The General Election took from the membership of the House of Commons
several good golfers, including Mr. Arthur Balfour, Mr. Gerald Balfour,
and Mr. Alfred Lyttelton, and made only one notable addition, namely,
Mr. Frank Newnes, the new member for the Bassetlaw Division of Notts.
The two best players at Westminster, Mr. Eric Hambro and Mr. H. W.
Forster, retained their seats.
The Walton Heath Club has inaugurated a competition which promises to
excite much interest among London golfers. The competition is for a
challenge trophy presented by the club, and is confined to clubs whose
headquarters are within thirty miles of Charing Cross. Each club will
provide a professional and an amateur player, or two amateurs, and the
couple will play a two-ball foursome on a neutral green, until the final
round is reached, when the play must take place on Walton Heath. If the
response to the invitation for entries is at all general there will be
fine play, for the London clubs include some of the best players,
amateur and professional, in the country. The latter include Harry
Vardon, James Braid, J. H. Taylor, Jack White and Rowland Jones; while
among the former are Mr. H. H. Hilton, Mr. Harold Beveridge, Mr. W.
Herbert Fowler, and Mr. T. R. Pinkerton.
Four professionals from this country, Jack White, Alexander Herd, Andrew
Kirkaldy and Rowland Jones, went to Mexico and took part in the
championship meeting there. They, however, found the conditions far from
their liking, and made an indifferent show. The championship was won by
Willie Smith, an old Carnoustie player, who has been some time in
America, and can play on sand greens. A team competition was arranged,
but in this the home professionals did no better than in the
championship play. Andrew Kirkaldy had for opponent Bernard Nicholls,
the young professional who beat Harry Vardon twice in America. Nicholls
on this occasion defeated Kirkaldy by two holes.
Harry Vardon is staying at La Touquet this winter for his health, and
has distinguished himself by making a record score for the course of 68.
This indicates surely that his health is mending.
A scheme has been started for the laying out of a full golf course at
Cowes, in the Isle of Wight, and the conversion of Norris Castle into a
clubhouse, with bedrooms for the accommodation of golfers as well as
yachtsmen.
“HIS HOUSE IN ORDER,” AT THE ST. JAMES’S THEATRE.
Following the great success of “Nero” comes the marked success of
Pinero, and Mr. George Alexander is to be congratulated upon the
reception which his recent production has received from public and
critics alike.
Mr. Pinero rising, phœnix-like, from the ashes of “The Wife without a
Smile,” has, according to many intelligent playgoers, soared to a
greater height than ever before, and people have not hesitated to
declare “His House in Order” to be a finer play than “The Second Mrs.
Tanqueray.”
A few years ago Mr. Pinero was reported to have said, upon some public
occasion, that what a dramatist requires is praise. Our leading
playwright ought just now to be like the little boy in the
advertisement, “He is happy now he has got it.”
With everybody loud in their praises of the play, we have to ask for
sympathy in the disappointment we suffered on seeing it. We have always
been full of admiration for Mr. Pinero’s genius, and having been told to
expect so much of his latest work, we were discontented with what we saw
and heard. To begin with, we could not find in the play one single
character with whom we could sympathise or whose cause we could espouse
with any enthusiasm.
Nina is presumably meant to appeal to the sympathies of the audience,
but, after all, her only claim to this appears to be that she is
mortified and distressed by the brutality of the relatives of the first
wife of her husband. Nina Jesson seems to be just a middle-class little
thing who, entering the Jesson household as governess, marries Jesson on
the death of his first wife.
She is devoted to ill-mannered dogs, which she would love to encourage
about the house; she is a confirmed cigarette-smoker, having been
instructed in this accomplishment by her father, the clergyman, and she
appears to be untidy, unpunctual, and generally impossible; whilst she
is sneak enough to read other people’s letters and to use them for her
own ends. And so to keep Jesson’s house in order, the deceased wife’s
sister acts as hostess instead of the unpractical Nina—and that is the
grievance. She and the other three members of the Ridgeley family do not
hesitate to enlarge on the shortcomings of the second Mrs. Jesson, and
hence our tears are invoked on behalf of the ex-governess.
We may say, however, that for Miss Irene Vanbrugh, who plays Nina, we
have nothing but the warmest admiration. She plays the part for all that
it is worth, and her performance is the finest feature of the play.
The members of the Ridgeley family are, to our mind, like nothing in the
world except themselves, and they certainly are so much like one another
that Nina might have drawn them at any time by saying: “There are not
four Ridgeleys but one Ridgeley.”
Mr. Pinero has probably met a Ridgeley somewhere, but we hope there are
not many of them about. Hillary Jesson, in one of his flights of
declamation, denounces the Ridgeleys as “individually and collectively
one of the pests of humanity,” and this line got the most hearty
applause of the evening. Obviously the Ridgeleys never go in front at
the St. James’s Theatre, and it is not at all a bad device of
stage-craft to direct all your slings and arrows against a class of
people who, if not absolutely non-existent, are certainly never to be
found amongst the audience in a theatre. The middle-class Puritanical
goody-goody must always be a safe butt for the player and playgoer.
But there are much worse people than the Ridgeleys in the play. There is
a Major Maurewarde who seduces the wife of his friend, sneakingly claims
the only offspring of that marriage as his own natural son, and after
the death of the lady contrives to enjoy the hospitality of the cuckold
and the affection of the bastard—a nice specimen of an officer and a
gentleman!
Then there is a British Minister to some foreign republic, unfortunately
home on leave, who must have a finger in every pie and put the whole
world straight. He espouses the cause of Nina, but when she is going to
use the compromising letters of her predecessor in the affections of
Jesson, Hillary Jesson, his brother, the meddler, prevails upon her to
do no such thing, but to hand over the compromising documents to his
safe keeping, with the result that he loses little time in handing them
himself to his brother, the deceived husband.
As a reward for having nearly talked her to death, her self-elected
champion asks Nina to present him with her cigarette case that he may
add it to a very bizarre collection of curiosities he has made,
including “the blood-stained handkerchief of a matador, and a
half-smoked cigarette that has been pressed by the lips of an
empress—one of the noblest of her sex.” To our mind, the man who can
talk such rot as this is likely to be a much more troublesome creature
than any of the despised Ridgeleys.
Then the husband Jesson would not be everybody’s choice; he certainly
treats his second wife very unkindly, and as far as we can see the only
reason for his kicking out the Ridgeleys, and allowing his wife to
resume the proud privilege of keeping house for him, is that he becomes
aware of the infidelity of his first wife and wreaks his vengeance upon
her relatives.
We are told that two wrongs cannot make one right, and there seems no
reason why the accidental revelation of the infidelities of a dead woman
should suddenly transform a bad housekeeper into a good one, as probably
Mr. Jesson soon discovered.
Upon the theme of this interesting play one might wander on
indefinitely, but space fortunately forbids our saying more now, except
that everybody should go and see “His House in Order,” and everybody
should be interested by it; but we cannot think that anybody ought to
call it Mr. Pinero’s masterpiece, for Mr. Pinero has written some very
fine plays indeed.
Sporting Intelligence.
[During January—February, 1906.]
On January 17th Her Majesty the Queen attended the meet of the West
Norfolk Foxhounds, at Rougham Hall, in a motor car; the Princess
Victoria, and the Princes Edward and Albert of Wales were present on
horseback. The Queen showed great interest in the pack, and photographed
the hounds.
* * * * *
While out hunting with the Woodland Pytchley Hounds, on January 17th,
Mr. John Thornton, of Pilton, Northamptonshire, when jumping a high
fence, was thrown from his seat and came down on the point of the
saddle, sustaining severe internal injuries, to which he succumbed on
the following day.
* * * * *
Mr. J. G. Blanshard, who had been for some thirty years secretary of the
Wetherby Steeplechase Meeting, died at his residence, Walton, near
Wetherby, on January 18th, at the age of seventy. Mr. Blanshard was a
well-known judge of horses, and bred many good hunters in his time.
* * * * *
On January 18th there died at his residence, Wynnstay Gardens,
Kensington, Mr. Thomas Hughes, aged eighty-three years. Mr. Hughes was,
in his day, a well-known personage on the turf, and so far back as 1859
he did well when The Brewer won the Liverpool Autumn Cup; and in 1864 he
won the Chester Cup with the eight-year-old Flash-in-the-Pan.
* * * * *
The Croome Hounds had a good run on January 20th, during which the pack
got upon the railway and had the misfortune to lose a hound.
* * * * *
At the early age of forty-two years, Sir James Percy Miller, Bart., died
at Manderston, Duns, Berwickshire, on January 22nd, as the result of a
chill taken while out hunting the previous week. The deceased baronet
had a very successful career on the Turf, and in 1903 won the Derby with
Rock Sand; he was also well known in the hunting-field, and had been
from 1897 Master of the local pack.
* * * * *
Owing to the death of Sir George Shiffner, which occurred on January
23rd, in his eighty-sixth year, at his residence, Coombe, Lewes, the
Southdown Foxhounds did not meet for several days.
A painful incident occurred with the Meynell Hounds on January 25th. The
meet was at Brailsford Bridge, and Captain Frederick Livingstone
Campbell, superintendent of the Sheerness Dockyard, who was out,
suffered a seizure just as the fox was killed, and fell from his saddle,
dislocating his neck; hounds were at once called off.
* * * * *
The death occurred at Mython House, near Shrewsbury, of Mr. Alfred
Roqueir Candon. The deceased, who was an old member of the Cotswold
Hunt, was this season hunting with the Shropshire hounds. On January
30th, while exercising a hunter, after taking several fences the horse
bolted and threw its rider at a gate: Mr. Candon broke his neck, death
being almost instantaneous.
* * * * *
One of the best-known writers on natural history and country life
subjects, Mr. Charles John Cornish, died at Worthing on January 30th,
aged forty-seven years. The deceased was a keen lover of field sports
and wildfowling, and his experiences were most agreeably related in many
books and articles contributed to the _Spectator_ and other periodicals.
* * * * *
Lord Newlands, who was in his eighty-first year, died at Maudslie
Castle, Lanarkshire, on January 30th. For many years he was a keen
supporter of coaching, and was a member of the Four-in-Hand and also of
the Coaching Clubs, being elected President of the last-named in 1902.
Lord Newland was a prominent supporter of the Lanark Races.
* * * * *
On January 30th the death occurred of a well-known Yorkshire sportsman
and ex-M.F.H., Mr. John Hill. He was in his eighty-fifth year, and
passed away suddenly at the Low Hall, Brompton, Yorkshire. Mr. John Hill
and his father before him, Mr. R. Johnson Hill, hunted the country
around Scarborough, now known as Mr. Sherbrooke’s, from the year 1808.
Mr. John Hill took over the Mastership upon the death of his father in
1855, but sold the hounds in 1862 to the Duke of Grafton. Frank Beers
was well pleased with the pack, and their blood is to be found, says
_Horse and Hound_, in the Grafton Hounds to-day. Mr. Hill was succeeded
in the Mastership of the Scarborough country by Mr. Harcourt Johnstone
(the present Lord Derwent), for whom he hunted them for many seasons,
and another member of the family, Mr. Robin Hill, is at present acting
as amateur huntsman to Mr. Sherbrooke.
* * * * *
Mr. John Bell Irving, of Whitehill, Dumfriesshire, died on January 31st
in his ninety-fourth year. The deceased was the oldest Justice of the
Peace in Scotland, having been on the commission for sixty years. He was
a famous breeder of stock and a prominent coursing man, having owned
many well-known greyhounds, and was the only survivor of a band of
county gentlemen which started the Dumfriesshire Foxhounds. Last year,
at the age of ninety-three, he was present at the annual races. His
wife, who predeceased him eighteen months ago, was the sister of the
late Sir Robert Jardine.
* * * * *
On February 3rd Charles Littleworth died at his residence at Crediton,
aged seventy-six years. The deceased, who was born in Hampshire, entered
hunt service in 1854, when he became second horseman to the Earl of
Portsmouth, then Master of the Vine; later he went with Lord Portsmouth
to Devonshire as first whipper-in to the Eggesford, and was soon after
promoted to huntsman. He remained on active service in the country for
nearly forty years. In 1890 he was presented with an illuminated address
and a purse of 200 guineas. Charles Littleworth took a great interest in
the breeding of fox-terriers, and often acted as a judge at shows.
* * * * *
On February 3rd there passed away Major T. H. Preston, of Moreby Hall,
near York, in his eighty-ninth year. Very keen to hounds and a fine
shot, Major Preston was one of the few survivors of the disaster to the
York and Ainsty Hounds on February 4th, 1869, when Sir Charles
Slingsley, the Master, and other members of the Hunt lost their lives
through the capsizing of the ferry-boat on the River Ure.
* * * * *
Mr. John Arkwright, who was for many years Hon. Secretary to the North
Warwickshire Hunt, died on February 12th at his residence, Hatton House,
near Warwick, aged eighty-two years. Mr. Arkwright was presented with
his portrait a number of years ago, when there was a great gathering of
hunting men at Stoneleigh, and the late Lord Leigh made the presentation
on behalf of the subscribers. The present Master of the North
Warwickshire, Mr. J. P. Arkwright, is elder son of the deceased
gentleman.
* * * * *
A veteran Irish sportsman has passed away in the person of Mr. Philip
Blake, who died at his residence, Ladyrath House, Navan, aged eighty
years. He was well known with the Meath and the Louth Hounds, and in the
sixties was Master and owner of the Meath Union Harriers.
* * * * *
Some good prices for hunters have been obtained at the Leicester
Repository. Lord Chesham sold three: Patrick, 160 gs.; Goodman, 170 gs.;
and Dulcimer, 230 gs. Three sent up by Captain G. E. Belleville sold as
follows: St. Maur, 210 gs.; Oatmeal, 185 gs., and Samuel, 150 gs. Mr.
Alex. Browne, M.F.H., realised an average of £283 10s. for eleven
hunters; The Dub, 600 gs.; Daly, 500 gs.; Silver Cloud, 400 gs.; Galway,
350 gs.; Ludlow, 260 gs.; Grantham, 200 gs.; Leicester, 175 gs.; The
Chef, 160 gs.; Tinker, 130 gs.; Benjamin, 125 gs., and Jedburgh, 70 gs.
Other properties included Bay g. 125 gs.; Hall Weston, 200 gs.; Lady
Sissie, 120 gs.; Nimrod, 100 gs.; Princess Osra, 180 gs., and Buller,
110 gs.
* * * * *
Amongst the more important sales by Messrs. Tattersall at Albert Gate
during the last few weeks may be mentioned: Mr. E. W. Bradbury’s
Starlight, 105 gs.; Imperial, sent up by a lady, 130 gs.; Major
Sherston’s bay, 110 gs. From Mr. H. Thompson, Crossgar, the following
made three figures: Nine Pins, 100 gs.; Mullingar, 140 gs.; Gentleman,
105 gs.; The Stag, 120 gs.; Ebony, the property of Mr. J. Blackburn,
realised 130 gs.
* * * * *
Owing to her great age and increasing infirmity, it was found necessary
to destroy the famous old mare, Mowerina, at the Hunciecroft Paddocks,
Welbeck. Herself and her children have won just over £87,000 in stakes,
the offspring including Modwena and her brother Donovan, a very good
horse indeed, who won £55,154 in two years’ racing. Mowerina’s daughter,
Semolina, was a good early two-year-old; she won the Brocklesby Stakes;
and Semolina’s brother, Raeburn, was the only horse to ever beat
Isinglass, and is now in Hungary, having been purchased at the last
Newmarket December Sales by Baron Harkanyi.
* * * * *
Harvester, by Sterling-Wheatear, who ran a dead heat with St. Gatien in
the Derby of 1884, when the stakes were divided for the first time,
recently died at the Zabola Stud, in Hungary. Bred by Lord Falmouth in
1881, Harvester won as a two-year-old the Thirty-sixth Triennial at
Newmarket, and the Clearwell Stakes, and in the spring of 1884 was sold
to Sir John Willoughby, for 8,000 gs.
* * * * *
SHIP-BUILDING SURGERY.—The steamship _Forth_, one of the Carron fleet
running between London and Scotland for passenger and goods traffic, is
at present laid up for an extraordinary operation which will lengthen
the boat by 40 feet. She was hoisted on a large cradle and cut right
through just forward of the bridge deck. The cradle was also sawn
asunder, and the two parts with their respective portions of the ship
were drawn apart to a distance of 40 feet, which space was then built
in. The alteration will enable the _Forth_ to carry about 200 tons more
cargo, and her steaming capabilities will not be impaired. On the
contrary she will now rank amongst the finest steamers on the East
Coast.