, well, it’s done now, and—

Philip. Yes, it’s done. For four years I’ve been like an escaped prisoner that wanted to give himself up and dreaded the punishment. I’m captured at last, and without hope or fear,—I was going to say without shame,—I ask you, my judge, to pronounce my sentence.

Marg. That’s a terrible thing to ask me to do, Philip…. (She hesitates.)

Philip. Of course you’ll get a divorce?

Marg. Don’t let us have any more ceremonies, Philip…. I gave myself to you when you asked me to. We were married in my mother’s little home. Do you remember what a bright, beautiful morning it was?

Philip. Yes.

Marg. That was seven years ago. To-day we’re here!…

. . . . . . . . 

I am calm. My eyes have simply been turned in upon myself for four years. I see clearer than I used to.

Philip. Suppose I could come to you some day and say, Margaret, I’m now an honest man. Would you live with me again?

Marg. The wife-heart has gone out of me, Philip.

Philip. I’ll wait, Margaret. Perhaps it may come back again. Who knows?

. . . . . . . . 

Philip. Is it degrading to forgive?

Marg. No; but it is to condone. Suppose I had broken faith with you?

Philip. Ah, Margaret!

Marg. I know! But suppose I had? Why should a wife bear the whole stigma of infidelity? Isn’t it just as revolting in a husband?…

. . . . . . . . 

Then can’t you see that it is simply impossible for me to live with you again? Philip. That’s my sentence…. We’ll be friends?

Marg. Yes, friends. We’ll respect each other as friends. We never could as man and wife.

As they clasp hands, something latent, organic rushes over her. She masters it, puts his hand aside: “Ring that bell!”

Played as Mrs. Herne plays it, this act is the supreme climax toward which the action moves from the first. It is her knowledge of its significance, her belief in its justice, and her faith in its beneficence that makes her reading so intellectually powerful and penetrating. She seems to be all of the woman, and something of the seer, as she stands there as Margaret whose blindness has somehow given her inward light, and conviction, and strength. She seemed to be speaking for all womankind, whose sorrowful history we are only just beginning to read truthfully. It is no wonder that Mrs. Herne appealed with such power to the thinking women of Boston. Never before has their case been so stated in America.

One of the most noticeable and gratifying results of Mr. and Mrs. Herne’s performance was the forced abandonment by the critics of conventional standards of criticism. Every thoughtful word, even by those most severe, was made from the realist’s standpoint. It forced a comparison with life and that was a distinct gain.

The critics got at last the point of view of those who praise an imperfect play simply for its honesty of purpose, and its tendency. My own criticism of Margaret Fleming is that it lacks the simplicity of life. It has too much of plot. Things converge too much, and here and there things happen. Measured by the standard of truth it fails at two or three points in its construction, though its treatment is markedly direct and honest. Measured by any play on the American stage, it stands above them all in purpose, in execution, in power, and is worthy to stand for the new drama. It was exposed to the severest test, and came out of it triumphantly. What the effect will be upon the American drama, it would be hard to say. Certainly whether great or small, that influence will be toward progress, an influence that is altogether good.

Already it has precipitated the discussion of an independent American theatre, where plays of advanced thought and native atmosphere can be produced. It has given courage to many who (being in the minority) had given up the idea of ever having a play after their ideal. It has cleared the air and showed the way out of the cul de sac into which monopoly seemed to have driven plays and players. It demonstrated that a small theatre makes the production of literary plays possible, and the whole field is opening to the American dramatist. The fact that the lovers of truth and art are in the minority, no longer cuts a figure. The small theatre makes a theatre for the minority not only possible, but inevitable.

In the immediate advance in truth, both in acting and play-writing, Mr. and Mrs. Herne are likely to have large part. The work which they have already done entitles them not only to respect, but to gratitude. They have been working for many years to discredit effectism in acting, and to bring truth into the American drama. They have set a high mark, as all will testify who saw the work in Chickering Hall. Now let who can, go higher.

SOME WEAK SPOTS IN THE FRENCH REPUBLIC

BY THEODORE STANTON

Last autumn the third French republic completed the second decade of its checkered existence, and has thus proved itself to be the most long-lived government which France has known since the advent of the great Revolution a century ago. No previous government has been able to stand eighteen years, so that the present republic has outstripped all its predecessors, whether republican, imperial, or monarchical, leaving even the most fortunate of them two or three years behind, and bidding fair to increase the distance indefinitely. Its longevity has been greater than the first and second republics taken together, which covered a period of a little over sixteen years; while if we combine the existence of all three republics, equal to about thirty-six years, we again find that no other regime has shown such prolonged vitality,—the two empires having lived for only twenty-eight years, and the two monarchies for about thirty-three and a half years.

But the early years of the third republic—from 1870 to 1879—like the declining period of the first and second republics, were more monarchical than republican. And again, there are so many weakening influences in the present institutions of France, that the decisive conclusions which might otherwise be drawn from the foregoing considerations need, I regret to say, to be considerably qualified. Previous to the election to the presidency of M. Grévy, in 1879, the government was happily styled “a republic without republicans.” But since that date the same party—the republican—has had supreme control. Practically, therefore, the third republic has been in operation about twelve years, and has, therefore, still to pass that dangerous turning-point in the history of French governments, the twentieth year.

I now come to the consideration of some of the more serious causes of lack of faith in the duration of the present regime. But it should be pointed out right here at the start that many of these blemishes, most all of them in fact, have characterized every government in France, so that they are not peculiarly republican; and I hasten to add that my object in pointing them out, in analyzing them and dwelling on them, is not for the purpose of belittling or ridiculing the estimable government now controlling the destinies of France. As an American and a republican who has observed contemporary French history on the spot since 1874, who has been an eye witness of many of the crucial episodes of this critical period, who has known personally several of the leading actors and who wishes well for the present institutions, I take up this subject not so much in order to find fault with what is, as to endeavor to discover how far these imperfections and weaknesses endanger the existence of a form of government in which all Americans take such a lively and sincere interest. Nowhere else in the civilized world, not even in France itself, would the fall of the third republic cause such deep regret as in the United States. Hence it is that we desire to know what likelihood there is of such a disaster being brought about, in the hope that by calling attention to the dangers, we may, perhaps, do something to prevent such a lamentable catastrophe.

The greatest peril that has threatened the republic since its foundation in 1870, was the recent Boulanger adventure. Though this rather addle-brained general is now quite dead politically, the causes which gave him strength and nearly plunged France once more into a chaos whence would probably have issued a tyranny of some sort, still exist and are continually on the point of cropping out again. The principal one of them is the lack of union among republicans. Just as the republic owed its final triumph to the circumstance that the royalists and imperialists could not coalesce during the years immediately following 1870, so Boulanger, backed by these same royalists and imperialists, nearly won the day two years ago, almost wholly because the republicans were divided among themselves. Union among republicans is scarcely less necessary to-day than it was during the dark days of Marshal MacMahon’s presidency and the threatened Boulangist coup d’etat.

Since the republicans have had control of the two houses, the minority, especially in the chamber of deputies, has been very strong, the Right to-day numbering about one hundred and seventy deputies, and the Boulangists about thirty more, making a grand total of two hundred in a membership of less than six hundred. That is to say, the Opposition, mustering more than a third of the chamber. And when it is borne in mind that this minority is not simply a constitutional Opposition, that its advent to power would mean the eventual overthrow of the republic, we perceive how radically different such an Opposition is from that found in the parliament of other countries, where whether the outs come in or the ins go out, no vital change occurs in the nature of the government.

The existence of this recklessly revolutionary minority and the fickleness of republican union are the chief causes of ministerial instability, one of the worst features of the present regime. The ministry has changed so often during the last twenty years, that many republicans have been led to doubt the advantages of the English parliamentary system, and have turned their eyes toward its modification in the United States, where the existence of the Cabinet is independent of a vote of the House. It was this admiration of the American system which led M. Naquet and M. Andrieux—once prominent republican deputies, and the former still a member of the Chamber—to espouse Boulangism, and the general obtained not a little of his popular strength from his oft-repeated assertion that he would put an end to ministerial instability. That this evil is not exaggerated, though the proposed remedy would probably have been worse than the disease, is shown by the most casual glance at French cabinet history since the fall of the second empire.