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Page 36

"But surely it doesn't pretend to be anything else?" suggested St
Aubyn, surprised.

"Be it so. I don't like shams, I suppose," returned the boy.

"Still, you shouldn't generalise too widely," urged the other. "There
are plays where one's sensibilities are really touched, where the
situations are not forced, where the performers move and speak like
living, ordinary human beings, and, in the case of great actors, work
upon the feelings of the audience to such an extent----"

"And there the artificiality is all the greater!" chipped in Austin,
tersely. "The more perfect the illusion, the hollower the
artificiality. Of course, no one could take Sardanapalus seriously,
any more than if he were a marionette pulled by strings instead of the
sort of live marionette he really is. But where the acting and the
situations are so perfect, as you say, as to cause real emotion, the
unreality of the whole business is more flagrantly conspicuous than
ever. The emotions pourtrayed are not real, and nobody pretends they
are. The art, therefore, of making them appear real, and even
communicating them to the audience, must of necessity involve greater
artificiality than where the acting is bad and the situations
ridiculous. There's a person I know, near where I live--you never
heard of him, of course, but he's called Jock MacTavish--and he told
me he once went to see a really very great actress do some part or
other in which she had to die a most pathetic death. It was said to be
simply heart-rending, and everybody used to cry. Well, the night Jock
MacTavish was there something went wrong--a sofa was out of its place,
or a bolster had been forgotten, or a rope wouldn't work, I don't know
what it was--and the language that woman indulged in while she was in
the act of dying would have disgraced a bargee. Jock was in a
stage-box and heard every filthy word of it. Of course _he_ told me
the story as a joke, and I was rather disgusted, but I'm glad he did
so now. That was an extreme case, I know--such things don't occur one
time in ten thousand, no doubt--but it's an illustration of what I
mean when I say that the finer the illusion produced the hollower the
sham that produces it."

"You're a mighty subtle-minded young person for your age," exclaimed
St Aubyn, with a good-humoured laugh. "I confess that your theory is
new to me; it had never occurred to me before. For one who has only
been inside a theatre two or three times in his life you seem to have
elaborated your conclusions pretty quickly. I may infer, then, that
you're not exactly hankering to go on the stage yourself?"

"_I_?" said Austin, drawing himself up. "I, disguise myself in paint
and feathers to be a public gazing-stock? Of course you mean it as a
joke."

"And yet there _are_ gentlemen upon the stage," observed St Aubyn, in
order to draw him on.

"So much the better for the stage, perhaps; so much the worse for the
gentlemen," replied Austin haughtily.

A pause. They were now well out in the open country, with the moonlit
road stretching far in front of them. Then St Aubyn said, in a
different tone altogether:

"You surprise me beyond measure by what you say. I should have thought
that a boy of your poetical and artistic temperament would have had
his imagination somewhat fired, even by the efforts of the poor
showman whom we've seen to-night. Now I will make you a confession. At
the bottom of my heart I agree with every word you've said. I may be
one-sided, prejudiced, what you will, but I cannot help looking upon a
public performer as I look upon no other human being. And I pity the
performer, too; he takes himself so seriously, he fails so completely
to realise what he really is. And the danger of going on the stage is
that, once an actor, always an actor. Let a man once get bitten by the
craze, and there's no hope for him. Only the very finest natures can
escape. The fascination is too strong. He's ruined for any other
career, however honourable and brilliant."

"Is that so, really?" asked Austin. "I cannot see where all this
wonderful fascination comes in. I should think it must be a dreadful
trade myself."

"So it is. Because they don't know it. Because of the very fascination
which exists, although you can't understand it. Let me tell you a
story. I knew a man once upon a time--he was a great friend of
mine--in the navy. Although he was quite young, not more than
twenty-six, he was already a distinguished officer; he had seen active
service, been mentioned in despatches, and all the rest of it. He was
also, curiously enough, a most accomplished botanist, and had written
papers on the flora of Cambodia and Yucatan that had been accepted
with marked appreciation by the Linn�an Society. Well--that man, who
had a brilliant career before him, and would probably have been an
admiral and a K.C.B. if he had stuck to it, got attacked by the
theatrical microbe. He chucked everything, and devoted his whole life
to acting. He is acting still. He cares for nothing else. It is the
one and only thing in the universe he lives for. The service of his
country, the pure fame of scientific research and authorship, are as
nothing to him, the merest dust in the balance, as compared with the
cheap notoriety of the footlights."

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Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Mon 22nd Dec 2025, 6:30

Austin and His Friends by Frederic H. Balfour