"THE BELOVED VAGABOND."

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 76, 28 March 1908, Page 11

"THE BELOVED VAGABOND."

New Zealand readers of Mr. W. J. Locke's delightful novel, "The Beloved Vagabond"—and I hope they are many — need not regret that they cannot see the dramatised version at His Majesty's Theatre, London. Mr. Locke has sadly mutilated his fine work in "adapting" it for the stage. The charm of the novel was in its atmosphere, its subtle flavour of the Bohemian temperament, its joy of life, and its masterly study of that prince of the open road, Berzelius Nibbidard Paragot. Most of these qualities vanish in the stage version, in which the interest is concentrated on a melodramatic, milk-and-watery story in the style of the old "Family Herald." One has the painful impression that Mr. Locke has deliberately "written down" to his theatre audience, as though he rated their intelligence far lower than that of his reading public. In the novel Paragot was above all tilings a peripatetic philosopher, a musician, a born artist, a Bohemian. His aristocratic lineage was kept in the background, and the melodramatic story of how he abandoned love and rank in order to raise money to save his fiancee's father from disgrace and imprisonment is kept in the background also, and told in a page or two of narrative towards the end of the book. And in the novel Paragot meets his fiancee Joanna again after long years, tries to become respectable again in order to marry her, trims his long nails, cuts his flowing locks, dons a most uncomfortable frock coat and hideous yellow gloves, and is desperately unhappy until at last he deliberately runs away back to Paris and freedom, and marries little Blanquette de Veau, the companion of his wanderings, leaving his genteel Joanna free to marry the respectable, well-bred, and entirely commonplace English gentleman whom in her heart of hearts she really preferred. Paragot finds happiness in renouncing his rank, turning his back on society, -and, with the humble and devoted Blanquette as helpmate, leading the, life of a peasant in sunny, 'grance.

That is the Paragot of the novel. But in the play only the second act gives us the "beloved vagabond.'' In the first act we<£nd Paragot, as Gaston de Nerac, entertaining a -company of high-class Bohemians, -who are as prosaic as a borough council. He is about to maTry Joanna, daughter of the president of the AngloParisian Bank. To gave hjs fiancee's noble parent from.financial ruin and imprisonment, he sells the lady's hand for half a million francs to the villain of the piece, a wicked French Count, and goes out into the world as Paragot, a wandering philosopher-minstrel. As such we see him in the second act, and this is much the best part of the play. Mr. Beerbohm Tree makes Paragot a very picturesque wanderer, and his acting has many happy suggestions of the- Paragot of the novel. In the third act the wicked Count dies, and Joanna, dressed in black, seeks out the dissolute Paragot insordor to deliver a letter from the Count. Instead of posting it, she climbs up to his Parisian attic, and there little Blanquette" reveals to her the truth about the hero's romantic self-sacrifice. So of course Joanna and.Paragot are reconciled, and presumably get married and live happily ever after. And little Blanquette, who loves the wanderer with such dog-like devotion, sees him carried off by the genteel Joanna, arid the curtain comes down amidst the thunders of applause from the sentimental British public.