Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/193

167 THE REAL STANLEY HOUGHTON 167 make his choice. But young Houghton in his suburb ! What chance of choice had he ? Those who know Mancastrian suburbs will admit the range was small. Those who do not can judge from The Younger Genera- tion. Chapel debating societies — amateur theatricals — scales and exercises — peonies on plaques — the surplus energies of a community devoting all its genius to miracles of mechanism, does not go very much further in the way of desultory creativeness than this. It is very natural, it is perhaps even inevitable. It is part of the specialization that produces London. Houghton, hungering vaguely for romance, did the best that he could. He " went in " for amateur theatricals. It was in this blindfolded fashion, haphazard as a key struck in the dark, that the first phase of Houghton's work was determined. When he left school, Mr. Brighouse tells us, he vaguely hoped to become " a writer." What more natural, more tempt- ing, than to indulge this ambition by concocting imitation parlour plays, the traditional article, for production by himself and his friends? He wrote a number, we are told — " little comic operas and farces " and drawing-room melodramas with the good old- fashioned titles — The Blue Phial^ After Naseby, The Last Shot. They were probably exactly like all othei parlour plays — that was, indeed, the idea. They were simply the work of a man engaged in rigging up an evening's entertainment, and enjoying himself hugely over the job. Even the first plays reprinted in his Collected Wo7^ks — Independent Means (written in 1908) and Marriages in the Making (1909) are obviously written in the spirit one writes a Christmas-party charade. There is hardly a pretence of real observa- tion ; they are deliberately theatrical, unaffectedly artificial — and it is this naif knowingness that chiefly constitutes their charm. These plays t^ere plays to Houghton ; he had no idea of taking himself seriously ;