“Mr. Hopkinson,” however, would scarcely be possible for American consumption. Its hero is a cockney cad, who would hardly be intelligible in New York. New York has its own brand of cad—a highly accentuated kind—and should not be blamed for shirking the notion of fathoming the motives of the English style of blackguard. Then the part of Hopkinson is played by Mr. James Welch, for whom it might have been built. I can imagine no other actor playing it, with the possible exception of Francis Wilson. The piece has simply hung onto the coat tails of little Mr. James Welch.
It is a farce filled with nasty types—all titled, of course. People who nauseate, if taken seriously, are used as the excuse for various farcical situations. Hopkinson himself, who is a rich “bounder,” becomes engaged to a pretty society girl, and on the eve of the wedding she elopes. The “hero” then marries a woman whom he has jilted, and who, in her turn, has blackmailed him. Nearly all the characters in the piece are of the decadent order. They are the sort that occur seriously in “The Walls of Jericho,” at the Garrick Theater. They are, perhaps, better there, but quite unnecessary anywhere, and even improper.
“Mr. Hopkinson” has puzzled a good many people who saw it. They have wondered why it ran so long, and what there was in the piece that held it up, so to speak. Its success was simply due to James Welch, a quaint, freakish little actor—a sort of Louie Freear in trousers. Many plays of the same slight artistic value have succeeded because one actor has seemed to give a new wrinkle in comedy to the public. “Mr. Hopkinson” without James Welch would be a singularly risky proposition—worse than “Leah Kleschna” without Mrs. Fiske. Evidently the “American invasion” agreed with me—which makes it pleasant for me, don’t you think?
FOR BOOK LOVERS
Archibald Lowery Sessions
Literary preferences of well known people. How characters and doings in real life are reflected in fiction. Robert Grant’s “The Orchid,” William J. Locke’s “The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne.” The twenty-five best selling books of the month
THE public has passed a few pleasant summer hours in discussing, through the medium of various journals, what people like to read. Very interesting information comes to light regarding the sort of fiction preferred by different personalities, female chiefly, in days past and present. There seems to be no difficulty in getting hold of facts; indeed, it becomes apparently a sort of mania with some successful people to explain their own results by hunting up their early literary likes and dislikes. Perhaps stories have molded some of us more or less—in all conscience let us hope so—since we wander in such a wilderness of them.