H.L. Mencken

Baltimore Evening Sun/January 11, 1911

We Can’t Be As Bad As All That

Henry Arthur Jones’ new play, “We Can’t Be As Bad As All That,” which had its first performance on any stage in New York the other day, seems to have made a very favorable impression. At all events the critics were unusually kind to it and most of them predicted, in their morning reviews, that it would run a long while. And why not? Jones is a clever fellow; he knows how to write to please. Few other living men, indeed, display a firmer grip upon the technique of the theatre. If he had but one thing else he would be a dramatist of the first rank. That one thing is an individual and illuminating outlook upon life—and unluckily for his fame, he hasn’t got it. He is middle-class; he is a Philistine; his philosophy gets us nowhere. 

But before we go into that, let us review the story of “We Can’t Be An Bad As All That.” The play introduces us to an English house-party at the country home of Lord Carnforth, and we make quick acquaintance with a large and interesting group of persons belonging to what is commonly called the fast, or horsey set. Mrs. Engaine, a somewhat mysterious person, and her step-daughter Violet, a great heiress, are two of them. Lady Carnforth wants to marry Violet to her bankrupt brother, Fulks Bissett, but against this alliance Mrs. Engaine sets her face, for she knows that Fulks is an egg of extremely doubtful freshness. Meanwhile, Lady Carnforth’s cousin, the handsome Sir Ralph Newell, falls in love with Mrs. Engaine and she with him.  

A Pleasant House Party

We go back a bit and hear old scandals. Sir Ralph, in his youth, had a friend named Harold Furnival, who deserted his wife to make off with a girl named Nora Shard, of whom nothing was  known save her name. But he didn’t get very far upon that morganatic honeymoon, for he was killed by accident on the day it began, and Nora promptly vanished. Sir Ralph has always held this Nora responsible for the death of his friend, though he has never met her and does not know what has become of her. Now the crafty Lady Carnforth discovers that Nora and Mrs. Engaine are one and the same, and at once uses the fact as a bludgeon, to compel Lady Engaine to consent to the marriage of Fulks and Violet. 

But Mrs. Engaine is not so easily browbeaten. Instead of crying “Hold! Enough!” she goes to Sir Ralph with the whole miserable story, confessing everything. Ralph still loves her, but the tale she tells is too much. He is paralyzed, flabbergasted, appalled. A marriage between them seems to be entirely out of the question. Ralph believes that he will never bring himself to forget poor Harold, his dead and disgraced friend. Mrs. Engaine bears it bravely. She loves Ralph, but she is no cry-baby. 

Suddenly there is a diversion. Mrs. Engaine’s pearl necklace, worth thousands, disappears from her room, and a hunt for the thief begins. Various members of the pleasant little party are suspected by the others, but in a short while suspicion is concentrated upon the odorous Fulks. Confronted with the evidence, he confesses—and so his marriage with Violet becomes impossible. It is now the turn of Lady Carnforth to be the underdog. She has great influence over her cousin Ralph. In return for Mrs. Engaine’s promise not to prosecute Fulks, Lady Carnforth bounces Ralph into her arms. Poor old Harold is forgotten. The curtain falls to sweet music. 

The Fault of Jones

According to those who have seen it, “We Can’t Be As Bad As All That” is a lively and entertaining play, with characters who seem to be real, and plenty of bright dialogue. Jones has not minced matters—he is dealing with a vicious crowd and he doesn’t attempt to conceal it. The long scene between Mrs. Engaine and Sir Ralph is said to be written with truly amazing skill. It recalls, after a fashion, the great cross-examination scene in “Mrs. Dane’s Defense,” but there is still a considerable difference, for Lucy Dane tries to lie and Mrs. Engaine tries to tell the truth. Altogether, the play reveals an old hand. It hangs together admirably. It is sound in structure and in detail. It is the work of a journeyman.  

And yet the idea at the bottom of it is empty enough. What is it that the play seeks to tell us? Simply that there is rottenness in rotten society. In other words, Jones is still uttering platitudes in a sonorous voice—and fancying that he is revealing secrets worth hearing and heeding. That is what he did in “Saints and Sinners,” the first play of his artistic maturity; that is what he did in “Mrs. Dane’s Defense” and “The Hypocrites,” the best of his serious plays: that is what he did in “The Liars” and “Joseph Entangled,” his best comedies; and that is what he is doing again in “We Can’t Be As Bad As All That.” 

Two main ideas run through four-fifths of all the Jones plays. The one is the idea that there is altogether too much hypocrisy in civilized society and the other is the idea that there is altogether too much downright lying. Both ideas are sound enough, but it cannot be said for either that it is novel enough to bestir the cerebrum to profitable mentation. Both, in brief, are so depressingly familiar and obvious that they form the chief stock in trade of all professional moralists. We expect the professional moralist to be platitudinous. It is not his business to examine morality critically, but to preach it eloquently. He is a hunker, ex-officio. The slightest deviation from the trodden path makes him a heretic and loses him his commission. 

The Drama of Ideas

But among dramatists of the serious sort we look for a greater originality. What we ask of them, when they deal with morals, is not that they ratify the old morality with a whoop, but that they ask impertinent questions about it and search out soft spots in it. In brief, the drama of ideas is a criticism of life, and of the doctrines which condition life, and that is how it differs from the drama without ideas, which is a mere picture of life (more or less absurdly idealized), and a ratification of the current theories of conduct. 

Ibsen in “A Doll’s House” and “Ghosts” showed himself to be a dramatist of ideas, for he questioned a rule of morals in universal acceptance—the rule, to wit, that a wife’s first duty is to her husband. Pinero in “The Thunderbolt” elected himself to the same congregation, for there he showed us honest villain and a felonious heroine. But Jones is never so daring. His best plays are of astounding merit, as stage-plays, but as criticisms of life they get but little beyond those primitive melo-dramas which inform us, with vast pomposity, that it is sinful to steal children or murder kindly old ladies, and virtuous to revere the senile, succor the orphan and avoid the excessive use of morphine.