Page:Punch Vol 148.djvu/412

him, and he recovers sufficiently to receive a representative of the Press; and, seeing a chance of making capital out of his son's gallant death, he bribes the interviewer with a five-pound note (I have never done this myself, nor seen it done) to include in his report a reference to the hero's father as the creator and proprietor of Sufan's Staminal Syrup.

It is not till the War is over (and apparently forgotten) that he learns the facts about the boy's fatherhood. Among the few virtues that he has retained (including a fluent familiarity with Holy Writ) is a strong predilection for chastity, and he is extremely annoyed. His wife leaves him; he throws up the Syrup and the chance of a knighthood and resumes the violin habit. Finally, in his old age she gets in touch with him again on the roof of a Garden City, where he is keeping the Feast of Tabernacles in a summer-house hung with very unlikely grapes; and the prospect that "at eventide it shall be light" is symbolised as the curtain falls by her readjustment of his disordered neckwear.

As to the main purpose of his play, Mr. Hastings has gone the way of least resistance in justifying his title. Something worth while might have been told us about certain secret methods of advertisement; but the ways of the patent-medicine-monger have been too freely exposed. Something again (though perhaps not very fresh) might have been made out of the tendency to snobbery in the attitude of a boy toward a father who has educated him above his own station; but when he is actually the son of somebody else, the fault may be ascribed to heredity, and no moral is to be got out of that.

For the rest, apart from the Jew's character, which owes much of its air of originality to its mixture of incredibly inconsistent qualities, the play is largely a rechauffé. There are strong scenes, but they are not always grounded upon humanity. Thus, though the father's tears over the death of his son caused us great embarrassment (the sight of a grown man shaken with grief is always a terrible thing), it was modified by a suspicion of insincerity, for he had never given any proof of deep affection, but only of a parvenu's pride in his boy's superiority. And when this suspicion was rudely confirmed by his prompt effort to secure a commercial réclame from his affliction, we felt that the author had trifled with our emotions.

Mr. Hastings has shown himself capable of much better work than this; and if he succeeds now he will have his cast to thank for it. Mr. Sydney Vallentine was brilliant. There was little trace of Hebraism in his accent, and he glossed over the thinness of many passages by extreme rapidity of speech; but he got every ounce of strength out of the stuff he had to play with. Miss Lilian Braithwaite brought a very perfect dignity and sweetness to her difficult part as the wife. Miss Ellen O'Malley showed great tact and charm in the pleasant interludes, too brief, in which she was allowed to play a minor rôle. Mr. Arthur Chesney, as the funny man among the advertising agents, was obviously prepared to be funnier still if he had been given the chance; and Mr. Athol Stewart as the representative of The Daily Passenger, who took a Staff appointment during the War, and made the very slowest kind of love before and after, was a pattern of stolidity. As the Jew's Secretary (with an eye for a stunt) Miss Violet Graham had little to do, but I should never think of asking for a prettier typist. Finally, as Adolf, who played the piano and accompanied the Jew's violin (not to be confused with the Jew's-harp) when it was in use, and served, when it wasn't, as a loyal, if acquisitive, butler, Mr. Leon Lion gave a clever performance in the Perlmutter manner. As a right Semite, Adolf had strong views on mixed marriages and did his best to confound the intrusive Gentile. He it was that, by his wicked manipulation of their correspondence, delayed the reunion of the severed couple. But Sufan was also to blame. When a man takes the trouble to have his letters registered in order to ensure their delivery he might take the further trouble of posting them himself, instead of leaving them to the care of a suspected menial. And so, of course, he would, except in a play, where the course of true love, and even of untrue (as here), must not lack for artificial corrugation.

Jellaby is one of those miserable crocks whose diseases are so vague and uninteresting that nobody will listen to them. Nobody, that is, who can help it.

Since the War began he has been worse than ever. Though I constantly reassure him as to the state of my memory, he never fails to give me his long list of reasons (some of them quite repulsive) for not enlisting.

If I was only moderately fit," he says, "I'd have enlisted ages ago. But a chap with my liver———" (Here follows a lengthy and fluent dissertation on dyspepsia in general and liver trouble in particular.) "So it has come to this," he concludes: "I force—positively force—my breakfast down every morning, and then comes that dreadful feeling of repletion as soon as I leave the table."

Once I asked him what his doctor said, and Jellaby flared up immediately.

"Brown!" he cried. "That fellow knows little and cares less about dyspepsia. Told me there was nothing wrong, the great beaming apple-faced brute! Said I was to take plenty of hard exercise and laugh a lot. Laugh! The man's a blithering idiot."

Now Brown is an old friend of mine, and a practical adviser if ever there was one. I felt sure that Jellaby was concealing something, and I took the first opportunity to tackle Brown on the subject.

"I've just been talking to a patient of yours," I began; "chap called Jellaby."

The Doctor smiled. "Ah!" said he. And how is Mr. Jellaby this morning?"

"Mr. Jellaby," I said, "is too dyspeptic to serve his country. He had quite a lot to say about it."

The Doctor's smile broadened. "And had he nothing to say about me? I suppose that professional etiquette forbids me to ask you, but———"

"Jellaby considers," I announced with relish, "that you are a blithering idiot."

"And I told Mr. Jellaby," said the Doctor, "that if he really wants to cure his dyspepsia his best plan will be to———"

"Not enlist?" I cried.

"Just that," said the Doctor.

"Lord Kitchener fopen to interviewers in ———'s outfitting window has proved a great attraction. He is now displaying Navy Serge Suits."—Shepton Mallet Journal.

We do not pretend to know what "fopen" means. But the rest of the paragraph is easily intelligible, and we foresee that a jealous Admiralty will soon be exhibiting khaki in its windows.

"When fire broke out early yesterday at the City Hall, Glasgow, where 200 recruits are billeted, the sleeping men were paraded and helped to extinguish the flames."

Daily Mirror.

"Scandinavia has no doubt that in the latter half of last week a naval engagement took place between Great Britain and Germany in the North Sea. The evidence is that of kippers who, using their eyes and ears, put two and two together."—Star.

From the very first the story was regarded as fishy.