FORAIN.
When M. Raemaekers went to Paris the other day to receive his decoration and be fêted for his fine pro-Ally spirit, it was M. Forain, as the head of living French cartoonists, who received him in the name of France and conferred the Order. M. Forain's public appearances are nowadays few and far between, but he still wields—and none more searchingly—a pencil keen and swift as a sword, and he never takes it in hand but to create something memorable. A selection of his recent work is now on view in London at 22, Montagu Square, the residence of Mr. Campbell Dodgson, the Keeper of the Prints at the British Museum, the proceeds of the entrance fees being intended for a hospital for French wounded soldiers at Arc-en-Barrois. The little exhibition, which should be seen by all who love great draughtsmanship and France, remains open until April 1.
AT THE PLAY.
"The Barton Mystery."
One of the most difficult feats of juggling is, I understand, the deft tossing up and catching of a heavy weight (say a dumb-bell), a very light weight, such as a champagne cork, together with any old thing of irregular shape, a bedroom candlestick, for instance. Mr. Walter Hackett's The Barton Mystery is a most ingenious turn of this sort.
The fiancé of the sister of the wife of Richard Standish, M.P., is under sentence of death for the murder of Mr. Barton. He happens to be innocent, though he admits at the trial that he quarrelled violently with and even threatened Barton on the night of the murder, and his revolver has been found by the dead man's side. That vindictive relict, Mrs. Barton, is holding back some material evidence which could save the condemned man, or so Standish thinks, and she is adamant. Now Barton was unquestionably a bad egg, but the widow doesn't want the whole world to know it—at least not till she finds the woman. Some woman, who had incidentally written some, shall we say, very impetuous love letters, is being shielded. Who is she? Is it Standish's wife, for instance? Ah!... This is the dumb-bell.
A Lady Marshall, the wife of a Sir Everard Marshall, a comic scientist in perpetual flight from his overwhelming spouse, is one of the sort that finds a new religion every few months and is now in the first fast furious throes of her latest, which is some form of psychomania, whereof the high priest is one Beverley, a plausible ringletted charlatan of alcoholic tendencies (Sludge the Medium, without his cringe and snarl), who ekes out his spasmodic visitations of genuine psychic illumination with the most shameless spoof. This is the cork.