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[Illustration: "And what should Columbine be like? Well, she is just like
what you'd most like her to be. She has a rose in her hand."]
The Harlequinade
An Excursion by
Dion Clayton Calthrop and Granville Barker
Published, March, 1918
Just a Word in Your Ear
Not to put too fine a point to it, this isn't a play at all and it isn't
a novel, or a treatise, or an essay, or anything like that; it is an
excursion, and you who trouble to read it are the trippers.
Now in any excursion you get into all sorts of odd company, and fall into
talk with persons out of your ordinary rule, and you borrow a match and get
lent a magazine, and, as likely as not, you may hear the whole tragedy and
comedy of a ham and beef carver's life. So you will get a view of the world
as oddly coloured as Harlequin's clothes, with puffs of sentiment dear
to the soul of Columbine, and Clownish fun with Pantaloonish wisdom and
chuckles. When you were young, you used, I think, to enjoy a butterfly's
kiss; and that, you remember, was when your mother brushed your cheek with
her eye-lashes. And also when you were young you held a buttercup under
other children's chins to see if they liked butter, and they always did,
and the golden glow showed and the world was glad. And you held a shell to
your ear to hear the sound of the sea, and when it rained, you pressed your
nose against the window-pane until it looked flat and white to passers-by.
It is rather in that spirit that Alice and her Uncle present this excursion
to you.
I suppose it has taken over a thousand people to write this excursion, and
we are, so far, the last. And not by any means do we pretend because of
that to be the best of them; rather, because of that, perhaps, we cannot be
the best. We should have done much better--if we could. Oh, this has been
written by Greeks and Romans and Mediaeval Italians and Frenchmen and
Englishmen, and it has been played thousands and thousands of times under
every sort of weather and conditions. Think of it: when the gardeners of
Egypt sent their boxes of roses to Italy to make chaplets for the Romans to
wear at feasts this play was being performed; when the solemn Doges (which
Alice once would call "Dogs") of Venice held festa days, this play was
shown to the people.
And here Alice interrupts and says: "Do you think people really like to
read all that sort of thing? Why don't you let me tell the story, please?
I'm sitting here waiting to." Well, so she shall.
The Harlequinade
For some time now she has been sitting there. Miss Alice Whistler is an
attractive young person of about fifteen (very readily still she tells
her age), dressed in a silver grey frock which she wishes were longer.
The frock has a white collar; she wears grey silk stockings and black
shoes; and, finally, a little black silk apron, one of those French
aprons. If you must know still more exactly how she is dressed, look at
Whistler's portrait of Miss Alexander.
What happened was this. A pleasant old Victorian art fancier (
of) saw the child one day, and noted that her name was Whistler ("No
relation," said her Uncle Edward, "so far as we know"), and "That's how
to dress her," said he. And thereupon he forked out what he delicately
called "The Wherewithal" ("Which sounded like a sort of mackintosh,"
said Alice afterwards), for they couldn't have afforded it themselves.
"You're still young enough to take presents," said Uncle Edward. And
indeed Alice was very pleased, and saw that the hem was left wide
enough to let down several times. And here she is; the dress is kept
for these occasions.
Here she is in a low little chair, sitting with her basket of knitting
beside her on one side of a simply painted grey and black proscenium,
across which, masking the little stage, blue curtains hang in folds.
"The blue," said Miss Alice when she ordered them, "must be the colour
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