A shadow passed suddenly across the author's brow.
"And the sickening thing," he said, as he leant back in his chair and sipped his ginger-beer, "is that on the cover of it I've spelt Disappointment with two 's's.'"
(The troubles of this literary life!)
"Sickening," I agreed.
If there is one form of theft utterly unforgivable it is the theft by a writer of another writer's undeveloped ideas. Borrow the plot of Sir J. M. Barrie's last play, and you do him no harm; you only write yourself down a plagiarist. But listen to the scenario of his next play (if he is kind enough to read it to you) and write it up before he has time to develop it himself, and you do him a grievous wrong; for you fix the charge of plagiarism on him. Surely, you say, no author could sink so low as this.
And yet, when I got home, the plot of "Disappointment" (with one "s") so took hold of me that I did the unforgivable thing; I went to my desk and wrote the opera. I make no excuses for myself. I only point out that Bobby's opera, as performed at Covent Garden in Italian, with Short's music conducted by Richter, is not likely to be belittled by anything that I may write here. I have only written in order that I may get the scenario—which had begun to haunt me—off my chest. Bobby, I know, will understand and forgive; Short I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting, but I believe he is smaller than Bobby.
Act I.
Scene—A grand restaurant. Enter Tommy, a very handsome man, just back from Oxford.
Tommy sings: