Year: 1878




[Harper's for January.l


Going the other evening to see Rip Van
Winkle. the old question of its moral natu-
rally came up, and Portia warmly asserted
that it was shameful to bring your children
to see a play in which the exquisite skill of
Jefferson threw a glamor upon the sorriest
vice. "See," she said, "the earnest fearful
interest with which these boys and girls near
us hang upon the story. The charm to them
of the scene and of the acting is irdescriba-
bic. Do you suppose they can escape the
effect? Ali their sympathy is kindled for
the good natured and good tor nothingTep-
rebate, and when Gretchen turns him out
into the night and storm, they can not help
feeling that it is she, not he that has ruined
the home, and the drunken vagabond, who
has lust made his endearments the cover
of deception is really the victim of virago.
And when he returns, old and decrepid. and,
we might hope, purged of that fatal appetite
which has worked all the wOe it is his
old victim, the woman whose youth his evil
habits ruined, and who, in consequence of
these habits, was driven into the power of
the tormentor, Derrick Won Beekman, who
hands him the cup which shall be death in
tasting as if it were she. and not he who
had been properly chastened and converted
from the fatal error of supposing that drunk
enness is not good. No, no." said Portia,
Indignantly and eloquently, raising her
voice to that degree that the Easy Chair
feared the appalling '"Sh! 'shl" of the dis
turbed neighbors; sit is a grossly immoral
spectacle and the subtler and more fascin-
ating the genius of Mr.. Jefferson to the rep.
resentation, the more deadly is the effect"
The drop had just fallen, and the scene on
the mountain was about to open. The house
had been darkened, and as the clear, quiet,
unforced tone of Rip, yielding, not remon-
strating, TO the doom that we all knew and
he did not. fell upon the hushed audience.
the eyes of the men and women were full of
tears; while the orchestra murmured, mezzo
voce, during the storm within and without
the house, the tenderly pathetic melody of
the Lorelci


know not what it presages,


This heart with sadness fraught;
'Tis a tale of the olden sages


That will not from my thought.
1t was not easy to find in the emotion of
that moment a response to Portals accusa-
ton OF gross immortality. There was but
poetic figure in the mind, the sweet natured,
weak willed, simple hearted vagabOnd OF the
village and the mountain, touching the heart
with pity, and, in the drunken scene, with
disgust. Its symmetry and charm are the
triumph OF the play as acted. Now the inn
morality can nOtlie in the kindly feeling for
the tippling vsgabond, for that is natural
and universal. Indeed, the same kind of
weakness that leads TO a habit of tippling
belongs often to the most charming and at
tractive natures, and the representation: of
the fact upon the stage is not in itself
immoral. The immortality must be found
if anywhere, as Portia insisted, IN the charm
with which vice is invested. But Is it in
vested inEthis play? 1t used to be urged
against Bulwer's early novels that they
| made scoundrels fascinating, and that boys
after reading them would prefer rascals to
honest men. IL that had been the fact, the





| to censure. But tried by this stan
dard, rip Van Wrinkle" as Mr.. jefferson
plays it, is far from an immoral play. The
| picture as he paints it is moral in the same
sense that nature is moral No one, shift.
| less, idle and drunken, afraid to go home,
| ashamed before his children, without self
| respect or the regard of Others, however
gentle and sweet, and however much of a
favorite with the boys and girls and animals
| he may be- is not man whose course those
| boys will wish to initiate, or who will make
| vice more tasteful to them. The pathos of
the second part of the play, in which the
change of age mingled with mystery is mar
velously portrayed, is largely due to the
| consciousness that this melancholy end is
all due to that woeful beginning. The
| expulsion of Derrick and his nephew is
| nothing, the happiness of Meenie and her
lover is nothing, the release OF Gretchen is
nothing; there is only a wasted old man,
| without companions, the long prime of
! whose life has been lost in Inconsistencies,
and who suddenly awakening looks at us
pitifully from the edge OF the grave.
BY the most prosaic standards this should
not seem to adorn vice with attraction. 1t
is true that the spectator is more interested
| in Rip than in his wife, and that she is made
| a viragO. But il is not his drunkenness that
charms, and her virtue is at least severe
Indeed, if this performance is to be tried by
this standard, the play must be regarded as
temperance mission. For temperance is to
be inculcated upon the youthful spectators
| who sit near us not so much by stories and
pictures of the furious brute who drives
wife and children from q home made desc
late by him, and who fly from him as from
demon, as by this simple, faithful showing
of the work of Jolly dog" who makes
wretched a wife who yet loves him, and who
| denounces himself to the child that he
| loves. This is the fair view of it as picture
| of ordinary human life. But, as we look
| the low wall of the sad music is In our ears
the scene changes to a weird world of fancy
the story merges in dream, and Rip Van
| Wrinkle smiles at us from realms beyond the
| diocese of conscience. IL conscience in
| deed, will obtrude, conscience shall be salts
fed. 1t is a sermon if you will, but if you
will, also, it is a poem.