The principal act occurs in the “man’s rooms”—with the girl, the mother and the man. Barrie, in a positive ecstasy of ghoulish “humor,” allows the mother to understand the girl’s idea. She clamors for her daughter’s love, and believes that the best way to secure it will be to feign guilt, so that the girl can “rescue” her. This she does. Amy believes that she has saved her mamma from a horrible fate—mamma caters diligently to that suggestion—and the play ends with Amy’s betrothal to the man in the case.
In this play Barrie has violated sheer decency of sentiment. It is all very well to shower satire upon the matinée girl—she can stand it, and has stood it full many a time and oft—but to mix her up in the imaginary adultery of her own mother—and as a joke, saving the mark!—gives one such a disagreeable shock, that recovery from its effects is quite out of the question. To be even more delicately humorous, Barrie might have introduced the grandmother under similarly suspicious circumstances.
It is all very well to write caviare, but the caviare must be fresh and not putrid. Barrie’s “humor” in “Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire” has the taint of decay—as it had the germ of acute dyspepsia in that atrocity produced in New York under the title of “Little Mary.” Real humor attacks hereditary sentiment with delicacy, and a certain amount of timidity. To completely realize this you have but to study George Bernard Shaw, who, while he flouts a thousand traditions, and is rarely amusing unless he is flouting, does so with a keen appreciation of what he is doing. The redoubtable George may even scoff occasionally at filial sentiment, but he would never dredge humor from the imaginary sin of a mother, used as a joke to please her own stagestruck daughter. At the close of “Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire” one wondered what Amy, after her marriage to the man in the case, would think of the maudlin situation. And this, please your grace, has been announced as Barrie’s crowning fantasy! Fortunately, we have “Peter Pan” to hear from in New York. Not having seen that, I pin my faith to it, for I want to hold on to Barrie a bit longer, in spite of “Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire.”
This “page from a daughter’s diary” was preceded by a sketch, also by Barrie, entitled “Pantaloon,” and programed as “a plea for an ancient family.” There is no need to discuss this one-act trifle, with its pathos and bathos, in extraordinary blend, and no single salient idea to carry it through. The elopement of Harlequin and Columbine, with the jilting of Clown, and the distress of Pantaloon may perchance be a “plea for an ancient family,” and as there are all sorts of pleas, you are possibly allowed to pay your money and take your choice.
It was Ellen Terry who played Alice, in the “Sit-by-the-Fire” affair. Poor Ellen Terry! To my mind it was sad and disheartening. Why should an actress who has had such a joyous career as that which fell to Miss Terry’s lot, elect, in her ultra maturity, to play a bad part in a bad play—and not too well? There is tragedy in this continued, and—I should say—unnecessary service. Probably there are still roles that Miss Terry might acceptably play, but as the forty-year-old mother in this wretched piece one could but feel sorry for her—and sorry for those who saw her. I have heard that Miss Ethel Barrymore plays the part in the United States. I can’t believe it until I see it.
Miss Irene Vanbrugh—you remember her in “The Gay Lord Quex”—was the matinée girl, with much force. There are flashes of humor in the part, and Miss Vanbrugh made the most of them. For the benefit of those who may see “Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire” on the American side of the pond, the rest of the cast was made up of Aubrey Smith, A. E. Mathews, Kenneth Douglas, Lettice Fairfax—who was once in Augustin Daly’s New York company—Dora Hole, Edith Craig and Hilda Trevelyan.
Always at this time of year there is an influx of foreign actresses into London. They come; they are seen; but they never conquer. They must be awfully tired of it, for history has such a sad way of repeating itself. This year, however, one French actress has made a good deal of a stir, but under such distinctly new conditions that the stir is quite intelligible. This young woman, Madame Simone Le Bargy, of whom I wrote you last year when I reviewed “Le Retour de Jerusalem” from Paris, was brought to London by George Alexander, the actor-manager of the St. James Theater, not for a season “on her own,” but as his leading lady, and in English, too!
A French actress in English! Could anything be more unusual? Sarah Bernhardt, who has been cavorting around the English-speaking world for portentous yet vulgar fractions of a century, never managed to acquire even a suspicion of English; Rêjane, who has done London and New York pretty thoroughly, would have an artistic fit at the idea of juggling with English, at her time of life; Jane Hading, Jeanne Granier and others are quite willing to play anywhere, but it must be in French.
Madame Simone Le Bargy played the leading rôle in “The Man of the Moment,” at the St. James Theater, and was duly and unselfishly boomed by Mr. George Alexander, as “of the Gymnase Théâtre, Paris. Her first appearance in England.” The piece was an adaptation, by Harry Melvill, of “L’Adversaire,” by Alfred Capus and Emmanuel Arène. The English actor-manager was a wise man in his London generation. He had a weak play, most indifferently adapted, but he had Le Bargy, and for a while she caught the town.
While English leading ladies must have fumed at Alexander’s neglect of “home talent,” Madame Le Bargy showed that it is quite possible not only to play with grace and facility in a foreign language, but actually to prove more intelligible than a good many London actresses who flatter themselves that they speak good English. Madame Le Bargy’s English was an absolute revelation. Naturally it had an accent—a delightful one—and Paris was stamped on everything she said, but compared with Mrs. Fiske in New York, or Miss Ashwell in London, Madame Le Bargy’s diction was wonderful. Every word she uttered was intelligible. She rattled off various speeches almost as quickly as she might have done in French, but never once did their meaning miscarry. I’ve seen all sorts of foreign actresses waylay the English language—Modjeska and Janauschek being in the list—but seldom have such results as those given by this little, thin, nervous Frenchwoman been attained.