Life — November 1, 1883 — page 11: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

- LIFE: tween Society and Mrs. DuNDERTEUFEL SYMMONS there is a reciprocity which is beautiful to see. Mrs. DUNDERTEUFEL SYMMONS’ Intellect,when it surges too vio- lently for her personal comfort, finds a safety valve in the Drama. “The Thoughts which come to me in my quiet hours,’ says Mrs. DUNDERTEUFEL Symmons with a sigh, ‘I set down ina little book which is always at my side."’ Of course the number of Mrs. Dun- DERTEUFEL SYMMONS’ quiet hours, as every one knows, are few and far between, but the little book accumulates the Thoughts steadily, and by and by it grows too heavy to carry around, Then the Intellect begins to surge and boom and ferment, and the result is a Play. Most dramatic authors, when incubating a plot, undergo series of pangs which would have undermined the constitution of the most vigorous martyr of the middle ages. They rumple up their clothing, let down their back hair, bang furniture around, clutch wildly at the air, and undergo generally the most violent spasms, While working up a “situation” they are maudlin, and when put- ting the last touches to a ‘‘climax" are a prey to the most terrible form of rabies known toscience. Any one who has the misfortune of having a poet in the family knows how dreadful the symptoms of an ‘inspiration’ are, and yet a poet’s “inspiration” is as mild, compared to the dramatist’s, as our fashionable malaria is to Asiatic cholera, When it is known that SARDou invariably foams at the mouth 223 while devising a play; that Bronson Howarp writes in a straight-jacket, and that GILBERT was once compelled to. throw seventeen babies out of a fourth story window before he could work himself up to the state of feeling necessary to the proper composition of a third act, it can be readily seen that play writing is no light matter. How illimitable then the Intellect which can, in a ‘‘ quiet hour,” evolve thoughts which shape themselves into a Play as readily as a company of militia will tumble into ranks on the tap of a drum, without fever, or fret or vexation. Every author has his pet means of wooing inspiration. One famous novelist, as we know, wrote with a death's head before him ; another took long and solitary walks in the forest ; a third captured his best ideas while feeding his canary ; a fourth used to jump over chairs, and a fifth never could write a line unless a vase of flowers stood before him, Mrs. DUNDERTEUFEL SyM- MONS shares this peculiarity alone with her brother composers. In her quiet hours she finds her Thoughts come most freely when a French dictionary and a volume of French plays, preferably Scribe's, lie before her. This is merely one of those childish idiosyncrasies peculiar to the truly great 'mind. Provided with a volume of Scribe and a competent dictionary, Mrs, DUNDERTEU- FEL SYMMONS will, in a few quiet hours, evolve a comedy the like of which not Howarp nor SARDOU nor GILBERT has ever writ- ten or ever will write. Thad the pleasure once of seeing one of the plays written by vi Py rae er HE ASPIRED TO BE THE LEADER OF HIS SET. (And he is.) comicbooks.com