The Sun.
London, England, 1856-08-11 00:00:00

TO THE EDITOR 07 THE TIMES.

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Sir,—My first impulse on reading your article on the
" Traviata" was to remain silent, but, feeling strongly
the responsibility which you have cast upon me, I am
induced, on reflection, to trouble you with this commu-
nication; and, while I recognise thozsal for public mora-
lity which prompted your criticism, I cannot doubt that,
in the investigation of a truth to which you attach so
much importance, you will give me a patient hearing,
and that this appeal to your candour will not be in vain.
Grant me this indulgence, and I hope to satisfy you that,
however just your strictures may be, as applied to
the Dame au Camellia, the opera of "Le Traviata," both
in scope and detail, is not only undeserving of censure,
but is of a strictly moral tendency, And first let me
meet an objection which may be suggested as to my ap-
pearing as the defender of the libretto. It may be said
that I was interested, at whatever risk to morality, in
making use of a plot offering musical opportunities for
the display of the versatile genius of the principal artiste.
This is not so. Nothing would have been easier than to
expunge from the story everything which you have
treated as objectionable, without sacrificing a particle of
the interest, or changing a single situation of the drama.
To take your own analysig, the excitement of the tale de-
pends upon the play of passion between the two lovers,
upon his jealousy, upon her devotion, and upon the tragic
fate of the heroine at the moment when her troubles seem
to have been surmounted. To give scope to these feelings
Violetta might have been made a girl of simple purity
and humble birth. The self-sacrifice which is the charm
of her character might have been rendered necessary by
the aristocratic pride of her lover's noble relations. The
demouement would have been equally effective if theglimpse
of happiness which precedes it had been caused by the vic-
tory of simple worth over the prejudices of a haughty fa-
mily. The change of a very few words would have effected
themeeesslry transformation. You will ask why I did not
introduce alterations which would have removed every
ground fur cavil. My answer is, that they would have
injured the moral tendency of the plot. As it stand', the
melancholy catastrophe illustrates the Nemesis that at-
tends on vice, and that cannot be entirely averted even
by the most touching and devoted repentance. Strike
out from the character the evil which had blighted it,
and the last scene would have offended against the dra-
matic canon—that suffering should only he exhibited for
the purpose of teaching a moral lesson. The business of
the stage is to hold " a mirror up to nature," to exhibit
the contest between good and evil, and, as a necessary
consequence, to let vice be seen in contrast with virtue.
I do not understand you to contend for the principle
that none but faultless characters should find a place in
our dramas and operas, or that the education, whether 1
of the schoolroom or the theatre, should be based upon
the delusion that there is nothing but purity in the
world. Such notions have no doubt been entertained by
good men, who, as a natural inference from their doc-
trine, have condemned the stage under whatever condi-
tions. For my own part, I believe the exhibition of
the retribution which attends on sin may have as bene-
ficial an influence as the highest example of virtue. In-
stead of fruitlessly attempting to ignore the existence of
vice, would it not be well rather to follow the counsel
of Bacon, and let the yoUng see the basilisk before the
basilisk casts its fatal glance on them I
I do not wish to fill your columns with a catalogue of
the many classical tales and dramas which are open to
at least as severe a criicism as that with which you have
visited Verdi's opera. You would not surely proscribe
the "Vicar of Wakefield," for example, for the objec-
tionable characters it introduces, or for the supposed
seduction on which the interest of the tale depends.
Though the greatest works of the greatest dramatists
and novelists are filled with examples of the
most fearful and hideous crime, you allow that the
common sense of mankind has determined that no evil
can arise to morality from the manner in which these
subjects are handled by the great masters of tragic emo-
tion, and that the tendency of such displays is rather to
purify than to corrupt the passions of an audience. Ido
not argue for the indiscriminate representation of vici-
ous characters upon the stage ; but I do ask that a mo-
dern libretto may be judged by the same principles on
which Sophocles and Shakspere, Corneille and Racine,
Alfieri and Goethe, have thought right to work. '
Two conditions seem to be essential whenever vice is
presented in fiction—one, that its grossness should not
be offensively obtruded ; the other, that it should not be
presented in an alluring form. It is true that the play
of the "Dame au Camellia" offends in some degree
against one at least of these principles, and is open to
some of the charges which you have transferred to the
opera of "La Traviata." But in the construction of the
libretto of the opera everything of the kind has been
studiously avoided, and it is only to those who are fami-
liar with Dumas' novel that the situation of the drama
can even by an accidental association suggest a single
impure or offensive idea. The opera begins with the re-
coil of the heroine from her past dissipation ; her for-
mer career, so far from being offensively obtruded, is
only dimly indicated by a few worsisaewhieh the moral
purpose of the plot requires. There is not in- the whole
play a sentence that the most prudish could condemn as
indelicate, nor a sentiment to raise a blush on the face
of decent womanhood. The sympathy which the elm.
tracter of Violetta commands is given not to the evil of
leer ways, wherein she has offended, but to the nobility,
sorrow, and suffering by which she atones her guilt.
It may possibly be true that the vice of the Dame aux
Camellias is presented under an alluring shape, but it
is certain that the sin of the Traviata only wins our pity
by her repentant devotion. If, as you say, the perdi-
tion of the libertine in Mozart's opera is not "likely to
invite imitation, or to excite the pruriency of passion,"
it may with equal truth be said that the hopeless strug-
gle of Violetta to retrieve the past supplies a more
powerful, because a more natural warning, against the
evils of such a career than any necromantic and unreal
catastrophe like that of Don Giovanni. Incidentally I
may add, with reference to one of your objections, that
in order to disconnect the opera as much as possible from
any impuritiesfsuggested bythe novel of Dumas, or what
you call the debauchery of modern life, the scene of the
opera is purposely thrown back to the beginning of the
last century. No one who sees or reads the opera with-
out a previous acquaintance with the French tale will
find in it the slightest matter of offence—a circumstance
which will sufficiently explain how it is "that the ladies
of England have not felt their delicacy outraged" by a
plot which some have thought it just to denounce as im-
pure. Your own illustration derived from the play of
"Jack Sheppard" seems to show in the clearest light
the moral tendency of "La Traviata." The two dramas
are exactly the antipodes of another. In "Jack Sleep
pard" the charm is derived from the excitement and
adventure of the thief's career, not from the occasional
expression of passing compunction. In the opera the
whole interest is absorbed by the deep, though unavail-
ing efforts of the sinner to blot out the evil of her earlier
life. Therefore it is that, while Jack Sheppard may in-
vite imitation, the example of Violetta will rather tend
to deter from yielding to temptation. The one resembles
a will-o'-the-wisp to allure, the other a beacon to warn
and to save.

There is yet another way in which the opera of "La
Traviata" may operate for good. An over-fastidicus
sensibility has made it too much the fashion to sigh at
misery, and to shun the wretched. It is not very long
since you yourself administered a just castigation to the
morbid prudishness which had dared to reflect upon
an angel of mercy who did not shrink from watch.
ing at the pillow of the sick and wounded. And is
there not the same unclean spirit to be found in the
code which would exclude the suffering and repentant
sinner from the sympathy of her sisters ? Should we
not do well to pour oil into the wounds of the unfor-
tunate, and to open a door, were it never so small,
to the return of the erring ? Is it not our duty at
least to admit the truth, which our PharasaiQm practi-
cally denies, that noble feelings may freqmently dwell in
the broken heart even of a stricken and repentant Mag-
dalen ? If, as I believe, the tendency of La Traviata
is to soften the hearts of the pure towards those who are
struggling to raise themselves from degradation, I shall
never regret the part I have had in its production. Had
the plot contained one circumstance to hold up evil to
imitation it should never have appeared at a theatre
under my control. But as I believe it presents a whole-
some warning to the weak, and may teach a lesson of
mercy to the strong, I should be most reluctant to de-
tract from its moral value, out of deference to what I
cannot but regard as a mistaken sensibility. I need not,
I think, dwell on the objection which you take to the
dying scene. I know nothing in which it can be sup-
posed to offend, unless it is in being too exquisitely true
to nature. But it does not approach in painfulness many
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heroine's farewells and plaintive music in which they
are embodied, refine by their beauty the suffering which
touches the heart, and I cannot conceive why the con-
cluding scene of the "Traviata" should be thought more
open to objection than the death of Katherine or Juliet,
the murder of Desdernona, the melancholy catastrophes
of King Lear and Hamlet, or the admired tragedy of
"Adrienne Lecouvteur." If death by natural sickness
is too terrible for the stage, surely the throes of poison
ought not to be exhibited. Physical agony, it is true,
ought to be veiled, but the death of Violetta is as free
from every adventitious horror as it is possible for any
truthfully-acted scene of the kind to be ; and really the
only question with respect to it is one which has been
practically settled for centuries,—whether the closing
scene of life is or is not a fit subject for dramatic repre-
sentation ?
In conclusion, let me assure you that in presenting
the libretto of the Traviata without modification, I de-
liberately believed, and still believe, that I was adminis-
tering to a good, a right, and a merciful cause. You may
possibly differ from my views, but if you will only exa-
mine the printed libretto of the opera, rejecting every
reminiscence of the " Dame au Camellia," I do not de-
spair of your final judgment being with am, Sir,
your obedient servant, B. LUMLEY.
Her Majesty's Theatre, Aug. 9.

(Nom the Times.)
Mr. B. Lumley, the manager of her Majesty's Theatre,
in the 'Haymarket, has forwarded to us a defence of the
opera named "La Traviata," which has been performed
under his auspices during the last season. In truth the
exhibition stood much in need of a defence, and as many