It is true that
amazing coincidences do occur in life; but when they are invented to
serve an artist's purposes, we feel that he is simplifying his task
altogether beyond reason, and substituting for normal and probable
development an irrelevant plunge into the merely marvellous.
Of the abuse of coincidence, I have already given a specimen in speaking
of _The Rise of Dick Halward_ (Chapter XII). One or two more examples
may not be out of place. I need not dwell on the significance of the
fact that most of them occur in forgotten plays.
In _The Man of Forty_, by Mr. Walter Frith, we find the following
conjuncture of circumstances: Mr. Lewis Dunster has a long-lost wife and
a long-lost brother. He has been for years in South Africa; they have
meanwhile lived in London, but they do not know each other, and have
held no communication. Lewis, returning from Africa, arrives in London.
He does not know where to find either wife or brother, and has not the
slightest wish to look for them; yet in the first house he goes to, the
home of a lady whose acquaintance he chanced to make on the voyage, he
encounters both his wife and his brother! Not quite so startling is the
coincidence on which _Mrs.
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