As a reward for having nearly talked her to death, her self-elected champion asks Nina to present him with her cigarette case that he may add it to a very bizarre collection of curiosities he has made, including “the blood-stained handkerchief of a matador, and a half-smoked cigarette that has been pressed by the lips of an empress—one of the noblest of her sex.” To our mind, the man who can talk such rot as this is likely to be a much more troublesome creature than any of the despised Ridgeleys.
Then the husband Jesson would not be everybody’s choice; he certainly treats his second wife very unkindly, and as far as we can see the only reason for his kicking out the Ridgeleys, and allowing his wife to resume the proud privilege of keeping house for him, is that he becomes aware of the infidelity of his first wife and wreaks his vengeance upon her relatives.
We are told that two wrongs cannot make one right, and there seems no reason why the accidental revelation of the infidelities of a dead woman should suddenly transform a bad housekeeper into a good one, as probably Mr. Jesson soon discovered.
Upon the theme of this interesting play one might wander on indefinitely, but space fortunately forbids our saying more now, except that everybody should go and see “His House in Order,” and everybody should be interested by it; but we cannot think that anybody ought to call it Mr. Pinero’s masterpiece, for Mr. Pinero has written some very fine plays indeed.
Sporting Intelligence.
[During January—February, 1906.]
On January 17th Her Majesty the Queen attended the meet of the West Norfolk Foxhounds, at Rougham Hall, in a motor car; the Princess Victoria, and the Princes Edward and Albert of Wales were present on horseback. The Queen showed great interest in the pack, and photographed the hounds.
While out hunting with the Woodland Pytchley Hounds, on January 17th, Mr. John Thornton, of Pilton, Northamptonshire, when jumping a high fence, was thrown from his seat and came down on the point of the saddle, sustaining severe internal injuries, to which he succumbed on the following day.