Winifred Emery (1862-1924)

"SOWING THE WIND."
A New and Original Play, in four acts, by SYDNEY GRUNDY.
First produced at the Comedy Theatre, September 80th, 1898.
With Miss WINIFRED EMERY as Rosamund.

In a Marcus Stone room in a cottage at Fulham, A.D. 1838, sit two quaint figures, also of the (Marcus) Stone age. Like Dogberry, they have everything handsome about them. Rosebud chintzes, grandfather chairs, spinet, and Sheraton half-moon buffet, all are pretty enough to engage their eyes, and employ their tongues; but none of these pretty things concern them. The pale young beauty and the silver-haired old widower have left the shallows for the deeps, and both are in troubled waters.

Almost as dear to his childless heart as a child of his own would be is the adopted son of this wealthy and well-born Mr. Brabazon of Barchester; and dearer to Rosamund Athelstane than herself is the same young blood, Ned Annesley. And because the kindly old man has vainly tried to tear his infatuated boy from her embrace, and because she has of her own free will released her lover, banished him, cut herself adrift from him for ever, they two sit face to face and in the shadow of their grief see nothing of the sunny beauty of Rosamund's bower. What she has done, she has done for love. She admits the force of the world's objection. A "singing woman" of dubious birth, she grants her unfitness to be this young squire's bride. But where does the unfitness lie? That is the question to which she must in justice have an answer.

She is the child of a notorious woman! Oh, yes. But what fault is that of hers? Her father is unknown to her; her childhood and her girlhood she passed with her wretched mother. Is that her crime? She has lived through scenes to recall which scorches her brain and stops her heart; she earns her own bread as a singer; she loves Ned; she is loved by him; but is any one of these calamities her fault? No. The shame she and her dead mother have to bear; but the sin is her unknown father's. His was the sin of her mother's fall; his desertion the primal cause of her mother's infamous life; he is her foe, her sorrow, her curse; and upon him, when right and wrong are disentangled, will lie all the burden. What proof has she of her mother's innocence, for that would mend matters vastly? A letter but now delivered by the dead woman's scoundrelly protector. But the woman's own word will not suffice. It may be a lie. In the war of sex against sex, what will not a woman say to win. The old fellow will take the side of the man. "Baby Brabant" was an infamous wretch, and was doubtless deserted because she had deceived. "Speak no slanders of my mother," cries the girl, "and call her by her proper name - call her Helen Gray." And the old man staggers, stricken dumb. For in his youth he loved wisely, loved too well; but too readily he listened to the voice of calumny, and parted from the woman he loved; and all his life long he has mourned his lost faith and happiness, and the name of the woman he loved was Helen Gray. So the girl whom a moment since it would have been a social crime for his adopted son to marry, the girl he has helped to persecute, is his own flesh and blood, the child he has all his life hankered to love, and prayed for (as he thought) in vain.

This scene, most tenderly, movingly written, really ends the play; but mechanical complications necessitate a concluding act of anti-climax, to which, however, the touching humiliation of the father before his deeply-wronged child would reconcile the greatest stickler for proportion. But by the scene described the play is judged, and its passion and power ensure the success of the whole. Never has Mr. Grundy written more telling dialogue, never more surely has he, in following Mr. Stevenson and Mr. Henley (even into their special period of "Beau Austin") with a Duel of Sex, probed the hearts of a pure woman and a chivalrous, warm-hearted man. Never, too, has a play of his enjoyed better acting. As Mr. Brabazon, Mr. Brandon Thomas, long-looked-for, come-at-last, as a leading man, presents the stage with the most lovable and affecting old fellow conceivable. A little uncertain, perhaps, about the volume of emotion wanted, he knew no uncertainty about its depth and truth, and this one scene established him as the only pere noble of the English stage. Miss Emery, long since the ideal Clarissa, is also of necessity the ideal representative of wronged maidenhood in general, and a tendency to play in too subdued a tone, notwithstanding her passionate defence of trusting womanhood, enormously strengthens her claim, as an emotional actress, to a position in the very front rank. And as with the chief part, so with the minor ones; all were admirably filled. Mr. Maude, more happily suited than of late, added one more quaint figure, this time a testy old cynic, to his catalogue of eccentric worthies. Mr. Ian Robertson and Mr. Maurice, as a withered debauchee and a rakish young booby, were most effective; Miss Leclercq and Miss Hughes managed in a bare five minutes to stamp an impression upon their too brief scenes of old-world formality and measured grace; and Mr. Brough, taking his place at last as a jeune premier, and pressing into service all his boyish sincerity and frankness, made of Ned Annesley so comely and honest a fellow as it would puzzle any other young English actor of the day to represent. Mr. Comyns Carr's first managerial venture thus won an emphatic and instant success.

'The Theatre', November 1893.