England, however--! Unfortunately this was a newspaper
whose political opinions Edward Henry despised. The next newspaper
praised everything and everybody, and called the reception
tumultuously enthusiastic. And Edward Henry felt as though somebody,
mistaking his face for a slice of toast, had spread butter all over
it. Even the paper's parting assurance that the future of the higher
drama in London was now safe beyond question did not remove this
delusion of butter.
The two following newspapers were more sketchy or descriptive, and
referred at some length to Edward Henry's own speech, with a kind of
sub-hint that Edward Henry had better mind what he was about. Three
illustrated papers and photographs of scenes and figures, but nothing
important in the matter of criticism. The rest were "neither one
thing nor the other," as they say in the Five Towns. On the whole,
an inscrutable press, a disconcerting, a startling, an
appetite-destroying, but not a hopeless press!
The general impression which he gathered from his perusals was that
the author was a pretentious dullard, an absolute criminal, a genius;
that the actors and actresses were all splendid and worked hard,
though conceivably one or two of them had been set impossible
tasks--to wit, tasks unsuited to their personalities; that he himself
was a Napoleon, a temerarious individual, an incomprehensible fellow;
and that the future of the intellectual-poetic drama in London was
not a topic of burning actuality.
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