The New Age
Vol 14 No 3
20th November 1913
MISS MAUD ALLAN, it appears, has decided to carry out the programme for her tour in India as originally arranged, out of regard for her reputation and self-respect. Neither the fact nor Miss Allan’s motives are of the slightest importance to anybody, except possibly to Miss Maud Allan, but the recent outcry on the subject in the English Press was a revelation of the state of public opinion in England. The gist of the agitation appeared to be this: that Indians would fail to make any distinction between Indian dancers and Miss Maud Allan, and that British prestige in India would suffer thereby. The proposition sounds sufficiently absurd, as thus stated, but apparently it has been one of sufficient gravity to disturb the equanimity of the British public for a fortnight; perhaps, after all, there may be something in it.
The public, of course, has a right to choose its own worries; conceding the right, we must take its worries seriously. We are in the position of a physician. A patient complains of certain pains and alarming symptoms; the physician tells him, “If you have these pains and betray these symptoms, you have appendicitis. Perhaps you have, perhaps you haven’t – in any case let me examine you.”
When Miss Maud Allan some weeks ago announced her intention of going to India, the public proclaimed itself to be not at ease. We shall endeavour, as sympathetically as possible, to diagnose this dis-ease of the public.
And first as to the alleged cause of the malady-a dancer’s tour abroad-a trivial matter, in all conscience, but not, therefore, to be lightly dismissed. Our patient’s health must be already enfeebled if it may be so easily affected; so let us make a preliminary note-“general debility.”
Next we shall examine the pain, which is due to the fear that Indians will fail to make any distinction between Miss Maud Allan and Indian dancers. The pain, we fear, is not an imaginary one; the irritant is undoubtedly there. Indians will certainly refuse to make the distinction. This is a normal or natural circumstance which would cause no pain to a person in normal good health. That it should pain the English public is prima facie ground for believing the English people to be unsound at heart. Let us consider the facts. If an Indian audience, after seeing her performance, critically compared the dancing of Miss Maud Allan with that of a trained nautch-girl, it would undoubtedly consider the nautch-girl’s to be the more finished exposition of the dancer’s art. The dancer’s art has been practiced and brought to perfection in India in the course of centuries; in England it is a recent fad. It has been urged that Miss Allan’s dancing would not be “understood” in India. Where it is unintelligible it would certainly not be understood, but then where, as dancing, it is unintelligible, it is not dancing. Indians are trained critics of dancing, they have been taught during many generations to appreciate the beautiful in postures and motions. An Indian audience would certainly seize any lurking elements of beauty in Miss Allan’s postures and motions: the rest it probably would not grasp.
We note by the way that Miss Allan has decided to omit “Salome” from her Indian programme and wisely. There is not much that is intrinsically good, as dancing, in the “Salome” turn. On the other hand+ the character of Salome is extremely liable to be misunderstood. An Indian audience might quite possibly have fallen into the lamentable error of the little girl who understood Salome to be “the woman who put on a lot of beads and danced in front of Harrod’s”!
From the point of view of artistic merit, then, an Indian audience would make a positive distinction between Miss Maud Allan and Indian dancers, in favour of the latter. In the eyes of the British public, however, this would not be an invidious distinction-the British public is rarely vexed by a distinction based on artistic merit. But it is seriously vexed because Indians would refuse to make an invidious distinction between Miss Allan and Indian dancers, in favour of the former, on the ground of general moral excellence.
Indians hold the profession of acting, including dancing-in fact any profession which involves making an exhibition of oneself-to be a dishonourable one; an actor is a low-caste person. English people consider acting an honourable profession, and they unreasonably expect Indians to alter their views on the subject so far as regards Miss Allan. But why should Indians be expected to violate a racial, and what is more, a rational principle, so as to humour an alien idiosyncrasy? It is obvious that in holding the stage to be an honourable profession English people are guilty of a lapse of taste. The Greeks and the Romans alike held the actor in contempt. In Greece actors were generally slaves; at Rome enactments were at various times passed forbidding senators to enter the houses of pantomime players, and forbidding knights from publicly associating with actors. “No spiritual aristocrat will prostitute his expressions to the emotions of another.’’ The profession of acting consists in perpetual self-abandonment; in this sense every actor is an abandoned character. In despising the profession of acting Indians prove that they retain what the English people have lost-a sense of genuine aristocracy. It says much for the moral strength of India and the instinctive good taste of the Indian people that they persist in contemning the actor, though the British Government reserves an equal honour, that of knighthood, for the Indian maharajah and the English mime. The judgment of an Indian audience on Miss Allan or any dancer would be exactly that of the barbarian king, who after witnessing an exhibition of dancing by his son, applauded his performance and thanked him for the entertainment, but added, “You should be ashamed of dancing so well.” An actor’s shame is the greater in proportion as he is a better actor, for this implies the greater self-abandonment. Restraint, repression, self-control-these are the virtues of the aristocrat, and Indians rightly hold that any calling which implies the negation of these qualities is an ignoble calling.
In going to India, Miss Allan submits herself to the judgment of a people who hold primitively sane and well-defined views on many subjects, and therefore believe in certain fundamental social distinctions. All men are not equal; to them an actor is an actor. English people have lost this sane clarity of judgment. They are blinded by the passion of avarice, and have lost all sense of values, except a sense of the value of money. The stage is an honourable profession simply because it has been proved that there is money in it. To quote a recent writer in THE NEW AGE, there has been in England “a deliquescence (to use Mr. Belloc’s word)-a melting and confounding of the outlines of beliefs and desires; a going to slush of values; a thawing and liquefaction of all that was hard and permanent i n the world, . . . an obliviousness to the permanent variety and difference in things. The whole of modernism is an attempt to obliterate distinctions.” Caste distinctions are still sufficiently crystallised in India for the Indians to assign a definite place in the social order to the profession of acting, judged on its merits as an activity apart from its emoluments.
It is quite possible that Miss Allan’s visit to India will seriously disturb her peace of mind. That the English public should be affected, as it has been affected, by the possibility of a sane judgment on Miss Allan by a people who retain a natural sense of “the permanent variety and difference in things” argues some radical unsoundness in the English people. It appears that a perfectly natural and normal circumstance produces in them the most grotesque contortions of pain.
To turn to the question of British prestige. It has been urged, in quarters apparently responsible, that Miss Allan’s visit would result in a loss of British prestige in India. How precarious that prestige which a dancer may dance away! Or has the British public after all a superstitious fear of dancers, mindful of Salome, who danced away the august head of the Baptist? Not less awful is the augustness of British prestige, but would that avail against a dancer’s charms? No-the English public has done well to forewarn the Indian police of Miss Allan’s coming.
But entre nous and for our satisfaction, let us examine this question of prestige. Prestige is pre-eminence based on recognised excellence. By claiming prestige the English people claims excellence and the recognition of excellence. A loss of prestige then amounts to a denial of excellence. It is said that Miss Allan’s Indian tour would result in a loss of British prestige, and this, as we have seen, merely because the Indian people pass a sane judgment on Miss Allan, and would further be led to question English standards of taste. By fearing a loss of prestige the British public admits that it fears criticism, and this because it doubts its own excellence. In short, it fears exposure. But what shall we say of a prestige that has no basis in excellence? Shall we whisper it? It is not prestige, but mere pretension.
Lionel de Fonseka.