Between these two plays was sandwiched Mr. A.A.  MILNE’S

“WURZEL-FLUMMERY.”

There was never any doubt about the freshness and spontaneity of Mr. MILNE’S humour.  The only question was whether an author so fastidiously unstagey, who never underlines his intentions, would be able to accommodate himself to the conditions of a medium that discourages the elliptical method.  Well, he did it, and very artfully.  He began by making concessions to the habits of his new audience.  He wouldn’t try them too high at first.  In the person of Robert Crawshaw, M.P. (Mr. NIGEL PLAYFAIR), he introduced them to a more or less conventional type—­exposed, it is true, to a very unusual test of character but dealing with it as such a type was bound to deal.  Then, having inspired confidence, he created a rarer atmosphere, and in Denis Clifton, a blend of solicitor and play-wright, he produced a figure of fantasy whose delightfully irresponsible humour might have found his audience a little shy at an earlier stage.  There was a real note of distinction, extraordinarily well maintained, in Clifton’s dialogue with Crawshaw and the boy-clerk, and Mr. MILNE was particularly fortunate to have the part interpreted by Mr. DION BOUCICAULT, who developed qualities undreamed of in my previous estimation of his gifts.

When that inveterate cynic, Anthony Clifton, made a will (it is not Mr. MILNE’S fault that, since he wrote his play before going out to the Front, we have had two others turning on eccentric bequests) leaving L50,000 each to two perfect strangers on the condition that they adopted the preposterous name of Wurzel-Flummery, he hoped to have the grim satisfaction of witnessing, from the grave, an exhibition of human weakness.  Of the two legatees—­politicians on opposite sides of the House—­Crawshaw, whose whiskers gave him the air of a successful grocer of the mid-Victorian period, found reasons sufficiently convincing to himself for accepting the testator’s terms; while Richard Meriton, who had little besides his salary as an M.P., took the high line of proper pride and declared his determination to refuse.  Mr. MILNE, by the way, did not specify the respective politics of these two, but I judge, from my knowledge of his own, that Crawshaw was meant to be a Tory and Meriton a Liberal.

The latter eventually succumbed to pressure on the part of Crawshaw’s daughter, who cared nothing for names so long as she could marry the man of her choice—­a prospect denied to her by her father, who thought little of poor men.  Meanwhile Meriton’s lofty attitude of general contempt for money, and particular contempt for it when offered on degrading terms, gave scope for a little serious relief.

[Illustration:  THE POLITICIAN AT HOME.

Robert Crawshaw, M.P ...  MR. NIGEL PLAYFAIR.

Mrs. Crawshaw ...  MISS HELEN HAYE.]