I must confess that at one time I had little regard for collectors of
cigarette cards; it seemed a feeble pursuit, though perhaps I should add
I am of a somewhat intellectual nature.
Some little time ago, however, I happened to glance at one of these
cards and was surprised to see a picture of a gentleman attired in white
flannels and a vest of white, decorated with red embroidery. He was
grasping a towel in both hands and appeared to have two or three sets of
arms. The label said, "Scarf or Towel Exercises 4." A perusal of the
instructions on the back of the card made everything clear.
Ten minutes later I entered the shop of an athletic outfitter.
Unfortunately he had no white vests with red edges: I had to purchase
one with blue. A scarf or towel I could find at home.
Then I entered a tobacconist's.
Four days later I had collected Scarf or Towel Exercises 2 and 3.
"We can," I said, "now make a start." As a matter of fact it was not
altogether a foolish proceeding. Deep thinkers are apt to overlook the
need for physical culture. This error I decided to remedy.
Every morning I (1) stood in position illustrated, (2) raised arms above
head in manner indicated by the instructions, (3) straightened right arm
and lowered right hand so that towel (_still taut_) sloped to right, (4)
returned to Position 1. I then changed towel for scarf (my own idea) and
continued with Exercises 3 and 4.
I was very happy; my only worry was the absence of Scarf or Towel
Exercises 1.
Every morning I called at the tobacconist's and purchased packets of
cigarettes, eagerly searching them for the missing card. Every afternoon
I called again.
For a week I bore my disappointment bravely; then I became cynical.
"Perhaps," I said, "there is no Exercise 1. It may be a joke on the part
of the makers."
My consumption of cigarettes increased. Packet followed packet with
extraordinary rapidity, and still no Exercise 1.
I began to get worried. "Is it safe," I asked myself, "to do 2, 3 and 4
without 1? The omission may have a serious effect on 2, 3 and 4."
Then I returned to the attack with renewed vigour. In a week I got
through twenty tens--with no result.
Disappointed and weary I was walking to the office one morning when
suddenly I had an attack of giddiness. By the end of the day I was
beginning to wonder if I was very ill. I felt it. Usually the clearest
of thinkers, I was dizzy and dazed.
The evening saw the arrival of my doctor, and a thorough examination
followed, at the end of which he shook his head gravely.
"'M," he murmured. "Ah."
"Tell me," I said with extraordinary calmness--"tell me the worst. Brain
fever, I suppose?"
"Oh, dear no," he replied. "What I'm worrying about is the heart. It's
in a bad state--a really bad state. Heaven knows how many cigarettes
you've been consuming lately. You'll have to stop it altogether."
I looked at him blankly; then, with a bitter laugh, I (1) stood in
position illustrated, (2) raised arms above head in manner indicated by
the instructions, (3) straightened right arm and lowered right hand so
that handkerchief (_still taut_) sloped to right, and (4) returned to
sofa.
* * * * *
The Latest Style in Strikes.
"Engineers and firemen on the western railways of the United States
have threatened to strike unless their demands for increased wages
and other reforms are not granted."
_The Times._
They seem very hard to please.
* * * * *
Illustration: Mr. H. B. IRVING (_Sir Hubert Lisle_).
"Pomfret will fall in another two seconds if I don't ride over and raise
the siege. Still, my first duty is to Mr. STEPHEN PHILLIPS, and he wants
me for a few dialogues and a brace of soliloquies before I start."
* * * * *
AT THE PLAY.
"THE SIN OF DAVID."
This is not, like the plays in which JOSEPH has recently figured, an
adaptation from the Hebrew. Mr. STEPHEN PHILLIPS has given a
seventeenth-century (A.D.) setting to the BATHSHEBA motive,
transplanting it from the polygamous East into the England of
one-man-one-wife. His object, no doubt, was to emphasize one aspect of
his borrowed theme, which is further enforced by his choice of
_milieu_--the camp of the Puritans.
Lest this fairly obvious note of irony should escape us, Mr. PHILLIPS
accentuates it at the start by making his DAVID (_Sir Hubert Lisle_,
Commander of the Parliamentary Forces in the fenland) condemn a young
officer to be shot for a "carnal" offence. The delinquent's answer--
"Thou who so lightly dealest death to me
Be thou then very sure of thine own soul;"
and _Lisle's_ prayer--
"And judge me, Thou that sittest in Thy Heaven,
As I have shown no mercy, show me none!...
If ever a woman's beauty shall ensnare
My soul into such sin as he hath sinned"--
these passages, even if the title of the play had not prepared us,
afford fair warning of the way in which things have got to go. In fact
it is all very simple and straightforward, and (on the constructive
side) Hellenic. Perhaps indeed the treatment is a little too direct, and
the tragedy moves too quickly to its consummation (thirty or forty
minutes suffice for the reading of it). It might serve its publisher (of
the Bodley Head) as one of a series to be entitled: "Half-hours with the
Best Sinners."
As a poem _The Sin of David_ cannot compare for beauty with _Paolo and
Francesca_, though it contains isolated lines which recall Mr.
PHILLIPS'S earliest drama, such as the plea of _Joyce_, the condemned
officer--
"Her face was close to me, and dimmed the world."
or _Lisle's_--
"Thou hast unlocked the loveliness of earth."
But then, of course, the exotic manner would here have been an
impropriety. This is not Rimini; it is the English Fenland; and all the
characters, with the exception of _Miriam Mardyke_ (the BATHSHEBA of the
piece), who was bred in France and had its sun in her blood, were of the
Puritan pattern that does not accommodate itself very easily to the
language of passion.
But all this we knew ten years ago, when _The Sin of David_ was first
published; and the only new interest was the question of its
adaptability to the theatre. Poetic drama seldom gains much by
presentation on the stage, unless it is full of action; and there is
little action in this play except of the inward kind. In almost the only
case where quick movement is here demanded one becomes conscious of the
intrusion of words. When he knows that the relief of Pomfret depends
upon his instant action, _Lisle_ still finds time for conversations with
his servant, with _Miriam_ and with the doctor, and for a couple of
well-sustained soliloquies.
Certain lines, again, whose literary flavour, when read, makes us
overlook their inherent improbability in the mouth of the character that
utters them, take on, when spoken, an air of artifice. Such are the
lines in which _Miriam_ describes her old sister-in-law, to her face, as
"living without sin
And reputably rusting to the grave."
And there is always the danger that actors will be content with a rather
slurred and perfunctory recitation of lines that have no bearing on the
action but are just inserted for joy as a rhetorical embroidery.
It may be a trivial criticism, but I think the play suffered a little
from the appearance of the love-child whose death was to be the
punishment for _Lisle's_ sin in sending _Mardyke_ to his death in a
forlorn hope. The instructions in my book are contradictory. The time of
Act III. is described as "five years later," and we are then told that
"four years are supposed to have elapsed since Act II." Anyhow, the boy
should be only three or four years old. Actually he is a girl (the stage
must have it so) of some ten summers. You may say that all those years
during which the lovers' passion has been purified by worship of the
child's innocence, and "God has not said a word," add a dramatic force
to the blow when at last it falls. But for myself--a mere matter of
taste--I feel that the vengeance of Heaven has been nursed too long.
As for the interpretation, I must honestly compliment Mr. IRVING and
Miss MIRIAM LEWES on their performance. It is true that I should never
have mistaken Mr. IRVING for a fighting Roundhead, and he might well
have sacrificed something of his personality for the sake of illusion.
It is true, too, that he was more concerned about dramatic than poetic
effects; yet, within the limitations of a very marked individuality, he
did justice to the author by a performance that was most sincere and
persuasive. Miss LEWES played her more difficult part with great charm
and delicacy. Her manner, even under stress of passionate feeling, still
kept the right restraint that _Miriam_ had learnt from her environment;
but always we were made to feel that under the prim Puritan gown was a
body that had been "born in the sun's lap," and held the warmth of the
vinelands in its veins. Perhaps it was from France, too, that _Miriam_
had caught her strange habit of pronouncing "my" (a perfectly good word)
as "me."
There is little so worth seeing on the stage to-day as _The Sin of
David_, and I very sincerely hope that both the play and its
interpreters may win the wide appreciation they have earned.