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DRAWING-ROOM DRAMA 8l
The next black sheep in Savile Row clothing would be positively welcomed.
So Sir Charles Young perceived. As men of title were rare in the theatre he had been overwhelmed with good advice directly he turned playwright. One manager wanted him to steal Wagner's plots, and another told him, belatedly, that he must provide a sensation scene. When he wrote his last play, the year before his death, he pleased himself. The title of this drama, staged at the Haymarket in 1886, was the nickname of a notorious social pest— James Townsend Saward, a barrister who was transported in 1857 for cheque forgeries which menaced the " entire mercantile community ". The real names of contemporaries were ruled out by the censorship, but Jim The Penman was allowed to stay and the drawing-room drama, with Lady Monckton as leading lady, came into its own. Compared with this " romance of modern society " Diplomacy is rough house. The sole breach of good manners occurs when Captain Redwood, left alone in the conservatory, pretends to fall asleep. With an assumed slothfulness which enables him to eavesdrop, he is the new type of detective which always would, according to quite a number of authors, be new. Pressure is brought upon James Ralston, an international jewel-thief who is thought to be a City gentleman of some standing, to steal the family diamonds of his future son-in-law. When he relents, his chief accomplice (Baron Hartfeld, who was played by Tree) opposes him and a fatal heart-attack saves a lot of future trouble.
Once more a stage death challenges comparison with life, for this story makes less impression than the story of its leading actor. Dr. Arthur James paid a considerable sum in 1877 for a Kensington practice. The next year he sold out, left word that he had gone abroad for his health, and vanished — to reappear in America as an actor under the name of Arthur Dacre. With very little experience but great confidence in his good looks, he came back to London as a star and was welcomed at first. But when he tried to divorce his wife he was " the object of the execrations of the virtuous gods " ; his petition failed. His wife divorced him, and he married a Miss Hawkins of Lillie Road, Fulham, who made considerable headway on the stage under the name of Amy Roselle : she was tender and winsome in her acting, she adored her handsome husband, and he shared her opinion. She suited herself to her husband's engagements. So much has been written about his " inordinate vanity " and insane love of histrionics in private life, that a letter of his, concerning his part in Jim The Penman, may help to explain his mentality (though as eight pages are covered with his writing it cannot be quoted in full).