Frenzied Fiction (8 page)

“I thank you,” I answered, “I have already all the notes I want!”

[With any European Prince—travelling in America]

On receiving our card the Prince, to our great surprise and pleasure, sent down a most cordial message that he would be delighted to see us at once. This thrilled us.

“Take us,” we said to the elevator boy, “to the apartments of the Prince.” We were pleased to see him stagger and lean against his wheel to get his breath back.

In a few moments we found ourselves crossing the threshold of the Prince's apartments. The Prince, who is a charming young man of from twenty-six to twenty-seven, came across the floor to meet us with an extended hand and a simple gesture of welcome. We have seldom seen anyone come across the floor more simply.

The Prince, who is travelling incognito as the Count of Flim Flam, was wearing, when we saw him, the plain morning dress of a gentleman of leisure. We learned that a little earlier he had appeared at breakfast in the costume of a Unitarian clergyman, under the incognito of the Bishop of Bongee; while later on he appeared at lunch, as a delicate compliment to our city, in the costume of a Columbia professor of Yiddish.

The Prince greeted us with the greatest cordiality, seated himself, without the slightest affectation, and motioned to us, with indescribable bonhomie, his permission to remain standing.

“Well,” said the Prince, “what is it?”

We need hardly say that the Prince, who is a consummate master of ten languages, speaks English quite as fluently as he does Chinese. Indeed, for a moment, we could scarcely tell which he was talking.

“What are your impressions of the United States?” we asked as we took out our notebook.

“I am afraid,” answered the Prince, with the delightful smile which is characteristic of him, and which we noticed again and again during the interview, “that I must scarcely tell you that.”

We realized immediately that we were in the presence not only of a soldier but of one of the most consummate diplomats of the present day.

“May we ask then,” we resumed, correcting our obvious blunder, “what are your impressions, Prince, of the Atlantic Ocean?”

“Ah,” said the Prince, with that peculiar thoughtfulness which is so noticeable in him and which we observed not once but several times, “the Atlantic!”

Volumes could not have expressed his thought better.

“Did you,” we asked, “see any ice during your passage across?”

“Ah,” said the Prince, “ice! Let me think.”

We did so.

“Ice,” repeated the Prince thoughtfully.

We realized that we were in the presence not only of a soldier, a linguist and a diplomat, but of a trained scientist accustomed to exact research.

“Ice!” repeated the Prince. “Did I see any ice? No.”

Nothing could have been more decisive, more final than the clear, simple brevity of the Prince's “No.” He had seen no ice. He knew he had seen no ice. He said he had seen no ice. Nothing could have been more straightforward, more direct. We felt assured from that moment that the Prince had not seen any ice.

The exquisite good taste with which the Prince had answered our question served to put us entirely at our ease, and we presently found ourselves chatting with His Highness with the greatest freedom and without the slightest gêne or mauvaise honte, or, in fact, malvoisie of any kind.

We realized, indeed, that we were in the presence not only of a trained soldier, a linguist and a diplomat, but also of a conversationalist of the highest order.

His Highness, who has an exquisite sense of humour—indeed, it broke out again and again during our talk with him—expressed himself as both amused and perplexed over our American money.

“It is very difficult,” he said, “with us it is so simple; six and a half gröner are equal to one and a third gross-gröner or the quarter part of our Rigsdaler. Here it is so complicated.”

We ventured to show the Prince a fifty-cent piece and to explain its value by putting two quarters beside it.

“I see,” said the Prince, whose mathematical ability is quite exceptional, “two twenty-five-cent pieces are equal to one fifty-cent piece. I must try to remember that. Meantime,” he added, with a gesture of royal condescension, putting the money in his pocket, “I will keep your coins as instructors”—we murmured our thanks—“and now explain to me, please, your five-dollar gold piece and your ten-dollar eagle.”

We felt it proper, however, to shift the subject, and asked the Prince a few questions in regard to his views on American politics. We soon found that His Highness, although this is his first visit to this continent, is a keen student of our institutions and our political life. Indeed, His Altitude showed by his answers to our questions that he is as well informed about our politics as we are ourselves. On being asked what he viewed as the uppermost tendency in our political life of today, the Prince replied thoughtfully that he didn't know. To our inquiry as to whether in his opinion democracy was moving forward or backward, the Prince, after a moment of reflection, answered that he had no idea. On our asking which of the generals of our Civil War was regarded in Europe as the greatest strategist, His Highness answered without hesitation, “George Washington.”

Before closing our interview the Prince, who, like his illustrious father, is an enthusiastic sportsman, completely turned the tables on us by inquiring eagerly about the prospects for large game in America.

We told him something—as much as we could recollect—of woodchuck hunting in our own section of the country. The Prince was interested at once. His eye lighted up, and the peculiar air of fatigue, or languor, which we had thought to remark on his face during our interview, passed entirely off his features. He asked us a number of questions, quickly and without pausing, with the air, in fact, of a man accustomed to command and not to listen. How was the woodchuck hunted? From horseback or from an elephant? Or from an armoured car, or turret? How many beaters did one use to beat up the woodchuck? What bearers was it necessary to carry with one? How great a danger must one face of having one's beaters killed? What percentage of risk must one be prepared to incur of accidentally shooting one's own beaters? What did a bearer cost? and so on.

All these questions we answered as best we could, the Prince apparently seizing the gist, or essential part of our answer, before we had said it.

In concluding the discussion we ventured to ask His Highness for his autograph. The Prince, who has perhaps a more exquisite sense of humour than any other sovereign of Europe, declared with a laugh that he had no pen. Still roaring over this inimitable drollery, we begged the Prince to honour us by using our own fountain pen.

“Is there any ink in it?” asked the Prince—which threw us into a renewed paroxysm of laughter.

The Prince took the pen and very kindly autographed for us seven photographs of himself. He offered us more, but we felt that seven was about all we could use. We were still suffocated with laughter over the Prince's wit; His Highness was still signing photographs when an equerry appeared and whispered in the Prince's ear. His Highness, with the consummate tact to be learned only at a court, turned quietly without a word and left the room.

We never, in all our experience, remember seeing a prince—or a mere man for the matter of that—leave a room with greater suavity, discretion, or aplomb. It was a revelation of breeding, of race, of long slavery to caste. And yet, with it all, it seemed to have a touch of finality about it—a hint that the entire proceeding was deliberate, planned, not to be altered by circumstance. He did not come back.

We understand that he appeared later in the morning at a civic reception in the costume of an Alpine Jaeger, and attended the matinee in the dress of a lieutenant of police.

Meantime he has our pen. If he turns up in any costume that we can spot at sight, we shall ask him for it.

[That is to say, with Any One of our Sixteen Greatest Actors]

It was within the privacy of his own library that we obtained—need we say with infinite difficulty—our interview with the Great Actor. He was sitting in a deep arm chair, so buried in his own thoughts that he was oblivious of our approach. On his knee before him lay a cabinet photograph of himself. His eyes seemed to be peering into it, as if seeking to fathom its unfathomable mystery. We had time to note that a beautiful carbon photogravure of himself stood on a table at his elbow, while a magnificent half-tone pastel of himself was suspended on a string from the ceiling. It was only when we had seated ourself in a chair and taken out our notebook that the Great Actor looked up.

“An interview?” he said, and we noted with pain the weariness in his tone. “Another interview!”

We bowed.

“Publicity!” he murmured rather to himself than to us. “Publicity! Why must one always be forced into publicity?”

It was not our intention, we explained apologetically, to publish or to print a single word—

“Eh, what?” exclaimed the Great Actor. “Not print it? Not publish it? Then what in—”

Not, we explained, without his consent.

“Ah,” he murmured wearily, “my consent. Yes, yes, I must give it. The world demands it. Print, publish anything you like. I am indifferent to praise, careless of fame. Posterity will judge me. But,” he added more briskly, “let me see a proof of it in time to make any changes I might care to.”

We bowed our assent. “And now,” we began, “may we be permitted to ask a few questions about your art? And first, in which branch of the drama do you consider that your genius chiefly lies, in tragedy or in comedy?”

“In both,” said the Great Actor.

“You excel then,” we continued, “in neither the one nor the other?”

“Not at all,” he answered, “I excel in each of them.”

“Excuse us,” we said, “we haven't made our meaning quite clear. What we meant to say is, stated very simply, that you do not consider yourself better in either of them than in the other?”

“Not at all,” said the Actor, as he put out his arm with that splendid gesture that we have known and admired for years, at the same time throwing back his leonine head so that his leonine hair fell back from his leonine forehead. “Not at all. I do better in both of them. My genius demands both tragedy and comedy at the same time.”

“Ah,” we said, as a light broke in upon us, “then that, we presume, is the reason why you are about to appear in Shakespeare?”

The Great Actor frowned.

“I would rather put it,” he said, “that Shakespeare is about to appear in me.”

“Of course, of course,” we murmured, ashamed of our own stupidity.

“I appear,” went on the Great Actor, “in
Hamlet
. I expect to present, I may say, an entirely new Hamlet.”

“A new Hamlet!” we exclaimed, fascinated. “A new Hamlet! Is such a thing possible?”

“Entirely,” said the Great Actor, throwing his leonine head forward again. “I have devoted years of study to the part. The whole conception of the part of Hamlet has been wrong.”

We sat stunned.

“All actors hitherto,” continued the Great Actor, “or rather, I should say, all so-called actors—I mean all those who tried to act before me—have been entirely mistaken in their presentation. They have presented Hamlet as dressed in black velvet.”

“Yes, yes,” we interjected, “in black velvet, yes!”

“Very good. The thing is absurd,” continued the Great Actor, as he reached down two or three heavy volumes from the shelf beside him. “Have you ever studied the Elizabethan era?”

“The which?” we asked modestly.

“The Elizabethan era?”

We were silent.

“Or the pre-Shakespearean tragedy?”

We hung our head.

“If you had, you would know that a Hamlet in black velvet is perfectly ridiculous. In Shakespeare's day—as I could prove in a moment if you had the intelligence to understand it—there was no such thing as black velvet. It didn't exist.”

“And how then,” we asked, intrigued, puzzled and yet delighted, “do
you
present Hamlet?”

“In
brown
velvet,” said the Great Actor.

“Great Heavens,” we exclaimed, “this is a revolution.”

“It is. But that is only one part of my conception. The main thing will be my presentation of what I may call the psychology of Hamlet.”

“The psychology!” we said.

“Yes,” resumed the Great Actor, “the psychology. To make Hamlet understood, I want to show him as a man bowed down by a great burden. He is overwhelmed with Weltschmerz. He carries in him the whole weight of the Zeitgeist; in fact, everlasting negation lies on him—”

“You mean,” we said, trying to speak as cheerfully as we could, “that things are a little bit too much for him.”

“His will,” went on the Great Actor, disregarding our interruption, “is paralysed. He seeks to move in one direction and is hurled in another. One moment he sinks into the abyss. The next, he rises above the clouds. His feet seek the ground, but find only the air—”

“Wonderful,” we said, “but will you not need a good deal of machinery?”

“Machinery!” exclaimed the Great Actor, with a leonine laugh. “The machinery of
thought
, the mechanism of power, of magnetism—”

“Ah,” we said, “electricity.”

“Not at all,” said the Great Actor. “You fail to understand. It is all done by my rendering. Take, for example, the famous soliloquy on death. You know it?”

“‘To be or not to be,'“ we began.

“Stop,” said the Great Actor. “Now observe. It is a soliloquy. Precisely. That is the key to it. It is something that Hamlet
says to himself
. Not a
word of it
, in my interpretation, is actually spoken. All is done in absolute, unbroken silence.”

“How on earth,” we began, “can you do that?”

“Entirely and solely
with my face
.”

Good heavens! Was it possible? We looked again, this time very closely, at the Great Actor's face. We realized with a thrill that it might be done.

“I come before the audience
so
,” he went on, “and soliloquize—thus—follow my face, please—”

As the Great Actor spoke, he threw himself into a characteristic pose with folded arms, while gust after gust of emotion, of expression, of alternate hope, doubt and despair, swept—we might say chased themselves across his features.

“Wonderful!” we gasped.

“Shakespeare's lines,” said the Great Actor, as his face subsided to its habitual calm, “are not necessary; not, at least, with my acting. The lines, indeed, are mere stage directions, nothing more. I leave them out. This happens again and again in the play. Take, for instance, the familiar scene where Hamlet holds the skull in his hand: Shakespeare here suggests the words ‘Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him well—'”

“Yes, yes!” we interrupted, in spite of ourself, “‘a fellow of infinite jest—'”

“Your intonation is awful,” said the Actor. “But listen. In my interpretation I use no words at all. I merely carry the skull quietly in my hand, very slowly, across the stage. There I lean against a pillar at the side, with the skull in the palm of my hand, and look at it in silence.”

“Wonderful!” we said.

“I then cross over to the right of the stage, very impressively, and seat myself on a plain wooden bench, and remain for some time, looking at the skull.”

“Marvellous!”

“I then pass to the back of the stage and lie down on my stomach, still holding the skull before my eyes. After holding this posture for some time, I crawl slowly forward, portraying by the movement of my legs and stomach the whole sad history of Yorick. Finally I turn my back on the audience, still holding the skull, and convey through the spasmodic movements of my back Hamlet's passionate grief at the loss of his friend.”

“Why!” we exclaimed, beside ourself with excitement, “this is not merely a revolution, it is a revelation.”

“Call it both,” said the Great Actor.

“The meaning of it is,” we went on, “that you practically don't need Shakespeare at all.”

“Exactly, I do not. I could do better without him. Shakespeare cramps me. What I really mean to convey is not Shakespeare, but something greater, larger—how shall I express it—bigger.” The Great Actor paused and we waited, our pencil poised in the air. Then he murmured, as his eyes lifted in an expression of something like rapture. “In fact—ME.”

He remained thus, motionless, without moving. We slipped gently to our hands and knees and crawled quietly to the door, and so down the stairs, our notebook in our teeth.