There is a certain kind, or perhaps it is only a certain degree, of

theatrical reputation, which makes its coming felt in all sorts of

ways, like a change in the weather. The rise of literary men to fame is

almost always a surprise to themselves, their families, and their

former instructors. Especially the latter, who know much more than the

young novelist does, but have never been able to do anything with their

knowledge, hold up their shrivelled, or podgy, or gouty old hands in

sorrow, declaring that the success of a boy who was such a dolt, such a

good-for-nothing, such a conceited jackanapes at school, only shows

what the judgment of the public is worth, and how very low its standard

has fallen. But the great public does not think much of decayed

schoolmasters at best, and is never surprised that a young man should

succeed, for the very simple reason that if he did not, some other

young man certainly would; and to those who do not know the colour of

the author's hair and eyes, the difference between Mr. Brown, Mr.

Jones, and Mr. Robinson, in private life, must be purely a matter of

imagination.

But theatrical reputation is a different matter, and its rise affects

the professional barometer beforehand. The people who train great

singers and great actors know what they are about and foresee the

result, as no publisher can foresee it with regard to a new writer.

There is a right way and a wrong way of singing, one must sing in tune

unless one sings out of tune, there are standards of comparison in the

persons of the great singers who are still at their best.

It is not easy to be mistaken, where so much is a matter of certainty and so

little depends on chance, and the facts become known very easily. The

first-rate second-rate artists, climbing laboriously in the wake of the

real first-rates, and wishing that these would die and get out of the

way, feel a hopeless sinking at the heart as they hear behind them the

rush of another coming genius. The tired critics sleep less soundly in

the front row of the stalls, the fine and frivolous ladies who come to

the opera to talk the whole evening are told that for once they will

have to be silent, the reporters put on little playful airs of mystery

to say that they have been allowed to assist at a marvellous rehearsal

or have been admitted to see the future diva putting on her cloak after

a final interview with Schreiermeyer, whose attitude before her is

described as being that of the donor of the picture in an old Italian

altar-piece.




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