signed all the scenery. Mr. Hampden has never done better acting; it is a delight to see and hear him. The cast is adequate, particularly in the important rôles of Pompilia, Canon Conti, and the Pope. Do not miss this performance, for it is one of the most important events of the season. The prodigious success of Helen Hays in Barrie's "What Every Woman Knows" is not only a very good thing in itself, but I hope it means that she will give us a Barrie cycle; without employing the work of any other playwright, there are sufficient opportunities in the dramas of that man of genius to display the resources of this brilliant actress for many years to come. Winthrop Ames, emboldened by the public response to his impeccable production of "Iolanthe," is now going ahead with "The Pirates of Penzance," which should be the second in a long series. Of the new plays in New York, the most successful is "Broadway,' a crude and unimportant melodrama, exceedingly well acted. It seems good by contrast, most of the new plays being quite beneath criticism. Dreiser's "American Tragedy," of which I saw the worldpremière in New Haven, is a collection of episodes, ending in shallow sentimentality. The best thing about it is its introduction to the stage of Katherine Wilson, who acts the part of Roberta with high intelligence and subtle art-a beautiful interpretation.

Eva Le Gallienne deserves the admiration and support of all lovers of the theatre because of her courage and resolution and energy in establishing a civic repertory theatre. She has taken an old but attractive theatre at 105 West Fourteenth Street, and at very low prices gives excellent plays, with frequent change of bill. In the first few weeks she produced "The Three Sisters," "The Master Builder," "John Gabriel Borkman," "Saturday Night" (by Benavente), and "La Locandiera" (by Goldoni). I wonder if all theatre-goers realize the sacrifice of time, money, and energy this determined young woman is making for the best interests of the drama? She could easily have continued as a matinée idol, and with little effort and above all, no worry, could have basked in the sunshine of popularity and have amassed a fortune. She exchanged a

life of wealth and ease for one of heartbreaking worry, chronic overwork, and no financial profit; because she rightly believed that New York needed and deserved a repertory theatre. Such courage will, I hope, be rewarded.

The Theatre Guild has also established a repertory theatre, in addition to its other undertakings; this admirable organization has recently revived Shaw's "Pygmalion," the most successful production since it moved into its new and beautiful playhouse at 52d Street.

The late A. B. Walkley, commonly and justly regarded as the foremost Englishwriting drama critic, lost in his latter days not only some of his prejudices but some of his enthusiasms. He quoted with approval Professor Walter Raleigh's comment on Ibsen.

Ibsen represents very exactly all that I most dislike. The Evangelist with a wooden

leg! They are praising him up to the skies delight in anything but his own mop-headed, whiskered, methodical self. I'm glad he's dead. Some good people liked his books. He caught them on their stupid side.

now. But he won't wash. He never took

I wonder why it is that the majority of people love to read a violent attack on a book or an author, love it so much more than they love praise? Is it because the common herd rejoice at any attempt to belittle, befoul, or bludgeon a great man? Raleigh says some good people liked his books-liked his books. Ibsen was a playwright-did Raleigh ever see one of his plays? Raleigh's disposal of Ibsen may be funny in a grotesque way, but it betrays stupid, insular ignorance and prejudice. Mr. Walkley's comment is singularly assuming and inept. "I take Ibsen himself to be as dead as mutton.... The rare revivals of him in London have been hole-in-corner affairs." As though the opinion of London theatre-managers and West End audiences had any value or weight in determining what is and what is not important in the drama! In Germany Ibsen is very much alive; and if Professor Raleigh and Mr. Walkley could have seen the New York performance of "The Wild Duck," in 1925, they might have learned something. It is true that Ibsen is no longer a sensation; he is no

longer a sensation because, like Shakespeare, he is a classic.

Two books of high value for those who follow contemporary drama and verse, are Burns Mantle's "The Best Plays of 1925-26," and William Stanley Braithwaite's "Anthology of Magazine Verse, 1926." Mr. Braithwaite has performed many valuable services in the cause of poetry; the amount of labor bestowed on this latest tome is almost terrifying. Yet it is all so carefully and thoroughly indexed that the reader can find immediately anything he wants-except, alas, great poetry. But that is not the fault of the compiler, and it is well to know the truth.

In the November American Mercury, there is an article on "The New York Dailies," by Hugh Kent, in which, after praising The Sun for its news and financial prosperity, he says: "You never see its editorials quoted, but what of that?" Now the Sun editorial on "The Country

Store," commenting on Bruce Barton's interview with President Coolidge, and its editorial on Kipling's poem on America, were worthy of the best traditions of that paper, and I know no higher praise, n'estce pas, Mr. Mitchell? That interview, by the way, which appeared everywhere last September, was a triumph of American journalism. The Sun had a long and brilliant editorial commenting on the oldfashioned American crossroads country store, which, Mr. Editor, is not obsolete. Not far from my house in Michigan stands the country store of William Pottinger, which runs absolutely true to form. The Sun omitted one of the most delightful characteristics of the country-store emporium-the smell. I like the smell of the country store-it is compounded of the ingredients of coffee, tea, gingersnaps, cheese, candy, leather, brooms, dry-goods, cream-cans, brown sugar, spices, and the glorious, sweetish, pungent odor of chewing-tobacco.

I

IN the crowded New York art season there occasionally occurs an exhibition in which, as the saying goes, there is more than meets the eye. Vistas are opened. Old memories are reawakened. Such an exhibition was held at the Higgs Gallery this winter, a little show of ten paintings by the late Frank Duveneck. Decidedly there was more in them than met the eye. Besides being good paintings they revived the tale of an old tradition, one that is still felt in American art, but is also more or less obscured. Our debt to France is a heavy one, but it is not by any means all that we owe to Europe. When foreign criticism wants to be very friendly and patronizing toward us-and it is not infrequently disposed to that impulse it is wont to characterize American art as an offshoot from the French school, as though nothing had ever happened here not directly traceable to the influence of Parisian training. As a matter of fact we went to Munich before we went to France in any concerted sense, and, apropos of this Duveneck exhibition, it is interesting to recall some incidents and personalities from a salient chapter in our artistic history.

in it. We find him a pupil in the Royal Academy at Munich in 1870, his biographer, Norbert Heermann, noting that it took him only three months at the antique to emerge into the painting class. At that moment Piloty and Makart were prevailing, but Duveneck found his predestined leader in Dietz and with his sympathy he sat at the feet of the old masters, especially Rembrandt and Hals. When he came back to America three years later the pictures he brought with him made a great stir not only in Cincinnati but in Chicago and Boston. In Boston they bought all his works and wanted him to stay. Instead he went back to Munich, travelled in Italy, and in the late 'eighties was settled in Bavaria again, where he opened a kind of academy of his own. Young Americans flocked to his standard, and from that period, in Munich, in Florence, and in Venice dates the steady growth of the influence which was to be advanced by "Duveneck's Boys." One of the painter's old pals, George H. Clements, who shared a studio with him for several years, gives me some delightful reminiscences of the atmosphere in which that influence was developed. He says:

Hiking from Paris to Italy I dropped into a café in Florence and found myself facing Duve

back as the 'sixties, when David Neal and Toby Rosenthal went over. In less than ten years thereafter Frank Duveneck put the Bavarian city on the map, so to say, for the new American painter. William M. Chase had an important share in this transaction and, indeed, if I am not mistaken, was actually earlier on the ground. But Duveneck was the prime initiator of the American tradition springing from Munich. He was a Kentucky man, born at Covington in 1848 and growing up under the tuition of German painters in Cincinnati. He seems to have begun as an ecclesiastical mural painter. What his work then was like I do not know, but it must have had talent

Rolshoven. Duveneck

yellow-haired Norseman I had ever seen and his temperament matched. I was bound to tramp to my champion and brother, as he was to all the Naples, but he persuaded me to stop. He became boys. He and Rolshoven hired a villa on the Poggio Imperiale and I joined one of the classes and taught water-colors. Etching was a fad. I designed a big wooden press which answered perfectly. Opposite was the sculptor's studio of Thomas Ball and his son-in-law, Will Couper. The home was one of music and social distinction. On Mondays the press was wheelbarrowed across ... Our little lunch-room was adorned with for a monotype evening-accompanied by music. compositions and comic sketches by Duveneck. He was a good actor and the life of costume parties. He painted a few portraits, especially of children, of whom his love was ardent.

In the spring he and I went to Venice and shared a studio. He etched and painted spas

way! Paint was used with a lavish hand in his cénacle. It was used as the old Dutchmen used it, in a thick impasto.

Woman in Black Scarf.

of shrewd criticism it contained. After the talk we sat together over mugs of beer, Duveneck and Chase, the old war-horses, and others like Joe De Camp, who had started among the boys. I can see the veterans now, Chase elegantly leonine and picturesque, piquantly articulate, and Duveneck silvery and quiet, putting in a pregnant word now and then, the grave tenor of which was tempered by the kindly light in his eye. Yes, "wisdom" is the word. I felt him to be a very wise old painter, full of the lore of his craft, full of experience and authority. It was touching to see how Joe De Camp, that genially aggressive soul, looked up to him.

But what of my reservation? It is one that forced itself upon me at the San Francisco Exposition ten years ago. That was a great occasion for Duveneck. He had a big room to himself and all the art juries got together to see that a special medal of honor was struck for him. Nobody

could wonder. The room was superb. But your heart sank when you saw one historical fact that it pro

Only the important thing was to use it lovingly, understandingly, so that you gave the genius of pigment its chance and left a painted surface sensuously beautiful. Duveneck was no slap-dash handler of his materials. Save for one reservation, to which I will presently return, he knew with great clarity of vision exactly what he was about. I surmise that one of the things drawing his boys to him was just his painter's wisdom. Vividly do I remember the impression that this left upon me when I met him one night in his later years. It was at a Boston club, where Chase was giving his delightful lecture on Whistler. I had heard of that lecture before, from Whistler himself, who was not quite sure whether it would please him or not and quaintly urged me to go after Chase with a blunderbuss. As a matter of fact it was full of appreciation and a humanly interesting thing which was none the worse for the bits

Young Girl.

From the painting by Frank Duveneck shown at the Higgs Gallery.