LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
A HOLIDAY IN THE TYROL. IL—Tim PASSION PLAY.
go THE EDITOR OF "THE SPECTATOR:] Berne, Friday, August 12, 1870. SIR, Violent disturbances in Paris !' An Englishman shot by order of the Government as a Prussian spy l' Imagine my consternation. Why, Henry is precisely the sort of person to get shot as a Prussian spy. I don't mean that he looks like a spy ; but he has a large beard, and is horribly shortsighted and looks like a book-worm, and has German books in his bag, and he unfortunately has a habit, got from our many weeks of travel in Germany, of saying " Herein " instead of "Come in" when anybody knocks at the door,—a habit by which a German waiter in a French inn has more than once found out that German is the right language to talk to him in ; and then he is very imprudent in his talk, and is just as certain to revile the Emperor in France as in Switzerland. Nobody, I am sure, would ever suspect me of being Prussian ; and as I can't get on in German at all fluently,
the French, if they would reason, might be pretty sure my husband is not German ; but they are quite frantic just now, and for anything I see, Henry has every bit as good a chance of being shot on suspicion as poor Mr. Elliot.* I am afraid our stay at Berne begins to look somewhat indefinite, for I tell Henry I really cannot allow ourselves to furnish occasion for a "Correspondence between the English and French Governments on the arrest and execution of Mr. and Mrs.—, English subjects." He says it would be a very distinguished close to our career ; but of that I am not ambitious, and I cannot forget the large circle of attached friends who would deplore our loss and give Lord Granville good reason to deplore it too,—even without making any allowance for his naturally kind heart. Well, as I tell Henry, there is the back-door thinugh Italy always open, and I suppose we could get home by way of Malta and Gibraltar at no greater sacrifice than a long sea-voyage. For the present, however, Berne is very pleasant and safe, and I have the consola- tion of seeing English tourists still voluntarily coming by driblets into the Swiss trap in which we are nibbling our Alpine cheese with so anxious a heart as to the ultimate way out.' But to return to my Ammergau narrative.
We had felt more anxious, as I told you in my last letter, as to the effect of the Passion-Play on us, the nearer we were to the fulfilment of the long-delayed expectation. Like most other English people who went there, I had read the account of the play in " Quits" by the Baroness Tautphceus, at the time when Flunger, who now acts the part of Pilate, took that of Christ. And her account made me fear the play might be almost too oppressively real, too much of an illusion. On the other hand, on the Saturday, Henry had been shown Joseph Mair, who now takes the part of Christ, sitting in a wide-a-wake and short jacket with some friends outside one of the Ammergau inns, drinking a glass of beer, and had thought his face, as seen under these not very fortunate circumstances, though gentle and, for his position in life, singularly refined, quite wanting in the majesty requisite to present springs of action so unique and unearthly, —and apparently, too, a little shadowed by a personal melan- choly, or perhaps it might be by a craving for work more suitable to his powers than the wood-carving which is his usual occupa- tion. How, if the whole representation were marred by a touch of anything morbid and self-regarding in the expression of one who in every word and deed should have seemed to be founding a kingdom that is not of this world? But neither fear was in the least realized. The open-air theatre, with the very un-Oriental scenery,—the bright green mountain-side, with its herds of cows, its hayfields and pine woods, towering behind the stage and its mimic Jerusalem,—the larks that hung over the audience vying with the finest of the singers in the beauty of their song,—the bright butterflies that darted to and fro among us whenever a gleam of sun came out,--all gave an outside framework, as it were, to the play which kept our imaginations fully awake to the fact that it was but a reproduction of the Passion in a distant land and time, and guarded us against falling under the spell of what I might call an unreal realism. Moreover, the long-robed and gaily-robed " Schutzgeister," ' protecting spirits,' as the people there called them, who played the part of a Greek chorus, reciting, chaunting, and singing their com- ments on the development of the action, and their descriptions of those various illustrative tableaux-vivants from the earlier periods of Jewish history, by which the leading events of our Lord's life were, or were supposed to be, prefigured, interposed a confessed artistic purpose between the spectator and the action, and protected us from any illusion that we were gazing at the greatest, darkest, brightest action of human history, and not merely at a dim image of it. There is not only no vulgar attempt at that ' deception' which is falsely called realism, and is, in fact, the moat utter unrealism ; but there is a much completer freedom from it than is at all usual in the modern drama ;—a freedom partly due to the pure air and natural lights and shadows of the wide mountain landscape, which counteract every morbid or artificial excitement,—partly to the greatness of the action itself, which, like the themes of the old Greek tragedies, kept before our eyes sufferings and aims elevated far beyond those of ordinary life. Hence, though I felt, with the heroine in " Quits," from the moment that the procession with Christ sitting on the ass wound on to the stage, that every interest centred at once in that strangely impressive figure, from which it was impossible to remove the eyes while it remained before them,—yet there was not a trace of that harassing and ( We may reassure our fair correspondent Mr. Elliot's death was a pure canard. ..—ED.13pedalor.) absorbing pain which would have accompanied any Minion, any forgetfulness that what we saw was not an image of the past, but a tragedy maturing in our presence. On the other hand, Henry's fear that there would hardly be enough majesty in the figure, or sufficient elevation above personal mortification to ex- press the supernatural range of motive essential to the whole, dis- appeared in a moment. The singular grace of the purple robe did something ; but Herr Mair's complete possession by the radical idea of our Lord's life,—an interior life lived with the Father which drew none of its deeper springs from mere earthly circumstance,— gave to a dark face, and tender, speaking eyes, which certainly had enough capacity for expressing, under other influences, a morbid dejection, a grandeur of mien, and a complete "detachment" from all earthly passion which I have never seen,—at least in combina- tion with so much human tenderness,—in any of the painters' ideal Christs. If there were any defect in the representation, it was perhaps that the far-away light in the eyes so entirely predominated that one missed in vividness the flash when it struck either on evil or on good. When, after sliding with inexpressible grace from the ass on which he rode, and entering the outer Court of the Temple, he finds it full of the tables of the money-changers and of those who sold doves, there is perhaps too much of mild serenity in the tone of the severe judgment, It is written, my Father's house is a house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves.' When he asks Judas, " Judas, betrayest thou the Son of Man with a kiss .?" there is not that lightening of the eye for which one looks. And when, bending under the cross, he cries, " Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. If this is done in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry ?" there is hardly that piercing vision of the appalling future in his glance which seems to be demanded by its wholly obliterating for the moment so terrible a present. But this, I think, is almost the only criticism which the most fastidious observer could have passed_ For true and perfectly natural stateliness of movement and dignity of manner, both in private with the Apostles, and amidst every indignity of the trial, it is impossible to conceive Herr Mair's part surpassed. " Ye call me Master and Lord, and ye say well, for so I am," is pronounced in a tone which explains how impossible it was that any act of humility, like the washing of the disciples' feet, should in him involve a humiliation. The almost utter silence, too, before Annas, Caiaphas, Herod, and Pilate, and the complete passiveness in the hands of the soldiers, as they struck and insulted him, were all accompanied by a look, not of fortitude and tension, but rather of what the Roman. Catholics call 'recollection,' a look as if there were nothing in these coarse questions and insults to which any genuine answer or explanation or expostulation were appropriate, but rather only a current of inevitable passions, a surface current of which the moving spring lay deep beyond the reach of words ; as if, in short, there• were no real want which words could reach, only, at most, an opportunity for words which could not but be vain. Nothing struck me more freshly than the effect of this prolonged and hardly- broken silence of Christ's. In reading the history, one cannot realize this, both because the events pass far too quickly in the terse narrative, and because such silence, till you see it, is a nega- tive and not a positive conception. I confess I never realized so fully the meaning of ' the Word made flesh' as when I perceived the connection between the Divine speech and silence.
The crucifixion thrilled, but did not horrify me. The scene opens after the crosses of the crucified malefactors have been already raised on each side. And as the greater cross in the middle, on which Christ is stretched, is slowly elevated into its place, and Mair's head turns painfully round, his eyes resting upon the soldiers immediately beneath him, who are throw- ing their dice for his unseamed garment, and then on the group-of women and disciples standing afar off, a slight shudder ran through the audience, and in all parts of the theatre there were men and women alike unable to restrain their tears. But even then there was no physical horror. The scene was too familiar in the-
history of Christian art. The living forms of the soldiers- and the priests as they pass and repass the dying figure, the weeping Magdalen with her yellow robe and her long hair wound round the foot of the cross, the voice which pardons the penitent malefactor, asks forgiveness for the mockers, and com- mends the mother to the beloved disciple, though they vivify the great conceptions of Albert Diirer or Velasquez, and do something towards bridging the waste of centuries, do not in the least impose on the spectator. The whole medium of triumphant associations through which you gaze and listen, is too strong for that. You are not cohniving at a murder ; you are commemorating a sacrifice. It is a pity that the play does not end here, or that if any scenes But the most unexpected of the impressions which the Play freshness and power that made my heart beat fast. Again I heard the made upon me was that produced by the vivid popular life thrown oaths and jests of the soldiers, saw the high priests wagging their into it. You saw this as well in the most purely pictorial as in wicked grey heads, heard the people yelling " We have no king the most exciting and clamorous scenes. The tableaux-vivanta but Ctesar," was filled with the majesty of that thrilling voice from the Old Testament, really picturesque and brilliant, often which declared, " For this end was I born, and for this cause came contained many more than a hundred figures, and amongst them I into the world, that I might bear witness to the Truth ;" and considerable numbers of children in attitudes which were never caught the half-supercilious, half-sad enigma put by the Roman for a moment varied during the three or four minutes that Governor," What is truth?" I can only describe the general effect they were presented to the spectators. At least, I only once saw produced on my mind as the Spanish friar described to Wilkie, a mere baby's arm tremble, and the fiery sword, which the angel when gazing in admiration at one of the Last Suppers of Velaequez, pointed at Adam and Eve when driven out of Paradise, waver, how the picture had so taken possession of his imagination as to I think, a moment in its bearer's hand ; and Henry, who saw the make the common events of life seem almost unreal phantoms beside whole play again when it was repeated on the Monday (I seeing it. The Passion Play at Ammergau had much the same effect on only a part), reported that Tobit's little dog, a wiry terrier of my mind :- rather a large breed, which I had supposed to be stuffed, wagged "It seemed as though these were the living men, its tail and ran off as the curtain descended before it was quite And we, the coloured shadows on the wall."
hidden from view. But, for the most part, the artistic perfection of AN ENGLISHWOMAN IN DIFFICIILTINS. very difficult and elaborate tableaux, including great numbers of figures of all ages, and for the preparation of which often three or four minutes must have been the longest available time, was A WAR-INTERIOR.
really marvellous. Moreover, we heard, and our own experience [To THE EDITOR OF TEE " SPECTATOR.1 partly confirmed it, that the grouping is varied in almost every Weilburg, August 8. performance, being left in great measure to the artistic in- You will at once comprehend how everything concerned with stint and training of the performers. Such a tableau as that of events like the present seizes hold of the mind, and requires a the people of Israel massed together in the wilderness, where every strong physical frame to stand the emotions they cause for any man, woman, and child looks up with awe and joy as the shower of length of time ; but it is a grand time to watch the manner in manna descends from heaven,—a tableau connected with the gift of which the war has taken hold of all Germany, rich and poor, the living bread in the Last Supper,—could only have been arranged —the way in which it has cast aside all political and reli- es it is by a people whose ancestors had been trained to artistic gious feuds. All former grudges and jealousies ; and even the work of this kind, and among whom the tradition had never faded wrongs done by one Sovereign to another are forgiven at a
away. But this popular effect is still more striking in the moment's notice. There is the one strong feeling; our
are given after the resurrection, they should not be the walk to scenes where the mob of Jerusalem, stirred up by the priests and Emmaus and the appearance to St. Thomas, which have in them terrified at the prospect of Roman vengeance for the kingly claims so much of human pathos. The scenes of resurrection and ascen- of Christ, howls -for the release of the ruffian Barabbas (who, sion, with their somewhat clumsily-arranged machinery of miracle, clothed in his prison sackcloth, looks on with brutal enjoyment at a little mar the wonderful unity of the previous effect. the scene), and for the crucifixion of Jesus. After a most exqui- Of the disciples, Peter, John, and J odes were given with real site piece of music in parts,—the present music, by the way (much power by Jakob Hett, Johann Z wink, and Gregor Lechner, of of it wonderfully fine, and, I was told by those who know more of whom the second looked rather " the disciple whom Jesus loved " it than myself, very original) was composed by an Ammergau than the Son of Thunder (Boanerges) ; while the last, though he schoolmaster in 1810, and no part of it has ever been published,— made perhaps a little too much of the greed and avarice of Judas, in which the chorus pleads for the release of Jesus, while the unseen expressed his despair at the issue of his sin in an attitude of agony crowds in the background respond with demands for the release of that I can never forget,—his hand pressed on his forehead with Barabbas and the most solemn imprecations of the blood of our a force which brought his elbow above the level of his head, Lord on themselves and their children, the scene commences in and his upturned face gleaming white with horror. The which they fiercely urge the crucifixion, and repel with ferocity what curious thing was that all these men were genuine peasants in seem to be the sneers of the Roman Governor at their wish to have their speech and demeanour,—not clowns or rude-mannered, but their King crucified. There was the effect of a truly local mob,- " unlearned and ignorant men,"—while not a vestige of this origin of common habits and common origin about the demeanour of the hung about their comrades who took the parts of Christ, Pilate, multitude in this scene,—which made its apparent passion infinitely and Herod. Indeed, the art shown by Herr Flunger and Herr more impressive than that of any stage crowd I ever saw. It was Lang, who took respectively the parts of Pilate and Herod, was a people, and not a mere company of actors, a people swayed by marvellous. The former is the same actor who twenty years ago the feeling of vehement common interests and fears. Henry said delighted the Baroness Tautphoeus so much by his representation that Mr. Darwin should cite the Ammergau Play as "a proof of of Christ. In 1860 he took the part which he acted again this year, the hereditary accumulation of artistic capacities in a selected of Pilate. It is hard to conceive two characters so different. But race," whatever he meant by that ; but it sounds so well, I thought for Madame Tautphceus's evidence, it would be impossible to con- I would mention it. None of these people get real profit by the ceive that the face which expressed so powerfully the Roman noble's play. I was told that the most that players of the first class, Joseph proud indifference to the superstitions of the Jews, his haughty con- Mair, Flunger, and the leader of the orchestra, Herr Gutsjell, with tempt and dislike for the high priests, his supercilious wonder at many others, would get in a good year, would be about £12, for Christ's mysticism and impracticability, however modified by a something like thirty or forty full performances (of eight hours clear recognition of the singular loftiness of character beneath, his each) and innumerable rehearsals through the previous winter. sagacious deference to popular wishes, and none the less his funda- Clearly that is no profit, but a great pecuniary loss. This year, as mental scorn for the mob he was so anxious to conciliate, could the performances ended two or three months before the usual time, have expressed twenty years ago the wonderful spiritual beauty and I fear they will get nothing ; and perhaps the poor actors will detachment' from earthly motives of the Saviour of mankind. One be shot before they feel the need of it.
would ha4 called his face a cold though by no means cruel one. But as to the tendency of the Passion-Play, you may ask, was it Certainly, with Herr Lang, who took the part of Herod, any such to produce a deeper feeling for Christ, or to fritter feeling away in change of parts must have been always quite impossible. His was picturesque effects ? I can only answer for myself. I admit tha a part of selfish and sensual good-nature and luxurious vanity. He in many of the audience there were occasionally signs of a shallow welcomes Christ as the Czar or Napoleon might have welcomed and empty curiosity. When the liberated doves flew out of the Mr. Home, from the appetite for physical marvel, and suggests to Temple, there was a titter ; and there was an inane disposition to him one miracle after another which he would like to see performed, regard Judas as the comic character of the piece,—comic on account treating Christ's unbroken silence as indicating imbecility and im- of his failure. When he cast down, with every sign of real despair, posture which are irritating because they have wasted time which he the thirty pieces of silver on the floor of the treasury, I heard a dis- might have spent in amusement and have made him look foolish, but duct giggle ; and one chit of a German girl near us said to her which it would be ridiculous to treat as justifying death. He sends brother, " Ich kann nur lachen " I can't help laughing '), in a Jesus away with a shrug of the shoulder,—' John the Baptist at weak, apologetic way, that gave me a strong desire to order her off least could make kings tremble ;—this man is a dumb dog, not to to bed. But nothing more exalting than the effect apparently pro- be compared to him for a moment.' The contrast between the duced on the actors themselves is easily imaginable. And for myself, puppet-king living for pleasure and ostentation, and the working I can only say that when some Sundays later I heard in the lesson of Roman Governor could hardly have been more powerfully given, the day St. John's account of the crucifixion, it came to me with a
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