OUR LONDON FLANEUR.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5093, 29 August 1884, Page 3

OUR LONDON FLANEUR.

* (From the "Star's" London Correspondent.) SOCIAL, THEATRICAL, AND LITERARY GOSSIP. 11. AT THE THEATRES. This hot weather is " ruination " (as Mrs Brown would say) to the theatres. Mo6t of the West End houses are already closed, and very few will re-open again ; before September. At the Empire the I magnificent spectacle of " Chilperic " — for | which Tawhiao and his suite have shown j such predilection — is coming to the end of j its run, and Mr Farnie is busy touching up ! the "Cloches de Corneville" to take ita j place. Rumours relative to the vast scale j aud splendour of this revival are already ! rampant, and will probably turn out to be J true. The Empire management hope to j beat Mr Holland and the Alhambra direc- j torate at their own game. " The Mascotte " j was withdrawn from the Comedy last week, j and the theatre is now closed. It will reopen in September with a revival of " Rip : Van Winkle," after which a new opera by j M. Audran, founded on " The Miller of i the Dee," will be produced. M. Audran j has undertaken to write four comic operas i — libretti by Farnie — for the London stage • within the next two years. Let us hope ' there will be another "Olivette" amongst j them. On one of the hottest afternoons of the ! season your old friend Ada Ward appeared I as Pauline, in the " Lady of Lyons," at a j matinde at the Princes Theatre. A few i professionals and old acquaintances looked j in at the performance for ten minutes, but j nobody stayed long. Most of the critics j seem to have been impressed hy Miss j Ward's dresses rather than her acting. The case of Finney v. Garmoyle hasbeen j settled out of Court. That much is now ' certain, but what amount of damages Lord j Cairns agreed to pay no one can aver ; positively. The Referee says .£14,000 only, ' the Era .£17,000, and a law paper .£13,000. | The revival of " Our Boys " at the Strand j is a complete failure. It seems strange ■ that a comedy which ran for more than a j 1000 nights in London a few years ago \ can't fill a small theatre now for a month, j but such is the fact. David James has '. already put " She Stoops to Conquer " into i rehearsal as a stop-gap, and James Albury j is busy translating the piece at present ! running at the Palais Royal in Paris, to j follow. | " Featherbrain," the farcical comedy that j very nearly came to grief when it was first | played at the Criterion has been worked up j into a positive Buooess. and now seems j likely to run till Christmas. "" Princess : Ida," on the other hand languishes so, that j a revival of " Pinafore " may be fallen back upon. "TWELFTH NIGHT" AT THE LYCEUM. " Twelfth Night " was produced at the Lyceum on July 8, in the presence of a not t altogether friendly audience. The piece j is lavishly mounted and capitally played, j but somehow or other it didn't "" go" with i the spirit to which admirers of Henry i Irving and Ellen Terry have grown j accustomed. For one thing the night was overpoweringly hot, and the performance long. Considering the play had been illus- j trated -with sixteen elaborate set scenes, l half -past eleven was not very late for it to i be over. The majority showed themselves ; satisfied with the entertainment, and ; applauded lustily, but amidst the cheers j and clapping could be distinctly heard 1 some clear, well-defined hisses. Most i actors would have put down the display to ] a few ill-tempered gallery boys, and ignored it. With doubtful sagacity Irving rose to ] the bait, and when called on to the stage for j his customary speech demanded to know j the meaning of the disturbance. Candidly '. owning that he had been away some time j from England, and waß not quite accus- j tomed to the evidently altered attitude of 1 first night audiences, he owned to feeling ! the existence of a strange element in the i house, which he did not understand. He was perplexed and puzzled at the possi- J bility of any opposition in the face of what i had been done, and what had been seen. I His company, he knew, was as good a one as ! could be got together, the scenes were of i exceptional beauty, and the performance j I all round was above the average. What '< j then did the hissing mean ? From some ! J actors such a protest would have been | j bitterly resented, but Irving can do no ; j wrong at present, and was warmly encour- j . aged. G. M. Anson, for venturing on a ; ! Bimilar trip when one of Wilkie Collins j j play 3 was damned, got himself howled off ) j the stage, and has not to this day obtained j I full forgiveness from the Adelphi Theatre j • audience. Fortunately, London theatre- j j goers are capricious, or even Irving might j ! have regretted his temerity. j | The success par excellence of " Twelfth j j Night " is Miss Ellen Terry's Viola. Since ! i her sister Kate scored such a triumph in I j the part, it has never been played as it is j j now. On this point all the authorities are • ■ agreed. Adelaide Neilson was a fair, and ! j Miss Wallis a passable Viola, but neither ; 'of them approached the Terry cristers. • '. living's Malvolio seems to be estimated I . variously. Mr Clement Scott gushes j ecstatically over its " quaint subtlety," but | old playgoers shake their heads and mutter j " not to be mentioned with poor Compton's j reading of the character." j AHONGST THE BOOKS. ; "My Ducats and My Daughter "is the title of a novel everybody is asking for at Mudie's just now. I read it straight ■ ! through without stopping, and I confess I ! was much interested. The hero comes into . a fortune and loses his sweetheart siuiul- ; taneously, the latter deliberately sacrificing j herself in order to prevent her degenerate j father plundering the man she loves, j Camilla's reward for this high-flown conduct . is to lose her Arthur altogether. His j anger at her supposed faithlessness kills j his love, and when she reveals the truth, I instead of being thanked for her self- j immolation, she is informed that his heart ■ ia no longer hers. The situation is admirably led up to and effectively do- , scribed. j ; " Little Lady Linton," Frank Barrett's j \ last and best novel, has a capital plot. A j ; disagreeable mother has a disagreeable j ; daughter whom she has married well. The j ( daughter misbehaves herself not a little, but disappears mysteriously, and in a way | opportunely. The mother makes up her mind that she has been murdered, and ; applies to a private enquiry office to trace the crime home. It 1b no injustice either to Mr Barrett or to the probable reader to j make the obvious statement that the daughter is not dead at all. She turns up again in a fashion discreditable but not at j all impossible, and the unlucky (but more j unamiable than unlucky) mother discovers the facts, with results equally unpleasant j to herself and the first Lady Linton. The j baronet hero and his second wife, " little ! Lady Linton," aro both well drawn and j most interesting personages ; in fact, the i work as a whole is a great advance on

" Folly Morison," and other of the same author's earlier works. Do you like weird mystic ghost-stories ? If so go right away to the nearest booksellers and order Sheridan Le Fanu's " In a Glasß Darkly," which has just been reissued by Mr Bentley at 6s. It was this book you may remember which struck the late Duke of Albany so strongly. He read it whilst at Nice, and spoke of it to his doctor the night before he died. All Le Fanu's novels are of a more or less blood-curdling description. As a boy I remember shuddering over " Uncle Silas," indeed, it is not a book I should care to read even now last thing at night. About two years ago one of the literary sensations of the season was Mr Robert Louis Stevenson's " New Arabian Nights." This work can now be obtained for two shillings, and is well worth the money. The only other, cheap editions that have come out since I last wrote, are " Lady Sef ton's Pride," by Dora Russell; and "A Heart's Problem," by Charles Gibbon. Neither deserve favourable mention. Charle3 Reade's valedictory novel, " A Perilous Secret," was published yesterday. It is simply an amplified edition of " Love or Money," the play of his that proved a semi-failure at the Adelphi last year. Rumour says that Mr Bentfey paid .£SOOO for the copyright. If so, I fear he has got a bad bargain. The story is a commonplace one, and not to be compared with any of the author's earlier works. Failing powers and a weakened intellect are everywhere evident.