CORA PEARL Snt,—In his notice of my book, Ego 5,
your reviewer has this passage: " Surely the same kink is to blame for Mr. Agate's pernickety forefinger-wagging. There is no example of inaccuracy in his own writings, he remarks ; and so compels paternal kindness to turn back to this: Even clever people like Stella Gibbons come croppers when they write of things outside their own knowledge. In her new story, "The Hoofer and the Lady," occurs this: "I expect he remembers the naughty 'nineties and all that. Pretty grim to see Nervo and Knox rioting over the very spot where Cora Pearl used to swoon about in yards of grubby lace, what? " Cora died in 1886, and had not acted in France since 1867, and never played in England. What Miss Gibbons wrote is plainly (very, very plainly) not a state- ment or misstatement of fact. And to correct what stands in no need of correction the pedagogue implies that Cora Pearl acted. She did not." That which is neither statement nor misstatement of fact is presumably fancy. Your reviewer may possibly be right in holding that Miss Gibbons did not seriously mean what ninety persons out of a hundred will under- stand that she meant—that it is disconcerting to see modern buffoons clowning it on the boards on which " in the naughty 'nineties" Cora Pearl acted. In the realms of fancy " the very spot " may mean no more than London, and " swoon about " may have reference to the lady's non-theatrical activities. Even so, these must be conditioned by the allusion to the 'nineties, unless, of course, Miss Gibbons's fancy holds sway over dates. It is not contested that Cora Pearl died in i886.
Your reviewer is on less safe ground—indeed he is on no ground at all—when he says that Cora " did not act." She appeared in 1867 at the Bouffes-Parisiens in Offenbach's Orphie aux Enfers. Charles Dolph has left an amusing account of her performance, of her Englishing of the verse: 7e sours Kioupidonne, mon ctmor
Ah fait l'ecole bouissoniere . . .
and of the behaviour of the gallery which protested against " la morale outragee."
Your reviewer is entitled to his views as to what Miss Gibbons may or may not have meant. He is not entitled to say that Cora Pearl did not act, when it is a matter of theatrical history that she did. And very
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