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Since these days Brighouse has scored a big success with Hobson’s Choice. He will score other successes. He will die reputed and rich. He will live, some day, in a West End flat and have a cottage in the country from which he will issue at regular intervals and take long walks in muddy lanes. I believe he will sedulously cultivate the friendship of those who may be of service to him, and he will drink his pint of beer every day of his life. He will be praised twice a year by Sir William Robertson Nicoll. Yes, he will be praised twice a year by Sir William Robertson Nicoll. And when Sir William dies, MrStJohn Adcock will take up the cry. And, when the war is over, our successful young dramatist will go to America, where the money comes from.... I should like to see Harold in America.

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There came a day when a new one-act play by Houghton was given at the Manchester Gaiety—a play I subsequently saw at a London music hall, its fit home; but I remember neither the play’s title nor its plot. I recollect, however, that three or four men and women met in the corridor of a London hotel and talked or suggested risky things. Rather stupid, I thought it, and it certainly never occurred ssss1 to me that it was immoral or nasty; it was merely a dramatic experiment that did not quite come off. But the dramatic critic of The Manchester Guardian—either MrA.N. Monkhouse or MrC.E. Montague (I think the former)—“went for” it tooth and nail on the score of its alleged immorality. The criticism was scathing: it made a wound and then poured acid into the wound. Houghton must have felt the criticism sorely, but when I met him next day he pluckily treated it as a matter of no consequence whatever.