After reading the whole letter one may hint that Guilbert's own ideas might not serve her very well if she tried to appear as improvisator.
[CHAPTER XIII ]
MISCELLANEOUS
[Finance in Plays ]
It is to be hoped that the title will not be misunderstood. The finance of plays is quite another story, often an ugly story, sometimes with a comic aspect, and frequently disclosed in a bankruptcy or a winding-up. Occasionally in pieces supposed to be quite modern we are told, incorrectly, a good deal about the way in which plays are financed, which does not mean the mode of spending money on the production and performance of dramas and in keeping theatres open—or closed—but the method of raising money for theatrical enterprises. Certainly, the subject is worthy of consideration, and some day we hope to handle it almost adequately. The remarks, however, concern the ideas of general finance exhibited by authors. Mr Sutro's drama The Perfect Lover set us thinking. No doubt the title does not suggest money, nor, indeed, does it give an idea of the real subject of the drama. In his new work the author preaches a sermon about the corrupting influence of wealth and the desire for it. As business men, in a sort of second-hand way, most of us were interested in the talk concerning money.
Everything turns upon the fact that Willie, the wicked solicitor, wishes to buy the Cardew estates, which (though the property of a noble family) happen to be unsettled, because he has discovered that there is coal under them, and therefore scents a fortune in the purchase. The moment that the word "coal" is mentioned to the persons in the play everything is understood—by them. All assume that the property is multiplied in value by its existence. Joe is to be offered £5000 to bring about the sale. A simple practical person, such as a dramatic critic, is inclined to ask whether Willie is not buying a pig in a poke. He can hardly have had shafts sunk surreptitiously on the Cardew estates in order to ascertain whether the coal-mines would be a curse or a blessing to the owner; and if the property adjoined valuable collieries, the Cardews would have made some investigation.
For it by no means follows that a coal-mine is a source of wealth, since the "black diamonds," concerning our available quantity of which Professor Jevons scared our fathers when some of us were agreeably younger, may be indifferent in quality or lie with such faults and in a manner so inconvenient that it can only be worked at a ruinous cost. Nevertheless, whenever the magic word "coal" is whispered the characters are thrilled, like housewives reminded by their husband that they have forgotten to order it at the "lowest summer prices." No doubt the author will say that after all coal is coal, and may be reminded of the plaintive retort by the little girl in Punch that "mother said the last lot was nearly all slates." Willie talks of making a million out of the purchase; he is fortified in his views by the fact that the Great Central Railway is going to run through part of the property. Writers of fiction are apt to believe that in these times land-owners receive on compulsory purchase the extravagant sums that used to be awarded in past days and by their magnitude have hampered the railway companies and the general public ever since; juries or arbitrators have come to their senses, and compensation no longer spells unmerited fortune, except by the reaping of a large crop of "unearned increment." And now there are the new taxes.
It may be suggested that we do not demand exact finance or correct law in our fiction nowadays. A few, indeed, are meticulous in the matter, but it is generally assumed that the public would be bored by correct details. No one has ventured to dramatize Laurence Oliphant's brilliantly humorous "Autobiography of a Joint Stock Company"—apologies if by slip of memory the title is given at all incorrectly. Occasionally, it is true, our plays treat financial matters with some particularity; one may cite Mammon and A Bunch of Violets, both versions of Feuillet's drama Montjoie, and Mr Arthur Jones's clever piece A Rogue's Comedy, and Business is Business, the adaptation of Les Affaires sont les Affaires. Moreover, there was a melodrama given at the Opéra Comique which, despite the care of the Censor, contained caricatures of several notorious living financiers. They were financiers touching whom one may record the story, perhaps unpublished, of an American who asserted vaingloriously that we have no great financiers in England such as are to be found in the United States, and on being answered that we have, and thereupon inquiring scornfully where they could be found, received the curt reply, "In gaol." Unfortunately, the finances of the Opéra Comique production were almost as unsubstantial as the finance in the other plays, and it did not last long.
Mr Cecil Raleigh also, in some of the Drury Lane dramas which used to give us vast entertainment, handled company matters in a broad, generous, comic fashion which baffled criticism.
Would a public so abominably engrossed as ours in money, a people that is exchanging the ascendency of an aristocracy for the despotism of a plutocracy, a nation a large proportion of which gambles on the Stock Exchange whilst another plays bridge for shocking stakes, really reject a drama turning on financial matters and containing a moderate amount of accurate detail? If there is little poetry in Throgmorton Street, at least there is plenty of romance, and more imagination is exhibited in the average prospectus than in the ordinary play. It would not be impossible to introduce a touch of sentiment, assuming, sadly, that the playgoers cannot be happy without a little bit of sugar; whilst the fierce clash of men in the mad pursuit for wealth—a pursuit, after all, more engrossing than that of love—is often terribly dramatic. There was a piece called The Wheat King, an adaptation of one of the few books by the powerful American novelist Norris, who died too young. The version, made by two ladies, very nearly fulfilled the conditions suggested, and it almost achieved success.