Los Angeles herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1900-1911, 1909-06-08
Ryw HERBERT BLAKE

TUHERF was French poet-one
Raudelaire-who found his ideal
Il of beauty and purity in a lily
growing from a heap of refuse. The
symbol must have dweit long in the
mind of young. Edward Sheldon. in
those weeks in which he was writing
aSalvation Nell" For the woman
whose shipwreck and sudden, exultant
rescue Mrs Minnie Maddern Fiske
unrolled before us at the Auditorium
last night was like that lily-like it IN
her fragile, GREATNESS beauty-yes,
like it in her regained purity, IN her
eternal fidelity TO love and to life.
salvation Nelr' is the glorious
antithesis to Tess of Durberyilles, in
which old playgoers still recall Mrs.
Fiske's first stage triumph. Tess sins,
as though by compulsion, and perishes.
Nell sins in utter ignorance, and
tramples on her sin until she saves
self and betrayer. The difference Is
between Hardy and Sheldon-decad-
ence and youthful hope-a corroding
philosophy and the bright fair light OF
faith.
There is neither beginning nor end
to the Sheldon play unless Christmas
day be taken as symbolic OF the De-
ginning of all things good and en-
nobling in the souls of SHINING men.
And the end is a strain of music,
last rumble of the drums that have
beaten a haunting refrain to the ebb
and flow of battle in human souls,
flash of tears that irradiates the tu-
ture-no, not the end, but another be-
ginning-a new incarnation i'll the soul
of a belated penitent.
There was revelry and din a-plehty
in Sid MeGoverns that Christmas eve,
thing hO11t the
stage picture is the absolute, fiat dull
ness of it all-the brave realism that
naints vice in its soddenness, with the
s,bost-1ike face of the little girl who
comes to buy the beer and peers out
like some strange spirit many years
older than men and women. The dope
fend, the rowdy, the cowardly SUM
mer, the bully Jim Platt all lounge
against the bar and lest And Nell
who is Jim's girl when he's sober, she
mons the floor and tables and talks in
that choking voice-haf sob, haf
SILVER.
s'Harelujah' Maggie, with that fine
blending of evangelical angularity and
sweet womanliness one finds SO otteh
among the women Of the SalValloll
Army, appeals to Nell to flee her
world. Nell refuses, and we feel, as
We feel from first to last, that she has
acted wisely. For as the play grows
unon. rs this love Of hers for drunken
sot becomes the greatest thing in all
their world And when the raid of a
nearby resort brings Myrtle Odell,
frank and unblushing in her surrender
to life. into the bar we feel that her
pleas, too, will fail.
And then there is ore of those jeal-
Gus episodes so common as to seem
trivial to the city dweller A man tries
CT he hfn-<illS
him. There is a well acted scene IN
which the police arrive and Jim goes
and the bartender orders Nell, as the
cause Of il all, out into the street. Dry
eyed she hears her sentence, While the
painted faces beckon to her from out
side the window. Myrtle and Maggie
point her to diverse ways, and stun IN
a daze she goes with the rolling drums
of fhe army. All this. and each char
acter still acting the hard and infiex-
ihle men and women who dwell down
daen in our social cellars. There is a
touch of human feeling as Nell falls
soothing on "HallelUjah" Maggie
shoulder. And all the rest is outer
darkness.
Bill has left prison in act and
comes back. weak ond dogged, TO
claim his woman. She is an army
officer now, and the sweet humanism
of her tempers the harshness of the
trained gospeler, Jim comes to
claim her, and for his sake, more
even than her own, she fights
him off--with careless indifference at
first. then with fear as he tells her of
a plotted robbery which win make
her rich" then with a great love that
bids her yield herself to his passionate
embrace, If at such a cost she can
Keep his soul from utter ruin In those
r moments where the woman's daZed
soul comes to life at his entrance, bios
SONS into sympathy as he tells of his
thwarted attempts to reform, and
shrinks and bends before his storm of
brutal love, Mrs. Fiske utterly sank
her personality i'm her role. With that
rare artistic modesty of hers she yield
ed the stage TO Holbrook Blinn. 1t was
his act, even in Jim's failure. He dom
mated and she let him.
Nell verbally spars to gain time
and then up from the street comes the
saving roll of the drums. She gains a
respite by fight. In her absence Jim
discovers his child. There were few
lauehs-and subdued-at the comedy
touches here The audience was toe