Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1622 page)

There are persons whose interest it may be to deny this, and who will deny it. It is not a question of assertion or denial, but a question of figures. How much per week did a popular actor get in Colman’s time? How much per week does a popular actor get now? The biographies of dead players will answer the first question. And the managers’ books, for the past ten or fifteen years, will answer the second. I must not give offense by comparisons between living and dead men — I must not enter into details, because they would lead me too near to the private affairs of other people. But I tell you again, that the remuneration for acting has immensely increased, and the remuneration for dramatic writing has immensely decreased, in our time; and I am not afraid of having that assertion contradicted by proofs.

It is useless to attempt a defense of the present system by telling me that a different plan of remunerating the dramatic author was adopted in former times, and that a different plan is also practiced on the French stage. I am not discussing which plan is best or which plan is worst. I am only dealing with the plain fact, that the present stage estimate of the author is barbarously low — an estimate which men who had any value for literature, any idea of its importance, any artist-like sympathy with its great difficulties and its great achievements, would be ashamed to make. I prove that fact by reference to the proceedings of a better pastime, and by a plain appeal to the market-value of all kinds of literature, off the stage, at the present time; and I leave the means of effecting a reform to those who are bound in common honour and common justice to make the reform. It is not my business to readjust the commercial machinery of theaters; I don’t sit in the treasury, and handle the strings of the money bags. I say that the present system is a base one toward literature, and that the history of the past, and the experience of the present, prove it to be so. All the reasoning in the world which tries to convince us that a wrong is necessary will not succeed in proving that wrong to be right.

Having now established the existence of the abuse, it is easy enough to get on to the consequences that have arisen from it. At the present low rate of remuneration, a man of ability wastes his powers if he writes for the stage — unless he is prepared to put himself out of the category of authors by turning manager and actor, and taking a theater for himself. There are men still in existence, who occasionally write for the stage, for the love and honour of their art. Once, perhaps, in two or three years, one of these devoted men will try single-handed to dissipate the dense dramatic fog that hangs over the theater and the audience. For the brief allotted space of time, the one toiling hand lets in a little light, unthanked by the actors, unaided by the critics, unnoticed by the audience. The time expires — the fog gathers back — the toiling hand disappears. Sometimes it returns once more bravely to the hard, hopeless work; and out of all the hundreds whom it has tried to enlighten, there shall not be one who is grateful enough to know it again.

These exceptional men — too few, too scattered, too personally unimportant in the republic of letters, to have any strong or lasting influence — are not the professed dramatists of our times. These are not the writers who make so much as a clerk’s income out of the stage. The few men of practical ability who now write for the English theater are men of the world, who know that they are throwing away their talents if they take the trouble to invent for an average remuneration of one hundred and fifty pounds. The well-paid Frenchman supplies them with a story and characters ready-made. The original adaptation is rattled off in a week; and the dramatic author beats the clerk after all, by getting so much more money for so much less manual exercise in the shape of writing. Below this clever tactician, who foils the theater with its own weapons, come the rank and file of hack writers, who work still more cheaply, and give still less (I am rejoiced to say) for the money. The stage results of this sort of authorship, as you have already implied, virtually drive the intelligent classes out of the theater. Half a century since, the prosperity of the manager’s treasury would have suffered in consequence. But the increase of wealth and population, and the railway connection between London and the country, more than supply in quantity what audiences have lost in quality. Not only does the manager lose nothing in the way of profit — he absolutely gains by getting a vast nightly majority into his theater whose ignorant insensibility nothing can shock. Let him cast what garbage he pleases before them, the unquestioning mouths of his audience open, and snap at it. I am sorry and ashamed to write in this way of any assemblage of my own countrymen; but a large experience of theaters forces me to confess that I am writing the truth. If you want to find out who the people are who know nothing whatever, even by hearsay, of the progress of the literature of their own time — who have caught no chance vestige of any one of the ideas which are floating about before their very eyes — who are, to all social intents and purposes, as far behind the age they live in as any people out of a lunatic asylum can be — go to a theater, and be very careful, in doing so, to pick out the most popular performance of the day. The actors themselves, when they are men of any intelligence, are thoroughly aware of the utter incapacity of the tribunal which is supposed to judge them. Not very long ago, an actor, standing deservedly in the front rank of his profession, happened to play even more admirably than usual in a certain new part. Meeting him soon afterward, I offered him my mite of praise in all sincerity. “Yes,” was his reply; “I know that I act my very best in that part, for I hardly get a hand of applause in it through the whole evening.” Such is the condition to which the dearth of good literature has now reduced the audiences of English theaters — even in the estimation of the men who act before them.

And what is to remedy this? Nothing can remedy it but a change for the better in the audiences.

I have good hope that this change is slowly, very slowly, beginning. “When things are at the worst they are sure to mend.” I really think that, in dramatic matters, they have been at the worst; and I have therefore some belief that the next turn of Fortune’s wheel may be in our favor. In certain theaters, I fancy I notice already symptoms of a slight additional sprinkling of intelligence among the audiences. If I am right, if this sprinkling increases, if the few people who have brains in their heads will express themselves boldly, if those who are fit to lead the opinion of their neighbours will resolutely make the attempt to lead it, instead of indolently wrapping themselves up in their own contempt — then there may be a creditable dramatic future yet in store for the countrymen of Shakespeare. Perhaps we may yet live to see the day when managers will be forced to seek out the writers who are really setting their mark on the literature of the age — when “starvation prices” shall have given place to a fair remuneration — and when the prompter shall have his share with the publisher in the best work that can be done for him by the best writers of the time.

Meanwhile, there is a large audience of intelligent people, with plenty of money in their pockets, waiting for a theater to go to. Supposing that such an amazing moral portent should ever appear in the English firmament as a theatrical speculator who can actually claim some slight acquaintance with contemporary literature; and supposing that unparalleled man to be smitten with a sudden desire to ascertain what the circulation actually is of serial publications and successful novels which address the educated classes; I think I may safely predict the consequences that would follow, as soon as our ideal manager had received his information and recovered from his astonishment. London would be startled, one fine morning, by finding a new theater opened. Names that are now well known on title-pages only would then appear on play-bills also; and tens of thousands of readers, who now pass the theater door with indifference, would be turned into tens of thousands of play-goers also. What a cry of astonishment would be heard thereupon in the remotest fastness of old theatrical London! “Merciful Heaven! There is a large public, after all, for well-paid original plays, as well as for well-paid original books. And a man has turned up, at last, of our own managerial order, who has absolutely found it out!”

With true regard, yours, my dear sir,

A. N. AUTHOR.

SOCIAL GRIEVANCES. — III.

GIVE US ROOM!

[The Imperative Request of a Family Man.]

THE entertainments of the festive season of the year, so far as I am personally concerned, have at last subsided into a temporary lull. I and my family actually have one or two evenings to ourselves just at present. It is my purpose to take advantage of this interval of leisure to express my sentiments on the subject of evening parties and ladies’ dress.

Let nobody turn over this page impatiently, alarmed at the prospect of another diatribe against Crinoline. I, for one, am not going to exhibit myself in the character of a writer who vainly opposes one of the existing institutions of this country. The Press, the Pulpit, and the Stage have been in the habit of considering themselves as three very powerful levers, capable of being used with terrible effect on the inert material of society. All three have tried to jerk that flourishing foreign plant, Crinoline, out of English earth, and have failed to stir so much as a single root of it. All three have run full tilt against the women of England, and have not moved them an inch. Talk of the power of the Press! what is it, compared to the power of a French milliner? The Press has tried to abridge the women’s petticoats, and has entirely failed in the attempt. When the right time comes, a French milliner will abridge them at a week’s notice. The Pulpit preaches, the Stage ridicules; and each woman of the congregation or the audience sits, imperturbable, in the middle of her balloon, and lets the serious words or the comic words go in at one ear and come out at the other, precisely as if they were spoken in an unknown tongue. Nothing that I can remember has so effectually crushed the pretensions of the Press, the Pulpit, and the Stage as the utter failure of their crusade against Crinoline.

My present object in writing is likely, I think, to be popular — at least, with the ladies. I do not want to put down Crinoline — I only want to make room for it. Personally, I rather like it — I do, indeed, though I am a man. The fact is, I am a thoroughly well-disciplined husband and father, and I know the value of it. The only defect in my eldest daughter’s otherwise perfect form lies in her feet and ankles. She is married, so I don’t mind mentioning that they are decidedly clumsy. Without Crinoline, they would be seen; with Crinoline (except when she goes upstairs), nobody has the slightest suspicion of them. My wife — pray don’t tell her that I ever observed it — my wife used to waddle before the invention of Crinoline. Now she swims voluptuously, and knocks down all the light articles of furniture, whenever she crosses the room, in a manner which, but for the expense of repairs, would be perfectly charming. One of my other single daughters used to be sadly thin, poor girl. Oh, how plump she is now! Oh, my marriageable young men, how ravishingly plump she is now! Long life to the monarchy of Crinoline! Every mother in this country who has daughters to marry, and who is not quite so sure of their unaided personal attractions as she might wish to be, echoes that loyal cry, I am sure, from the bottom of her affectionate heart. And the Press actually thinks it can shake our devotion to our Queen Petticoat? Pooh! pooh!

But we must have room — we must positively have room for our petticoat at evening parties. We wanted it before Crinoline. We want it ten thousand times more now. I don’t know how other parents feel; but unless there is some speedy reform in the present system of party-giving, so far as regards health, purse, and temper, I am a lost man. Let me make my meaning clear on this point by a simple and truthful process. Let me describe how we went to our last party, and how we came back from it.

Doctor and Mrs. Crump, of Gloucester Place (I mention names and places to show the respectable character of the party), kindly requested the pleasure of our company a week ago. We accepted the invitation, and agreed to assemble in my dining-room previous to departure at the hour of half-past nine. It is unnecessary to say that I and my son-in-law (who is now staying with me on a visit) had the room entirely to ourselves at the appointed time. We waited half an hour: both ill-tempered, both longing to be in bed, and both obstinately silent. When the hall clock struck ten, a sound was heard on the stairs as if a whole gale of wind had broken into the house, and was advancing to the dining-room to blow us both into empty space. We knew what this meant, and looked at each other, and said, “Here they are!” The door opened, and Boreas swam in voluptuously, in the shape of my wife, in claret-coloured velvet. She stands five feet nine, and wears — No! I have never actually counted them. Let me not mislead the public, or do injustice to my wife. Let me rest satisfied with stating her height, and adding that she is a fashionable woman. Her circumference, and the causes of it, may be left to the imagination of the reader.

She was followed by four minor winds, blowing dead in our teeth — by my married daughter in pink moire antique; by my own Julia (single) in violet tulle illusion; by my own Emily (single) in white lace over glace silk; by my own Charlotte (single) in blue gauze over glace silk. The four minor winds and the majestic maternal Boreas entirely filled the room, and overflowed on to the dining-table. It was a grand sight. My son-in-law and I — a pair of mere black tadpoles — shrank into a corner, and gazed at it helplessly.