My Dear Sir: Yes, I began writing something—a year ago, is it?—on your subject, but have lost it, and am now utterly too busy to touch so difficult and so important a subject. I shall come on it, some day, necessarily.
Meantime, the one thing I have to say mainly is that the idea of making money by a theatre, and making it educational at the same time, is utterly to be got out of people's heads. You don't make money out of a Ship of the Line, nor should you out of a Church, nor should you out of a College, nor should you out of a Theatre.
Pay your Ship's officers, your Church officers, your College tutors, and your Stage tutors, what will honorably maintain them. Let there be no starring on the Stage boards, more than on the deck, but the Broadside well delivered.
And let the English Gentleman consider with himself what he has got to teach the people: perhaps then, he may tell the English Actor what he has to teach them.
Ever faithfully yours,
(Signed) J. Ruskin.
Brantwood, July 30th, 1880.
My Dear Sir: I am heartily glad you think my letter may be of some use. I wish it had contained the tenth part of what I wanted to say.
May I ask you at least to add this note to it, to tell how indignant I was, a few days ago, to see the drop-scene(!) of the Folies at Paris composed of huge advertisements! The ghastly want of sense of beauty, and endurance of loathsomeness gaining hourly on the people!
They were playing the Fille du Tambour Major superbly, for the most part; they gave the introductory convent scene without the least caricature, the Abbess being played by a very beautiful and gracefully-mannered actress, and the whole thing would have been delightful had the mere decorations of the theatre been clean and pretty. To think that all the strength of the world combining in Paris to amuse itself can't have clean box-curtains! or a pretty landscape sketch for a drop scene!—but sits in squalor and dismalness, with bills stuck all over its rideau!
I saw Le Chalet here last night, in many respects well played and sung, and it is a quite charming little opera in its story, only it requires an actress of extreme refinement for the main part, and everybody last night sang too loud. There is no music of any high quality in it, but the piece is one which, played with such delicacy as almost any clever, well-bred girl could put into the heroine's part (if the audiences would look for acting more than voice), ought to be extremely delightful to simple persons.
On the other hand, I heard William Tell entirely massacred at the great opera-house at Paris. My belief is they scarcely sang a piece of pure Rossini all night, but had fitted in modern skimble-skamble tunes, and quite unspeakably clumsy and common ballet. I scarcely came away in better humor from the mouthed tediousness of Gerin at the Français, but they took pains with it, and I suppose it pleased a certain class of audience. The William Tell could please nobody at heart.
The libretto of Jean de Nivelle is very beautiful, and ought to have new music written for it. Anything so helplessly tuneless as its present music I never heard, except mosquitoes and cicadas.
Ever faithfully yours,
(Signed) J. Ruskin.
Amiens, October 12th, 1880.
[177] This and the following letter were both addressed to Mr. John Stuart Bogg, the Secretary of the Dramatic Reform Association of Manchester. The first was a reply to a request that Mr. Ruskin would, in accordance with an old promise, write something on the subject of the Drama for the Society's journal; and the second was added by its author on hearing that it was the wish of the Society to publish the first.