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Page 16
How much she owes to Miss FAY COMPTON'S interpretation of _Sheila_
she would be the first to make generous acknowledgment. It was an
astonishingly sensitive performance. Miss COMPTON can be eloquent with
a single word or none at all. By a turn of her eyes or lips she can
make you free of her inarticulate thoughts. I must go again just to
hear her say "Yes," and give that sigh of content at the end of the
First Act.
Mr. AUBREY SMITH as _Mark Holdsworth_ had a much easier task, and
did it with his habitual ease. Mr. WILLIAM FARREN--a very welcome
return--was perfect as ever in a good grumpy part. It was strange
to see the gentle Miss STELLA CAMPBELL playing the unsympathetic
character of a jealous and rather cruel woman; but she took to it
quite kindly. Mr. LANCE LISTER, as the boy _Geoffrey_, who kept
intervening in the most sportsmanlike way on the weaker side and
adjusting some very awkward complications with the gayest and most
resolute tact, was extraordinarily good. Admirable, too, were Miss
JOYCE CAREY as a shop-girl friend of _Sheila's_ boarding-house period,
and Mr. HENRY OSCAR as her "fate," whose line was shirts. The scene in
which these two encounter the superior relatives of _Sheila's_ husband
abounded in good fun, kept well within the limits of comedy. It was
a pure joy to hear _Miss Hooker's_ garrulous efforts to carry off the
situation with aggressive gentility; but even more fascinating was the
abashed silence of her young man, broken only when he blurted out the
word "shirts," and gave the show away.
The whole cast was excellent, and Sir GEORGE ALEXANDER must be
felicitated on a very clever production. But it is to author and
heroine that I beg to offer the best of my gratitude for a most
refreshing evening.
O.S.
* * * * *
"You will find that the men most likely to get off the note
are those who never really got on to it."--_Musical Times_.
The real question is how those who never got on to the note contrive
to get off it.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Mother_ (_reading paper_). "I SEE A BAKER'S BEEN FINED
TEN POUNDS FOR SELLING BREAD LESS THAN TWELVE HOURS OLD."
_Alan_ (_who now goes to school by train_--_joining in_). "OH, THINK!
AND HE MIGHT HAVE PULLED THE CORD AND STOPPED THE TRAIN _TWICE_ FOR
THAT!"]
* * * * *
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(_BY MR. PUNCH'S STAFF OF LEARNED CLERKS_.)
When I first read the title of _Secret Bread_ (HEINEMANN) my idea
was--well, what would anyone naturally think but that here was a
romance of food-hoarding, a tale of running the potato blockade and
the final discovery of a hidden cellar full of fresh rolls? But of
course I was quite wrong. The name has nothing to do with food, other
than mental; it stands for the sustaining idea (whatever it is)
that each one of us keeps locked in his heart as the motive of his
existence. With _Ishmael Ruan_, the hero of Miss F. TENNYSON JESSE'S
novel, this hidden motive was love of the old farm-house hall of
Cloom, and a wish to hand it on, richer, to his son. _Ishmael_
inherited Cloom himself because, though the youngest of a large
family, he was the only one born in wedlock. Hence the second theme of
the story, the jealousy between _Ishmael_ and _Archelaus_, the elder
illegitimate brother. How, through the long lives of both, this
enmity is kept up, and the frightful vengeance that ends it, make an
absorbing and powerful story. The pictures of Cornish farm-life also
are admirably done--though I feel bound to repeat my conviction that
the time is at hand when, for their own interest, our novelists will
have to proclaim what one might call a close time for pilchards.
Still, Miss JESSE has written an unusually clever book, full of
vigour and passion, of which the interest never flags throughout the
five-hundred-odd closely-printed pages that carry its protagonists
from the early sixties almost to the present day. No small
achievement.
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