A plaintive figure out of
tapestry, a child out of a nursery tale, she made one feel at once the
remoteness and the humanity of this waif of dreams, the little princess
who does know that it is wrong to love. In the great scene by the
fountain in the park, Mrs. Campbell expressed the supreme
unconsciousness of passion, both in face and voice, as no other English
actress could have done; in the death scene she expressed the supreme
unconsciousness of innocence with the same beauty and the same
intensity. Her palpitating voice, in which there is something like the
throbbing of a wounded bird, seemed to speak the simple and beautiful
words as if they had never been said before. And that beauty and
strangeness in her, which make her a work of art in herself, seemed to
find the one perfect opportunity for their expression. The only actress
on our stage whom we go to see as we would go to see a work of art, she
acts Pinero and the rest as if under a disguise. Here, dressed in
wonderful clothes of no period, speaking delicate, almost ghostly words,
she is herself, her rarer self. And Mr. Martin Harvey, who can be so
simple, so passionate, so full of the warmth of charm, seemed until
almost the end of the play to have lost the simple fervour which he had
once shown in the part of Pelleas; he posed, spoke without sincerity,
was conscious of little but his attitudes.
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