The transition from Falstaff to Micawber, from a bibber of sack to a bibber of punch, was an easy one for Sir Herbert; but not so easy were the constant changes from and into the part of Dan'l Peggotty. Here he gave us a really admirable character-sketch—for Peggotty belongs to the region of possibility, whereas Micawber is always a creature of incredible fancy—and I am not sure that his achievement as the old salt was not, for him, the greater of the two. Certainly in the scene where he tells of his search over the world for Little Em'ly he came nearer to simple pathos than I have ever known him to come. Even the strong Somerset accent of this East Anglian tar could not conceal his sincerity.
I shrink from the odious task of distinguishing between the merits of a most admirable cast, but I must mention the delightfully piquant drollery of Miss Sydney Fairbrother as Mrs. Micawber, and the too-brief excellence of Mr. Roy Byford as the Waiter of the "Golden Cross," and Mr. Gayer Mackay as Littimer. Mr. Quartermaine's Uriah Heep—a very careful study—seemed perhaps too obviously stamped from the start with the hallmark of villany. Conversely the Betsey Trotwood of Miss Agnes Thomas appeared to be lacking in austerity of mien.
One shared Mr. Nigel Playfair's enjoyment of the futility of Mr. Dick; but this freakish figure, so typical of Dickens, seemed always a little out of the picture.
Though Mrs. Gummidge, played with a sound restraint by Miss Ada King, insisted from time to time upon the fact that she was a "lone lorn creetur'," we were spared a good many of the author's reiterated tags, and I think it was not till his friends had guaranteed to lubricate his passage to the New World that Mr. Wilkins Micawber so much as alluded to his habitual expectation of something "turning up."
The popularity of the production promises to be exceptional, and with good reason, apart from the high quality of the performance. For with its human tenderness, and the relief of its gaiety, it offers just the right kind of distraction to the strain of public emotion in these times. And, though its matter bears no relation to the subject which absorbs our hearts, the very name of Charles Dickens makes immediate appeal to that national spirit which the War has reawakened.
O. S.
TWO HERBERTS IN THE FIELD.
[In the scene of the emigration ship the entrance of Micawber follows with startling rapidity upon the exit of Dan'l Peggotty.]