... This play, too, I was unable to see, but I have read it with extraordinary interest. It is a social satire so largely conceived and so vigorously executed that it might take an honourable place in any dramatic literature. We have nothing quite like it on the latter-day English stage. In tone and treatment it reminds one of Mr. Carton; but it is far broader in conception and richer in detail than "Lord and Lady Algy" or "Lady Huntworth's Experiment." In France, it might perhaps be compared to "La Famille Benoiton" or "Le Monde ou l'on s'ennuie," or better, perhaps, to a more recent, but now almost forgotten satire of the 'nineties, "Paris Fin-de-Siècle."

I find it very hard to classify "The New York Idea" under any of the established rubrics. It is rather too extravagant to rank as a comedy; it is much too serious in its purport, too searching in its character-delineation and too thoughtful in its wit, to be treated as a mere farce. Its title—not, perhaps, a very happy one—is explained in this saying of one of the characters: "Marry for whim and leave the rest to the divorce court—that's the New York idea of marriage." And again: "The modern American marriage is like a wire fence—the woman's the wire—the posts are the husbands. One—two—three! And if you cast your eye over the future, you can count them, post after post, up hill, down dale, all the way to Dakota."

Like all the plays, from Sardou's "Divorçons" onward, which deal with a too facile system of divorce, this one shows a discontented woman, who has broken up her home for a caprice, suffering agonies of jealousy when her ex-husband proposes to make use of the freedom she has given him, and returning to him at last with the admission that their divorce was at least "premature." In this central conception there is nothing particularly original. It is the wealth of humourous invention displayed in the details both of character and situation that renders the play remarkable.

It is interesting to note, by the way, a return on Mr. Mitchell's part to that convenient assumption of the Restoration and eighteenth century comedy writers that any one in holy orders could solemnize a legal marriage at any time or place, without the slightest formality of banns, witnesses, registration or anything of the sort. One gathers that in New York the entrance to and the exit from the holy estate of matrimony are equally prompt and easy; or that, as one of the characters puts it, "the church is a regular quick-marriage counter."

I presume there is some exaggeration in this, and that a marriage cannot actually be celebrated at midnight, over a champagne-and-lobster supper, by a clergyman who happened to drop in. But there can be no doubt that whatever the social merits or demerits of the system, facility of divorce and remarriage is an immense boon to the dramatist. It places within his reach an inexhaustible store of situations and complications which are barred to the English playwright, to whom divorce always means an ugly and painful scandal. The moralist may insist that this ought always to be the case; and indeed that is the implication which Mr. Mitchell, as a moralist, conveys to us.

He sacrifices the system of divorce for every trivial flaw of temper which prevails in the society he depicts; but he no doubt realizes that his doctrine as a satirist is hostile to his interest as a dramatist. Restrict the facilities of divorce and you at once restrict the possibilities of matrimonial comedy. Marriage becomes no longer a comic, but a tragic institution.

In order to keep his theme entirely on the comic plane, Mr. Mitchell has given no children to either of the two couples whom he puts through such a fantastic quadrille. Law or no law, the separation of its parents is always a tragedy to the child; which is not to say, of course, that their remaining together may not in some cases be the more tragic of the two alternatives. Be this as it may, Mr. Mitchell has eluded the issue.

Nor has he thereby falsified his problem, for his characters belong to that class of society in which, as Mr. Dooley points out, the multiplication of automobiles is preferred to that of progeny. But he has not omitted to hint at the problem of the children, and, as it were, confess his deliberate avoidance of it. He does so in a touch of exquisite irony. John and Cynthia Karslake are a couple devoted, not to automobiles, but to horses. Even their common passion for racing cannot keep them together; but their divorce is so "premature," and leaves John so restless and dissatisfied, that he actually neglects the cares of the stable. His favourite mare, Cynthia K, falls ill, and when his trainer brings him the news he receives it with shocking callousness. Then the trainer meets Cynthia and complains to her of her ex-husband's indifference. "Ah, ma'am," he says, "when husband and wife splits, it's the horses that suffers." I know not where to look for a speech of profounder ironic implication. More superficial, but still a good specimen of Mr. Mitchell's wit, is William Sudley's remark as to John Karslake: "Oh, yes, he comes of a very respectable family, though I remember his father served a term in the Senate."

Altogether "The New York Idea" is, from the intellectual point of view, the most remarkable piece of work I have encountered in America. It is probably too true to the details of American life to have much success in England; but the situation at the end of the third act could not fail to bring down the house even here. It would take too long to describe it in detail. Suffice it to say that just at the point where Cynthia Karslake dismisses her second bridegroom, to return to her first, the choir assembled for the marriage ceremony, mistaking a signal, bursts forth with irresistibly ludicrous effect into "The Voice That Breathed O'er Eden."[B]