There is a certain kind, or perhaps it is only a certain degree, of
theatrical reputation, which makes its coming felt in all sorts of
ways, like a change in the weather. The rise of literary men to fame is
almost always a surprise to themselves, their families, and their
former instructors. Especially the latter, who know much more than the
young novelist does, but have never been able to do anything with their
knowledge, hold up their shrivelled, or podgy, or gouty old hands in
sorrow, declaring that the success of a boy who was such a dolt, such a
good-for-nothing, such a conceited jackanapes at school, only shows
what the judgment of the public is worth, and how very low its standard
has fallen. But the great public does not think much of decayed
schoolmasters at best, and is never surprised that a young man should
succeed, for the very simple reason that if he did not, some other
young man certainly would; and to those who do not know the colour of
the author's hair and eyes, the difference between Mr. Brown, Mr.
Jones, and Mr. Robinson, in private life, must be purely a matter of
imagination.
But theatrical reputation is a different matter, and its rise affects
the professional barometer beforehand. The people who train great
singers and great actors know what they are about and foresee the
result, as no publisher can foresee it with regard to a new writer.
There is a right way and a wrong way of singing, one must sing in tune
unless one sings out of tune, there are standards of comparison in the
persons of the great singers who are still at their best.
It is not easy to be mistaken, where so much is a matter of certainty and so
little depends on chance, and the facts become known very easily. The
first-rate second-rate artists, climbing laboriously in the wake of the
real first-rates, and wishing that these would die and get out of the
way, feel a hopeless sinking at the heart as they hear behind them the
rush of another coming genius. The tired critics sleep less soundly in
the front row of the stalls, the fine and frivolous ladies who come to
the opera to talk the whole evening are told that for once they will
have to be silent, the reporters put on little playful airs of mystery
to say that they have been allowed to assist at a marvellous rehearsal
or have been admitted to see the future diva putting on her cloak after
a final interview with Schreiermeyer, whose attitude before her is
described as being that of the donor of the picture in an old Italian
altar-piece.