"The Land of Promise."
"I'm about fed up with God's Own Country," says the waster in the play, a youth who, after exchanging a safe thousand a year at Bridge for the dangerous delights of "Chemin-de-fer," had been invited by a stern sire to migrate to Canada. And even so he had not been present during the Third Act to see the things that we saw, or he would have learnt some more discouraging facts which are never mentioned in the philosophy of the emigration-agents; for example, that the solitude and wide spaces of the Golden West seem to induce, even in the honest native worker, a reversion to the state of a dragon of the prime. But he had already seen, in the case of Norah Marsh, whom poverty had driven to seek the shelter of her brother's roof on a Manitoba farm, how the drudgery and petty jealousies of a narrow Colonial ménage, the familiar society of hired hands, and the lack of life's common amenities, had developed a gently-bred Englishwoman into a sour-tongued shrew.
Extract from "The Prentice (Manitoba) Post":—"The wedding was quite an impromptu affair, the happy pair going straight to Mr. Taylor's shack, where they are spending the honeymoon quietly."
Norah Miss Irene Vanbrugh.
Frank Taylor Mr. Godfrey Tearle.
Worse was to follow when, as a sole escape from the bitter spite of her plebeian hostess, she consented to marry a barbarian who was looking for a woman-of-all-work to manage his primitive shack. Here, having already mislaid her feminine charm, she loses all sense of honesty. First, when ordered to do her household duties—which were of the essence of the contract—she declines to obey till he uses brute force; and then, when he demands of her the attitude of a wife (a very embarrassing scene), she protests that this was no part of the bargain.
I can't imagine what she supposed the bargain was about, if it didn't require her to be either wife or servant.
Terrorism was the man's simple solution; but those who looked, in the last Act, for a tamed and adoring shrew were to be disappointed. Brute force had only produced a patient obedience; and it was not till a damaged crop had brought them to the edge of ruin that she consented to become his ministering angel. But by that time we knew too well her distaste for Manitoban methods to believe in the sincerity of this sudden conversion.
Altogether, after what Mr. Maugham has done to my illusions, I have given up any thought of going to God's Own Country in search of a larger existence.
The acting was perhaps better than the play, though the play was good up to a point. The Second Act, with its fierce jealousy and wrangling and the futile efforts of the farmer (admirably played by Mr. C. V. France) to intervene between wife and sister, was excellent. For the rest, it was the personality of Mr. Godfrey Tearle, as the savage mate of the shrew, that dominated the scene. There is no better rough diamond (and he was really very rough) in the whole stock of stage-jewellery. Miss Irene Vanbrugh, though no actress could have done more with her part, had less chance than usual of showing her particular gift of finesse; and Norah's character was too inconsistent to command our sympathy. Not that we necessarily gave it to the man. Indeed it was a flaw in the play that our sympathies were never thoroughly engaged by either party. We were, of course, prepared to range ourselves on the winning side, but there was no victory. The issue was decided by force majeure in the shape of a wretched weed that destroyed the crop.
The situations, though of a rather strenuous order, gave occasion from time to time for humorous relief. At first, when the English servant in the opening Act rudely interposed with a facetious comment on the sincerity of the grief of certain mourners, I feared lest the humour was going to be distributed loosely without regard to the propriety of its mouthpiece. But the rest was reasonable enough; and my only complaint about the best repartee ("There's no place like home." "Some people are glad there isn't") has to do with its antiquity rather than with its appropriateness.
I have never been to Manitoba (and, after seeing The Land of Promise, I am definitely resolved, as I said, never to go), so I cannot say whether Mr. Maugham's interiors corresponded to the facts; but their freedom from any signs of picturesqueness gave them an air of being the right thing. Life in these parts no doubt revolves largely round the simple joys of the stomach. Seldom have I seen so much eating on the stage. We began at Tunbridge Wells with a funeral tea (though perhaps I ought to pass this over as taking place outside the Dominion); then as soon as we get to Dyer (Manitoba) we had a mid-day dinner, with washing-up; and then at Prentice (Manitoba) we were regaled with a supper of black tea and syrup.
I am confident that there is a great opening for drama dealing solely with Life Between Meals. To see people smoking on the stage is sufficiently irritating; but, when you are assisting at a First Night after a sketchy repast from the grill, all this feeding on the stage, however frugal the menu, makes for exasperation.
Finally I must compliment Mr. Maugham on his ironical title. For his play, too, is a thing "of promise" rather than achievement, if it is to be judged by the test of the Last Act. Still, if a play only promises well enough and long enough—as this play did—that is an achievement in itself.
O. S.