Sir Geoffrey's father, it seems, had before his marriage run away with a girl not of his own rank, who had generously refused to spoil the family tree by marrying him; and Fishpingle was the result. You might judge from the peculiarity of his surname that the matter was taken lightly by his parents. But you would be wrong. His mother died when he was born, and his first name (for I cannot call it a Christian name) was Benoni, which, being interpreted, means "the child of sorrow." Sir Geoffrey's grandmother, who had discouraged the legal adjustment of the relationship between the lovers, had tried to repair matters by educating Fishpingle above the obscurity of his irregular birth; hence his comparative erudition, rare in a butler.
THE BREED OF THE POMFRETS.
Fishpingle (to himself). "How anybody can fail to see the extraordinary family likeness between us I cannot imagine."
Fishpingle.... Mr. Henry Ainley. Sir Geoffrey Pomfret. Mr. Allan Aynesworth.
Now the opening of the play had put me into a mood which was not the right one for the reception of this extract from a deplorable past. Some comedies would be all the better for a little tragic relief; but this was too much. Mr. Vachell had no business to give his play a title like Fishpingle. He should have called it "Nature's Nobleman, or The Tragical Romance of a Faithful Butler's Birth," and then I might have known what to expect. As it was I felt aggrieved. It was not, of course, a question of asking for my money back at the doors (critics, to be just to them, never do this in the case of a complimentary seat), but I felt I had a right to protest against this attempt to harrow my heart-strings, attuned as they were to the key of comedy, with a painful drama dating back to more than half a century before the rise of the curtain, and with its chief actors all dead. And the irritating mystery in which it was wrapped only made things worse. Further, I suffered a considerable strain on both my head and my heart in consequence of obscure hints (vaguely involving a photograph on his mantelpiece) as to the reason why Fishpingle remained a bachelor to the bitter end.
But I am ashamed to appear flippant, for Mr. Ainley played with exquisite feeling and a fine sincerity. And I have to thank Mr. Vachell for giving us some excellent studies of character—not character developed before our eyes by circumstance (except perhaps a little at the last), but admirably observed as a kind of fixture to be taken with the house.
And if the play is not quite on the high level of Mr. Galsworthy's The Eldest Son, which it faintly recalls, it is much more worthy of Mr. Vachell's gifts than the poor thing, Penn, which died so young. Also he is very much more fortunate this time in his cast. Miss Marion Terry, as Lady Pomfret, was a pattern of sweet graciousness; and Mr. Allan Aynesworth was at his happiest as Sir Geoffrey. And the two pairs of lovers, Mr. Cyril Raymond and Miss Maud Bell above stairs, and Mr. Reginald Bach and Miss Doris Lytton below (they were really all of them on the ground floor, the butler's room being the common trysting-place), served as delightful examples of natural selection—both on their own part and that of the management—and were as fresh and healthy as the most eugenical could desire.
O. S.