deal of girlhood. It
is, rather, the young girl as Goncourt has rendered her in "Cherie," a
creature of awakening, half-unconscious sensations, already at work
somewhat abnormally in an anaemic frame, with an intelligence left to
feed mainly on itself. And Yvette herself, with her bright hair, the
sleepy gold fire of her eyes, her slimness, her gracious awkwardness,
her air of delusive innocence, is the very type of the young girl of
whom she sings. There is a certain malice in it all, a malicious
insistence on the other side of innocence. But there it is, a new
figure; and but one among the creations which we owe to this "comic
singer," whose comedy is, for the most part, so serious and so tragic.

For the art of Yvette Guilbert is of that essentially modern kind which,
even in a subject supposed to be comic, a subject we are accustomed to
see dealt with, if dealt with at all, in burlesque, seeks mainly for the
reality of things (and reality, if we get deep enough into it, is never
comic), and endeavour to find a new, searching, and poignant expression
for that. It is an art concerned, for the most part, with all that part
of life which the conventions were intended to hide from us. We see a
world where people are very vicious and very unhappy; a sordid,
miserable world which it is as well sometimes to consider. It is a side
of existence which exists; and to see it is not to be attracted towards
it. It is a grey and sordid land, under the sway of "Eros vanne"; it is,
for the most part, weary of itself, without rest, and without escape.
This is Yvette Guilbert's domain; she sings it, as no one has ever sung
it before, with a tragic realism, touched with a sort of grotesque
irony, which is a new thing on any stage. The _rouleuse_ of the Quartier
Breda, praying to the one saint in her calendar, "Sainte Galette"; the
_soularde_, whom the urchins follow and throw stones at in the street;
the whole life of the slums and the gutter: these are her subjects, and
she brings them, by some marvellous fineness of treatment, into the
sphere of art.

It is all a question of _metier_, no doubt, though how far her method is
conscious and deliberate it is difficult to say. But she has certain
quite obvious qualities, of reticence, of moderation, of suspended
emphasis, which can scarcely be other than conscious and deliberate. She
uses but few gestures, and these brief, staccato, and for an immediate
purpose; her hands, in their long bl