Bringing Down the House.
Personally, I must admit that I received with joy the news that he was drinking himself to death, and only felt the deepest regret when I learned that he had not perished in an admirably contrived Earthquake.
Sweets to the Sweet.
But, in spite of Mr. Jack Lovell, Oxford, at Drury Lane, contained a number of interesting persons. The Doddipotts, father and son, with their American relative (Miss Brough), were most amusing, and I was quite satisfied to accompany them to Nice and Monte Carlo, to see the Battle of Flowers, the Carnival Ball, and last, but not least, the Earthquake. This latter effect, in more senses than one, "brought down the house." In Pleasure the stage-management is excellent throughout, and, of the joint authorship of the piece, I think I may safely say that its chief merit lies in the name of Harris. Not a mythical "Harris," like unto the friend of Mrs. Gamp, but some one far more substantial, the great Augustus Druriolanus himself. Whether one is gazing upon the Sheldonian Theatre (the background to an Oxford Mixture of no common kind), or the Barges, or the Promenade des Anglais, or the Carnival Ball, the presence of an excellent master of effect is seen in every group, in every detail.
An Oxford Mixture.
Pleasure is described as a Comedy-Drama, and the plot is not, perhaps, as strong as some of its predecessors. As "strength" at a theatre invariably spells "murder" or "sudden death," I am not at all sure that this absence of the ultra-melodramatic is not to be welcomed, in spite of the taste for the horrible which is supposed to be the characteristic of those who patronise the pit and gallery. But what the People (with a capital initial letter) lose in the ghastly, they certainly gain in the beautiful. If the scenery at Drury Lane of the Riviera does not cause "Personally conducted tours" to be more numerously attended next year than ever, I shall be more than surprised—I shall be disappointed. Even the Earthquake should not be a deterrent, for as far as I could learn from "the incident" at Drury Lane, no one was a penny the worse for the shaking. Even the unworthy Lovell escaped—I fancy up the chimney. If this were so, it would only be in keeping with his character.
In the first Drury Lane success, The World (by the same authors as Pleasure), there was a wonderful clergyman, played by the late Mr. Ryder, whose cynicism was equal to his audacity. This strange ecclesiastic I remember, having sown an unusually large crop of wild oats in his youth, on his return from Evening Service in his middle age, imperiously refused to allow a lady to remain in his parish because she had once been deeply attached to him, and had loved him "not wisely, but too well." I shall never forget the dignified earnestness of the late Mr. Ryder as he explained to this lady his position as a married man, and sternly ordered her to move on. Had Mr. Jack Lovell been ordained, I fancy he would have made an excellent curate to this reverend gentleman, and that between them they would have formed what is satirically termed a "pretty pair."
It is possible that the original intention of the authors of Pleasure may have been to have conferred on the hero of their piece a Deanery, or even an Archbishopric, and that the recollection of this prior clerical creation may have influenced them to alter their contemplated Church patronage into a temporal peerage linked with twenty thousand a-year. Be this as it may, Jack and his prototype will rest in my memory as companion pictures, of what a clergyman might, could, would (but should not) be. The scenery and the admirable stage-management make Mr. Lovell and his doings bearable. They pull him through. For the rest, Pleasure is an amusing play, well mounted, and capitally acted, and should keep the boards until December brings to Drury Lane and a delighted world the Christmas Pantomime. On the first night all went well up to the end of the Fifth Act; but the last, after the excitement of the Riviera scenes, came as rather an anti-climax.—I beg to sign myself, in compliment to and emulation of the Earthquake,