Miss Bretherton

“ Miss Bretherton's first appearance in Elvira had been the subject of conversation for weeks past among a far larger number of London circles than generally concern themselves with theatrical affairs. Among those which might be said to be within a certain literary and artistic circumference, people were able to give definite grounds for the public interest. The play, it was said, was an unusually good one, and the progress of the rehearsals had let loose a flood of rumours to the effect that Miss Bretherton's acting in it would be a great surprise to the public. ”

“ Miss Bretherton takes her homage very prettily; it is natural to her to be made much of, and she does not refuse it, but she in her turn evidently admires enormously her friend's social capabilities and cleverness, and she is impulsively eager to make some return for Mrs. Stuart's kindness—an eagerness which shows itself in the greatest complaisance towards all the Stuarts' friends, and in a constant watchfulness for anything which will please and flatter them. ”

“ Miss Bretherton wandered round, surveyed the familiar Oxford luncheon-table, groaning under the time-honoured summer fare, the books, the engravings, and the sunny, irregular quadrangle outside, with its rich adornings of green, and threw herself down at last on to the low window-seat with a sigh of satisfaction.
'How quiet you are! how peaceful! how delightful it must be to live here! It seems as if one were in another world from London. ”

“ Her two guides led Miss Bretherton through the quadrangle of the schools, which, fresh as it was from the hands of the restorer, rose into the air like some dainty white piece of old-world confectionery. For the windows are set so lightly in the stone-work, and are so nearly level with the wall, that the whole great building has an unsubstantial card-board air, as if a touch might dint it. ”

“ I am all for people getting enjoyment where they can," with a defiant look at me, "and snapping their fingers at the critics. But one must draw the line somewhere. There's some art that's out of court from the beginning."
'I couldn't resist it.
'"Don't listen to him, Miss Bretherton," I cried. "If I were you I wouldn't let him spoil your pleasure; the great thing is to feel; defend your feeling against him! It's worth more than his criticisms."
'Forbes's eyes looked laughing daggers at me from under his shaggy white brows. Mrs. Stuart and Wallace kept their countenances to perfection ”

“ Supposing, after Sunday next, she never speaks to either of us again?'
'Oh!' said Wallace, wincing, 'I should give up the play at once if she really took it to heart. She attaches one to her. I feel towards her as though she were a sister—only more interesting, because there's the charm of novelty.'
Kendal smiled. 'Miss Bretherton hasn't got to that yet with me. Sisters, to my mind, are as interesting as anybody, and more so. ”

“ CHAPTER VI The Sunday party separated at Paddington on the night of the Nuneham expedition, and Wallace and Eustace Kendal walked eastward together. The journey home had been very quiet. Miss Bretherton had been forced to declare herself 'extremely tired,' and Mrs. Stuart's anxiety and sense of responsibility about her had communicated themselves to the rest of the party.
'It is the effect of my long day yesterday,' she said apologetically to Forbes, who hovered about her with those affectionate attentions which a man on the verge of old age pays with freedom to a young girl. ”

“ I looked at Forbes with some amusement; it was gratifying, remembering the rodomontade with which Wallace and had been crushed on the night of the White Lady, to see him wince under Miss Bretherton's liking of the worst art in England! Is the critical spirit worth something, or is it superfluous in theatrical matters and only indispensable in matters of painting! ”

“ Miss Bretherton was a woman of lofty aims, who was continually looking beyond her pupils’ schooldays to the time when they should be the women of Britain; the wives and mothers, and sisters and friends of the men who were to carry on the work of our great Empire, and who, humanly speaking, would do that work well or ill according to the manner in which their womankind influenced their lives. Miss Bretherton realised that the chief result of school study was not the mere storing of information, but the training of the brain to grapple with the great problems of life. ”

“ They looked enviously at the closed door of the Bodleian, they read the
Latin names of the schools just freshly painted at intervals round the
quadrangle, and then Forbes led them out upon the steps in front of the
Radcliffe and S. Mary's, and let them take their time a little.
'How strange that there should be anything in the world,' cried Miss Bretherton, 'so beautiful all through, so all of a piece as this! I had no idea it would be half so good. Don't, don't laugh at me, Mr. Forbes. I have not seen all the beautiful things you other people have seen. ”

“ Nothing, indeed, could be prettier than her manner to them whenever she came across them, but it was evident that she was no longer an automaton to be moved at their will and pleasure, but a woman and an artist, mistress of herself and of her fate. Kendal fell into conversation on the subject with Mrs. Stuart, who was as communicative and amusing as usual, and who chattered away to him till he suddenly saw Miss Bretherton signalling to him with her arm in that of his sister. ”

“ Is everybody gone away—"gone down" you say? I should like to see all the learned people walking about for once.'
'I could show you a good many if there were time,' said young Sartoris, hardly knowing however what he was saying, so lost was he in admiration of that marvellous changing face. 'The vacation is the time they show themselves; it's like owls coming out at night. You see, Miss Bretherton, we don't keep many of them; they're in the way in term time. ”

“ Oh, my dear Eustace, you have been hasty,—all the world has been hasty! Isabel Bretherton's real self is only now coming to the front, and it is a self which, as I say to myself with astonishment, not even your keen eyes have ever seen—hardly suspected even. Should I, myself a woman, have been as blind to a woman's capabilities, I wonder? Very likely! These sudden rich developments of youth are often beyond all calculation.
'Mr. Wallace's attitude makes me realise more than I otherwise could the past and present condition of things. ”

“ It's the same with their novels as with their theatre. Whatever other faults he may have, a first-rate Frenchman of the artistic sort takes more pains over his work than anybody else in the world. They don't shirk, they throw their life-blood into it, whether it's acting, or painting, or writing. You've never seen Desforêts, I think?—no, of course not, and you will be gone before she comes again. What a pity!"
'Miss Bretherton picked one of my primroses ruthlessly to pieces, and flung it away from her with one of her nervous gestures. ”

“ She must come to depend more and more on the physical charm, and on that only. The whole pressure of her success is and will be that way.'
Miss Bretherton's inadequacy, indeed, became more and more visible as the play was gradually and finely worked up to its climax in the last act. In the final scene of all, the Prince, who by a series of accidents has discovered the Countess Hilda's plans, lies in wait for her in the armoury, where he has reason to know she means to try the effect of a third and last apparition upon the Princess. She appears; he suddenly confronts her ”

“ She couldn't play the part of Elvira—you remember the plot?—even decently. It's an extremely difficult part. It would be superb—I think so, at least—in the hands of an actress who really understood her business; but Miss Bretherton will make it one long stagey scream, without any modulation, any shades, any delicacy. It drives one wild to think of it. And yet how, in the name of fortune, am I to get out of it?'
'You had thought,' said Kendal, 'I remember, of Mrs. Pearson for the heroine.'
'Yes; I should have tried her. She is not first-rate, but at least she is intelligent ”

“ One day Miss Strickland announced:
"There is to be a concert at the end of the term, Elsie. You have improved so much lately that I have told Miss Bretherton that you will play at it."
"Oh, if you please, Miss Strickland, I can't!" she stammered. "I could n't, not before people. I'm too—I'm too afraid."
"Nonsense!" said Miss Strickland, firmly. "I am the best judge of whether you can play or not, and I have decided that you can. It is absurd to be afraid of people who know very little about music and have come prepared to be easily pleased. ”

“ For an actress must have one of the two kinds of knowledge: she must have either the knowledge which comes from a fine training—in itself the outcome of a long tradition—or she must have the knowledge which comes from mere living, from the accumulations of personal thought and experience. Miss Bretherton had neither. She had extraordinary beauty and charm, and certainly, as Kendal admitted, some original quickness. ”

“ The whole difficulty of art consists in losing your own personality, so to speak, and finding it again transformed, and it is a difficulty which Miss Bretherton has never even understood.
'After this impression of spontaneity and natural force, I think what struck me most was the physical effect London has already exercised upon her in six weeks. She looks superbly sound and healthy; she is tall and fully developed, and her colour, for all its delicacy, is pure and glowing. ”

“ Miss Bretherton is an angel, and without Forbes we should have collapsed a hundred times already, and that's about all I know. As for the other actors, I suppose they will get through their parts somehow, but at present I feel like a man at the foot of the gallows. There goes the hell; now for it.'
The sketch for the play of Elvira had been found among the papers of a young penniless Italian who had died, almost of starvation, in his Roman garret, during those teeming years after 1830, when poets grew on every hedge and the romantic passion was abroad. ”

“ In this matter of Wallace and Miss Bretherton he saw the struggle between an ideal interest, so to speak, and a personal interest, and he was heart and soul for the ideal. Face to face with the living human creature concerned, his principles, as we have seen, were apt to give way a little, for the self underneath was warm-hearted and impressionable, but in his own room and by himself they were strong and vigorous, and would allow of no compromise. ”

“ She took off her hat—conscious that Miss Bretherton’s eyes were regarding the tomato-topped pin with silent disapproval—wriggled out of her coat, and bestowed a series of pats and pulls to hair, necktie, and blouse. Being one of the happy people who feel cheered rather than depressed by the sight of her own reflection in the glass, she followed the head mistress downstairs without any of the trepidations of nervousness which afflict most new girls, and was by no means surprised when that lady made straight for the doorway of Number 5. ”

“ You see, my dear Eustace, you men never realise how clever we women are, how fast we learn, and how quickly we catch up hints from all quarters under heaven and improve upon them. An actress so young and so sympathetic as Isabel Bretherton must still be very much of an unknown quantity dramatically. I know you think that the want of training is fatal, and that popularity will stereotype her faults. ”

“ Wallace had made all the arrangements perfectly, and the six friends found themselves presently journeying along to Oxford, at that moderated speed which is all that a Sunday express can reach. The talk flowed with zest and gaiety; the Surrey Sunday was a pleasant memory in the background, and all were glad to find themselves in the same company again. It seemed to Kendal that Miss Bretherton was looking rather thin and pale, but she would not admit it, and chattered from her corner to Forbes and himself with the mirth and abandon of a child on its holiday. ”

“ Short of an unfavorable interposition on the part of Providence, they were safe; but those who rely upon Providence to remain inactive in their favor should not tempt it by displaying any activity of their own. Miss Bretherton, without consulting Onoria beforehand, arranged for her to take six pupils to "The Messiah," whether she liked it or not.
Forty girls, in white dresses with blue sashes, upon one side, and forty men, in a variety of semi-evening clothes, upon the other, had scarcely sung through the first chorus before Elsie and Peter became aware of Onoria's eyes. ”

“ During the rapid give and take of this trying scene Kendal saw with a kind of incredulous admiration that Isabel Bretherton never once lost herself, that every gesture was true, every word struck home. Her extraordinary grace, her marvellous beauty were all subordinated to, forgotten almost in the supreme human passion speaking through her. Macias, in the height of his despair while he was still alone with her, had flung her his sword, declaring that he would go forth and seek his death an unarmed and defenceless man. ”

“ Now I come to think of it, there are many different ways of gardening; that must be why it is always interesting to go round the garden with the gardener. When I say different ways, I don’t mean such trifling divergencies of method as landscape gardens versus intensive culture, or tomatoes under glass versus gloxinias. These primarily concern the pocket; the differences that interest me are temperamental.
There is Miss Bretherton, for instance, a most diligent and vigilant gardener. And yet she never seems to me to get much genuine, unalloyed pleasure out of her garden ”