314
PARTISAN REVIEW
little laughter in it. The play is pervaded by a sort of emotional albinism
hard to characterize. Children find their parents and parents their chil–
dren without a flicker of feeling. It may be that I am not responsive
to an unusually dry variety of modern English humor. "I should like
to know how I ought to address you/Lady Elizabeth," says young Mr.
Kaghan who has at last found his real mother, "I've always been ac–
customed/to regard Mrs. Kaghan as my mother."
LADY ELIZABETH:
Then in order to avoid any danger of confusion
You may address me as Aunt Elizabeth.
B.
KAGHAN:
That's easier, certainly.
LADY ELIZ.:
And I shall wish to meet them,
Claude, we must invite the K aghans to dinner.
SIP. CLAUDE:
By all means, Elizabeth.
You can't beat this for playing it cool. Arms by their sides, perfectly
self-possessed, making no gesture toward one another, the relatives trip
through their verses. Imagine Neapolitans or Russians or Jews in this
situation. But this impressive demonstration of self-command made me
wonder whether anything so close to death was really suitable to dramatic
representation and, also, why this aridity of the British character should
be admired and associated with culture or religion. Better observers than
I have complained of it : John Stuart Mill, for instance, in the chapter
of his
Autobiography
called "A Crisis in My Mental History." It is not
easy to explain why one should go to the old world in search of quali–
ties that were so often the despair of those who could not avoid them
and why Englishmen should have fled from them to Italy and Arabia
whereas Americans have seen salvation in being, as Matthew Arnold
described it, three parts iced over.
Restrained and unassuming, as plain in dialogue as it is undemon–
strative in its drama,
The Confidential Clerk
nevertheless is not a simple
play. Audiences and readers are wiser than they used to be. They know
that everything simple is not
really
simple. The barest of statements re–
fers the mind to something profound. J ack and Jill can no more be
merely Jack and Jill than Moby
Dick
can be nothing but a whale.
Critics have proved to us that mythological and religious entities inhabit
ordinary Midwestern personalities. Passengers descending from street–
cars illustrate the
R eisemotiv.
Little boys in Mississippi are really Aeneas.
Decidedly, things are not what they seem. Elvire thinks that T artuffe
is feeling her thigh, but he murmurs,
"QueUe merveiUeuse etoffe."
Now
what is stuff but another name for substance? Elvire is perhaps de–
ceived. A simple act is not what the naive eye takes in. But there are at
