"Those who Sit in Judgment."
Indays of great national tension the public needs some coaxing to be got into the theatre at all. Our managers should either, at the risk of appearing callous, offer us a pure distraction from the strain of things or else provide something in harmony with the emotions of the time. But frankly I cannot find in the programme at the St. James's any apparent sign of consideration for present conditions. It is true that it supposes excellent entertainment for Mr. George Alexander, who has plenty of occupation in a part that suits him well. But I was thinking, selfishly enough, of my own needs and those of other non-combatants.
I admit that the scene in West Africa was a diverting novelty. I had never before, to my recollection, met a native monarch from the Gold Coast, and I have pleasure in accepting the assurance of Mr. Crowther, Secretary for Native Affairs in this district, that they are like that. But is was impossible to feel any very deep concern as to what might happen to the damaged hero (Michael Trent) on his return to England after the failure of his rubber schemes. The best he could hope for, by way of consolation for being misunderstood, was to become a co-respondent in a suit brought by the chief sitter-in-judgment. Even so we might have contrived a little sympathy if the woman's fifth-rate environment had not made any community of tastes hopelessly improbably. For her, too, it seemed to us a poor business that the only encouragement she could offer him in the undeserved ruin of his career was to get it blasted all over again—and this time on a true charge—by running away with him.
But the rubber-man in the play was never a hero. There in his Gold Coast shanty we see his lover's young brother dying of fever under his eyes. Yet from the moment when he himself gets a touch of the same complaint he takes to brandy, and practically loses all further interest—at any rate of a coherent kind—in the fate of his protégé. And at the end—though he seems to take a good deal of personal pride in the prospect—the only heroism that lies before him is the living-down of a sordid scandal in the divorce-court.
As Michael Trent, Mr. George Alexander played excellently, and I have nothing to say against either the quality or the quantity of his work, except that in the First Act the tale of his experience in the Beresu forest, which began with a very natural air, developed into something like a recitation. He might almost have been Mr. Roosevelt, in a mood of exaltation, describing his river to the Geographical Society. That clever Miss Henrietta Watson, had to play a difficult part as Trent's lover, in a vein that, I think, is new to her. She did it well, though she seemed to start on a note of intensity which left her too little margin for the time when she really needed it; her appeal, too, was rather to our intelligence than our hearts. Mr. Nigel Playfair, waiving his gift of deliberate humour, showed himself a master of the petty meannesses of a certain phase of suburban banality. Mr. Volpé presided, with the right rotundity of a rubber company's chairman, over a very spirited meeting of indignant shareholders. And, finally, nothing became Mr. Reginald Owen so well as the manner of his dying.
"Young Wisdom."
Victoria was very young and very, very wise. She knew all about the slavery of the marriage-tie, the liberty of the female subject, and high-sounding things of that sort, and kept books of advanced thinking secretly under her mattress—where her little brother found them and thought them dull, and her mother found them and thought them rather funny. Victoria's theory was that all marriages ought to be preceded by a trial trip, but it was her sister Gail who had the pluck to put this theory into practice. She insisted on her young man, Peter, eloping with her on the night before their wedding. Peter, a simple gentleman with a mouth permanently open, was reluctantly persuaded. Whereupon Christopher, the best man, engaged to Victoria, insisted upon Victoria also living up to her theory and eloping without clerical assistance—which she did almost as unwillingly as Peter. The two couples meet at midnight in an old moorland cottage rented by an artist called Max (no, not the one you think), whereupon two important things happen:—
(1) Gail decides in about twenty minutes that she loves Max, not Peter. (2) Victoria decides that she hates trial trips. So they all five go back together, and, after a lot of "Tut-tut-what-the-blank-upon-my-souls" from the military stage-father, they sort themselves out again and get married properly—Peter being left over with a cold in the head.
The author, Miss Rachel Crothers, has not strained herself severely in writing Young Wisdom, and the result is a pleasantly innocent little play, which, thanks to the Misses Margery Maude and Madge Titheradge as the two sisters, and Mr. John Deverell as Peter, gave us all a good deal of pleasure. Miss Maude had a part with a little comedy in it for once, and she played it delightfully.
We were playing the ancient and honourable game of acrostics and we had to think of and describe a word bounded on the West by the initial E, and on the East by the final H.
"That which you can never have of mushrooms," was one of the descriptions. It was, of course, guessed at once—"Enough;" and could there be a trued compliment to this strange exotic delicacy, which costs nothing but a walk in an early autumnal morning and is more choice than the rarest flavours ever designed by the most inspired of chefs? For certainly there has never been enough of them. I, at any rate, have never had enough. The thought of mushrooms missed must add pathos to many a death-bed.
It is a terrible moment when the dish comes in and one rapidly notes the disparity between the paucity of its contents and the vast and eager anticipation of the company. For it is useless to attempt to conceal greed when mushrooms arrive. A certain amount of dissimulation has mercifully been given by a wise Providence to all of us for the lubrication of the cogs of daily life; but it does not extend so far as this. And particularly so if the mushrooms have been fried in butter. Stewed they are not of course to be undervalued, especially if one dares to soak one's bread in the juice; nor even reposing in tragic isolation on Jual Fernandezes of toast; but the real way is to fry them in butter. As I say, it is a terrible oment when the dish arrives and the faces of the guests are studies; but should there be one present, or—more ecstatic moment still—two, who confess to a dislike of this perilous fungus, then what an access of rapture by way of compensation! Truly wise hostesses have been known to murmur something about toadstools and risk, as an encouragement to the doubters; or if they don't their husbands do. It is however no real good! Even with two defaulters the dish does no more than stimulate desire; whilst such is its power of fascination that consummate gourmets have been known to express no dismay at the possibility of poison being there, a death so won being worth dying.
Mushrooms, to win such homage as this, must be picked in the fields and cooked at home. The forced mushrooms which grow under the shelf in
