[Enter, hurriedly, Mr. C. T. H. Helmsley.] Mr. Alexander, a moment with you! A most important telegram has just arrived.
Faust (reading). ‘Handed in at Greba Castle, 10.15. Reply paid. Do not close with Stephen Phillips until you have seen my
play of Gretchen, same subject, five acts and twelve tableaux.—Hall Caine.’ Where is Mr. Stephen Phillips? [Stephen Phillips advances.] My dear Phillips, I think we will put up Harold Hodge instead. ‘The Last of the Anglo-Saxon Editors,’ by the last Anglo-Saxon poet.
Curtain.
(1906.)
To W. Barclay Squire, Esq.
SHAVIANS FROM SUPERMAN.
Donna Ana has vanished to sup her man at the Savoy; the Devil and the Statue are descending through trap, when a voice is heard crying, ‘Stop, stop’; the mechanism is arrested and there appears in the empyrean Mr. Charles Hazelwood Shannon, the artist, with halo.
The Devil (while Shannon regains his breath). Really, Mr. Shannon, this is a great pleasure and quite unexpected. I am truly honoured. No quarrel I hope with the International? Pennell quite well? How is the Whistler memorial getting on?
Shannon. So-so. To be quite frank I had no time to prepare for Heaven, and earth has become intolerable for me. (Seeing the Statue.) Is that a Rodin you have there?