Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 1.djvu/130

122 poet with his muse—rolled it loudly and proudly, tossed it and tumbled it about the room. Madame Carré watched her at first, but after a few moments she shut her eyes, though the best part of the business was to look. Sherringham had supposed Miriam was abashed by the flatness of her first performance, but now he perceived that she could not have been conscious of this; she was rather exhilarated and emboldened. She made a muddle of the divine verses, which, in spite of certain sonorities and cadences, an evident effort to imitate a celebrated actress, a comrade of Madame Carré, whom she had heard declaim them, she produced as if she had but a dim idea of their meaning. When she had finished Madame Carré passed no judgment; she only said, "Perhaps you had better say something English." She suggested some little piece of verse—some fable, if there were fables in English. She appeared but scantily surprised to hear that there were not—it was a language of which one expected so little. Mrs. Rooth said, "She knows her Tennyson by heart. I think he's more profound than La Fontaine;" and after some deliberation and delay Miriam broke into "The Lotos-Eaters," from which she passed directly, almost breathlessly, to "Edward Gray." Sherringham had by this time heard her make four different attempts, and the only generalization which could be very present to him was that she uttered these dissimilar compositions in exactly the same tone—a solemn, droning, dragging measure, adopted with an intention of pathos, a crude idea of "style." It was funereal, and at the same time it was rough and childish. Sherringham thought her English performance less futile than her French, but