New-York tribune., 1919-06-29
Alice Joyce Pays
The Price of Aristocracy

Joyce meet they do not mingle Some
body has to 60 to the wall
You would imagine that this must be
Annie. Because you think of Annie,
first and last, as helpless. When she
sits there before the lawyers door,
waiting to capture the greatest defend
er in the world for her Howard. though
without any money to capture him
with, the patient figure in its respect
able, careful, clumsy dowdiness, with
its bare hands folded in it's passive lap,
strikes you as being as helpless as
log. Before the mean and shallow
more like a helpless blunderbus, and
that terrible, sodden crying she breaks
into when her defence Of Howard loses
a point is the very weltering Of help
less heart
Now, nobody less helpless than Miss
Joyce can possibly be imagined. Nor
anybody less inclined to welter, She
has the essential elegance Of all quite
that standpoint she plays the part
When she enters the proud portals of
Howard's family mansion does she
stumble or quail? Far from it. She
glances at his advancing relatives with
an air that says: "These people are
probably purseproud and vulgar, but
at least am a lady and shall refrain
from taking offence until it is given >
The delicate suppleness Of her wrist
in her elegantly gloved hand is enough
to rebuke any doubt as to her social
standing. In her interviews with that
reluctant but great lawyer which are
life and death to Annie Miss joyce
wears a fur swung at the jauntiest
angle of the latest fashion, as though
she could not sufficiently disconnect
herself from Annie's desperate deport-
ment She is never otherwise so false
as that She has sympathy with weak
she can conceive of it only as some
thing which she must stiffen with her
own force; she cannot identify herself
with it, Nor does she seem in the
least to wish to. She has no use for
sodden crying nor clumsy movements.
Consequently, the relation between
Howard and Annie soon changes-the
. question ceases to be how good but
weak little soul like Howard can
=. eventually face the world with so COM
mon, however devoted, wife; what
the question becomes is how this grave
Diana is ever going TO put up with so
commonplace q person as Howard.
Part Wins Against Acting
Now, this would be bad enough if
Miss Joyce in refusing characterization
contributed an even greater gift OF
emotional wisdom. But in refusing -
abandon herself to Annie she seems
unable to abandon herself at all 1t l-
true that she can do nothing without
lovely moments, without flashes Of
force and fire and charm, but she has
no deep tide Of feeling on which to
float the picture; there is concern in
III !.
. no sense of profound humanity. 1.
seems a high price to pay for aristoc
racy, no matter how personal.
So poor Annie has a sort of revenge.
In the greatness of her heart she IS
not so helpless after all. The part
fights dead against the acting of it
just as bravely and wins just as pte-
Gus and admirable a partial triumph
as we are accustomed to see actors
fight and wind dead against their parts.
And, as Annie would be glad to know,
Howard at least does not suffer He =,
so safe in the hands of Mr.. Gladder
James that not an infection, either of
emotion or of character, remains un~
lrealized. If Mr.. James had also
scorned weakness and lack of dignity,
how much picture would have been
left US?