Lord Anerley
(Mark Quinton & Henry Hamilton adapt. of Arthur Arnould, Le duc de Kandos 1881)
First performance on 7 November 1891 until 23 December for 45 performances – Scenery by H.P.Hall – Furniture by Frank Giles and Co.
Henry Hamilton
Drawing-room melodrama was the need of the moment, which Messrs. Mark Quinton and Henry Hamilton (with Lord Anerley) and Mr. J. Comyns Carr (with Forgiveness), set out to supply in the autumn of 1891. In neither case, however, did the means justify the end. The intention truly was there, the realisation all to seek. But this choice only served to re-cast Mr. Alexander in his proper mould—high comedy and comedy-drama. Incidentally, too, it set a notch in the progress of the English drama which, under his direction, had advanced by leaps and bounds during the past eight years. The aesthetic movement had been accepted under protest, satirized, and finally had become an integral part of art and literature; but the drama, always lagging behind, had still to come up with it. (A.E.W.Mason)
Mander & Mitchenson Theatre Collection, University of Bristol
From The Freemason - November 21st, 1891.
In the most westerly (but one) of West-end theatres we now have the most easterly of melodrama duly installed. Mr. George Alexander has at the St. James's given us strong meat in his production of the late Mr. Mark Quinton's and Mr. Henry Hamilton 's play, "Lord Anerley," but the food does not seem in the least too strong even for West-end palates. We cannot call it a great work, nor is its plot unconventional, nor is it even highly polished, but it is full of thrilling interest, and there can be no doubt that Mr. George Alexander has in "Lord Anerley" yet another commercial success. It is stage mounted with all the care and elaboration of detail worthy of the traditions of the St. James's Theatre, and in the taste, one may expect from such an artist as Mr. Alexander, with his scholastic (theatrically speaking) training. His acting is throughout manly, careful, and polished. Mr. Arthur Bourchier has but little to do, which is to be Alexander's double in the first act, and disappear from the play, but he does this well. Mr. Herbert Waring can be safely trusted to get all he can out of, at the best, an unsatisfactory part. Mr. Nutcombe Gould, who makes the best peer on the stage, sets a pattern to many peers, who, no doubt, will be found from time to time amongst his audience. Miss Marion Terry at once touches the hearts of her listeners and onlookers by her gentleness and delightful acting. Miss Gertrude Kingston, who is again cast for the part of the adventuress, makes her part repellent as she should do. Miss Maud Graves is a winsome young lady in her teens.
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Lord Anerley
ST. JAMES'S THEATRE.
IN his latest production Mr. Alexander has made what may be considered for him and for the St. James's Theatre a new departure. Lord Anerley, for the plot of which Messrs. Quinton and Hamilton avow themselves indebted to a novel and play by A. Matthey, called Le Duc de Kandos, is melodrama pure and simple, and as such it may be expected to attract to the St. James's a class of playgoers which has not generally wandered so far west of the Adelphi and Princess's. In this way the new piece may doubtless be of solid service to the management, as the pit and gallery have hitherto been rather weak points at the fashionable house in King-street, and it is always well to extend the area of one's clientele. On the other hand, it must be confessed that Lord Anerley, albeit a very fair piece of its kind, will not tend to advance the reputation of the company, still less that of Mr. Alexander himself. Its stage convention is of the tritest, its dramatis personæ are familiar to every student of cheap fiction, its dialogue is commonplace, and its characterisation is superficial. It remains to be seen how far these deficiencies will, in the estimation of the public, be compensated for by the picturesqueness of scene, the stir of vigorous action, and the interest of spirited movements which are prominent merits of the new dramatic venture.
The experienced playgoer might guess, from a glance at the programme, something very like an outline of the plot of the melodrama. What is more inevitable than that Rupert Lee, the handsome young Englishman known among the South American gauchos as José, will turn out to have been a nobleman in disguise, or that his sinister comrade, Miguel, alias Harvey Lester, will strive to levy blackmail when they both find themselves back in England. Do we not all of us know—in the pages of romance—the kind of vengeance that will be exacted by the Spanish danseuse, Teresita, of any one who either ill-treats or neglects her? Have we not all met with the blind Earl, who, having had to cast off his prodigal son, is tortured with the thought that he is being punished for the wrong which he did to that son's unrecognised elder brother? Of a truth there is little in Messrs. Quinton and Hamilton's melodrama which is either new or true; but en revanche, there is a great deal that is calculated to stir the imagination of an unsophisticated audience. One difficulty in the way of enjoyment—and it is one which we confess we could not overcome—lies in the inconsistent character of the hero, Rupert Lee, who for no adequate reason suddenly degenerates from a happy-go-lucky ne'er-do-well into a deliberate impostor. It is natural enough that a rascal like Harvey Lester should think it a capital stroke of business when, after murdering Lord Anerley, he persuades Rupert to impersonate that outcast young noble man, and impose upon the credulity of the blind Earl of Edgehill. But it is as unlikely that Rupert—the Rupert of the later scenes of the play—would consent to this nefarious strategy as it is that, having undertaken it, he would discover himself to be in truth the earl's older son by a secret marriage. Improbable as it all is, however, there is shown considerable perception of stage effect not only in the showy prologue, but in the telling passages which illustrate the hero's remorse during the development of his fraud and his perpetual danger from discovery. The unlooked-for appearance of Teresita, the dancer, at the end of the third act, is well arranged, and so also is her surprise at finding in the Lord Anerley, whom she has come to claim as husband, the lover whom she has believed her husband to have killed. So, too, there is interest in the attitude of Lady Anerley—the real Lady Anerley—towards the husband, whose confession discloses so sad, and, indeed, so shameful a past and there are several delicate touches in the impostor's hesitation while playing the role of father to an innocent girl, who is looking to him for the protection and guidance and love which he has no earthly right to give. But the character is as a whole by no means worthy either of the power or the skill which Mr. Alexander naturally brings to bear upon it and the actor's triumph in making so hypocritical a rogue sympathetic represents at the best a victory in a poor cause. None the less, however, is Mr. Alexander's a very clever piece of acting—a performance likely to please a very large number of playgoers. It is excellently supported by Mr. Waring's capital study of Lester; by Miss Gertrude Kingston's clear-cut rendering of Teresita and by Mr. Bourchier's embodiment of the reckless roué who is shot in the first act and is seen no more. It is Mr. Webster's lot often to have to supply comedy relief in the imbecilities of foolish young lovers, and here the lover is more foolish than ever. But he and Miss Laura Graves, a very promising little actress, play their scenes very brightly, whilst Messrs. Gardiner and Gould are efficient in other small parts. The piece of course enjoys a mounting and general treatment much more refined than any usual for melodrama, and its reception on its first night left no doubt of its popular success.
The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News (London), Saturday, 14 November 1891, p.306
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Herbert Waring
Marion Terry
V&A Museum, London
OUR CAPTIOUS CRITIC.
"LORD ANERLEY."
THE authors of Lord Anerley acknowledge their indebtedness to Le Due de Kandos, a novel by A. Matthey (Arthur Arnould), for "the leading idea" of the Saint James's piece. I do not know what Messrs. Quinton and Hamilton would regard as "the leading idea" of their front-parlourised melodrama. But certainly in the long-winded story of Le Petit Journal, and in the dramatic version of it which M. Arnould himself prepared for the Nations, it seems to me that these gentlemen have found more ideas than one. They have made great changes, it must he admitted, in plot, character, and dénouement. Their work has not the ghastly pluck of the original, its frank audacity in vice, its placid readiness for murder with poison, pistol, or the knife. These difficulties have been toned down by modifications less outspoken and more conventional, but for all that there is plenty of the Duc de Kandos left. It is precisely this toning down, however, which spoils Lord Anerley; the boldness gone which gave the original a certain freshness, there is nothing but a very ordinary story before us. Indeed, so familiar does the course of this polite melodrama become from what we have seen before, or what we have read, that we know all the while what is next to happen. The consequence is that although the acting may catch our attention now and then, the plot has no interest for us whatever. I do not remember a piece with a serious purpose in which there has been such a lack of grip in situations intended to be powerful and in personages meant to stir the feelings. In the Duc de Kandos of Arnould there are two brothers—one illegitimate. The one, who is regarded as the rightful heir, and is called the marquis, has been cast forth by his father, the duke, for malpractices at home, which he has continued abroad. The other, left to his own devices from childhood, has also led a wild life, his offences including the killing of a man who called him bastard. Some years back the marquis has married a rope-dancer from Buenos Ayres who, after squandering his fortune, has deserted him. When they meet again—in the Argentine—she has many lovers of whom her husband's illegitimate brother is the most favoured. The marquis still adores her but she declines to be reconciled. He kills her as he supposes and burns her villa over her lifeless form. Then he flies to the Pampas. Here he becomes the guest of "Cuchillo the Gaucho"—his brother—who does not know him, and whom he does not know. There is a third person, the Machiavel of the story, one Clermont—an ex-convict—a sort of Vautrain. The family likeness of the marquis and Cuchillo inspires Clermont with the idea that the former may be got rid of and the latter take his place. He induces the fugitive to tell the history of his crimes. The latest episode, the murder of Maraquita, is reached at last, and then Cuchillo learns for the first time that his mistress has been killed and that the assassin is before him. A duel with knives follows in which the marquis falls by his brother's hand. Clermont then unfolds his scheme and Cuchillo with some hesitation consents. The body of the marquis is left on the plains to be buried by the police as that of the Gaucho, while Cuchillo returns to France and presents himself to the blind Duke of Kandos in his murdered brother's place.
The difference in the St. James's version up to this point is in the treatment of the character of Cuchillo—renamed José in Lord Anerley. Instead of making him a bad character there is an attempt to make him a good one. It is not he who has been the sinner; it is Clermont—Hervey Lester he is called now—or somebody else. Thus if Lord Anerley has been a convict in the past it was for another's crime, and if his brother was killed in the duel it was because Hervey Lester stabbed him from behind. The idea was of course to make the part which Mr. Alexander plays more sympathetic, but one may say that what is gained in sympathy is lost in remorse. The terror-haunted sinner of the original dwindles down to a nervous impostor merely; there is a sad sacrifice of dramatic force in such a modification as this. And after all there is still a blemish left; the hero's mistress was his brother's wife. He did not know of the relationship, it is true, but one cannot accept him as a very nice sort of fellow in face of this. Whether the offender was conscious or unconscious of it there is a term for such relationship which I need not write. I have not space to deal with all the points in the Duc de Kandos which I think might have either been used to better purpose or left alone. But I am bound to say that the character of Clermont ought to have made a more original villain than the St. James's gives us, and that the wooing of Annette and Lapierre as M. Arnould tells it is represented but poorly indeed by that of Beaufort and Esmé de Burgh at Mr. Alexander's theatre. Annette is really a striking character in the French. She suspects the false marquis who comes forward as her father. Lapierre is the son of Clermont and his love for Annette is crossed by the knowledge of this dishonour which he dares not reveal. One of those girl and boy courtships which have recently replaced that of low comedian and soubrette is all that we get from the young lovers in the present version, and yet their attachment might have been made the central feature of a much stronger play than Lord Anerley.
When the impostor presents himself as the wandering heir at the home of Lord Edgehill, he has already saved the life of Evelyn Carew, the earl's adopted daughter. It has been a case of love at first sight between the false Lord Anerley and this young lady. Her influence with the old gentleman is paramount, and the hero, in the name of his victim, professing repentance for the past, is in his name forgiven. As the heir of the Earl of Edgehill his word is the law at Anerley Chase. He has qualms of conscience at moments and Hervey Carew worries and blackmails him, but on the whole he has a pleasant enough time. He has just married Evelyn and consented to his daughter's—his brother's daughter's—marriage with her timid admirer, when a Madame de Sivori appears. Madame de Sivori is Maraquita, or Terrasita, as they have it here. She did not die when the other Lord Anerley stabbed her, nor when her house was burnt was she consumed. She has come to look up her miscreant husband and to claim her place as Lady Anerley. She finds that her former lover has taken her late husband's name and position. She is quite content that he should retain them, only, if the impostor is Lord Anerley, he must, to be logical, acknowledge her as Lady Anerley and his wife. It is exactly the same in the French. When he refuses to agree to this, when he rejects her firmly, all his former admiration gone—Madame de Sivori denounces him. He quarrels too with Harvey Lester, and then, having written a confession for the benefit of Evelyn, is ready for suicide. But Evelyn finds, when her first indignation has cooled down, that she cannot live without him, and consents to share his fortunes, whatever they may be. They prove to be all that could be desired. The old earl has been a scamp and cheat, like the rest of his beautiful family. The supposed intruder is his eldest son by a secret first marriage, and the murdered Lord Anerley was never Lord Anerley at all. This is the traditional ending of a piece of which the greatest merit is that it is not very long.
It could not have been a pleasant play—considering its origin—but it might have been more clever, more vigorous, and more fresh. It has very little of any of these qualities; the best that can be said of it is that it seems like a transpontine story out of its element, and crushed by lessons of deportment. Yet it might have been made another Jim the Penman if, with the good ideas which they had to start upon, the adaptors had brought more imagination of their own to working them out. Everything becomes too obvious and too conventional as soon as they depend upon themselves. There is really nothing to say about the acting. Mr. Alexander as the Lord Anerley who survives is earnest and somewhat monotonous, and Mr. Salisbury is passable as the Lord Anerley who dies. [sic – evidently an understudy for Arthur Bourchier in the role.] The youthful lovers of Mr. Webster and Miss Laura Graves are much as usual. Mr. Nutcombe Gould shows dignity as the blind Earl of Edgehill. Mr. Herbert Waring gives us nothing new as the villain Hervey Lester. Miss Gertrude Kingston shows force in the small part of Terrasita, and Miss Marion Terry is alternately affectionate and sad in the character of Evelyn Carew. Mr. Gardiner is a detective with not much to do. The company is a good one, but from Mr. Alexander down the artists want parts stronger and more decided to take them away from themselves.
(Caricatures by Alfred Bryan)
The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News (London), Saturday, 28 November 1891, p.382
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The Scenes
Act I - Near Buenos Ayres - A Corral on the Plains (The Illustrated London News, 14 November 1891, p. 627)
Act II & III - The Hall, Anerley Chase, England (scenery by H.P. Hall) - JCW Scene Book 10 - Theatre Heritage Australia
Act IV - The Drawing-Room, Anerley Chase, England (scenery by H.P. Hall) - JCW Scene Book 10 - Theatre Heritage Australia
Scene from Act IV (The Illustrated London News, 14 November 1891, p.627
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Forgiveness
(J.W. Comyns Carr)
First performance was on 30 December 1891 until 10 February 1892 for 41 performances – Scenery by H.P. Hall & Walter Hann – Furniture by Frank Giles and Co
Caricature by "SPY" (alias of Sir Leslie Ward - 1851-1922)
Joseph William Comyns Carr (1 March 1849 – 12 December 1916), often referred to as J. Comyns Carr, was an English drama and art critic, gallery director, author, poet, playwright and theatre manager.
Mander & Mitchenson Theatre Collection, University of Bristol
Forgiveness
ST. JAMES'S THEATRE.
ALTHOUGH in some respects a trifle disappointing, the new play by Mr. Comyns Carr, which is Mr. Alexander's latest production at the St. James's, yet ranks high amongst the original works contributed of late years to our English stage. It has, to begin with, an interesting and sympathetic story, in which, like Mr. Carr, we are old-fashioned enough to believe as an essential element of successful dramatic achievement. It has also a motive—that of self-sacrifice—which has been long recognised as a favourite with playgoers. It has admirably written dialogue, and it is fortunate enough to have suggested and obtained interpretation of much delicacy and force. Against these merits one or two drawbacks are no doubt to be set. Some of the motives actuating Mr. Carr's dramatis personæ are found puzzling, through the modifications which from time to time they undergo during the development of the action. The hand of comparative inexperience is shown in certain flaws of construction, such as the formal arrangements of certain duets of conversation, the occasional leaving of the stage empty, and, above all, in the double narration of events which have occurred before the raising of the curtain. On the whole, however, the good in Forgiveness far outweighs the bad, and it fortunately happens that the defects, such as they are, do not seem to be of the kind likely to prejudice the popularity of the production. Mr. Carr will no doubt someday turn out a piece of dramatic workmanship far more perfect than this, but he will hardly achieve any that will make an appeal for sympathy more touching, more wholesome, and more effective with the public.
The story of Forgiveness may in one sense be said to have begun years before the period at which the play is supposed to commence. It began with the events which caused Nina Ferrars, daughter and supposed heiress to the entailed estates of Sir Edward Ferrars, to be illegitimate. It will be sufficient here to explain that this terrible misfortune was brought about by the vengelul malice of the baronet's younger brother, long since dead, and that it has caused Sir Edward to nourish feelings of the deepest animosity against his brother's son, whom he has never seen. Under the assumed name of Hamilton, this young man, who has learned with profound distress the nature of his uncle's probable feeling towards him, comes over from America, where he has been brought up, introduces himself at Ferrars Court through the family lawyer, and falls over head and ears in love with his cousin before he has dared to avow his identity. He subsequently finds that to please her father the girl has allowed herself to be engaged, or half-engaged, to Reginald Erie, whom, from his American experiences as manager of a mine in which Sir Edward is largely interested, he knows to be a scheming rogue. The almost overwhelming temptation to the hero is of course to stare who he really is, to show up the real character of Erie, and to claim the hand of his cousin as his reward. But he is held back by one consideration the knowledge that he cannot declare himself without at the same time proclaiming the bastardy of the girl he loves. It would take too long to explain the legal steps whereby this result of a disclosure by Edward Hamilton is made to seem inevitable indeed at one point the playwright's law, as well as his plot, seems a trifle hazy, since when it comes to a question of mortgage and entail it is difficult to see how the secret of the supposed heiress's illegitimate birth can be kept, even though the real heir-at-law is content to suppress his existence. In the meanwhile, however, fine and moving scenes are undeniably reached in the passages illustrating the humiliation voluntarily endured by the hero at the hands not only of his rival, but of the heroine, when he cannot, or will not, explain his assumption of a false name. Another very moving episode is that of Sir Edward's forced confession to his daughter that she has no right to the name and position to which she has all her life believed herself entitled whilst there is much that is very interesting in the means whereby the happy end of a tender love-story is ultimately reached. Even if the play here and there puzzles its audience, it never for a moment fails to hold attention, and in its stronger emotional appeals, it fairly takes the house by storm. The acting is of a very high class throughout. The principal mark is perhaps that made by Miss Marion Terry in her singularly womanly and winning interpretation of the character of Nina Ferrars, the pleasantest part that she has had to play for a long time. Mr. Alexander has we see been blamed for not allowing the hero to show a pride of conscious innocence when remaining silent under undeserved contumely but surely this would be to betray the secret which ex hypothesi he is above all things anxious to keep. In our judgment Mr. Alexander has never acted with sounder judgment or more convincing tact than in this somewhat thankless character. Mr. Nutcombe Gould gives rare style and polish to his embodiment of Sir Edward, fully keeping up his high reputation for the natural rendering of aristocratic old men, whilst Mr. Bourchier if not very subtle is at any rate quite presentable as the gentlemanly rascal, Erie. Of the subordinate comedy which flashes with a genial and thoroughly original humour the happiest passages fall to Miss Fanny Coleman the life-like representative of a man-hating, but loveable old maid, to Mr. E. W. Gardiner as a loutish lover, and to Miss Dolores Drummond as an intriguing mother. Others included in the cast are Mr. Everill as a singularly impulsive solicitor, Mr. H. H. Vincent as a bland and rather tedious parson, Mr. de Lange and Miss L. Graves. The morning-room of a country house wherein three-fourths of the action takes place is an excellent example of thoroughly tasteful scenic art. The success of the play on its first night admitted of no doubt whatever.
The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News (London), Saturday, 9 January 1892, p. 571
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James Nutcombe Gould
V&A Museum, London
Arthur Bourchier
OUR CAPTIOUS CRITIC.
"FORGIVENESS."
THERE is much good work in Mr. Comyns Carr's new comedy, which is doing I cannot judge how well at the St. James's. We were obliged, in fact, to witness the performance last week, when no one went to any theatre who was able to stay away. Whatever its other qualities, I think we must generally concede that Forgiveness is an artistic play—a clever literary composition of which the details have more of that graceful Robertsonian touch than we have noticed in recent productions of similar dramatic purpose. Undoubtedly some of the situations are manipulated with skill. The character, too, is well contrasted, and the dialogue is away from the commonplace. With all these things in its favour, it may be nevertheless that something more is wanted, or something less—more possibility in the story or less art in the treatment of it. In fact, the author, having selected a plot very hard to believe in, has exercised great ingenuity in the attempt to make it plausible; but while recognising his talent and his courage, the audience soon sees that the attempt is vain. One is amused and interested, but not convinced; for however cleverly the incidents are worked out, the conditions from which they arise come back to spoil the illusion. The whole course of the story depends upon the anxiety of the father and lover of the heroine to keep from her the fact that she is illegitimate. The desire to spare the young lady's feelings is a very laudable one. But when the father, a good man who has been the victim of an unconscious bigamy, is ready to forget his goodness and perpetrate a fraud; when the lover, also a good man, is willing to be treated as a swindler and a thief, to say nothing of giving up his sweetheart and his heritage—when these two good people are prepared to go so far rather than that the truth should be told, we think that too much is asked of onr credulity. We think this all the more when we get to the last act and find that, despite the great fuss which has been made of the heroine's misfortune of birth in the rest of the play, nobody seems to make any difficulty whatever about it at the ending. The motive of Forgiveness is certainly not strong enough for a piece which would be dramatic as well as artistic. The heroine, Nina Ferrars, is the daughter of Sir Edward by a lady whom he married on a report that her first husband was dead. A younger brother of the baronet had published the false news in order to dishonour by bigamy a woman who had resisted his own unholy advances. Nina, now grown up, is treated as the heiress of Ferrars, and is so happy in the position that her father still defers the revelation which will, he fears, blight her life. Meanwhile, with the Hon. Reginald Earle as a go-between, he enters into wild speculations, hoping to make a fortune for Nina which will compensate her for her loss of the estate.
A stranger, a Mr. Hamilton, arrives at the village of Ferrars, and in the absence of Earle, to whom she is engaged—to please her father—wins the heroine's love. He is the son of the bad younger brother, and, since the heroine is illegitimate, is Sir Edward's rightful heir. But finding that Nina knows nothing of the secret of her birth, for her sake and in atonement for his father's deceit, he conceals his identity and regards his real self as dead. Earle, however, returns from America with the news that, in consequence of a false telegram from one Edward Ferrars—namesake of the baronet and chairman of the company—the mining shares in which Sir Edward's fortune was risked went down to zero, and were sold at immense loss. As a matter of fact, it was Earle himself who forged the telegram, in order to bear the market and to buy for a song his principal's shares, which, the telegram having been promptly contradicted, quickly returned to a big premium. The baronet is ruined and Earle is a rich man, although he has to divide his profits with a smart little financier, one Abraham Plack. Confronted with the so-called Edward Hamilton, he recognises the Edward Ferrars whose name he has forged to the stock exchange wire. But Hamilton's mouth is sealed, and all for the sake of Nina he consents to be called bad son of a bad father, scoundrel, forger, thief, and so on by Sir Edward, the young lady, and everybody concerned. Hamilton dismissed with contumely, Earle offers to come to the help of the baronet, and Plack in the background prompts Earle. The Ferrars estate is to be mortgaged to Plack to pay off the large sums of which Sir Edward has been defrauded by this precious pair. When everything is arranged, however, the family lawyer writes to the schemers that the heir declines to sign the mortgage deed. That there should be an heir who is not Nina compels the explanation with his daughter which Sir Edward has so long withheld. The other explanations follow, with the utter discomfiture of Earle and his colleague, who return their plunder and proceed across the seas, while Hamilton, rehabilitated, is rewarded with the hand of the heroine for his sufferings and his sacrifice. In the sub-plot there are a Rev. Maitland Muir—a sort of satire upon comfortable parsons, and his son "Tommy,'' a decent, stupid young man, who flirts with and weds clandestinely Miss Lucy Badger, the daughter of Mrs. Badger—a pushing, gossipy widow, whose people have got on. Miss Meakin, the elderly companion, chaperon, or what not of Nina, is a man-hater; the type is not new on the stage, but is treated with some freshness here.
I do not know whether it is because he is so terribly and so unreasonably self-sacrificing that the Edward Hamilton of Mr. Alexander comes out in the acting a trifle preachy and solemn. But apart from this Mr. Alexander, who is always careful and elaborate, is at all events interesting. I cannot say that he is touching—in the best dramatic sense, for like Nina, acted by Miss M. Terry, the part depends too much upon make-believe conditions. Hamilton would not be a man but a statue to endure, unmoved all that he suffers in the piece for the reasons that the piece gives. Nina, too, in these days of scandal would certainly not have grown to womanhood ignorant of the stain upon her birth. There are too many Mrs. Badgers and too many society papers; secrets like this are not kept where a great estate is involved—especially when they are the direct outcome of plots meant to bring about dishonour. The Nina of Miss M. Terry is a little tearful, as most of her parts appear to be at the St. James's, but it is very intelligent and very attractive. The character loses something of sympathy from the want of motive, or rather the weakness of motive of her relations with Earle. Her first engagement to him is so lax that she forgets him in her love for Hamilton as soon as the other is out of sight, and her second engagement to Earle, while she still sighs for the supposed forger and thief, wants some stronger reason than the real villain's offer to carry out a mortgage—which she knows since she is the business manager at Ferrars— could be done by the nearest money-lender. Sir Edward Ferrars is a good man, as I have said, but when Hamilton tells him that Edward Ferrars (alias Hamilton himself) is dead he is quite ready for his illegitimate daughter's sake to cheat the next heir, a distant cousin. I am afraid that he would not be held good in the Court of Chancery, and I fear also that for all the dignity of Mr. Nutcombe Gould the audience is at critical moments somewhat of the same opinion. Mr. Gould, like Mr Alexander, recalls the style of pulpit oratory at times. He is a model of paternal devotion, but take him away from that I must say that he is a decidedly misguided old gentleman. The Earle of Mr. Alfred Bourchier is well intended, but lacks intensity; Mr. de Lange, however, makes a hit in the small part of the moneyed rascal behind the scenes, the business-like, perky, unscrupulous Mr. Plack. Mr. H. H. Vincent plays the part of Muir the vicar with conventional unctuousness; and as his son Tommy Mr. Gardner allows himself to be loved by Lucy Badger in a way that seems to please. His close-cut, canary-coloured hair and general make-up belong rather to broad farce than to comedy. Miss Laura Graves is the young lady in love with Tommy, doing all the work efficiently and eloping with him on the not very graceful pretext that she has a bad tooth which needs doctoring by a distant dentist. Mr. Everill is all that is required as the family solicitor, Mr. Tamworth. Miss Dolores Drummond is the efficient Mrs. Badger, and Miss Fanny Coleman is the admirable Miss Meakin, the man-hater. One of the scenes between the two ladies, in which Mrs. Badger tells how, since Sir Edward is ruined, she is diplomatically arranging for Lucy's engagement to Earle, is very amusing. Miss Meakin knows that Lucy is already married to Tommy, but without a hint of her knowledge, with calm malice acts the interested listener, and draws the scheming mother out. The scenery is pretty, and the music, under Mr. Slaughter, excellent.
(Caricatures by Alfred Bryan)
The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News (London), Saturday 30 January 1892
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The Scenes
Act I - The Lawn at Ferrars (scenery by H.P. Hall) - JCW Scene Book 10 - Theatre Heritage Australia
Act II, III & IV - Morning Room at Ferrars (scenery by Walter Hann) - JCW Scene book 10 - Theatre Heritage Australia
Scene from the play with George Alexander, Marion Terry, Arthur Bourchier & Nutcombe Gould - The Illustrated London News, 16 Jenuary 1892, p.83
Sources:
A.E.W. Mason, Sir George Alexander and the St. James' Theatre [Macmillan & Co., London: 1935]
J.P. Wearing, The London Stage 1890-1899 : a calendar of productions, performers, and personnel, 2nd Edition [Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield: 2013]
Acknowledgements:
With grateful thanks to the curator and staff of the University of Bristol Theatre Collection for their assistance in providing the St. James's theatre programmes.
With thanks also to Rob Morrison for his assistance in the preparation of this article.
