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II
HELENA IN NEW YORK

The New Haven Register, after commenting on the “superb piece of staging done by Jed Harris, and the quite indescribable beauty and magic of Lillian Gish’s performance as Helena,” spoke of “Uncle Vanya” as “surely one of the few really great plays in existence … a richly polyphonic drama, in which one watches the drift and flow of human life as one listens to the different voices in a Bach fugue.”

True enough, though “Uncle Vanya” is hardly a play at all, but a succession of incidents with no more plot than a picture, which is precisely what it is—a tapestry of exquisite workmanship, a cartoon of human futility—in this case, on a Russian farm.

Mark Twain once wrote:

“God, who could have made every one of His children happy … yet never made a single happy one.”

Chekhov might have taken that as a text for any of his plays. In “Vanya,” no one of the characters is even passably happy, except Marina, the nurse, and Marina’s happiness lies in strong tea and hope in the hereafter. All the rest are actively unhappy, especially Vanya himself, who is hopelessly in love with Helena, wife of a querulous egotist twice her age—Helena being a little in love with “the Doctor,” who is drinking too much, himself heedless of the love of Sonia, who is too good for him, and breaking her heart for him, and is about the unhappiest of all. The late R. K. Munkittrick, of Puck, had a poem beginning: “All the house is full of sorrow, all the house is full of gloom”; the rest of it will not bear quotation, but in its entirety, it would make a typical Chekhovian chant. Chekhov’s houses all were full of sorrow—the pathetic gloom of thwarted human ambitions and desires, of blasted human ideals. Like any of us who happens to think about it, Chekhov did not at all know whether life was a tragedy or a comedy, so he called his plays comedies, and laughed them off on us, letting the tragedy take care of itself, and sink in, and add itself to our own, to make certain that we had our share. And in doing this, he created pictures of which, as the Register remarked, “one is forever thinking: ‘These things cannot have been written, they must have been lived.’” With the possible exception of “The Cherry Orchard,” “Uncle Vanya” is, I should think, the choicest of Chekhov’s tapestries, and the part of Helena, the subtlest example of his artistry.

Certainly, no rôle could have been better suited to Lillian. Helena’s beauty, her elusive, eerie personality, her mild, impersonal attitude toward much of what went on about her—it was as if the part had been created for her, or she for the part. It is the advent of Helena, and her gouty, insufferable husband, Serebrakoff, that is the catastrophe of the play—a calamity, in Astroff’s phrase, as definite as the ruin wrought by a herd of elephants—and misses being complete only because Vanya’s attempt to shoot Serebrakoff hurries them away. There is no special reason why sympathy should be with Helena, except that she is beautiful, and indifferent, and only passively to blame for the trouble she causes, and for the fact that she is bound for life to the bewhiskered Serebrakoff. Perhaps that is enough; perhaps the fact that Lillian played the part had something to do with it. The scene between the two, which opens the second act, is one of the high spots in the play. The contrast between Lillian in a canary-colored dressing-gown, her splendid hair loose, and her trumpery husband, reveals an entire epic, as tragical as any in the human story; and wherever the blame may lie interests the audience not at all, the chief desire being that the whining old human disaster may pass away as promptly as possible—overnight—leaving the lovely Helena and the doctor, or somebody, to live happy ever after.

It was at the Cort Theatre, on the evening of April 15, that “Uncle Vanya” opened in New York City.

It was the event of the Spring season. A first-night audience in New York is a different matter from one in New Haven. New Haven being a university town, a Chekhov first-night audience would be largely intellectual, with a good sprinkling of picture fans who had “adored Lillian on the screen.” In New York, there would be all the typical first-nighters, who get a thrill out of any first night, and especially where it is the first appearance of a comely lady, famous in a different, even if kindred, field. Also, there would be the professionals of stage and screen, each with a very special interest; and all the Chekhovians, some of them doubtful and critical, resolved not to be carried off their feet by any trick of beauty and spotlight, but to stand firm for art only; after these, an army of fans, who all the years had longed to see Lillian perform in the flesh, and, of course, there would be intellectuals, too—and critics—on the whole, I submit, except for the fans, a rather hard-boiled audience, one calculated to put fear into the troubled heart....

But then the curtain went up … on a Russian garden scene, and presently, across the stage, floated a vision of loveliness, and all the fans broke loose. And all the Chekhovians, and first-nighters, and professionals, and critics of high and low degree, forgot they were hard-boiled, and broke loose, too, and pounded their hands together long after the vision had passed, as if they hoped it might return, if only to bow.

The Times next morning spoke of “the storminess of the greeting at her entrance,” and Charles Darnton, in his afternoon column, had this to say of it, and of the play as a whole:

The applause that greeted her at her appearance not only followed her every step of the way but into the wings. Even then it kept up warmly, strongly, insistently. For a moment I was seized with the sickening fear she might pop into view again, like a grand opera singer after an aria, to bow to the tribute. Evidently, the audience expected no less of her. But it might just as well have expected to call back the Ghost in “Hamlet.”

The event had its peculiar phase. Walter Connolly was playing the principal character, and playing it finely, whereas Lillian Gish was appearing in a minor rôle, or what would have been a minor rôle in the hands of an ordinary actress. Yet throughout the whole performance interest centered in Miss Gish.

This is said with every consideration for Mr. Connolly. He could not help himself. He was as powerless, and blameless, in the matter as though he had been playing with Duse. But I couldn’t help wondering how he felt about it. Not that I suspected him of professional jealousy. It was just that the gods, or Jed Harris, had set down an artist touched by genius, and there was nothing to be done about it. When Miss Gish again appeared, this time to stay and let us hear as well as see her, when the presence of her filled the stage like light flooding through a window into a room, she was so luminous that the others, including Mr. Connolly, faded into the background. Never before had I seen quite the same thing done in quite the same way.

Certainly, she is not a pushing person. Instead of crowding into the limelight, she seems always to be withdrawing from it. Yet wherever she goes her own radiance follows her and lights her up. Try as you may, you cannot get her out of your eye. Just what this rare thing is I hesitate to say. But a first-nighter did say to me, “She is sublime.”

Whatever it may be, it is there in the eyes, the face, the hair, the voice, the form of Lillian Gish.

True enough, but it was a qualification that in future would make it difficult for her to get a part in any play having more than one major rôle.

Mr. Darnton says that he was assured by Mr. Harris that bringing Lillian Gish back to the stage was the finest thing he had been able to do in the theatre, adding: “I am convinced that her performance is one of the most magnificent things I have ever seen.”

If there was any dissenting voice as to Lillian’s triumph, I have been unable to discover it. But I think there was none. She had everything demanded by the part: the personality, the subtle understanding, the years of training which had equipped her for its perfect interpretation. Percy Hammond, of the Herald Tribune, wrote:

“In future when I am told that association with the films is a destructive influence, I shall cite Miss Gish’s appearance in ‘Uncle Vanya’ to prove the contention wrong.”

III
“THE PENALTY OF GREATNESS”

We have reached the point in this narrative where the writer’s personal association with Miss Gish began. Though long an ardent admirer of her work on the screen I had never seen her, never made any attempt to do so. Once, from France I had written urging her to make a picture of Joan of Arc. I know now that this was an old story to her; many had offered the same suggestion—the idea had been one of her own dreams. Engagements, one thing after another, had always interfered. I treasured the two friendly letters she wrote me about it, but the matter had gone no further. Now, three years later, back in America, the papers told me that Lillian Gish was appearing in person and in picture, in Broadway productions. “Vanya” was playing to capacity, and I do not like buying seats in advance—something is so liable to happen.

Then, one June day, I found myself on Broadway in front of the Rivoli, facing the announcement: LILLIAN GISH IN ONE ROMANTIC NIGHT. I learned that it was continuous, and that there were seats. A very little later, in the cool dimness, I sat watching Alexandra and Prince Albert and the others, and for the first time was hearing Lillian speak.

I thought her more pleasing than ever, and her clear, perfectly enunciated speech was a revelation. I had feared that it might be too loud, too low, provincial—in some way disappointing. It was none of these things; it was pure and sweet, and particularly intelligible; the microphone had recorded every syllable. I sat twice through the picture, suffering through several program features until it came again.

Once more outside, I was sorry I had not remained longer, for the sun was a hot glare. Sitting in Fairyland with Lillian was much more to my taste. I drifted down Broadway, and by chance (apparently), turned into 48th Street.

All at once I stopped: From a large frame on an easel, several Lillians looked out at me. A moment later, I realized that it was Wednesday, for a card at the top plainly stated MATINÉE TO-DAY. I was at the entrance to the Cort Theatre. Some people were going in. I wondered if I could get a seat. Midweek, mid-June, and a hot day—I would try.

A very little later, from a fairly good, even if fairly warm, angle, I watched the curtain go up on a Russian garden, where Kate Mayhew was pouring tea and Osgood Perkins, in semi-Russian dress—that is to say, tall boots—was marching up and down.

“Take a little tea, my son.”

And so the action starts, and presently Walter Connolly comes yawning in, the weariest, most lethargic, ill-kempt man the stage has shown this season. What a contrast it all is to the smart soigné picture around the corner! Voices outside, and Gene Powers, wearing long whiskers, enters.... Then—a beam of pure light, a radiance—floats, glides, drifts across the stage, to a long, and prolonged, salvo of applause … and then … it is not Kate Mayhew and Perkins any more, or Walter Connolly and sweet Joanna Roos, but Marina and Astroff and Uncle Vanya and Sonia, figures in a sad, amusing dream—a dream that is real—truth reflected as in a looking-glass, and one no longer minds the heat, or thinks of it, or of anything except the figures that drift in and out, and carry on the dream … especially the one figure, embodiment of the Chekhov spirit—that luminous being around which all the others revolve and bruise their wings. The lines of Astroff: “What does she think … who is she … what is inside her small blonde head? She drifts about here, mysterious, fascinating us.... She is like a firefly, that arrests our attention, but gives no warmth, nothing....” And by and by … hours, days, maybe—time no longer counts—the futile human dream draws to its futile human ending, and Sonia’s sweet voice is saying—to Uncle Vanya, bowed and heartbroken, like herself:

“You have never known what happiness was … but wait, Uncle Vanya, wait. We shall rest. Beyond the grave we shall say that we have suffered and wept, and God will have pity on us. And we shall be happy.... The wheat fields will be there, and the blue cornflowers … and the woods in Spring.” And to the low music of Telegin’s guitar, she adds: “And those who in this existence did not love us … they’ll love us … they’ll want us … we shall rest.”

The crowd flows out into the June sunshine, the dream with it … and all the way home. Poor Uncle Vanya and Sonia … one would like to comfort them … and, yes, poor Helena…!

This was on Wednesday, as I have said. I think it was on Sunday that I sent a note to Miss Gish, proposing to write of her. I had given up such work as too arduous, but it seemed to me that this might be a happy thing to do—the story of one who had begun humbly, and walked in beauty and humility to achievement, making the world better and lovelier for her coming.

I suppose it was a week later that I received a characteristically simple reply. She expressed willingness to cooperate in the proposed work, modestly adding: “—if I really deserve it. Whatever I could do in the way of help, I should do most conscientiously.”

One could rely upon that. Whatever she did was done in that way. She was on the eve of sailing for France, to visit Eugene O’Neill and his wife. She would return the last of August; then we could begin.

She returned as planned, but it was not until September 11, at her town home, Beekman Terrace, at the extreme end of 51st Street, New York City, that we had our first meeting. Arriving, I was shown into the living-room, a handsome apartment, one end lined with books. A few moments early, I stood looking out at the striking East River view, when she entered.

I had, of course, expected to see a beautiful woman—the woman I had known in the pictures, and on the stage. Yet when she appeared in the room—a slender figure, simply gowned in black, simply coiffed, without make-up—and stood in the drench of light reflected from the river, I confess I caught my breath a little.

I could not understand it. The actress in her home is so often disappointing. Her beauty is the beauty of her rôle—of her lines, her make-up, of the lights—she lays it aside with her part—leaves it in the dressing-room.

Yet it was all simple enough, later: Lillian Gish had never played the part of a character as lovely as herself … as her own spirit.

She led the way to the little room overlooking the river, the den with which we have become familiar—also a place of books. No word of an agreement, much less of a contract, was mentioned between us. In my letter I had suggested that the work be done without the idea of gain. If profit accrued it could be shared. I think neither of us remembered this—then, or afterwards.

I thought the speaking quality of her voice even more musical than when I had heard it in the play and the picture. When I mentioned this, she spoke of the training she had received from Maurel. What I found still more notable was her refinement of diction. Of Middle-West birth and early association, it seemed to me remarkable that she had been able to eliminate practically every trace of sectional usage—no easy matter, once it is ingrained. I noticed that she pronounced “been” rather in the English way, though not conspicuously so. It seemed to me that this woman, whose childhood and girlhood had largely been spent amid surroundings where purity of diction was indifferently regarded, spoke about the most satisfactory English I had ever heard.

I mentioned “Vanya”—her utter identification with the part of Helena; and I asked:

“When one has played many parts, is one ever uncertain as to one’s own personality?”

“N-no. The actor has a picture in his mind that he hopes to paint on the screen or present to the audience. I think he does not confuse it with his own personality. Of course, I speak only for myself.” And a little later: “I have always honestly tried to reach a high spot—perfection. Sometimes I seem—almost—to reach it. But then it was never a personal thing—a mood—a moment in the play.... Acting in itself is not an art—it is merely repeating lines and gestures, more or less in the manner of the director. But to give these things a special quality—to make them produce a particular mood in the mind of the hearer—to stir something deep down in the heart of the audience—something not measurable by any physical law—something fourth-dimensional—that is art, and may become a very great and sublime one.”

I think it was not altogether what she was saying; I think it was as much her manner, her look … her voice; but as I listened, the feeling grew upon me that she was not quite of the familiar world … I saw what Cabell had meant, and Hergesheimer.

“With your voice,” I said, “now that the pictures speak–”

Gently she dissented.

“I do not care for the talking pictures. They seem to me incongruous. Even the lip movements, to give the effect of speech, seemed to me all wrong. The silent film at its best was a beautiful thing, and lovely effects could be produced with it. To make the pictures speak seems to me a mistake. Oh, I’m sorry I made the ‘Romantic Night.’

“Charlie Chaplin’s picture,” she went on—“I want it to be a success. He is one of the few who can do what he likes. Mary can do that, too, and Douglas. None of the rest of us. Yes, the people want the talking pictures now, but maybe there will be a change. There should be music, of course. The pictures need music.

“Griffith, in his way, is an artist—too much of an artist ever to be rich. He has shown the others the way to fortune—he has not travelled it himself. Nothing satisfied him but the best—completeness. He did not regard cost. Sometimes in the cause of completeness, he overdid. In ‘Intolerance,’ for example.

“Yes, I have written, from time to time, about the pictures. Not long ago I did an article for Oliver Sayler’s book, ‘Revolt in the Arts,’ and I did one on ‘Motion Pictures,’ for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. They sent me a check, which I have kept as a souvenir. It was for twenty-one dollars.”

She told me some of the happenings of her childhood, half pathetic, amusing things, over which one hardly knew whether to laugh or weep. I was not surprised to find that she had a happy, delicate sense of humor—I have yet to meet anyone worthwhile without it.

She spoke of Mark Twain—of her love for his work, especially “Huckleberry Finn.” Later, of “Mickey Mouse”: “I could see an entire show of nothing else.”

She spoke of her mother, her early hardships, her final break. “All those years of struggle and privation had to be paid for; her capital of health and strength were exhausted, utterly.”

Her face, in the fading light, reflected from the river, took on an added unreality.

“This is my favorite part of the day,” she said, and it came to me that her remark, and the manner of it, removed her a step farther from her surroundings: that she was, in fact, of Arcady.

IV
WORKING WITH LILLIAN

“Uncle Vanya” was to reopen in New York for two weeks at the Booth Theatre, then it was going on the road—to Boston, to Chicago, to Pittsburgh, to Philadelphia. There would be rehearsals, but we should have a good deal of time to work, she said, and would I like to come again tomorrow? It would be nearly four weeks until she left for Boston. We could make a good start.

We worked the next day, and the next, and were to have worked on Sunday, but she was ill when I arrived, and I saw her only briefly, her face flushed with fever, a light attack of “grippe.” On that day, I first met that rare woman, her mother, sweet and patient, her face like a miniature, her hands the daintiest in the world. And then, a few days later, that princess of comediennes, light-hearted Dorothy, “a bright flag flying in the breeze,” to whom all the days are good days, all music good music, to whom all clouds are lined with silver and spanned with rainbows. The likeness between the sisters, whatever it had been earlier, was hardly more now than a family suggestion that flashed faintly at long intervals. They were, in fact, about as different as it is possible for sisters to be.

Daily we rebuilt the sequence of the years—for Lillian a new occupation which she entered into with zest. As I have told earlier her “den” had a wide window that overlooked the East River—a cozy room, with small low chairs which she loved—a proper setting for her. We almost always worked there. It is associated with these pages.

Her memory of earlier happenings was vague. We relied a good deal upon Dorothy, always in childhood with her mother, who had kept her memories refreshed. To Lillian, those days of wandering had been one like another—little to look forward to, less to look back upon—mere links in a succession of one-night stands. Memory and anticipation do not prosper on that nourishment.

She typified the present. The moment it became the past, it was blurred—sometimes obliterated. Her interest in tomorrow lay chiefly in the fact that directly it was to become today. She examined it, she took it to pieces, in order that she might more substantially rebuild it. Dreams of a radiant, far-off possibility, interested her but meagerly. She had grown up without them, or had grown out of the habit of them and did not miss them any more. I think of her today as a slender figure, walking through a field of ripening grain, that parts before her, and closes behind her as she passes along. Her interest in life lies in the beautiful, exquisite things not far away, and in the welfare of those about her. She moves steadily forward, her feet firmly set. She is without envy, or malice, and totally without curiosity. She is, as I have suggested, apt to forget, but it is never safe to count on her doing so: More than once I have known her to treasure up some casual, inconsidered remark, and recall it one day to my undoing.

She was always in quiet good humor, but almost never gay. The spirit of banter, so riot in Dorothy, was in Lillian altogether lacking. I remember Dorothy saying to me: “Couldn’t you find a cigarette holder more complicated than that one?” A remark as foreign to Lillian as toe dancing.

Yet her words not infrequently took a quaint turn. Speaking of the many demands for money that came to her, she once said:

“Three hundred dollars is the amount they usually want to borrow. Sometimes they pay it back—a little of it—when it is three hundred. When it is five hundred, it is a gift—they don’t pay any of it.”

And I recall her saying: “Jazz is America’s challenge to the world.” And again: “The Guild Theatre looks like a library gone wrong.” She certainly made no effort to say such things, and when she did, apparently did not notice them at all, and would not have remembered them a moment afterward. But they were often quite unexpectedly on her tongue.

A mystic herself, she believed in mystical things—in telepathy, in foreknowledge, in visions, in Christian healing. I have already spoken of her visit to the Miracle Girl of Konnersreuth, and there was a time, chiefly on her mother’s account, when she devoted herself to Christian Science,—mind healing, and the like. I was sure she believed in the efficacy of prayer, though perhaps could not give any clear reason for it, beyond the general theory that spiritual and physical harmony might thus be restored. Certainly she was not orthodox, and I was by no means sure that she was not a pagan—a Sun-, a tree-, a flower-worshipper—that would be natural, and proper, for a dryad.

“What is your idea of God?” I asked, one day.

“Force, creative power.” A moment later, she added: “The cloud, the sunlight, that out there, the beggar on the street, myself—all a part of the great Whole—the Truth Absolute.”

“Mathematics,” I said, “is the only truth—mathematics in the larger sense, which includes art, music, science–”

But the faith of her childhood was not to be limited to equations. At luncheon, one day, we discussed the beauty of certain phrases, especially those of the King James version of the Bible. She mentioned the comfort and sheer loveliness of the words: “And underneath are the everlasting arms.”

I agreed, but pessimistically added:

“The ghastly thing about it is, that they’re not there—that this tiny pellet of a world is a part of no protecting consciousness—is drifting unheeded through space.”

“But it holds to its orbit—keeps its place in the constellation. Something sustains it.”

“A law—gravity, perhaps. Nothing that cares.”

“Oh, but there is—the arms are there—I am certain of it.”

She was interested in dreams. “I have dreamed things that happened; sometimes soon after,” she once said, and added: “I have worked out scenes in my sleep, and half-sleep, when my subconsciousness had full control. And I have many times experienced something that I am sure I had experienced before—possibly in a dream.”

“Science has accounted for that, rather prosaically, I believe.”

“Science is always accounting for things, and then by and by, it accounts for them again, in another way.”

One day, when I was rather down, she said to me:

“I know all about how futile one’s work can seem—how inconsequential. So many times last Spring I thought: ‘What am I doing this for? Dressing up and pretending to be something I am not—selling myself to these people. ‘Vanya’ was a beautiful play, and I loved it … but to do it publicly. It was just offering oneself to be seen, for money. I never had quite that feeling, doing the pictures. The audience was not present; we were doing the picture primarily for ourselves—at least it seemed so—making a panoramic painting, on a screen.”

One day I made use of the word “dooryard.” Surprisingly, I found it new to her, but she liked the sound—the picture it conveyed. “When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed,” I quoted from Whitman. She thought it a beautiful phrase.

In the article she had written for Oliver Sayler’s book, I read—as already she had said to me:

I do not believe in the sound film. Something very right, very true, very precious, was cut short on the verge of its ultimate and certain perfection by the intrusion of spoken dialogue and by the consequent throw-back of the cinema toward the theatre. The silent film was slowly coming into its own as an independent art which had nothing to do with the theatre, an art closely allied with music, dependent on music, an art which visualized music, creating independently to a certain point and completed thereafter by music.

But then, one day, she said:

“The silent film came to an end none too soon; it had gone as far as it could go.”

I looked out of the window, puzzled. A vessel of considerable size was passing up, toward the Sound. Noticing it, she added:

“I love a ship; any ship; I would go anywhere a ship was going. I never see one that I don’t wish to be on it.”

“I don’t think I quite understand,” I said.

“About my loving a ship?”

“No, I understand that—entirely. It is what you say of the pictures … I can’t quite reconcile it with your article in Sayler’s book.”

“But that was theoretical. What I said just now related to existing facts. The silent pictures had gone as far as they could go in the hands they were in … too far. In the right hands, they might have saved the world. They spoke a universal language—the only one ever invented. They could have brought all the nations together … done away with the narrow patriotism that childishly celebrates its own country above all others, that has for its motto ‘My country, right or wrong,’ a sentiment unworthy of grown-up, enlightened people. Human beings are pretty much alike, the world over. Difference in language is the chief barrier between them. With the interchange of films, which all but the blind could read, I believe these barriers, in time would have disappeared. Now …”

“Now …?”

“The barriers are busily being built up again. George Arliss’s ‘Disraeli,’ a beautiful talking picture, would be practically wasted in any country but England and America. An operetta has a better chance. There is a German one on 55th Street that you should see—‘Two Hearts in Waltz Time’—clean and wholesome, with lovely music. You come away from it with a kindlier feeling for Germany. Even better were the lovely silent pictures, with such titles as were needed, in the language of each country. I know something of that, from the letters that came to me, from everywhere. Fine, friendly letters. The writers of those letters could not be our enemies.”