Page:Punch Vol 148.djvu/432

A preliminary interviewer, whom Mr. Vachell was too good-natured to resist, had wrung from him several interesting admissions; as that Quinney's was his best book; that the play, as plays should be, had been written before the novel; that the scene of Mr. Quinney's sanctum contained genuine antiques as well as admirable fakes; that his hero preferred things to persons, and that the author found in the excitement of producing dramas an excellent anodyne for the strain of wartime. I in turn was too good-natured to be put off by all this, and remained fixed in my resolve to see the play for myself.

And I was well rewarded with something very unusual. To begin with, Quinney was an honest dealer in antiquities, and this notwithstanding an apprenticeship in worm-hole-drilling. His morality, in fact, like his fortune, was self-made, and the natural pride that he took in these creations was not lessened by the fact that he came from Yorkshire. A righteous man among knaves, and a true lover of Art for its own beauty, he was not content with the virtues which he obviously possessed, but claimed others, including the quality of altruism. He could persuade himself (but not his wife) that the sweat of his brow had been poured out primarily for the benefit of his family. His helpmeet knew better, and did not hesitate to tell him that he preferred things (sticks and stuff) to persons. The subtlety of this appreciation, coming from a very homely intelligence, surprised me, yet it was not quite so clever as it seemed. The truth of the trouble was that Quinney did not make any distinction between things and persons. His wife and his daughter he regarded (quite kindly) as chattels that served his needs or ministered to his sense of beauty; in one he found the utility of a kitchen dresser, in the other the charm of a Dresden porcelain.

Mr. Vachell might well have been contented with his brilliant character-study, but he too is an honest man, and meant that we should have our money's worth. So he threw in a plot which turned upon the love-affair of Miss Quinney and her father's skilled workman, and was complicated by a deal in which Quinney's honesty was compromised by a fake that had escaped him. The plot served its purpose, though the interest of it was never very poignant. The real interest was intended to lie in the action going on in the character of Quinney under the pressure of circumstance and experience. We were to gather that he came to readjust his views of the relative value of things and persons. But I detected very little modification in his character up to quite the end, and I never have much faith in curtain repentances.

The Foreman. "This chair is faked."
The Master. "You're a liar."
The Foreman. "It's faked."
The Master (turning on magnifying-glass). "So it is, by goom!"

Yet it was a drama all right, and Mr. Vachell had not forgotten his Classics. I cannot recall any hero of Greek tragedy who was actually a dealer in antiques, yet there was something a little Sophoclean about this picture of an honest man struggling with adverse conditions which were not wholly of his own making. On the other hand I will say nothing of the Sophoclean quality of the scene where Quinney looks on at the nocturnal love-tryst from behind a screen, and his daughter says, "Fancy if Daddy could see us now." This very elementary irony was obviously designed for beginners.

Mr. Henry Ainley had fitted himself tight into the skin of Quinney. This is the second fine character-study that he has given us since he retired from the profession of jeune premier. The same demand was not here made upon his imagination as in The Great Adventure; but, if his performance of Quinney was rather assimilative than creative the difference was one of character, and in both parts Mr. Ainley did his work just about as well as it could be done.

Miss Sydney Fairbrother, as the protesting phantom of a wife, had little to say, but her rare and unobtrusive interventions had a pleasant caustic quality. As Posy Quinney Miss Marie Hemingway was a very dainty figure and acted with great spirit. Mr. Godfrey Tearle, foreman and lover, showed his usual easy reserve of strength; and the succulent humour of Mr. A. G. Poulton as Quinney's brother-in-law, a gentleman who thought that one honest member was enough for any family of dealers, made me very tolerant of his detestable morals.

The first night's performance moved as smoothly as if the play had been running since the War begun, and I shall ask Mr. Lyall Swete, who produced it, to share the thanks and compliments which I now distribute broadcast upon all those who conspired to give me so delectable an evening. O. S.

"'He—"That's my friend Davis. He's in Kitchener's Army, you know." She—"What is he—a lieutenant?" He—"No, he's a lance-corporal." She (greatly impressed)—"O-oh, really! Influenza, I suppose."'—Punch.'"

Glasgow News.

We are much obliged to the kind effort of our Scottish contemporary to appreciate the joke in a recent issue of Punch, and regret that in this case the surgical operation should have been complicated by medical trouble.

"Millions of sandbags are wanted. This is an appeal to everyone to help. Women with sandbags, men with sixpence each, all will be forwarded to the firing line, and they are urgently wanted."

Sidcup and District Times.

The women with sandbags will no doubt be useful at the Front, but we do not quite understand the demand for men with sixpence each. They will be twice as valuable if they "take the shilling."

"AUSTRIAN EMPEROR RECEIVES KRUPP'S HEAD."

Edinburgh Evening News.

It is hardly fair of a newspaper to raise its readers' hopes like this. There was no charger. All that really happened was that Francis Joseph gave an audience to Herr Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach.