This is one of Lord Dunsany’s two experiments with a “realistic” background. By realistic I mean here that the action of the piece is set in “a fashionable London Street”, and that the characters are such persons as one might expect to meet in such a locality. The acceptance of these self imposed conditions has not, however, restrained Dunsany, in the very least degree, from indulging his fancy, and the result is one of the most amusing light comedies imaginable. There will doubtless be some who will insist on the term farce being used in this connection, but by farce is meant a play where the plot dominates the characterization, and by comedy is intended exactly the reverse. In this play again we find an entire lack of personal background for the characters; they have individuality rather than personality; we are dealing with broad types used for the exposition of certain ideas, but these ideas are exposed through characterization rather than through plot. Hence, if it is necessary to classify the play at all it seems quite reasonable that it should be dignified by the term of comedy. If it were a longer play, and if the background were painted in, it is entirely possible that we should have been treated to the only perfect comedy of manners since “The Importance of Being Earnest.” The outline is all there, ready and waiting.
The Caller stands on the door-step of a house, “faultlessly dressed”, but without a hat. He has just proposed to the lady in the house and has been rejected, and in the mad desperation of the moment has fled leaving his hat behind him. His predicament is no slight one. To return for the hat, while a sensible measure, would be an inconceivable anti-climax, and he cannot be ridiculous. Not to have the hat is an equally impossible situation. He cannot go through the streets of London half clothed! A Laborer comes along and the Caller accosts him in the hope that he can be persuaded to recover the hat. He tries to induce the Laborer to come to his aid, he tries even to bribe him, but he only succeeds in arousing the suspicions of that horny handed person to the effect that there is something very mysterious about the whole affair. The dialogue between the two is outrageously funny.
LABORER. YOU aren’t going to give me a sovereign, and rise it to two sovereigns, for an empty hat?
CALLER. But I must have my hat. I can’t be seen in the streets like this. There’s nothing in the hat. What do you think’s in the hat?
LABORER. Ah, I’m not clever enough to say that, but it looks as if the papers was in that hat.
CALLER. The papers?
LABORER. Yes, papers proving, if you can get them, that you’re the heir to that big house, and some poor innocent will be defrauded.
And so it goes until the Laborer makes his departure, sure that a crime is on the verge of commission. A Clerk enters and he is approached in the same way, and with the same result. He too is suspicious, but his imagination is not capable of the flights of that of the Laborer. It is rather his sense of propriety that is violated; the situation is unconventional, and therefore improper. He goes away, and the Caller is left alone. Enter the Poet, who having the whole ghastly mishap explained to him is disposed to be indulgent. He philosophises at length upon hats and upon proposals and at length advises the Caller to buy a bayonet, and join the Bosnians. There, having given up his life for a hopeless cause, he will become immortal. The Caller is furious, and at last decides to go in and get the hat himself, whatever the cost. The Poet pleads with him not to go, for if he does there will be a reconciliation and Romance will be unsatisfied; the Caller will marry the lady, and will have a large family of ugly children. Could anything be more horrible to contemplate? Nevertheless in the Caller goes, and the Poet sits disconsolate on the door-step.
POET, (rising, lifting hand)... but let there be graven in brass upon this house: Romance was born again here out of due time and died young. (He sits down. Enter Laborer and Clerk with Policeman. The music stops.)
POLICEMAN. Anything wrong here?
POET. Everything’s wrong. They’re going to kill Romance.
POLICEMAN, (to Laborer) This gentleman doesn’t seem quite right somehow.
LABORER. They’re none of them quite right today.
(Music starts again.)
POET. My God! It is a duet.
POLICEMAN. He seems a bit wrong somehow.
LABORER. YOU should ‘a’ seen the other one.
Curtain.
This is surely a most excruciatingly funny play. The Laborer is one of the best comedy characters I have seen in a long, long while. And just here let me digress sufficiently to remark that, quite unconsciously, I believe, Lord Dunsany has in the Caller and in the Poet drawn two delicious pictures of George Moore and Yeats — both caricatured broadly to be sure, but both recognisable. It may be that it is simply some perverse imp of the grotesque that makes me see a caricature where there is none intended, but the thought has amused me, and so I pass it on in the hope that its humour may not be entirely exhausted.
“The Lost Silk Hat” is not particularly dramatic, even for a comedy; nothing happens. Its carrying power exists almost entirely in the dialogue. But such dialogue! It is not witty, for wit is cold, a Shavian quality, intended not to expose a character, but to make a point, while humour is exactly otherwise. The French are, as a nation, witty; the English are humorous. The deep suspicion, the frank incredulity of the Laborer; the strong common sense of the Caller; the rigid conventionality of the Clerk; and the pure romance of the Poet are all as clean cut as possible. There is not a single waste word. It is one of the most delicious bits of pure humour that I have ever seen.
Technically, a hard word to use surely in this connection, the piece is well done. The action, such as it is, is rapid, each scene blending easily and swiftly into the next. The necessary exposition is given in a few words which serve not only to elucidate the previous happenings, but also to develop the present situation. This is quite as it should be, but how rarely do we find it! One becomes so used to machine-made drama, that the natural flow of Dunsany is like an echo from another age.
Having pointed out that Dunsany always ends his plays at just the proper moment, I shall now have to qualify the statement by remarking that the conclusion of this particular play would be stronger if the last two speeches were omitted. Whether this is the exception that proves the rule or not, I do not know, but there can be no doubt but that it is an exception.
Apropos of Dunsany’s constant irony there is a slight point which may be worthy of attention; namely, that it is the satirist who is witty, and the humorist who is ironic. Dunsany certainly comes within the last named category. He is a humorist, even a great humorist, and the final test is that in their very humour his plays border on tragedy. Humour may be turned to tragedy; satire never can be. The chief point of difference between Dunsany and most humorists is that while their outlook is personal his is cosmic. Man regarded in the mass becomes a gigantic joke, his pretence that he is civilised, his assumption of entire free will, and all his foibles of sophistication are entirely comic. It is only when he is regarded individually that he is tragic, and that which makes him so is the very same element that made him comic before. When one thinks of the present war as a whole it is immensely ironic, but when one stops to consider the individual personal problems involved the great irony breaks into an endless series of minor tragedies — minor, that is, in their relation to the whole. Dunsany’s outlook is as nearly universal, and hence as nearly detached and impersonal, as may be; he never reaches the personal, he never tries to reach it.
That is at once the cause of his greatness, and the reason why he is not greater.
“The Lost Silk Hat” is no more than a trifle, a spark flecked off the emery wheel of the imagination of the artist, but it is so perfect a trifle, and so brilliant a spark, that a more or less serious consideration of its merits is by no means out of place. The small thing beautifully done is of inestimably greater value than the great thing botched in the making. And perchance in this play we may find a promise of that perfect comedy of manners which Dunsany may one day write. Certain it is at any rate that no one is less interested in such a possibility than Dunsany himself, and for that we can be thankful. He has one receipt for writing a play — when you have a story to tell, tell it — and so long as he adheres to this dogma we can at least be sure that whatever the result may be we shall never lose interest.