"THINGS WE'D LIKE TO KNOW."
Almost the last thing that you expect in a starting-price bookie is a
strong penchant for poetry. It is true that I have before me, as I
write, a Turf Commissioner's telegraphic code which contains some rather
picturesque symbols. Thus "amber" is the codeword for £1; "heliotrope"
for £20; "rainbow" for "win and 1, 2." Still I do not think it probable
that if the author of this code should go bankrupt as a bookie--and this
he is never likely to do as far as I am concerned--he would be able to
retrieve his fortunes by taking up the profession of a publisher of
poetical works. Yet this is just what happened, in Mr. MONCKTON HOFFE'S
play, with the firm of _Wilberforce Brothers_, Turf Commissioners. In
the first Act we find them in such straits that they can barely scrape
together enough petty cash to satisfy the demands of a Water-Rate
Collector, insistent on the door-step. In the next Act, a year later,
they are all flourishing like green bay-trees as a firm of Poetry
Commissioners trading under the name of _The Lotus Publishing Company_.
This amazing result they have achieved by foisting on the office
typewriter--_trés gamine_--the poetical output of one of their own
number, and exploiting her as a prodigy under the auspices of a patron
of the arts--one _Lord Glandeville_. How this Mæcenas, this connoisseur
in taste, was ever imposed upon by the masquerading of such incredible
types, and how they could have amassed all that wealth by the
publication of serious poetry, the most notorious of drugs on the
market--these are among the "things" that we should all "like to know"
in case our own professions should fail us.
What worried me most was that Mr. HOFFE should have so poor an idea of
my intelligence as to suppose it possible to impart an atmosphere of
probability to a scheme that was pure farce. Yet that was what he tried
to do; he wanted me to believe that I was assisting at a comedy. There
was no knockabout business; nobody entered the room with a somersault,
tripped over a pin or hung his hat on the scenery. They all behaved as
if they were presenting us with what is known as a human document, to be
regarded _au grand_ (or, at worst, _au petit_) _sérieux_. The fun--and
there were some very pleasant touches--was not so much the fun of a huge
and preposterous joke, but rather the humour of character or incidental
detail. The part of _Lord Glandeville_, who might have been made the
most ridiculous butt of imposture, was treated quite solemnly. Indeed,
our sympathies were provoked for a man whose finest instincts had been
trifled with; who had been suffered to fall in love with the poet-soul
of a girl only to find that she was the tool of a gang of rogues. One of
them, _Dick Gilder_, might tell him that he (_Glandeville_) was an
egoist and that he ought to have fallen in love with the girl's body, as
he (_Gilder_) had done, instead of her supposed soul; but that did not
help matters much, or prevent our feeling that this treatment of
_Glandeville_ was no matter for laughter. And when I go and see a
production of Mr. HAWTREY'S I want matter for laughter and nothing else.
The best individual performances were those of Mr. LYSTON LYLE--really
excellent as a soldier of fortune--and Miss HELEN HAYE as _Lord
Glandeville's_ aunt who lays herself out to defeat the matrimonial
designs of the prodigy. Mr. CHARLES HAWTREY was not perhaps at his very
best as _Dick Gilder._ He wore an air of detachment and indulged his old
habit of looking over the heads of his stage-audience. He had too many
set speeches and was not always quite sure what word came next. Still
his mere presence is always irresistible.
As _Lord Glandeville_, Mr. VANE TEMPEST, most admirable of buffoons,
must have longed to be allowed to make us laugh, but solemnity was his
order of the day and he carried it out like a hero. As for Mr. WENMAN,
who played the partner that introduced _Lord Glandeville_ to the rest of
the "Lotus Publishing Company" (though how that refined nobleman ever
made the acquaintance of such a rough diamond is another of the "things
we'd like to know"), his face is a gift and he used its mobility to good
purpose.
Finally, Miss DOROTHY MINTO, as _Dorothy Gedge_, typewriter (with the
_nom de guerre_ of _Gedage_), was a little angular, and the motive of
her spasmodic excursions across the stage was not always apparent. But
she was extremely funny in her inimitable way when she had a chance of
exhibiting the unreasonableness of her selection as a mouthpiece of the
Muses. At the end, when she wonders if she could have been happy with
_Glandeville_ and knows that she would be happy with _Gilder_, she
showed an extremely pretty vein of sentiment. And here, too, I must
heartily compliment the author on a scene which threatened to be
commonplace and tedious, but was handled with a most engaging freshness
and a very unusual sense of what was just right and enough.