"THE COST."
_Mr. Samuel Woodhouse_, of the middle classes, being anxious to distract
his son _John_ during the critical moments of _Mrs. John's_ confinement,
relates how, in similar circumstances more directly affecting himself,
he had been playing tennis, and the strain of the crisis had quite put
him off his game. The little jest is, of course, adapted from the
familiar lines:--
"I was playing golf the day: When the Germans landed ..."
It is of material interest not so much because it is borrowed (for it is
not the only joke that Mr. THURSTON has conveyed) as because it serves
as a brief epitome of the play. For the thing started with the War, and
we were getting on quite well with it when an element of obstetrics was
introduced and became inextricably interwoven with the original design.
Indeed it went further and affected the destinies of the country at
large. For England had to wait till the baby was born before it could
secure its father's services as the most unlikely recruit in the
kingdom.
But you must hear more about this _John_. He was an intellectual who
threatened to achieve the apex of literary renown with a work in two
volumes (a third was to follow) on the Philosophy of Moral Courage. At
the outbreak of the present war he was at once torn asunder between his
duty to his country and his duty to himself. The latter seemed to have
the greater claim upon him, and this view was encouraged by an officer
who found himself billeted upon the Woodhouse _ménage_. The dilemma had
already worried _John_ (and us) a good deal even before the extension of
the age limit made him roughly eligible for the army. Indeed I never
quite gathered what it was that ultimately decided him to enlist.
Anyhow, six months later he received a bullet in the head, and the
wound, though I am glad to say that he survived it, left him incapable
of any further intellectual strain.
That was "the cost" of the war to him. Its cost to us (in the play) was
almost as heavy. For _John's_ head still retained such a command of
brain power that he contrived to be very fluent over his theories of war
in general, theories not likely to be of any vital service at a time
when our men of fighting age are wanted to act and not think.
I give little for Mr. THURSTON'S generalities (his talk of "hysteria,"
which was never a British foible, showed his lack of elementary
observation), but the character of _John_ intrigued me as a fair example
of the type of egoist, very common among quite good fellows, who is more
concerned to satisfy his own sense of the proper thing to do than to
consider in what way, less romantic perhaps, he can best devote to the
service of his country the gifts with which nature has endowed him.
The play went very well for the first two Acts. The various members of
the _Woodhouse_ family were excellently differentiated. The father
(played with admirable humour by Mr. FREDERICK ROSS) bore bravely the
shock to his trade, and took a manly but quite ineffectual part in
household duties for which he had no calling. His lachrymose wife (Miss
MARY RORKE) was a sound example of the worst possible mother of
soldiers. _John_ we know, and Mr. OWEN NARES knew him too, and very
thoroughly. _John's_ wife (I can't think how she came to marry him) had
the makings of an Amazon and would gladly have spared her husband for
KITCHENER'S Army at the earliest moment. Her part was played very
sincerely and charmingly by Miss BARBARA EVEREST. _John's_ eldest sister
regretted the war because she had some nice friends in Germany, but she
caught the spirit of menial service from her sisters, of whom the
younger was a stage-flapper of the loudest. Finally the second son (Mr.
JACK HOBBS) was a nut who began with his heart in his socks but shifted
it later into the enemy's trench.
Perhaps the best performance of all--though it had little to do with the
war and nothing to do with child-birth--was that of Miss HANNAH JONES as
_Mrs. Pinhouse_, a perfect peach of a cook. There were also two
characters played off. One was a maid-servant who declined to come to
family prayers on the ground of other distractions. I admired her
courage. The other was _Michael_, the precious infant whose entry into
the world had occupied so much of our evening. Everybody on the stage
had to have a look at him. I felt no such desire. He bored me.
For a play that made pretence to a serious purpose there was far too
much time thrown away on mere trivialities. At first the exigencies of
the stage demanded compression. The news of the ultimatum to Germany,
the mobilisation, the rush to enlist, the attack on Germany's commerce,
were all stuffed into the space of a few minutes. But the whole of the
Third Act (laid in the kitchen) was wantonly wasted over the thinnest of
domestic humour.
There is a light side, thank Heaven, even to war; but Mr. THURSTON had a
great chance of doing serious good and he has only half used it. I am
certain (though he may call me a prig for saying it) that if he had set
himself to serve his country's cause through the great influence which
the theatre commands, he could have done better work than this; and he
ought to have done it.