* * * * *
[Illustration: _Dentist (after preliminary inspection)._
"EXTRAORDINARY THING--THERE'S ONE OF YOUR TEETH ONLY HALF STOPPED."
_Patient._ "AH, THAT WERE T'OOTHER DENTIST. T' LAAD 'URT ME, SO AH
GAVE 'IM A GOOD LICK IN T' JAW."]
* * * * *
=NOMEN, OMEN.=
(_By our Medical Correspondent._)
No one who is interested in the possibilities of psycho-therapy
can view without serious misgiving recent tendencies in artistic
nomenclature. Some of us are old enough to remember when the trend
was in the direction of Italianisation; when FOLEY became SIGNOR FOLI;
CAMPBELL, CAMPOBELLO, and an American from Brooklyn was transformed
into BROCCOLINI. The vogue of alien aliases has passed, but it may
return, and it is to guard against the formidable and deleterious
results of its recrudescence that the following suggestions, are
propounded, not merely in the interests of Gongorism or of an
intensive cultivation of syncretic euphuism, but in accordance with
the most approved conclusions of psycho-analytic research.
It may be urged--and the objection is natural--that there can be
little danger of a relapse in view of the heroic and patriotic
adhesion of some of our most distinguished artists to their homely
patronymics. No doubt the noble example of CLARA BUTT and CARRIE TUBB
is fortifying and reassuring, and there are also clamant proofs that
denationalisation is no passport to eminence. But it would be foolish
to overlook the existence of powerful influences operating in an
antipodal direction. I confess to a feeling approaching to dismay when
I study the advertisement columns of the daily papers and note the
recurrence, in the announcements of impending concerts, of names of
a strangely outlandish and exotic form. In a single issue I have
encountered KRISH, ARRAU, KOUNS and DINH GILLY. The Christian names of
some of these eminent performers are equally momentous and perturbing,
_e.g._, JASCHA, KOFZA and UTT.
My grounds for perturbation are not imaginary or based on the
hallucinations of a hypersensitive mind. They are prompted and
justified by the notorious facts, established by the leading
psycho-analysts, that, just as mellifluous and melodious names
exercise a mollifying influence on the activities of the sub-conscious
self, so the possession or choice of strange or ferocious appellations
incites the bearer, if I may be permitted to use so commonplace a
term, to live up to his label.
It is therefore with all the force at my command that I entreat and
implore singers, players and dancers to think, not once but twice or
thrice, before they yield to the fascination of the unfamiliar and
adopt artistic pseudonyms calculated to intensify the "urges" of
their primitive instincts. It is not too much to say that a singer
who deliberately assumes the name of Pongo, Og or Botuloffsky runs a
serious risk, in virtue of the inherent magic of names, of developing
qualities wholly unfitted for the atmosphere of a well-conducted
concert-hall.
I believe that the question of establishing a censorship of artists'
names has been seriously considered by Dr. ADDISON, in view of its
bearing on public hygiene, and that he estimates the cost of staffing
the new department as not likely to exceed seven hundred and fifty
thousand pounds a year. Still, in these days when State economy is so
needful, it would be better if the desired effect were attained by the
pressure of enlightened public opinion rather than by the operations
of even so inexpensive a department as that contemplated by the
MINISTER OF HEALTH.
* * * * *
=IN FLANDERS FIELDS.=
These famous verses, which originally appeared in _Punch_, December
8th, 1915, being the work of a Canadian officer, Lieut.-Colonel
MCCRAE, who fell in the War, have been subjected to so many
perversions--the latest in a letter to _The Times_ from a Minister of
the Crown, where the closing lines are misquoted as follows:
"If ye break faith with those of us who died,
We shall not sleep, though poppies bloom in fields of France"--
that Mr. Punch thinks it would be well to reproduce them in their
correct form:--
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
* * * * *
=AT THE PLAY.=
"FÉDORA."
It may or may not be well that the War has modified our estimate of
the value of life; but it is a bad thing for the legitimate drama. And
in the case of _Fédora_ the bloody _régime_ of LENIN has so paled
our memory of the terrors of Nihilism that SARDOU'S play seems almost
further away from us than the tragedy of _Agamemnon_. In our callous
incapacity to be thrilled by the ancient horrors of forty years ago we
fall back on the satisfaction to be got out of the author's dexterity
in the mechanics of his craft.
And here the critic's judgment is also apt to be more cold-blooded.
He recognises the crude improbability of certain details which are
essential to the tragic development of the play. The death of _Count
Vladimir_ (accented on the first or second syllable according to the
temporary emotion of the speaker) was due to the discovery of a letter
in an unlocked drawer where it could never possibly have been thrown,
being an extremely private letter of assignation. The death of
_Fédora_, again, was the direct result of a letter which she
despatched to Petersburg denouncing a man who proved, in the light of
fresh facts learned a few minutes later, to be the last (or last but
one) that she would wish to injure. It is incredible that she should
not have hastened to send a second letter withdrawing her charge;
"instead of which" she goes casually off on a honeymoon with his
brother, and apparently never gives another thought to the matter till
it is fatally too late.
However, I am not really concerned at this time of day with the
improbabilities of so well-established a tragedy, but only with the
most recent interpretation of it. And let me say at once that, for the
best of reasons, I do not propose to compete with the erudition of my
fellow-critics in the matter of previous interpreters, for I bring a
virgin mind to my consideration of the merits of the present cast.
_Fédora_ is the most exhausting test to which Miss MARIE LÖHR has
yet put her talent. The heroine's emotions are worked at top-pressure
almost throughout the play. At the very start she is torn with
passionate grief for the death of her lover and a still more
passionate desire to take vengeance on the man who killed him. When
she learns the unworthiness of the one and the justification of the
other those emotions are instantly exchanged for a passionate worship
of the late object of her vengeance, to be followed by bitter remorse
for the harm she has done him and terror of the consequences when he
comes to know the truth. And so to suicide.
I will confess that I was astonished at the power with which Miss LÖHR
met these exigent demands upon her emotional forces. It was indeed a
remarkable performance. My only reservation is that in one passage
she was too anxious to convey to the audience the intensity of her
remorse, when it was a first necessity that she should conceal it
from the other actor on the stage. It was nice and loyal of Mr. BASIL
RATHBONE to behave as if he didn't notice anything unusual, but it
must have been as patent to him as to us.
Of his _Loris_ I cannot say too much in admiration. At first Mr.
RATHBONE seemed a little stiff in his admirably-fitting dress-clothes,
but in the last scene he moved through those swift changes of
emotion--from joy to grief, from rage to pity and the final anguish
and horror--with extraordinary imagination and resource.
Of the others, Mr. ALLAN AYNESWORTH, as _Jean de Siriex_, played in
a quiet and assured undertone that served to correct the rather
expansive methods of Miss ELLIS JEFFREYS, whose humour, always
delightful, afforded a little more relief than was perhaps consistent
with the author's designs and her own dignity as a great lady in the
person of the _Countess Olga_.