New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1911-05-14

Attempts! her departing soul outworn.
While bv her bedside Hebrew rites nave
place
All. not the radiant spirit Of Greece alone
She h lac home. power which made her 0rea''
In her, like US. there olash'd. contendins
powers.
Germany. France. Christ. Moses. Athens,
Rome
The strife. the mixture In her SOUL are
ours;
Her genius and her glory are her own.
Thus does one genius pay tribute TO
another. But Arnold reckoned without
his Gribble. How could he guess. poor
austere poet. that the true secret or
Rachel lay In the gutter? That was her
natural habitat. II we are to believe the
compilation put forth by our latter day
annalist Of the love affairs Of Rousseau
George Sand Byron and divers others.
Everybody knew that Rachel had no
morals. but Mr.. Gribble eagerly urges
chapter and verse upon us. so that there
may be no possibility Of mistake. was
there ever an episode In her life that
spelled avarice. meanness Of any sort,
vulgarity Of mind or the most culpable
grossness? Mr. Gribble promptly nails
1t for his book. His eye for flaw IN
conduct Is unerring his scent for scan
DIAL exquisitely keen. And what II rumor'
with its double tongue. has embalmeo
one Of Racheps sins In two stories. the
second only a shade less vile than the
first? Why. then. our good Mr.. Grippie
will tell them both. smugly adding,
Though no one can vouch for the literal
exactitude Of either story, the fact on
which both stories are founded does not
admit OF doubt" In other words. II you
can convict the object of your scorn IL
does not much matter whether the COL
lateral "stories' you have TO tell are
absolutely authentic or not; X they are
not true they ought to be, and, besides
what Is mud for?
There is something really curious about
this farrago Of old shreds and patches
torn from Rachel's back. Never was
there such an "ol' clo' man" FOR SEEING
upon the last pitiful rag and squeezing
out Of 1t the last possible bit of in
terest." Through stage after stage or
her splendid and miserable career Mr..
Grtbble pursues the great actress, expos
ing her every foible and recording her
every lapse, counting her lovers and
fiourishing with a sort Of ugly COM
placency every fragment Of evidence that
might tend to lower her in the estimation
of the reader. At times his ferret-like
ardor lands him In something like dull
maleyolence. Rachels friend Cremeux
was glad to write her letters for her.
supplying the literary graces which she
had never had the chance to cultivate.
When at the time Of her appearance at
Windsor Castle she Is obliged to write
to the Queen and appeals to Cremieux,
as usual, for his good offices, Mr.. Gribble
pounces upon the incident with all the
gusto Of high moral discoverer, saying.
so that If there IS, in fact. any letter
from Rachel to Queen Victoria preserved
in the royal collection Of autographs the
secret Is now out that not Rachel but
her legal adviser composed IT." 1t is too
bad to rob Mr.. Gribble Of the immense
credit attaching to this disclosure, but,
as a matter Of fact. the truth about this
letter to the Queen and RachePs general
Indebtedness to Cremieux in epistolary
matters is really no new thing. Five
wears ago Sir Theodore Martin made II
familiar to English speaking readers In
the volume OF Monographs" In which ne
reprinted his essay on Rachel from
'Bla ckwood's Magazine" for September.
1882.
We recur particularly to that essay
because 1t happens to afford In its wise
and gentle Judgment a perfect contrast
to Mr.. Grtbble's long drawn out indict-
ment. No one reading the admirable old
English critic Is in the slightest danger
of suffering illusions as to Rachers pri-
vate character, but neither, on the other
hand, is any reader Of the essay In Ques-
ton in danger Of forgetting her genius.
One can scarce think Of that In reading
Mr.. Gribble. 1t is as though one were
looking on at the heavy-handed ap-
praisal Of a fair but fragile statue and
observed the gleeful pressure of cruel
thumb on every half-hidden defect, until
pretty nearly the whole surface were
smudged and made revolving. Shall we.
in this way. get at the truth? Hardly.
We have, ourselves, no faintest illusion
as to the life Of Rachel off the stage, but
we believe that, as Martin has shown.
there Is a better way OF writing her
biography than the way chosen by Mr.
Gribble
If there is one thing more than another
which heightens the offensiveness OF his
book ii is the unctuous assertion OF a
lofty purpose which he embodies in his
preface. He says:
The case is one of the few in which It is
worth while to try TO go further, drawing
the portrait Of an actress and composing
a picture of the social medium in which
worth while. but may even be edifying-a
word which an author has as good a right
to use as the reviewer seeing that he, at
least, knows not only what he has put in
IT is q word at any rate. which is used
here for a definite reason, and with a full
sense Of responsibility. Let US con-
slider. We live in an age in which the
theatre tends. more and more, TO be re-
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