How many deserving persons besides dramatic authors are looking about
for good situations, and are unable to find them! Mr. 'ENRY HAUTHOR
JONES was sufficiently fortunate to obtain a good dramatic situation
of tried strength, which, placed in the centre of novel and most
improbable (not to say impossible) surroundings, has, in the hands of
Mr. CHARLES WYNDHAM and his highly trained company of illusionists,
achieved a remarkable success.
Within the last few years there have been notorious cases associated
with the names of Members of Parliament, but as the House is a
Legislative Assembly and not an inquisitorial tribunal instituted
for the public investigation of private morality, no charge could be
brought in the House itself against any one of its Members until after
a Court of Law had pronounced its verdict, and, even then, a Member
of Parliament, convicted of a criminal offence, would not cease _ipso
facto_ to belong to the House until after a motion for his expulsion
had been carried. As _Fritz_ in _La Grande Duchesse_ expressed his
wish to become a schoolmaster, in order that he might obtain some
smattering of education, so an immoral M.P. (if any such there be)
would be the very one to stand sponsor for a Bill for the Better
Preservation of Public Morals, with a view to gaining that elementary
knowledge of morality in which his education had been defective. But
no one could have brought up some awkward case against him in the
course of a debate in the House. In the parliamentary proceedings
of Little Peddlington this might be done, but not in the House of
Commons, which, by a very polite but necessary fiction, is supposed
to be a House of Uncommons, far above the weaknesses of the ordinary
human nature of mere Constituents.
_Mr. Stoach_ (capitally played by Mr. J. VALENTINE--but everybody
plays capitally in this piece) finds _Lord Clivebrooke_ (Mr. CHARLES
WYNDHAM--admirable also) between midnight and one in the morning alone
with charming _Jessie Keber_ (Miss MARY MOORE,--delightful!) in old
_Matthew Keber's_ toy-shop, _Keber_ himself (another very clever
impersonation by Mr. W. H. DAY) having gone out on the sly to get
drunk on money supplied him by the aforesaid unscrupulous _Stoach,
M.P._ So what would have to be said in the House should amount to
this:--
_Stoach._ What! the Leader of the House bring in this Purity Bill!!
Why I saw him myself with my own eyes in a toy-shop, all among the
toys, alone at one in the morning with an attractive young person of
the female persuasion.
"Look at that now," says an Irish M.P., following the example of
_Shaun the Post_ in _The Colleen Bawn_, when the scoundrelly lawyer
brings a charge against the hero of the drama, "An' what might _you_
be doin' about there at that same time?"
Supposing, for an instant, the impossible, _Stoach_ would be called to
order, and be severely reprimanded by the SPEAKER.
Had the much-heckled and long-suffering _Clivebrooke_ been gifted by
the Author with lively ready-wit, he would have replied to his
father and supporters, who invade his room, in the pleasantest and
Charliest-Wyndhamest manner, "Yes (_lightly and airily_). What could I
be doing in a toy-shop with a young lady? Why (_still more lightly
and airily_) of course I was '_toying with her!_'" Whereupon his old
father would have been immensely tickled, and the deputation, in fits
of laughter, would have rushed back to the lobby to report "the last
good thing said by that clever chap _Clivebrooke!_ So like him!"
This Act would have ended with the triumph of ready-wit over
disappointed malignity. _Jessie Keber_ would have run in and embraced
her hero, the Bill would have been carried (_Cheers heard without_),
and all would have ended happily and pleasantly without any necessity
having arisen for another Act, either of Parliament or of the piece.
"Yes," says this dramatist, "I admit the soft impeachment. I plead
guilty, with extenuating circumstances. _The play's the thing_; and if
the facts don't suit my play, so much the worse for the facts. Success
has been achieved, and what more can any living author want? Credit
and cash. _Voilà tout!_ 'Credit' for my own original invention in
hitting upon the Parliamentary accessories to my picture; and 'cash,'
which will be paid as long as the public take an interest _in_ the
play, and just so long shall I take my interest _out_ of the public
money."
To sum up in the words of the old-fashioned tag, "If our friends in
front are pleased, then Manager and Author are satisfied." But, if
objection be still taken to the unreality of the Parliamentary setting
of the picture, then "please remember," apologises 'ENRY HAUTHOR,
"that '_it's only my play_.'"
* * * * *
A Liberator Lay.
Three little roguey-boys said to Conscience--"Pooh!"
Croydon made one its Mayor, and then there were two.
Two little roguey-boys thought that Fraud was fun;
A Judge thought otherwise, and then there was one.
One little roguey-boy took the Chiltern Hun-
dreds upon his road to Spain, and then there was none!
* * * * *
WALKING ROUND HIS SUBJECT.--In TAY PAY'S interesting review of _The
Life of Lord Aberdeen_, a Book of the Week in the _Sun_, there is a
delightful chord which shows that "the harp that once thro' Tara's
halls" still upon occasion twangs. "It is pleasant," says TAY PAY,
writing of Mr. GLADSTONE, "to be able to project ourselves backward to
the time, when the statesman we know as full of years and the idol of
millions, was the bashful, self-distrustful youth." Now, if next week
our young friend, whose sympathy with bashful, self-distrustful youth,
is instinctive, will manage to withdraw himself forward, he may be
said to have thoroughly reconnoitered his subject, an excellent thing
in a reviewer.
* * * * *
[Illustration: THE VILLAGE BEAUTY AND THE RIVAL SWAINS, F-WL-R AND
G-SCH-N.]
* * * * *
[Illustration: ASSISTED EDUCATION.
_Christabel._ "I SAY, JACK, HOW EVER DO YOU DEFINE THE EQUATOR?"
_Jack_ (_who has been to the Circus_). "ISN'T IT A MENAGERIE LION THAT
GOES ROUND THE WORLD?"
[_Jack has learnt about "the Imaginary Line," and got the answer a
little mixed._]]
* * * * *