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"^f

STAGE-LAND:

<Cttmtt0 J^me anb Cueiome of i(e ^n^Ut<xn(e,

Pbsci^ibbd by

JEROME K. JEROME.

(AUTHOR OF " IDLE THOUGHTS OF AN IDLE FELLOW," &c.)

Pf^a^vm by

J. BERNARD PARTRIDGE.

F/FTI! EDITION.

LONDON:
CHATTO & WINDUS, 214, PICCADILLY.

1889.

163710

THAT HIGHLY RESPECTABLE

BUT UNNECESSARILY RETIRING

INDIVIDUAL,

OF WHOM

WE HEAR SO MUCH

BUT

SEE SO LITTLE

"THE EARNEST STUDENT OF THE DRAMA."

THIS

(COMPARATIVELY, TRUTHFUL LITTLE BOOK

IS LOVINGLY

DEDICATED.

List of Citizens Interviewed.

PAGE

Hero i

Villain 9

Heroine 15

Comic Man 21

Lawyer 27

Adventuress 33

Servant Girl .------ 41

Child - - 47

Comic Lovers 53

Peasants 59

Good Old Man 65

Irishman • - - 69

Detective - - 73

Sailor - ' . , , , ' ' 77

STAGE-LAND.

-sse-

C^e l^cto.

NAME is George, generally speak-
ing: "Call me George!" he says
to the heroine. She calls him
George (in a very low voice,
because she is so young and
timid). Then he is happy.

The Stage hero never has any work to do.
He is always hanging about, and getting into
trouble. His chief aim in life is to be accused of
crimes he has never committed, and if he can
muddle things up with a corpse, in some compli-
cated way, so as to get himself reasonably mistaken
for the murderer, he feels his day has not been wasted.
He has a wonderful gift of speech, and a flow of
language, calculated to strike terror to the bravest
heart. It is a grand thing to hear him bullyragging
the villain.

STAGE-LAND.

The Stage hero
is always entitled
to " estates," chiefly
remarkable for their
high state of culti-
vation and for the
eccentric ground
plan of the " Manor
House " upon them.
The house is never
more than one storey
high, but it makes
up in green stuff
over the porch what
it lacks in size and
convenience.

The chief draw-
back in connection
with it, to our eyes,
is that all the inhabitants of the neighbouring village appear to live in the
front garden, but the hero evidently thinks it rather nice of them, as it
enables him to make speeches to them from the front door step — his
favourite recreation.

There is generally a public house immediately opposite. This is handy.
These " estates " are a great anxiety to the Stage hero. He is not
what you would call a business man, as far as we can judge, and his
attempts to manage his own property invariably land him in ruin and
distraction. His " estates," however, always get taken away from him by
the villain, before the first act is over, and this saves him all further trouble
with regard to them, until the end of the play, when he gets saddled with
them once more.

Not but what it must be confessed that there is much excuse for the
poor fellow's general bewilderment, concerning his affairs ; and for his legal

BULLYRAQOING THE VILLAIN.

THE HERO.

errors and confusions^ generally. Stage "law" may not be quite the most
fearful and wonderful mystery in the whole universe, but it's near it — very
near it. We were under tha impression, at one time, that we ourselves,
knew something — ^just a little — about statutory and common law, but, after
paying attention to the legal points of one or two plays, we found that we
were mere children at it.

We thought we would not be beaten, and we determined to get to the
bottom of Stage law, and to understand it ; but, after some six months'
effort, our brain (a singularly fine one) began to soften ; and we abandoned
the study, believing it would come cheaper, in the end, to offer a suitable
reward, of about fifty or sixty thousand pounds say, to any one who would
explain it to us.

The reward has remained unclaimed to the present day, and is
still open.

One gentleman did come to our assistance, a little while ago, but his
explanations only made the matter more confusing to our mind than it was
before. He was surprised at, what he called, our density, and said the
thing was all clear and simple to him. But we discovered afterwards that
he was an escaped lunatic.

The only points of Stage ** law " on which we are at all clear, are as
follows : —

That if a man dies, without leaving a will, then all his property goes
to the nearest villain.

But that if a man dies, and leaves a will, then all his property goes to
whoever can get possession of that will.

That the accidental loss of the three and sixpenny copy of a marriage
certificate annuls the marriage.

That the evidence of one prejudiced witnc -j, of shady antecedents, is
quite sufficient to convict the most stainless and irreproachable gentleman
of crimes for the committal of which he could have had no possible motive.

But that this evidence may be rebutted, years afterwards, and the con-
viction quashed without further trial by the unsupported statement of the
comic man.

4 STAGE-LAND.

That if A. forges B.'s name to a cheque, then the law of the land is that
B. shall be sentenced to ten years' penal servitude.

That ten minutes' notice is all that is required to foreclose a mortgage.

That all trials of criminal cases take place in the front parlour of the
victim's house, the villain acting as counsel, judge and jury rolled into one,
and a couple of policemen being told off to follow his instructions.

These are a few of the more salient features of Stage *' law " so far as
we have been able to grasp it up to the present ; but, as fresh acts
and clauses and modifications appear to be introduced for each new
play, we have abandoned all hope of ever being able to really comprehend
the subject.

To return to our hero, the state of the law, as above sketched, naturally
confuses him, and the villain, who is the only human being who does seem
to understand Stage legal questions, is easily able to fleece and ruin
him. The simple-minded hero signs mortgages and bills of sale, and
deeds of gift and such like things, under the impression that he is
playing some sort of a round game ; and then, when he cannot pay
the interest, they take his wife and children away from him, and turn
him adrift into the world.

Being thrown upon his own resources, he naturally starves.

He can make long speeches, he can tell you all his troubles, he can
stand in the limelight and strike attitudes, he can knock the villain
down, and he can defy the police, but these requirements are not much
in demand in the labour market, and, as they are all he can do or
cares to do, he finds earning his living a much more difficult affair than
he fancied.

There is a deal too much hard work about it for him. He soon gives
up trying it at all, and prefers to eke out an uncertain existence by
sponging upon good natured old Irish women, and generous but weak-
minded young artisans who have left their native village to follow him,
and enjoy the advantage of his company and conversation.

And so he drags out nis life, during the middle of the piece, raving at For-
tune, raging at Humanity and whining about his miseries until the last act.

ffi

THE HERO.

Then he gets back those " estates " of his into his possession once
again, and can go back to the village, and make more moral speeches,
and be happy.

Moral speeches are, undoubtedly, his leading article, and of these, it
must be owned, he has en inexhaustible stock. He is as chock full of
noble sentiments as a bladder is of wind. They are weak and watery
sentiments of the sixpenny tea-meeting order. We have a dim notion
that we have heard them before. The sound of them
always conjures up to our mind the vision of a dull long
room, full of oppressive silence, broken
only by the sci-atching of steel pens,
and an occasional whispered : " Give
us a suck, Bill. You know I always
liked you " ; or a louder : '* Please,
sir, speak to Jimmy Boggles. He's a
jogging my ?lhow."

The Stage hero, however, evidently
regards these meanderings as gems of
brilliant thought, fresh from the philo-
sophic mine.

The gallery greet them with enthu-
siastic approval. They are a warm-
hearted people, galleryites, and they
like to give a hearty welcome to old
friends.

And then, too, the sentiments are
so good, and a British gallery is so
moral. We doubt if there could be discovered on this earth any body
of human beings one half so moral — so fond of goodness, even when
it is slow and stupid — so hateful of meanness in word or deed — as a
modern theatrical gallery.

The early Christian martyrs were sinful and worldly, compared with
an Adelphi Gallery.

SPONGING UPON OOODNATUREO OLD
IRISH WOMEN

STAGE-LAND.

^^4

The Stage hero is a very powerful man. You wouldn't think it, to
look at him, but you wait till the heroine cries : " Help ! Oh, George,

./ -L save me ! " or the

police attempt to run
him in. Then two
villains, three extra
hired ruffians, and
four detectives are
about his fighting
weight.

If he knocks down
less than three men
with one blow, he
fears that he must
be ill, and wonders
" Why this strange
weakness."

The hero has his
own way of making
love. He always
does it from behind.
The girl turns away from him, when he begins (she being, as we have
said, shy and timid), and he takes hold of her hands, and breathes his
attachment down her back.

The Stage hero always wears patent leather boots, and they are always
spotlessly clean. Sometimes he is rich, and lives in a room with seven
doors to it, and at other times he is starving in a garret ; but in either
event, he still wears brand-new patent leather boots.

He might raise at least three and sixpence on those boots, and, vvhcn
the baby is crying for food, it occurs to us that it would be better if, instead
of praying to Heaven, he took off those boots and pawned them ; but this
does not seem to occur to him.

He crosses the African desert in patent leather boots, does the Stage

^5^

THE STAGE HERO IS A VERY POWERFUL MAN.

THE HERO.

hero. He takes a supply with him, when he is wrecked on an uninhabited
island. He arrives from long and trying journeys : his clothes are ragged
and torn; but his boots are new and shiny. He puts on patent leather
boots to tramp through the Australian bush, to fight in Egypt, to discover
the North Pole.

Sometimes he is a gold digger, sometimt s a dock labourer, sometimes a
soldier, sometimes a sailor, but, whatever he is, he wears patent leather
boots.

He goes boating in patent leather boots, he plays cricket in them ; he
goes fishing and shooting in them. He will go to Heaven in patent leather
boots, or he will decline the invitation.

The Stage hero never talks in a simple, straightforward way, like a
mere ordinary mortal.

" You will write to me, when you
are away, Dear, -won't you," says the
heroine.

A mere human being would reply :

" Why, of course I shall, Ducky,
every day."

But the Stage hero is a superior
creature. He says :

** Dost' see yonder star. Sweet ? "

She looks up, and owns that she
does see yonder star ; and then off he
starts and drivels on about that star
for full five minutes, and says he
will cease to write to her when that
pale star has fallen from its place
amidst the firmament of Heaven.

The result of a long course of
acquaintanceship with Stage heroes
has been, so far as we are con-
cerned, to create a yearning for a breathes his attachment down her back.

STAGE-LAND.

new kind of Stage hero. What we would like, for a change, would
be a man who wouldn't cackle and brag quite so much, but who
was capable of taking care of himself for a day, without getting into
trouble.

THE STAGE HERO ALWAYS WEARS PATENT LEATHER BOOTS. /

luld
vho
nto

t^ QOittAin,

WEARS a clean collar, and
smokes a cigarette ;
that is how we know
he is a villain. In real
life, it is often difficult
to tell a villain from
an honest man, and this gives rise

JIl <H^f --"^mi^m^ ^0 mistakes ; but, on the stage, as
^*\ f HVL ^^^ have said, villains wear clean
-* ,--^M'IM^^ collars and smoke cigarettes, and thus

all fear of blunder is avoided.

It is well that the rule does not hold
off the stage, or good men might be misjudged. We ourselves, for
instance, wear a clean collar — sometimes.

It might be very awkward for our family, especially on Sundays.
He has no power of repartee, has the Stage villain. All the good people
in the play say rude and insulting things to him, and snack at him, and
score off him, all through the act, but he can never answer them back — can
never think of anything clever to say in return.

** Ha, ha, wait till Monday week," is the most brilliant retort that he
can make, and he has to get into a corner by himself to think of even that.
The Stage villain's career is always very easy and prosperous up to within
a minute of the end of each act. Then he gets suddenly let in, generally by
the comic man. It always happens so. Yet the villain is always intensely
surprised each time. He never seems to learn anything from experience.

A few years ago the villain used to be blessed with a hopeful and
philosophical temperament, which enabled him to bear up under these

m II

STAGE-LAND.

constantly recurring disappointments and reverses. It was "no matter,"
he would say. Crushed for the moment, though he might be, his buoyant
heart never lost courage. He had a simple, childlike faith in Providence.
" A time will come," he would remark, and this idea consoled him.

Of late, however, this trusting hopefulness of his, as expressed in the
beautiful lines we have quoted, appears to have forsaken him. We are
sorry for this, we always regarded
it as one of the finest traits in his
character.

The Stage villain's love
for the heroine is sublime
in its steadfastness. She is
a woman of lugubrious and
tearful disposition,
added to which
she is usually en-
cumbered with a
couple of priggish
and highly object-
ionable children,
and what possible
attraction there is
about her we ourselves
can never understand ;
but the Stage villain— well
there, he is fairly mashed on
her.

Nothing can alter his affec-
tion. She hates him and insults

him to an extent that is really unladylike. Every time he tries to explain
his devotion to her, the hero comes in and knocks him down in the middle
of it, or the comic man catches him during one or the other of his harassing
love scenes with her, and goes off and tells the "villagers" or the " guests,"

HE GETS SUDDENLY LET IN — GENERALLY
BY THE COMIC MAN.

THE VILLAIN.

^' )«5r»

and they come round and nag him
(we should think that the villain
must grow to positively dislike the
comic man, before the piece is over).

Notwithstanding all this he still
hankers after her, and swears she
shall be his. He is not a bad-looking
fellow, and from what we know of
the market, we should say there are
plenty of other girls who would jump
at him ; yet for the sake of settling
down with this dismal young female
as his wife, he is prepared to go
through a laborious and exhausting
course of crime, and to be bullied
and insulted by every one he meets.
His love sustains him under it all. *^
He robs and forges, and cheats, and
lies, and murders, and arsons. If
there were any other crimes he could
commit to win her affection, he would, for her sweet sake, commit them
cheerfully. But he doesn't know any others — at all events, he is not
well up in any others — and she still does not care for him, and what is
he is do?

It is very unfortunate for both of them. It is evident, to the merest
spectator, that the lady's life would be much happier if the villain did not
love her quite so much : and, as for him, his career might be calmer, and
less criminal, but for his deep devotion to her.

You see it is having met her in early life that is the cause of all the
trouble. He first saw her when she was a child, and he loved her, " aye,
even then." Ah, and he would have worked — slaved for her, and have
made her rich and happy. He might, perhaps, even have been a
good man.

A TIME WILL COME.

STAGE-LAND.

She tries to soothe him. She says she loathed him with an unspealcable
horror from the first moment that her eyes met his revolting form. She
says she saw a hideous toad once in a nasty pond, and she says that rather
would she take that noisome reptile, and clasp its slimy bosom to her own,
than tolerate one instant's touch from his (the villain's) arms.

This sweet prattle of hers, however, only charms him all the more.
He says he will win her yet.

Nor does the villain seem much happier in his less serious love episodes.
After he has indulged in a little badinage of the above character with his
real ladylove, the heroine, he will occasionally try a little light flirtation
passage with her maid or lady friend.

The maid, or friend, does not waste time in simile or metaphor. She
calls him a black-hearted scoundrel, and clumps him over the head.

Of recent years it has been attempted to cheer the Stage villain's
loveless life by making the village clergyman's daughter gone on him.
But it is generally about ten years ago, when even she loved him, and her
love has turned to hate by the time the play opens ; so that, on the whole,
his lot can hardly be said to have been much improved jn this direction.

Not but whatsit must be confessed that her change of feeling is, under
the circumstances, only natural. He took her away from her happy
peaceful home, when she was very young, and brought her up to this
wicked overgrown London. He did not marry her. There is no earthly
reason why he should not have married her. She must have been a
fine girl at that time (and she is a good-looking woman as it is, with
dash and go about her), and any other man would have settled down
cosily with her, and have led a simple, blameless life.

But the Stage villain is built cussed.

He ill uses this female most shockingly — not for any cause or motive
whatever, indeed his own practical interests should prompt him to treat
her well, and keep friends with her — but from the natural cussedness to
which we have just alluded. When he speaks to her, he seizes her by
the wrist and breathes what he's got to say into her ear, and it tickles and
revolts her.

THE VILLAIN.

The only thing in which he is good to
her is in the matter of dress. He does
not stint her in dress.

The Stage villain is superior to the
villain of real life. The villain of real life
is actuated by mere sordid and selfish
motives. The Stage villain does villainy,
not for any personal advantage to himself,
but merely from the love of the thing,
as an art. Villainy is, to him, its own
reward ; he revels in it.

" Better far be poor and villainous,"
he says to himself, " than possess all the
wealth of the Indes, with a clear con-
science." " I will be a villain," he cries,
" I will, at great expense and incon-
venience to myself, murder the good old
man, get the hero accused of the crime,
and make love to his wife, while he is in
prison. It will be a risky and laborious
business for me, from beginning to end,
and can bring me no practical advantage whatever. The girl will call me
insulting names, when I pay her a visit, and will push me violently in the
chest when I get near her ; her golden-haired infant will say I am a bad
man, and may even refuse to kiss me. The comic man will cover me with
humorous opprobrium ; and the villagers will get a day off, and hang about
the village pub and hoot me. Everybody will see through my villainy, and
I shall be nabbed in the end. I always am. But it is no matter, I will be
a villain, ha, ha ! " ♦

On the whole, the Stage villain appears to us to be a rather badly used
individual. He never has any " estates " or property himself, and his only
chance of getting on in the world is to sneak the hero's. He has an
affectionate disposition, and, never having any wife of his own, he is

IT TICKLES AND REVOLTS HER.

I^<""

STAGE-LAND.

compelled to love other people's : but his affection is ever unrequited, and
everything comes wrong for him in the end.

Our advice to Stage villains generally, after careful observation of
(stage) life ; and (stage) human nature, is as follows —

Never be a Stage villain at all, if you can help it. The life is too
harassing, and the remuneration altogether disproportionate to the risks
and labour.

If you have run away with the clergyman's daughter, and she still clings
to you, do not throw her down in the centre of the stage, and call her
names. It only irritates her, and she takes a dislike to you, and goes and
warns the other girl.

Don't have too many accomplices; and if you have got them, don't
keep sneering at them and bullying them. A word from them can hang
you, and yet you do all you can to rile them. Treat them civilly, and let
them have their fair share of the swag.

Beware of the comic man. When you are committing a murder, or
robbing a safe, you never look to see where the comic man is. You are so
careless in that way. On the whole it might, be as well if you murdered
the comic man early in the play.

Don't make love to the hero's wife. She doesn't like you ; how can you
expect her to ? Besides, it isn't proper. Why don't you get a girl of
your own?

Lastly, don't go down to the scenes of your crimes in the last act. You
always will do this. We suppose it is some extra cheap excursion down
there that attracts you. But you take our advice, and don't you go. That
is always where you get nabbed. The police know your habits from
experience. They do not trouble to look for you. They go down, in the
last act, to the old hall, or the ruined mill, where you did the deed, and
wait for you.

In nine cases out of ten you would get off scot free but for this idiotic
custom of yours. Do keep away from the place. Go abroad, or to the
seaside when the last act begins, and stop there till it is over. You will be
safe then.

gs
er

n't

ng
let

or
! so
red

you
I of

Vqu
3wn
'hat
rom
the
and

iotic

I the

II be

'^f''ih!!'^'ili'i' ii^ )

^6e ^etoim^

I S always in

trouble — and

don't she let

vou know it,

too. Her life

is undeniably

a hard one.

Nothing goes

'%^ right with

:'i)'\er. We all

have our

" : I •* troubles, but

' ^' the Stage hero-

,v«^-^"- ine never has anything

#:" else. If she only got one

afternoon a week off from trouble,

or had her Sunda^'s free, it would be

something.

But no ! misfortune stalks beside her from week's beginning to week's
end.

After her husband has been found guilty of murder, which is about the
least thing that can ever luippen to him, and her white-haired father has
become a bankrupt, and has died of a broken heart, and the home of
her childhood has been sold up, then her infant goes and contracts a
lingering fever.

She weeps a good deal during the course of her troubles, which, we

STAGE-LAND.

suppose, is only natural enough,
poor woman. But it is depressing
from the point of view of the
audience, and we almost wish,
before the evening is out, that
she had not got quite so much
trouble.

It is over the child that she does
most of her weeping. The child
has a damp time of it altogether.
We sometimes wonder that it
never catches rheumatism.

She is very good, is the Stage
heroine. The comic man expresses
a belief that she is a born angel.
She reproves him for this with a
tearful smile (it wouldn't be her
smile if it wasn't tearful).

*' Oh no," she says (sadly of
course), " I have many, many
faults."

We rather wish that she would
show them a little'more. Her ex-
cessive goodness seems somehow

to pall upon us. Our only consolation, while watching her, is that there
are not many good women off the stage. Life is bad enough, as it is ; if
there were many women, in real life, as good as the Stage heroine, it would
be unbearable.

The Stage heroine's only pleasure in life is to go oat in a snowstorm
without an umbrella, and with no bonnet on. She has a bonnet, we know
(rather a tasteful little thing), we have seen it hanging up behind the door
of her room ; but when she comes out for a night stroll, during a heavy
snowstorm (accompanied by thunder), she is most careful to leave

HER WHITE-HAIRED FATHER HAS BECOME
A BANKRUPT.

THE HEROINE.

it at home. Maybe she fears the snow will spoil it, and she is a careful

girl.

She always brings her child out with her on these excursions. She

seems to think that it will freshen it up. The child does not appreciate the

snow as much as she does. He says it's cold.

One thing that must irritate the Stage heroine very much, on these
occasions, is the way in which the snow seems to lie in wait for her, and
follow her about. It is quite a fine night, before she comes on the scene :
the moment she appears, it begins to snow. It snows heavily all the while
she remains about, and, the instant she goes, it clears up again, and keeps
dry for the rest of the evening.

The way the snow " goes " for that poor woman is most unfair. It
always snows much heavier in the particular spot where she is sitting, than
it does anywhere else in
the whole street. Why
we have sometimes seen
a heroine, sitting in
the midst of a blinding
snow-storm, while the
other side of the road
was as dry as a bone.
And it never seemed to
occur to her to cross
over.

We have even known
a more than usually
malignant snowstorm to
follow a heroine three
times round the stage,
and then go off r. with
her.

Of course, you can't get away from a snowstorm like that ! A Stage
snowstorm is the kind of snowstorm that would follow you up stairs, and
want to come into bed with you.

THE COMIC MAN EXPRESSES A BELIEF THAT SHE IS A BORnJaNGEL.

STAGE LAND.

Another curious thing about these Stage snowstorms is that the moon is
always shining brightly throughout the whole of them. And it shines only
on the heroine, and it follows her about, just like the snow does.

Nobody fully understands what a wonderful work of nature the moon
is except people acquainted with the stage. Astronomy teaches you
something about the moon, but you learn a good deal more from a few visits
to a theatre. You will find from the latter that the moon only shines on
heroes and heroines, with, perhaps, an occasional beam on the comic man :
it always goes out when it sees the villain coming.

It is surprising, too, how quickly the moon can go out on the stage.
At one moment it is riding in full radiance in the midst of a cloudless sky,
and the next instant it is gone ! Just as though it had been turned
off at the meter. It makes you quite giddy at first, until you get used
to it.

The Stage heroine is inclined to thoughtfulness rather than gaiety.

In her cheerful moments the Stage heroine thinks she sees the spirit of
her mother, or the ghost of her father, or she dreams of her dead baby.

But this is only in her very merry moods. As a rule, she is too much
occupied with weeping to have time for frivolous reflections.

She has a great flow of language, and a wonderful gift of metaphor and
simile — more forcible than elegant — and this might be rather trying in a
wife, under ordinary circumstances. But as the hero is generally sentenced
to ten years' penal servitude, on his wedding morn, he escapes, for a period,
from a danger that might well appal a less fortunate bridegroom.

Sometimes the Stage heroine has a brother, and, if so, he is sure to be
mistaken for her lover. We never came across a brother and sister, in real
life, who ever gave the most suspicious person any grounds for mistaking
them for lovers ; but Ihe Stage brother and sister are so affectionate that
the error is excusable.

And when the mistake does occur, and the husband comes in suddenly
and finds them kissing, and raves, she doesn't turn round and say :

"Why, you silly cuckoo, it's only my brother."

That would be simple and sensible, and would not suit the Stage

THE HEROINE.

heroine at all. No, she does all in her power to make everybody believe it
is true, so that she can suffer in silence.

She does so love to suffer.

Marriage is undoubtedly a failure in the case of the Stage heroine.

If the Stage heroine
were well advised

would remain single

she

Her
husband means well. He
is decidedly affectionate.
But he is unfortunate and
inexperienced in worldly
affairs. Things come right
for him at the end of the
play, it is true ; but we
would not recommend the
heroine to place too much
reliance upon the con-
tinuance of this happy
state of affairs. From
what we have seen of
her husband and his busi-
ness capabilities, during
the five acts pre-
ceding, we are
inclined to doubt
the possibility of
his being anything
but unfortunate to
the end of his
career.

1 rue ne nas ^^^ stage brother and sister are so affectionate.

at last got his

" rights " (which he would never have lost had he had a head instead of a

STAGE-LAND.

sentimental bladder on his shoulders), the villain is handcuffed, and he and
the heroine have settled down comfortably, next door to the comic man.

But this heavenly existence will never last. The Stage hero was built
for trouble, and he will be in it again in another month, you bet. They'll
get up another mortgage for him on the " estates ; " and he won't know,
bless you, whether he really did sign it, or whether he didn't, and out he
will go.

And he'll slop his name about to documents without ever looking to see
what he's doing, and be let in for Lord knows what ; and another wife will
turn up for him that he had married, when a boy, and forgotten all about.

And the next corpse that comes to the village he'll get mixed up with —
sure to — and have it laid to his door, and there'll be all the old business
over again.

No, our advice to the Stage heroine is, to get rid of the hero as soon as
possible, marry the villain, and go and live abroad, somewhere where the
comic man won't come fooling around.

She will be much happier.

lilt

y'll

)w,

see
vill

ess

\ as
the

■MmnevmnBoa

Zl^t Comic (Wlan

«|l^:'

FOLLOWS the hero all
over the world. This is
rough on the hero.

What makes him so

gone on the hero is that,

when they were boys

together, the hero used

to knock him down and

kick him. The comic man

remembers this with a

glow of pride, when he is grown up ; and

it makes him love the hero and determine

to devote his life to him.

He is a man of humble station — the
comic man. The village blacksmith or a pedlar. You never see a rich
or aristocratic comic man on the stage. You can have your choice on the
stage ; you can be funny and of lowly origin, or you can be well-to-do
and without any sense of humour. Peers and policemen are the people
most utterly devoid of humour on the stage.

The chief duty of the comic man's life is to make love to servant girls,
and they slap his face ; but it does not discourage him ; he seems to be
more smitten by them than ever.

The comic man is happy under any fate, and he says funny things at
funerals, and when the bailiffs are in the house, or the hero is waiting to be
hanged. This sort of man is rather trying in real life. In real life such a
man would probably be slaughtered to death, and buried at an early period
of his career, but on the stage they put up with him.

He is very good, is the comic man. He can't abear villainy. To thwart

STAGE-LAND.

I i

villainy is his life's ambition, and in this noble object fortune backs him
up grandly. Bad people come and commit their murders and thefts
right under his nose, so that he can denounce them in the last act.

They never see him there, standing close beside them, while they are
performing these fearful crimes.

It is marvellous how short-sighted people on the stage are. We always
thought that the young lady in real life was moderately good at not seeing

folk, she did not want to,
when they were standing
straight in front of her, but
her affliction in this direction
is as nothing compared with
that of her brothers and
sisters on the stage.

These unfortunate people
come into rooms where there
are crowds of people about —
people that it is most im-
portant that they should see,
and owing to not seeing
whom they get themselves
into fearful trouble, and they
never notice any of them.
They talk to somebody
opposite, and they can't see
a third person that is standing bang between the two of them.
You might fancy they wore blinkers.

Then, again, their hearing is so terribly weak. It really ought to be
seen to. People talk and chatter at the very top of their voices, close
behind them, and they never hear a word — don't know anybody's there,
even. After it has been going on for half an hour, and the people
" up stage " have made themselves hoarse with shouting, and somebody
has been boisterously murdered, and all the furniture upset, then the people
" down stage " ** think they hear a noise."

THEY SLAP HIS FACE.

THE COMIC MAN.

The comic man always rows with his wife, if he is married, or with his
sweetheart, if he is not married. They quarrel all day long. It must be a
trying life, you would think, but they appear to like it.

How the comic man lives and supports his wife (she looks as if it
wanted something to support her, too), and family is always a mystery to
us. As we have said, he is not a rich man, and he never seems to earn any
money. Sometimes he keeps a shop, and, in the way he manages business,
it must be an expen-
sive thing to keep, *»-<^i
for he never charges '^ ^'*!
anybody for anything,
he is so generous.
All his customers
seem to be people
more or less in
trouble, and he can't
find it in his heart
to ask them to pay
for their goods, under
such distressing cir-
cumstances.

He stuffs their
basket full with
twice as much as
they came to buy,
pushes their money back into their hands, and wipes away a tear.

Why doesn't a comic man come and set up a grocery store in our
neighbourhood ?

When the shop does not prove sufficiently profitable (as under the above
explained method sometimes happens to be the case) the comic man's wife
seeks to add to the income by taking in lodgers. This is a bad move on her
part, for it always ends in the lodgers taking her in. The hero and heroine,
who seem to have been waiting for something of the sort, immediately come
and take possession of the whole house.

THE COMIC MAN ALWAYS ROWS WITH HIS WIFE.

STAGE-LAND.

Of course the comic man could not think of charging, for mere board
and lodging, the man who knocked him down when they were boys
together ! Besides, was not the heroine (now the hero's wife) the sweetest
and the blithest girl in all the village of Deepdale ? (They must have been
a gloomy band, the others !) How can anyone with a human heart beneath
his bosom suggest that people like that should pay for their rent and
washing !

The comic man is shocked at his wife for even thinking of such a thing,
and the end of it is that Mr. and Mrs. Hero live there for the rest of the
play, rent free ; coals, soap, candles, and hair oil for the child, being pro-
vided for them on the same terms.

The hero raises vague and feeble objections to this arrangement now
and again. He says he will not hear of such a thing, that he will stay no
longer to be a burden upon these honest folk, but will go forth unto the
roadside, and there starve. The comic man has awful work with him, but
wins at last, and persuades the noble fellow to stop on, and give the place
another trial.

When, a morning or so after witnessing one of these beautiful scenes,
our own landlady knocks at our door and creates a disturbance over a
paltry matter of three or four weeks' rent, and says she'll have her money
or out we go that very day, and drifts slowly away down towards the
kitchen, abusing us in a rising voice as she descends, then we think of
these things and grow sad.

It is the example of the people round him that makes the comic man so
generous. Everybody is generous on the stage. They are giving away
their purses all day long : that is the regulation " tip " on the stage, — one's
purse. The moment you hear a tale of woe, you grab it out of your pocket,
slap it into the woe-or's palm, grip his hand, dash away a tear, and exit :
you don't even leave yourself a bus fare home. You walk back quickly, and
get another purse.

Middle-class people and others, on the stage, who are short of purses,
(have to content themselves with throwing about rolls of bank notes, and
tipping servants with five pound cheques. Very stingy people, on the stage,
have been known to be so cussed mean as to give away mere sovereigns.

THE COMIC MAN.

and

ses,
and

But they are generally only villains or lords that descend to this sort
of thing. Respectable stage folk never offer anything less than a purse.

The recipient is very grateful on receiving the purse, (he never looks
inside,) and thinks that Heaven ought to reward the donor. They get
a lot of work out of Heaven, on the stage. Heaven does all the odd
jobs for them that they don't want to go to the trouble and expense of
doing for themselves. Heaven's chief duty, on the stage, is to see to
the repayment of all those sums of money that are given or lent to the
good people. It is generally requested to do this to the tune of a
" thousandfold," an exorbitant rate, when you come to think of it.

Heaven is also expected to take care that the villain gets properly
cursed, and to fill u[ its spare time by bringing misfortune upon the
local landlord. It has to avenge everybody, and to help all the good
people whenever they are in trouble. And they keep it going in this
direction.

And when the hero leaves for prison, Heaven has to take care of
his wife and child till he comes out ; and if this isn't a handful for it,
we don't know what would be !

Heaven, on the stage, is always on the side of the hero and heroine,
and against the police.

Occasionally, of late years, the comic man has been a bad man, but
you can't hate him for it. What if he does ruin the hero and rob
the heroine, and help to murder the good old man ! He docs it all
in such a genial, light-hearted spirit, that it is not in one's heart to
feel angry with him. It is the way in which a thing is done that
makes all the difference.

Besides, he can always round on his pal, the serious villain, at the
end, and that makes it all right.

The comic man is not a sportsman. If he goes out shooting, we
know that when he returns we shall hear that he has shot the dog.
If he takes his girl out on the river he upsets her, (literally we mean).
The comic man never goes out for a day's pleasure without coming
home a wreck.

STAGE-LAND.

If he merely goes to tea with his girl at her mother's, he swallows
a muffin and chokes himself.

The comic man is not happy in his married life, nor does it seem
to us that he goes the right way to be so. He calls his wife " his old
Dutch clock," " the old geyser," and such like terms of endearment,
and addresses her with such remarks as " Ah, you old cat," " You ugly
old nutmeg grater," " You orangamatang, you ! " etc., etc.

Well, you know, that is not the way to make things pleasant about
a house.

Still, with all his faults, we like the comic man. He is not always
in trouble, and he does not make long speeches.

Let us bless him.

1 1

COMES HOMR A WRECK.

wallows

it seem

his old

arment,

ou ugly

t about
always

mmmm

i ii

ZU -fioSger

IS very old, and very long, and

very thin. He has white hair. He

dresses in the costume of the last

generation but seven. He has bushy

eyebrows, and is clean shaven. His

chin itches, considerably, so that he

has to be always scratching it. His

favourite remark is "Ah."

In real life, we have heard of young solicitors

of foppish solicitors, of short solicitors ; but, on

the stage, they are always very thin and very old.

The youngest Stage solicitor we ever remember to

have seen, looked about sixty — the oldest, about

a hundred and forty-five.

By-the-bye, it is never very safe to judge
people's ages, on the stage, by their personal appearance. We have known
old ladies who looked seventy, if they were a day, turn out to be the
mothers of boys of fourteen, while the middle-aged husband of the young
wife generally gives one the idea of ninety.

Again, what appears at first sight to be a comfortable looking and
eminently respectable elderly lady is often discovered to be, in reality, a
giddy, girlish, and inexperienced young thing, the pride of the village or
the darling of the regiment.

So, too, an exceptionally stout and short-winded old gentleman, who
looks as if he had been living too well, and taking too little exercise for the
last forty-five years, is not the heavy father, as you might imagine if you
judged from mere external evidence, but a wild, reckless boy. .J

STAGE-LAND.

]■:

You would not think so to look at him, but his only faults are that he is
so young and light-headed. There is good in him, however, and he will no
doubt be steady enough, when he grows up. All the young men of the
neighbourhood worship him, and the girls love him.

** Here he comes," they say, " dear, dear old Jack — ^Jack, the darling
boy — the headstrong youth — ^Jack, the leader of our juvenile sports, Jack !
whose childish innocence wins all hearts. Three cheers for dancing,
bright-eyed Jack ! "

On the other hand, ladies with the complexion of eighteen, are, you
learn as the story progresses, quite elderly women, the mothers of middle-
aged heroes.

The experienced observer of Stage-land never jumps to conclusions from
what he sees. He waits till he is told things.

The Stage lawyer never has any office of his own. He transacts all his
business at his clients' houses. He will travel hundreds of miles to tell
them the most trivial piece of legal information.

It never occurs to him how much simpler it would be to write a letter.
The item for " travelling expenses," in his bill of costs, must be something
enormous.

There are two moments in the course of his client's career, that the
Stage lawyer particularly enjoys. The first is when the client comes
unexpectedly into a fortune ; the second, when he unexpectedly loses it.

In the former case, upon learning the good news, the Stage lawyer at
once leaves his business, and hurries off to the other end of the kingdom
to bear the glad tidings. He arrives at the humble domicile of the
beneficiary in question, sends up his card, and is ushered into the front
parlour. He enters mysteriously, and sits left, client sits right. An
ordinary, common lawyer would come to the point at once, state the matter
in a plain, business-like way, and trust that he might have the pleasure of
representing, &c., &c. ; but such simple methods are not those of the Stage
lawyer. He looks at the client, and says:

" You had a father."

The client starts. How on earth did this calm, thin, keen-eyed old man

(

THE LAWYER.

in black know that he had a father ? He shuffles and stammers, but
the quiet, impenetrable lawyer fixes his cold, glassy eye on him, and
he is helpless. Subterfuge, he feels, is useless, and amazed, bewildered,
at the knowledge of his most private affairs, possessed by his strange
visitant, he admits the fact : he had a father.

The lawyer smiles with a quiet smile of triumph, and scratches his chin.

** You had a mother, too, if I am informed correctly," he continues.

It is idle attempting to escape this man's supernatural acuteness, and
the client owns up to having had a mother also.

From this, the
lawyer goes on to
communicate to the
client, as a great
secret, the whole of
his (the client's)
history from his
cradle upwards, and
also the history of
his nearer relatives,
and in less than
half- an - hour from
the old man's
entrance, or, say,
forty minutes, at
the outside, the
client almost knows what the business is about.

On the other occasion, when the client has lost his fortune, the Stage
lawyer is even still happier. He comes down himself to tell the misfortune
(he would not miss the job for worlds), and he takes care to choose the most
unpropitious moment possible for breaking the news. On the eldest
daughter's birthday, when there is a big party on, is his favourite time.
He comes in about midnight, and tells them just as they are going
down to supper.

You HAD A FATHER ! '

STAGE-LAND.

He has no idea of business hours, has the Stage lawyer — to make the
thing as unpleasant as possible seems to be his only anxiety.

If he cannot work it for a birthday, then he waits till there's a wedding
on, and gets up early in the morning on purpose to run down and spoil the
show. To enter among a crowd of happy, joyous fellow-creatures, and
leave them utterly crushed and miserable is the Stage lawyer's hobby.

The Stage lawyer is a very laik... e gentleman. He regards the telling
of his client's most private affairs to every stranger that he meets, as

part of his professional duties. A good gossip,
with a few chance acquaintances, about the
family sr'^^l ^f !i!s employers, is food and drink

*"■:• the Stage lawyer.

'^hey ail go about telling
thei . 'n and their friends*
jCCiCt:., • perfect strangers,
on the stage. Whenever two
people have five minutes to
spare, on the stage, they tell
each other the story of their
lives. " Sit down, and I will
tell you the story of my life,"
is the stage equivalent for the
** Come and have a drink,"
of the outside world.

The good Stage lawyer has
generally nursed the heroine on
his knee, when a baby (when
she was a baby, we mean) —
when she was only so high.
It seems to have been a part
of his professional duties. The good Stage lawyer also kisses all the
pretty girls in the play, and is expected to chuck the housemaid under the
chin. It is good to be a good Stage lawyer.

IS EXPECTED TO CHUCK THE HOUSEMAID
UNDER THE CHIN.

THE LAWYER.

The good Stage lawyer also wipes away a tear when sad things happen ;
and he turns away to do this, and blows his nose, and says he thinks he has
a fly in his eye. This touching trait in his character is always held in great
esteem by the audience, and is much applauded.

The good Stage lawyer is never, by any chance, a married man. (Few

THEY MAKE THE DULL OLD PLACE QUITE LIVELY FOR HIM.

good men are, so we gather from our married lady friends.) He loved, in
early life, the heroine's mother. That " sainted woman " (tear and nose
business) died, and is now among the angels — the gentleman who did marry
her, by-the-bye, is not quite so sure about this latter point, but the lawyer
is fixed on the idea.

STAGE-LAND.

In stage literature of a frivolous nature, the lawyer is a very different
individual. In comedy, he is young, he possesses chambers, and he is
married, (there is no doubt about this latter fact) ; and his wife and his
mother-in-law spend most of the day in his office, and make the dull old
place quite lively for him.

He only has one client. She is a nice lady, and affable, but her ante-
cedents are doubtful, and she seems to be no better than she ought to be —
possibly worse. But anyhow, she is the sole business that the poor fellow
has — is, in fact, his only source of income, and might, one would think,
under such circumstances, be accorded a welcome by his family. But his
wife and his mother-in-law, on the contrary, take a violent dislike to her ;
and the lawyer has to put her in the coal scuttle, or lock her up in the
safe, whenever he hears either of these female relatives of his coming up
the stairs.

We should not care to be the client of a farcical comedy Stage lawyer.
Legal transactions are trying to the nerves under the most favourable
circumstances; conducted by a farcical Stage lawyer, the business would
be too exciting for us.

tU (^i^tntxitiee.

SITS on a table and
smokes a cigarette. A
cigarette on the stage is
always the badge of
infamy.

In real life the cigar-
ette is usually the hall-mark of the
particularly mild and harmless in-
dividual. It is the dissipation of
the Y.M.C.A. ; the innocent joy of
the pure-hearted boy, long ere the
demoralising influence of our vaunted
civilisation has dragged him down
into the depths of the short clay.

But behind the cigarette on the
stage, lurks ever black-hearted vil-
lainy and abandoned womanhood.
The adventuress is generally of foreign extraction. They do not make
bad women in England, the article is entirely of continental manufacture,
and has to be imported. She speaks English with a charming little
French accent, and she makes up for this by speaking French with a good
sound English one.

She seems a smart business woman, and she would probably get on
very well if it were not for her friends and relations. Friends and relations
are a trying class of people, even in real life, as we all know, but the friends
and relations of the Stage adventuress are a particularly irritating lot.
They never leave her, never does she get a day or an hour off from them.
Wherever she goes, there the whole tribe goes with her.

STAGE-LAND.

They all go with her in a body when she calls on her youn^ man, and
it is as much as she can do to persuade them to go into the next room, even
for five minutes, and give her a chance. When she is married they come
and live with her.

They know her dreadful secret, and it keeps them in comfort for years.
Knowing somebody's secret seems, on the stage, to be one of the most
profitable and least exhausting professions going.

She is fond of married life, is the adventuress, and she goes in for it
pretty extensively. She has husbands all over the globe, most of them in
prison, but they escape and turn up in the last act, and spoil all the poor
girl's plans. That is so like husbands — no consideration, no thought for
their poor wives.

They are not a prepossessing lot either, those early husbands of hers.
What she could have seen in them to induce her to marry them is indeed
a mystery.

The adventuress dresses magnificently. Where she gets the money
from we never could understand, for she and her companions are always
more or less complaining of being " stone broke." Dressmakers must be
a trusting people where she comes from.

The adventuress is like the proverbial cat as regards the number of
lives she is possessed of. You never know when she is really dead. Most
people like to die once and have done with it, but the adventuress, after
once or twice trying it, seems to get quite to like it, and goes on giving way
to it, and then it grows upon her until she can't help herself, and it
becomes a sort of craving with her.

THOSE EARLY HUSBANDS OF HERS.

THE ADVENTURESS.

This habit of hers is, however, a very tryinp; one for her friends and
husbands, it makes things so uncertain. Something ought to be done
to break her of it. Her husbands, on hearing that she is dead, go into
raptures, and rush off and marry other people, and then, just as they are
starting off on their new honeymoon, up she crops again, as fresh as paint.
It is really most annoying.

For ourselves, were we the husband of a Stage adventuress, we should
never, after what we have seen of the species, feel quite justified in
believing her to be dead, unless we had killed and buried her ourselves ;
and even then we should be more easy in our minds if we could arrange
to sit on her grave for a week or so afterwards. These women arc
so artful !

But it is not only the adventuress who will persist in coming to life
again, every time she is slaughtered. They all do it on the stage. They
are all so unreliable in this respect. It must be most disheartening to
the murderers.

And then again, it is something extraordinary, when you come to think
of it, what a tremendous amount of killing some of them can stand, and
still come up smiling in the next act, not a penny the worse for it. They
get stabbed, and shot, and thrown over precipices thousands of feet high,
and, bless you, it does them good — it is like a tonic to them.

As for the young man that is coming home to see his girl, you simply
can't kill him. Achilles was a summer rose compared with him. Nature
and mankind have not sufficient materials in hand, as yet, to kill that man.
Science has but the strength of a puling babe against his invulnerability.
You can waste your time on earthquakes and shipwrecks, volcanic
eruptions, floods, explosions, railway accidents, and such like sort of
things, if you are foolish enough to do so ; but it is no good your
imagining that anything of the kind can hurt him, because it can't.

There will be thousands of people killed, thousands in each instance,
but one human being will always escape, and that one human being will be
the Stage young man who is coming home to see his girl.

He is for ever being reported as dead, but it always turns out to

STAGE-LAND.

be another fellow who was like him, or who had on his (the young
man's) hat. He is bound to be out of it, whoever else may be in.

" If I had been at my post that day," he explains to his sobbing
mother, " I should have been blown up, but the Providence that watches
over good men had ordained that I should be lying blind-drunk in Blogg's
saloon at the time the explosion took place, and so the other engineer,
who had been doing my work when it was his turn to be off, was killed
along with the whole of the crew."

" Ah, thank Heaven, thank Heaven for that ! " ejaculates the pious
old lady, and the comic man is so overcome with devout joy that he has
to relieve his overstrained heart by drawing his young woman on one
side, and grossly insulting her.

All attempts to kill this young man ought really to be given up now.
The job has been tried over and over again by villains and bad people
' " . kinds, but no one has ever succeeded. There has been an amount
ot energy and ingenuity expended in seeking to lay up that one man
which, properly utilised, might have finished off ten million ordinary
mortals. It is sad to think of so much wasted effort.

He, the young man coming home to see his girl, need never take an
insurance ticket, or even buy a Tit Bits. It would be needless expendi-
ture in his case.

On the other hand, and to make matters equal, as it were, there are
some Stage people so delicate that it is next door to impossible to keep
them alive.

The inconvenient husband is a most pathetic example of this. Medical
science is powerless to save that man when the last act comes round ;
indeed, we doubt whether medical science, in its present state of develop-
ment, could even tell what is the matter with him, or why he dies at
all. He looks healthy and robust enough, and nobody touches him, yet
down he drops without a word of warning, stone-dead, in the middle of
the floor — he always dies in the middle of the floor. Some folks like to
die in bed, but Stage people don't. They like to die on the floor. We all
have our different tastes.

^."i^'^yy

THE ADVENTURESS.

The adventuress herself is another person
who dies with remarkable ease. We suppose
in her case, it is being so ,y^

used to it that makes her Wf^^ii -.-rr;.^^?-> VJ^

_
There is no lingering illness and doctor's^ bills,
and upsetting of the whole household arrange-
ments, about her method. One walk round the
stage and the thing is done.

All bad characters die quickly on the stage.
Good characters take a long time over it, and
have a sofa down in the drawing-room to do it
on, and have sobbing relatives and good old
doctors fooling around them, and can smile and forgive
everybody. Bad Stage characters have to do the whole
job, dying speech and all, in about ten seconds, and do it
with all their clothes on into the bargain, which must make
it most uncomfortable.

It is repentance that kills off the the bad people in
plays. They always repent, and the />
moment they repent they die. Repent- f

ance, on the stage, seems to be one of the % jj

fwS-t in-

most dangerous things a man can be taken ^-.^^fi^/'
with. Our advice to Stage wicked

^^^-

ti&A'

^-7^\ people would undoubtedly be,

■% ~^^-i \ " Never repent. If you value

k.,X\^^3 your life, don't repent. It

always means sudden death ! "

''A To return to our adven-

turess, she is by no
means a bad woman.
There is much good in
her. This is more than

STAGE-LAND.

proved by the fact that she learns to love the hero before she dies ; for no
one but a really good woman, capable of extraordinary patience and
gentleness, could ever, we are convinced, grow to feel any other sentiment
for that irritating ass than a desire to throw bricks at him.

The Stage adventuress would be a much better woman, too, if it were
not for the heroine. The adventuress makes the most complete arrange-
ments for being noble and self-sacrificing, that is for going away and never
coming back, and is just about to carry them out, when the heroine, who
has a perfect genius for being in the wrong place at the right time, comes in
and spoils it all. No Stage adventuress can be good while the heroine is
about. The sight of the heroine rouses every bad feeling in her breast.

We can sympathise with her in this respect. The heroine often affects
ourselves in precisely the same way.

There is a good deal to be said in favour of the adventuress. True she

possesses rather too much sarcasm
and repartee to make things quite
agreeable round the domestic hearth,
and, when she has got all her
clothes on, there is not much room
left in the place for anybody else ;
but, taken on the whole, she is
decidedly attractive. She has grit
and go in her. She is alive. She
can do something to help herself
besides calling for " George."

She has not got a Stage child
— if she ever had one, she has left
it on somebody else's doorstep,
which, presuming there was no
water handy to drown it in, seems
to be about the most sensible thing
she could have done with it. She

SHE IS THE ONLY PERSON IN THE PIECE WHO

CAN SIT ON THE COMIC MAN, is not opprcsslvcly good.

THE ADVENTURESS. ^g

She never wants to be " unhanded," or " let to pass." She is not
always being shocked or insulted by people telling her that they love
her; she does not seem to mind it if they do. She is not always fainting,
and crymg, and sobbing, and wailing, and moaning, like the good people
in the play are. t^ f f

Oh they do have an unhappy time of it-the good people in plays I
1 hen she is the only person in the piece who can sit on the comic man

We sometimes think it would be a fortunate thing-for him-if they
allowed her to marry and settle down quietly with the hero. She might
make a man of him, in time.

&
V

Tie
otage

ervanl

Girl

nivnjiitrii;),' T'

tU ^tt^ant &xtt.

ARE two types of servant
girl to be met with on the
stage. This is an unusual
allowance for one profession.
There is the lodging-
house slavey. She has a
good heart, and a smutty
face, and is always dressed
according to the latest
fashion in scarecrows.

Her leading occupation is the cleaning of
boots. She cleans boots all over the house,
at all hours of the day. She comes and sits
down on the hero's breakfast table, and cleans them over the poor fellow's
food. She comes into the drawing-room cleaning boots.

She has her own method of cleaning them, too. She rubs off the mud,
puts on the blacking, and polishes up all with the same brush. They
take an enormous amount of polishing, she seems to do nothing else all
day long but walk about shining one boot, and she breathes on it and rubs
it till you wonder there is any leather left, yet it never seems to get any
brighter, nor, indeed, can you expect it to, for when you look closely you
see it is a patent leather boot that she has been throwing herself away upon
all this time.

Somebody has been having a lark with the poor girl.
The lodging-house slavey brushes her hair with the boot brush, and
blacks the end of her nose with it.

STAGE-LAND.

We were acquainted with a lodging-house slavey once — a real one, we
mean. She was the handmaiden at a house in Floomsbury, where we once
hung out. She was untidy in her dress, it is true, but she had not
quite that castaway and gone-to-sleep-in-a-dustbin appearance that we,
an earnest student of the drama, felt she ought to present, and we
questioned her one day on the subject.

** How is it, Sophronia," we said, ** that you distantly resemble a

human being instead of giving one the idea of an animated rag-shop ?

Don't you ever polish your nose with the blacking brush, or rub coal into

your head, or wash your face in treacle, or put skewers into your hair,

.or anything of that sort, like they do on the stage ? "

She said, " Lord love you, what should I want to go and be a ball)
idiot like that for ? "

And we have not liked to put the question elsewhere since then.

The other type of servant girl on the stage — the villa servant girl —
is a very different personage. She is a fetching little thing, and dresses
bewitchingly, and is always clean. Her duties are to dust the legs of the
chairs in the drawing-room. That is the only work she ever has to do, but
it must be confessed she does that thoroughly. She never comes into the
room without dusting the legs of these chairs, and she dusts them again
before she goes out.

If anything ought to be free from dust in a stage house, it should be the
legs of the drawing-room chairs.

She is going to marry the man-servant, is the Stage servant girl, as
soon as they have saved up sufficient out of their wages to buy an hotel.
They think they will like to keep an hotel. They don't understand a bit
about the business, which we believe is a complicated one, but this does
not trouble them in the least.

They quarrel a good deal ovei their love-making, do the Stage servant
girl and her young man, and they always come into the drawing-room
to do it. They have got the kitchen, and there is the garden (with a
fountain and mountains in the background — you can see it through the
window), but no ! no place in or about the house is good enough for

THE .SERVANT GIRL.

them to quarrel in except the drawinj^-room. They quarrel there so
vigorously that it even interferes with the dusting of the chair legs.

She ought not to be long in saving up sufficient to marry on, for the
generosity of people on the stage, to the servants there, makes one seriously
consider the advisability of ignoring the unremunerative professions of
ordinary life, and starting a
new and more promising
career as a Stage servant.

No one ever dreams of
tipping the Stage servant with
less than a sovereign when they
ask her if her mistress is at
home, or give her a letter to
post, and there is quite a rush
at the end of the piece to stuff
five-pound notes into her hand.
The good old man gives her
ten.

The Stage servant is very
impudent to her mistress, and
the master — he falls in love
with her, and it does upset the
house so.

Sometimes the servant girl
is good and faithful, and then
she is Irish. All good servant
girls on the stage are Irish.

All the male visitors are
expected to kiss the Stage she is going to marry the manservant.

servant girl when they come into the house, and to dig her in the ribs,
and to say, " Do you know, Jane, I think you're an uncommonly nice
girl — click." They always say this, and she likes it.

Many years ago, when we were young, we thought we would see if

STAGE-LAND.

things were the same off the stage, and the next time we called at a certain
friend's house, we tried this business on.

She wasn't quite so dazzlingly beautiful as they are on the stage, but
we passed that. She showed us up into the drawing-room, and then
said she would go and tell her mistress we were there.

We felt this was the time to begin. We skipped between her and

the door. We held our hat in front of us, and
cocked our head on one side, and said,
" Don't go ! dont go ! "

The girl seemed alarmed. We began to get
a little nervous ourselves, but we had begun it,
and we meant to go through with it.

We said, " Do you know, Jane," (her name
wasn't Jane, but that wasn't our fault), " do you
know, Jane, I think you're an uncommonly
nice girl," and we said " click," and dug her
in the ribs with our elbow, and then chucked
her under the chin. The whole thing seemed
to fall flat. There was nobody there to laugh
or applaud. We wished we hadn't done it. It
seemed stupid, when you came to think of it.
We began to feel frightened. The business
wasn't going as we expected; but we screwed
up our courage, and went on.

We put on the customary expression of

/Im comic imbecility, and beckoned the girl to

/ ..- We have never seen this fail on the

THEN SHE IS IRISH.

US.

stage.

But this girl seemed made wrong. She got behind the sofa, and
screamed " Help ! "

We have never known them to do this on the stage, and it threw us
out in our plans. We did not know exactly what to do. We regretted
that we had ever begun this job, and heartily wished ourselves out of it.

THE SERVANT GIRL.

But it appeared foolish to pause then, when we were more than half way
through, and we made a rush to get it over.

We chivied the girl round the sofa, and caught her near the door, and
kissed her. She scratched our face, yelled police, murder, and lire, and
fled from the room.

Our friend came in almost
immediately. He said,

" I say, J., old man, are
you drunk ? "

We told him no, that we
were only a student of the
drama.

His wife then entered
in a towering passion. She
didn't ask us if we were
drunk. She said,

" How dare you come
here in this state ! "

We endeavoured, unsuc-
cessfully, to induce her to
believe that we were sober ;
and we explained that our
course of conduct was what
was always pursued on the
stage.

She said she didn't care
what was done on the stage,
it wasn't going to be pursued
in her house ; and that if
her husband's friends couldn't behave as gentlemen they had better stop
away.

A few more chatty remarks were exchanged, and then we took our leave.
The following morning we received a letter from a firm of solicitors

DO YOU KNOW, JANE, I THINK YOU RE
UNCOMMONLY NICE GIRL — "CLICK."'

STAGE-LAND.

in Lincoln's Inn with reference, so they put it, to the brutal and un-
provoked assault committed by us on the previous afternoon upon the
person of their client, Miss Matilda Hemminj^s. The letter stated that
we had punched Miss Hemmings in the side, struck her under the chin,
and, afterwards, seizing her as she was leaving the room, proceeded to
commit a gross assault, into the particulars of which it was needless for
them to enter at greater length.

It added that if we were prepared to render an ample written apology,
and to pay fifty pounds compensation, they would advise their client,
Miss Matilda Hemmings, to allow the matter to drop, otherwise, criminal
proceedings would at once be commenced against us.

We took the letter to our own solicitors, and explained the circum-
stances to them. They said it seemed to be a very sad case, but advised
us to pay the fifty pounds, and we borrowed the money, and did so.

Since then we have lost faith, somehow, in the British drama as a guide
to the conduct of life.

th chn.

IS nice and quiet and it talks
pretty.

We have come across real
infants, now and then, in the
course of visits to married
friends; they have been
brought to us from outlying
parts of the house, and intro-
duced to us for our edification ;
and we have found them gritty
and sticky. Their boots have
usual]; been muddy, and they
have wiped them up against
our new trousers. And their
hair has suggested the idea
that they have been standing
on their heads in the dust-bin.
And they have talked to us
—but not pretty, not at all— rather rude we should call it.

But the stage child is very different. It is clean and tidy. You can
touch It anywhere and nothing comes off. Its face glows with soap and
water. From the appearance of its hands it is evident that mud pies and
tar are joys unknown to it. As for its hair, there is something uncanny
about Its smoothness and respectability. Even its boot laces are done up

We have never seen anything like the Stage child, outside a theatre
exceptmg once-that was on the pavement in front of a tailor's shop in
lottenham Court Road. He stood on a bit of round wood, and it was
fifteen and nine, his style.

We thought, in our ignorance, prior to this, that there could not be
anythnig m the world like the Stage .hild, but, you see we were mistaken.

.\| Hintson Juvpnilc J.hijuWtf

STAGE-LAND.

[

The Stage child is affectionate to its parents, and its nurse ; and is
respectful in its demeanour towards those whom Providence has placed in
authority over it ; and so far, it is certainly much to be preferred
to the real article. It speaks of its male and female progenitors as
" dear, dear papa," and " dear, dear mama," and it refers to its
nurse as *' darling nursey." We are connected with a youthful child,
ourselves — a real one — a nephew. .He alludes to his father (when his
father is not present) as " the old man ; " and always calls the nurse ** old
nutcrackers." Why cannot they make real children who say " dear, dear
mama," and ** dear, dear papa."

The Stage child is much superior to the live infant, in every way.
The Stage child does not go rampaging about a house and screeching and
yelling, till nobody knows whether they are on their head or their heels.

A Stage child does not get up at five o'clock in the morning to practice
playing on a penny whistle. A Stage child never wants a bicycle, and
drives you mad about it. A Stage child does not ask twenty complicated
questions a minute about things that you don't understand, and then wind
up by asking why you don't seem to know anything, and why wouldn't
anybody teach you anything when you were a little boy.

The Stage child does not wear out a hole in the seat of its knicker-
bockers, and have to have a patch let in. The Stage child comes down
stairs on its feet.

The Stage child never brings home six other children to play at horses
in the front garden, and then wants to know if they can all come in to tea.
The Stage child never has the whooping cough, and the measles, and every
other disease that it can lay its hands on, and be laid up with them one
after the other, and turn the house upside down.

The Stage child's department in the scheme of life is to harrow up its
mother's feelings by ill-timed and uncalled for questions about its father.
It always wants to know, before a roomful of people, where ** dear papa"
is, and why he has left dear mama; when, as all the guests know, the
poor man is doing his two years' hard, or waiting to be hanged.

It makes everybody so uncomfortable.

THE CHILD.

It IS always harrowing up somebody-the Stage child-it really ought
not to be left about, as it is. When it has done upsetting its mother, it
fishes out some broken-hearted maid, who has just been cruelly severed for
ever from her lover, and asks her in a high falsetto voice, why she doesn't
get married, and prattles to her about love, and domestic bliss, and young
men, and any other subject it can think of, particularly calculated to
lacerate the poor girl's heart, until her brain nearly gives way.

After that, it runs amuck, up and down the whole play, and makes
everybody sit up, all round. It asks eminently respectable old maids if

they wouldn't like to have a baby; and it wants to know why bald-

headed old men have left off wearing hair, and why other old gentlemen

have red noses, and if they

were always that colour.

In some plays, it so happens

that the less said about the

origin and source of the Stage

child, the better; and, in such

cases, nothing will appear so

important to that

contrary brat as to

know, in the

middle of an

evening party, who

its father was !
Everybody loves

the Stage child.

They catch it up

in their bosoms

evt ry other minute

and weep over it.

They take it in
turns to do this.
Nobody — on

the stap-e wp mean "^ ^gSgj^ wants to know why bald-heaued old men have
me stage, we mean """ left off wearing hair.

/■;->

STAGE-LAND.

—ever has enough of the Stage child. Nobody ever tells the Stage child
to "shut up," or to "get out of this." Nobody ever clumps the Stage
child over the head.

When the real child goes to the theatre it must notice these things,
and wish it were a Stage child.

The Stage child is much admired by the audience. Its pathos makes

them weep; its tragedy thrills them; its declama-
tion, as for instance, when it takes the centre of
the stage, and says it will kill the wicked man,
and the police, and everybody who hurts its mar,
stirs them like a trumpet note ; and its light comedy
is generally held to be the most truly humorous
tiling in the whole range of dramatic art.

But there are some people so strangely con-
stituted that they do not appreciate
the Stage child ; they do not com-
prehend its uses ; they do not under-
stand its beauties.

We should not be angry with them.
We should the rather pity them.

We ourselves had a friend once
who suffered from this misfortune.
He was a married man, and Provi-
dence had been very gracious, very
good to him : he had been blessed
with eleven children, and they were
all growing "P well and strong. "•

The " ba y " was eleven weeks
old, and then came the twins, who
were getting on for fifteen months, and were cutting their double teeth
nicely. The youngest girl was three, and there were five boys aged seven,
eight, nine, ten and twelve, respectively — good enough lads, but — well
there, boys will be boys, you know ; we were just the same ourselves
when we were young. The two eldest were both very pleasant girls, as

SAYS IT WILL KILL THE WICKED MAN.

THE CHILD.

their mother said, the only pity was that they would quarrel so with each
other.

We never knew a healthier set of boys and girls. The}- were so full of
energy and dash.

Our friend was very much out of sorts one evening when we called
on him. It was holiday time, and wet weather. He had been at home
all day, and so had all the children. He was telling his wife, when we
entered the room, that if the holidays were to last much longer and those
twms did not hurry up and get their teeth quickly, he should have to go
away and join the County Council. He could not stand the racket.

• His wife said she could not see what he had to complain of. She
was sure better hearted children no man could have.

Our friend said he didn't care a damn about their hearts. It was
their legs, and arms, and lungs that were driving him crazy.

He also said that he would go out with us and get away from it
for a bit, or he should go mad.

He proposed a theatre, and we accordingly made our way towards
the Strand. Our friend, in closing the door behind him, said he could
not tell us what a relief it was to get away from those children. He
said he loved children very much indeed, but that it was a mistake to
have too much of anything, however much you liked it, and that he
had come to the conclusion that twenty-two hours a day of them was
enough for anyone.

He said he did not want to see another child or hear another child
until he got home. He wanted to forget that there were such things
as children in the world.

We got up to the Strand and dropped into the first theatre we
came to. The curtain was up, and on the stage was a small child,
standing in its nightshirt and screaming for its mother.

Our friend looked, said one word and bolted, and we followed.

We went a little further, and dropped into another theatre.
There, there were two children on the stage. Some grown-up people
were standing round them listening, in respectful attitudes, while the
children talked. They appeared to be lecturing about something.

STAGE-LAND.

Again we fled, swearing, and made our way to a third theatre.
They were all children there. It was somebody or others Children's
Company performing an opera, or pantomime, or something of that sort.

Our friend said he would not venture in another theatre. He said
he had heard there were places called music halls, and he begged us to
take him to one of these, and not to tell his wife.

We enquired of a policeman and found that there really were such
places, and we took him into one.

The first thing we saw were two little boys doing tricks on a
horizontal bar.

Our friend was about to repeat his customary programme of flying
and cursing, but we restrained him. We assured him that he really
would see a grown-up person if he waited a bit, so he sat out the boys
and also their little sister on a bicycle, and waited for the next item.

It turned out to be an infant phenomenon who sang and danced in
fourteen different costumes, and we once more fled.

Our friend said he could not go home in the state he was then, he
felt sure he should kill the twins, if he did. He pondered for a while,
and then he thought he would go and hear some music. He said he
thought a little music would soothe and ennoble him — make him feel more
like a Christian than he did at that precise moment.

We were near St. James's Hall, so we went in there.

The hall was densely crowded, and we had great difficulty in forcing
our way to our seats. We reached them at length, and then turned
our eyes towards the orchestra.

" The marvellous boy pianist — only ten years old ! " was giving a
recital.

Then our friend rose and said he thought he would give it up and
go home.

We asked him if he would like to try any other place of amusement,
but he said, " No." He said that, when you came to think of it, it
seemed a waste of money for a man with eleven children of his own
to go about to places of entertainment now-a-days.

€U Comic Bo1?et0*

THEY aye funny!
The comic
lovers' mission in
life is to serve as
a sort of " relief "
to the misery,
caused the audi-
ence by the other
characters in the
play ; and all that
is wanted now is
somethinj^ that
will be a relief to
the comic lovers.
They have

: ^' hing to do with the play, but they come on immediately after anything
very sad has happened, and make love. This is why we watch sad scenes
on the stage with such patience. We are not eager for them to be got
over. Maybe, they are very uninteresting scenes, as well as sad ones,
and they make us yawn ; but we luive no desire to see them hurried
through. The longer they take, the better pleased we are : we know that,
when they are finished, the com.ic lovers will come on.

They are always very rude to one another, the comic lovers. Everybody
is more or less rude and insulting to everybody else, on the stage ; they
call it repartee, there ! We tried the effect of a little Stage " repartee,"
once, upon some people in real life, and we wished we hadn't, afterwards.

STAGE-LAND.

It was too subtle for them. They summonsed us before a magistrate for
" using language calculated to cause a breach of the peace." We were
fined two pounds, and costs I

They are more lenient to " wit and humour " on the stage, and know
how to encourage the art of vituperation. But the comic lovers carry the
practice almost to excess. They are more than rude, they are abusive.
They insult each other from morning to night. "What their married life
will be like, we shudder to think !

In the various slanging matches and bullyragging competitions, which
form their courtship, it is always the maiden that is most successful.
Against her merry flow of invective, and her girlish wealth of offensive
personalities, the insolence and abuse of her boyish adorer cannot stand
for one moment.

To give an idea of how the comic lovers woo, we, perhaps, cannot do
better than subjoin the following brief example : —

Scene : Main tJwroughfare in populous district of London.
Time : Noon. Not a soid to be seen anywhere.

Enter comic loveress R., walking in the middle of the road.
Enter comic lover l., also walking in the middle of the road.
They neither see the other one, until they hump against each
other in the centre.

Why, Jane ! Who'd a' thought o' meeting you here !
You evidently didn't — stoopid !

Hulloa! got out o' bed the wrong side again. I say, Jane, if
you go on like that, you'll never get a man to marry you.
She. So I thought, when I engaged myself to you.
Oh ! come Jane, don't be hard.

Well, one of us must be hard. Yoti're soft enough.
Yes, I shouldn't want to marry you, if I weren't. Ha ! ha I ha !
Oh you gibbering idiot {said archly).

So glad I am. We shall make a capital match {attempts to kiss her).
She {slipping away). Yes, and you'll find I'm a match that can strike
{fetches him a violent blow over the side of the head).

He.

She.
He.

He.

She.
He.

THE COMIC LOVERS.

He. {holding his jaw — in a literal sense, we mean.) I can't help feeling
smitten by her. •

She. Yes, I'm a bit of a spanker, aint I ?

He. Spanker! / call you a regular stunner. You've nearly made
me silly.

She {laughing playfully). No, nature did that for you, Joe, long ago.

He. Ah, well, you've made me smart enough now. You boss-eyed
old cow, you !

She. Cow ! am I ? Ah, I suppose that's what makes me so fond of
a calf! You German sausage on legs! You —

He. Go along. Your
mother brought you up
on sour milk.

She. Yah! They
weaned you on thistles,
didn't they ?

And so on, with such
like badinage do they hang
about in the middle of
that road, showering de-
rision and contumely upon
each other for full ten
minutes, when, with one
culminating burst
of mutual abuse,
they go off to-
gether, fighting ;
and the street is
left once more, deserted.

It is very curious, by-the-
bye, how deserted all public M^ CD
places become, whenever a v'j '
stage character is about. It

THEY BUMP UP AGAINST EACH OTHER,

STAGE-LAND.

would seem as though ordinary citizens sought to avoid them. We have
known a couple of Stage villains to have Waterloo Bridge, Lancaster Place,

*%./-«,*?!»

THEY GO 01-F TOOKTHER 1-IGHTING.

and a bit of the Strand entirely to themselves, for nearly a quarter-of-an-
hour on a summer's afternoon, while they plotted a most diabolical outrage.

As for Trafalgar Square, the hero always chooses that spot, when he
wants to get away from the busy crowd and commune, in solitude, with
his own bitter thoughts; and the good old lawyer leaves his office, and goes
there to discuss any very delicate business over which he particularly does
not wish to be disturbed.

And they all make speeches there to an extent sufficient to have turned
the hair of the late lamented Sir Charles Warren white with horror. But
it is all right, because there is nobody near to hear them. As far as the
eye can reach, not a living thing is to be seen. Northumberland Avenue,

THE COMIC LOVERS.

the Strand, and St. Martin's Lane arc simply a wilderness. The only sifjn
of life about is a bus at the top ol Whitehall, and it appears to be blocked.
How it has managed to get blocked, we cannot say. It has the whole
road to itself; and is, in fact, itself the only traffic for miles round. Yet
there it sticks, for hours. The police make no attempt to move it on,
and the passengers seem quite contented.

The Thames Embankment is an even still more lonesome and desolate
part. Wounded (stage) spirits fly from the haunts of men, and, leaving the
hard, cold world far, far behind them, go and die in peace on the Thames
Embankment. And other wanderers, finding their skeletons afterwards,
bury them there, and put up rude crosses over the graves to mark the spot.

The comic lovers are often very
young ; and, when people on
stage are young, they are young.
He is supposed to be about
sixteen, and she is fifteen. But
they both talk as if they were
not more than seven.

In real life, " boys " of six-
teen know a thing or two, we
have generally found. The
average " boy " of sixteen,
now-a-days, usually smokes
cavendish, and does a little on v^j
the Stock Exchange, or makes
a book : and, as for love ! he
has quite got over it by that
age. On the stage, however,
the new born babe is not in it
for innocence with the boy
lover of sixteen.

So, too, with the maiden.
Most girls of fifteen, off the
stage, so our experience goes,

THE COMIC LOVERS ARE OFTEN
VERY YOUNG,

,:i

STAGE-LAND.

know as much as there is any actual necessity for them to know, Mr.
Gilbert, notwithstanding; but when we see a young lady of fifteen on the
stage, we wonder where her cradle is.

The comic lovers do not have the facilities for love making that the
hero and heroine do. The hero and heroine have big rooms to make love
in, with a fire and plenty of easy chairs, so that they can sit about in
picturesque attitudes, and do it comfortably. Or if they want to do it out
of doors, they have a ruined abbey, with a big stone seat in the centre,
and moonlight.

The comic lovers, on the other hand, have to do it, standing up all
the time, in busy streets, or in cheerless-looking, and curiously narrow
rooms, in which there is no furniture whatever, and no fire.

And there is always a trejiiendous row, going on in the house, when the
comic lovers are making love. Somebody always seems to be putting up
pictures in the next room, and putting them up boisterously, too ; so that
the comic lovers have to shout at each other.

C^e ^ea0anf04

ARE so clean.
We have seen
peasantry off
the stage, and
it has presented
an untidy —
occasionally a
disreputable and
unwashed ap-
pearance ; but
the Stage peas-
ant seems to
spend all his
wages on soap
and hair oil.
They are

always round the corner — or rather round the two corners — and they come

on in a couple of streams, and meet in the centre ; and, when they are in

their proper position, they smile.

There is nothing like the Stage peasants' smile in this world — nothing

so perfectly inane, so calmly imbecile.

They are so happy. They don't look it, but we know they are, because

they say so. If you don't believe them, they dance three steps to the right

and three steps to the left back again. They can't help it. It is because

they are so happy.

When they are more than usually rollicking, they stand in a semi-circle,

\ ith their hands on each other's shoulders, and sway from side to side

h i

STAGE-LAND.

trying to make themselves sick. But this is only when they are simply
bursting with joy.

Stage peasants never have any work to do. Sometimes we see them
goin^ to work, sometimes coming home from work, but nobody has ever
seen them actually at work. They could not afford to work, it would
spoil their clothes.

They are very sympathetic, are Stage peasants. They never seem to
have any affairs of their own to think about, but they make up for this by

taking a three hundred horse-power interest in
things in which they have no earthly concern.

What particularly rouses them is the heroine's
love affairs. They could listen to that all day.

They yearn to hear what she said to him,
and to be told what he replied to her, and
they repeat it to each other.

In our own love-sicl days, we often used
to go and relate to various people all the
touching conversations that took place
between our lady-love and ourselves ; but
oiir friends never seemed to get excited over
it. On the contrary, a casual observer
might even have been led to the idea that
they were bored by our recital. And they
had trains to catch, and men to meet,
before we had got a quarter through the
job.

Ah, how often, in those days, have we
yearned for the sympathy of a Stage
peasantry, who would have crowded round
us, eager not to miss one word of the
thrilling narrative ; who would have rejoiced
with us with an encouraging laugh, and
have condoled with us with a grieved "Oh,"

so LAI-MLY IMBECILf..

THE PEASANTS.

and who would have gone off, when we had had enough of them, singing
about it.

By the way, this is very beautiful trait in the ciiaracter of the Stage
pear,antry, their prompt and unquestioning compliance with the slightest
wish of any of the principals.

" Leave me, friends," says the heroine, beginning to make preparations
for weeping, and, before she can turn round, they are clean gone — one lot
to the right, evidently making for the back entrance of the public house, and
the other half to the left, where they visibly hide themselves behind the
pump, and wait till somebody else wants them.

The Stage peasantry do not talk much, their strong point being to
listen. When they cannot get any more information about the state of
the heroine's heart, they like to be told long and complicated stories about
wrongs done years ago to people that they never heard of. They seem to
be able to grasp and understand these stories with ease. This makes the
audience envious of them.

When the Stage peasantry do talk, however, they soon make up for
lost time. They start off altogether with a suddenness that nearly knocks
you over.

They all talk. Nobody listens. Watch any two of them. They are
both talking as hard as they can go. They have been listening quite
enough to other people : you can't expect them to listen to each other.
But the conversation, under s.ich conditions, must be very trying.

And then they flirt so sweetly ! so idyllicly !

It has been our privilege to see real peasantry flirt, and it has always
struck us as a singularly solid and substantial affair— makes one think,
somehow, of a steam roller flirting with a cow — but on the stage it
is so sylph-like. She has short skirts, and her stockings are so much
tidier and better fitting than these things are in real peasant life ; and
she is arch and coy. She turns away from him and laughs — such a
silvery laugh.

And he is ruddy and curly haired, and has on such a beautiful waist-
coat ! how can she help but love him ? And he is so tender and devoted*

STAGE-LAND.

and holds her by the waist ; and she slips round and comes up the other
side. Oh, it is so bewitching.

The Stage peasantry like to do their love-making as much in public

as possible. Some people fancy a
place all to themselves for this

sort of thing
— where no-
body else is
about. We
ourselves do.
But the Stage
peasant is
more sociably
inclined.
Give him the
village green,
just outside
the public
house, or the
square, on
market day,
to do his
spooning in.

They are

very faithful,

are Stage

peasants. No jilting,

no fickleness, no

breach of promise.

If the gentleman in

pink walks out with

the lady in blue in the first act, pink and blue will be married in the end.

He sticks to her all through, and she sticks to him.

SHli IS ARCH AND COY.

THE PEASANTS.

Girls in yellow may come and go ; girls in green may laugh and dance ;

the gentleman in pink heeds them not. Blue is his colour, and he never

leaves it. He stands beside it, he sits beside it. He drinks with her, he

smiles vvith her, he laughs with her, he dances with her, he comes on with

her, he goes off with her.
When the time comes for

talking, he talks to her and

only her; and she talks to

him and only him. Thus

there is no jealousy, no

quarrelling.

But we should prefer an

occasional change ourselves.
There are no married
people in Stage villages, and
no children (consequently, of
course — happy village, oh, to
discover it, and spend a
month there ! ) There are
just the same number of men
as there are women in all
Stage villages, and they are
all about the same age and
each young man loves some
young woman. But they never marry.

They talk a lot about it, but they never
do it. The artful beggars! They see too
much what it's like among the principals.

The Stage peasant is fond of drinking,
and, when he drmks, he likes to let you
know he is drinking. None of your quiet half-pint inside the bar for him.
He likes to come out in the street and sing about it, and do tricks with it,
such as turning it topsy-turvey over his head.

HL LIKES TO COME OUT INTO THE
STREET AND SING ABOUT IT,

STAGE-LAND.

But, notwithstanding all this, he is moderate, mind you. You can't
say he takes too much. One small jug of -le among forty is his usual
allowance.

He has a keen sense of humour, and is easily amused. There is
something almost pathetic about the way he goes into convulsions of
laughter over such very small jokes. How a man like that would enjoy
a real joke ! One day he will, perhaps, hear a real joke. Who knows?

It will, however, probably kill him.

One grows to love the stage peasant after awhile. He is so good, so
childlike, so unworldly. He realises one's ideal of Christianity.

.n't
ual

is
of

joy

;i !

r
■ft.

t^t (B006 (Dtn (man.

HAS lost his wife. But he
knows where she is— amone-
the angels !

She isn't all gone,

because the heroine has her

hair. " Ah, you've got your

mother's hair," says the good

old man, feeling the girl's

head all over, as she kneels

beside him. Then they all

wipe away a tear.

The people on the stage think

very highly of the good old man,

but they don't encourage him much,

after the first act. He generally dies

in the first act.

If he does not seem likely to die,
they murder him.

He is a most unfortunate old
gentleman. Anything he is mixed up
in seems bound to go wrong. If he
, is manager or director of a bank,

smash It goes before even one act is over. His particular firm is
always on the verge of bankruptcy. We have only to be told that he
has put all his savings into a company-no matter how sound and pro-
mismg an affair it may always have been, and may still seem-to know
that that company is a *' gone-er."

IMAGE EVALUATION
TEST TARGET (MT-3)

1.0 If il- ilM

I.I

III

2.2

12.0

1.8

1.25

1.4

1.6

^ 6"

►

<?/.

smb. J^/ ^

Hiotographic

Sciences
Corporation

23 WEST MAIN STREET

WEBSTER, N.Y. MS80

(716) 872-4503

STAGE-LAND.

No power on earth can save it, after once the good old man has become
a shareholder.

If we lived in Stage-land, and were asked to join any financial scheme,
our first question would be : " Is the good old man in it ? " If so, that
would decide us.

When the good old man is a trustee for anyone, he can battle against
adversity much longer. He is a plucky old fellow, and, while that trust
money lasts, he keeps a brave heart, and fights on boldly. It is not until
he has spent the last penny of it, that he gives way.

It then flashes across the old man's mind that his motives for having
lived in luxury upon that trust money, for years, may possibly be mis-

IF HE nOKS NOT SEEM LIKELY TO DIE, THEY MURDER HIM.

THE GOOD OLD MAM.

e,
at

kSt

ist
til

ng
lis-

understnod. The world — the hollow, heartless world — will call it a swindle,
and regard him generally as a precious old fraud.

This idea quite troubles the good old man.

But the world really ought not to blame him. No one, we are sure,
could be more ready and willing to make amends (when found out) ;
and, to put matters right, he will cheerfully sacrifice his daughter's
happiness, and marry her to the villain.

The villain, by the way, has never a penny to bless himself with, and
can not even pay his own debts, let alone helping anybody else out of
a scrape. But the good old man does not think of this.

Our own personal theory, based upon a careful comparison of simila-
rities, is that the good oid man is in reality the Stage hero, grown old.
There is something about the good old man's chuckle-headed simplicity,
about his helpless imbecility, and his irritating damtom foolishness, that
is strangely suggestive of the hero.

He is just the sort of old man that we should imagine the hero would
develop into.

We may, of course, be wrong ; but that is our idea.

BB!™5«^5HMI

raan .^

^h Jtie^man*

SAYS: "Shure," and "Bedad,"
and, in moments of exultation,
" Beghorra." That is all the
Irish he knows.

He is very poor, but scru-
pulously honest. His great
ambition is to pay his rent,
and he is devoted to his land-
lord.

He is always cheerful, and
always good. We never knew
a bad Irishman, on the stage.
Sometimes a Stage Irishman
seems to be a bad -nan — such
as the ** agent," or the " in-
former " — but, in these cases,
it invariably turns out, in the
end, that this man was all along a
' Scotchman, and thus what had been

a mystery becomes clear and explicable.

The Stage Irishman is always doing the most wonderful things

imaginable. We do not see him do these wonderful things. He does

them when nobody is by, and tells us all about them afterwards : that

is how we know of them.

We remember, on one occasion, when we were young and somewhat
inexperienced, planking our money down, and going into a theatre solely
and purposely to see the Stage Irishman do the things he was depicted as
doing on the posters outside.

STAGE-LAND,

r '

They were really marvellous, the things he did on that poster.

In the right hand upper corner, he appeared, running across country
on all fours, with a red herring sticking out from his coat tails, while,
f^r behind, came hounds and horsemen, hunting him. But their chance
of ever catching him up was clearly hopeless.

To the left, he was represented as running away over one of the wildest
and most rugged bits of landscape we have ever seen, with a very big man
on his back. Six policemen stood scattered about a mile behind him.
They had evidently been running after him, but had, at last, given up
the pursuit as useless.

In the centre of the poster, he was having a friendly fight with seven-
teen other ladies and gentlemen. Judging from the costumes, the affair
appeared to be a wedding. A few of the guests had already been killed,
and lay dead about the floor. The survivors, however, were enjoying them-
selves immensely, and of all that gay group, he was the gayest.

At the moment chosen by the artist, he had just succeeded in cracking
the bridegroom's skull.

" We must see this," said we to ourselves. ** This is good." And we
had a bob's worth.

But he did not do any of the things that we have mentioned, after all —
at least, we mean, we did not see him do any of them. It seems he did
them " off," and then came on and told his mother all about it afterwards.

He told it very well, but, somehow or other, we were disappointed.
We had so reckoned on that fight.

(By-the-bye, we have noticed, even among the characters of real life,
a tendency to perform most of their wonderful feats " off.")

It has been our privilege, since then, to gaze upon many posters, on
which have been delineated strange and moving stage events.

We have seen the hero, holding the villain up high above his head,
and throwing him about that carelessly that we have felt afraid he would
break something with him.

We have seen a heroine, leaping from the roof of a house on one
side of the street, and being caught by the comic man, standing

THE IRISHMAN.

itry
lile,
ince

dest
man
him.
1 up

even-
affair
dlled,
them-

aicking

nd we

lal life,

lers, on

head,
would

)n one
Landing

on the roof of a
house the other side
of the street, and
thinking nothing of
it.

We have seen
railway trains rush-
ing into each other
at the rate of sixty-
miles an hour. We
have seen houses
blown up by dyna-
mite two hundred
feet into the air.
We have seen the
defeat of the Spanish
Armada,the destruc-
tion of Pompeii, and
the return of the
British Army from
Egypt in one " set "
each.

Such incidents
as earthquakes,
wrecks in mid-
ocean, revolutions
and battles, we take
no note of; they
being commonplace
and ordinary.

But we do not
go inside to see
these things now.
We have two looks
at the poster, in-
stead; it is more
satisfying.

THROWING HIM ABOUT THAT CARELESSLY.

STAGE LAND.

The Irishman, to return to our friend, is very fond of whisky — the
Stage Irishman, we mean. Whisky is for ever in his thoughts — and
often in other places belonging to him, besides.

The fashion in dress among Stage Irishmen is rather picturesque than
neat. Tailors must have a hard time of it in Stage Ireland.

The Stage Irishman has also an original taste in hats. He always
wears a hat without a crown ; whether to keep his head cool, or with
any political significance, we cannot say. ,

—the
—and

than

ilways
with

fll

th 'S>i(utilii,

j HE is a 'cute one, he is.

Possibly, in real life, he
would not be deemed any-
thing extraordinary ; but, by
contrast with the average of
Stage men and women, any
one who is not a born fool,
naturally appears somewhat
Machiavelian.

He is the only man, in

the play, who does not

swallow all the villain tells him and

believe it, and come up with his

mouth open for more. He is the only

man who can see through the disguise of an

overcoat and a new hat.

There is something very wonderful about
the d'sguising power of cloaks and hats upon the stage. This comes
from the habit people on the stage have of recognising their friends, not
by their faces and voices, but by their cloaks and hats.

A married man, on the stage, knows his wife, because he knows she
wears a blue ulster and a red bonnet. The moment she leaves off that
blue ulster and red bonnet, he is lost, and does not know where she is.

She puts on a yellow cloak and a green hat, and, coming in at another
door, says she is a lady from the country, and does he want a housekeeper ?
Having lost his beloved wife, and, feeling that there is no one now
to keep the children quiet, he engages her. She puzzles him a good deal,
this new housekeeper. There is something about her that strangely reminds
him of his darling Nell, may be, her boots and dress, which she has not had
time to change.

STAGE-LAND.

Sadly the slow acts pass away until ons day, as it is getting near closing
time, she puts on the blue ulster and the red bonnet again, and comes in
at the old, original door.

Then he recognises her, and asks her where she has been all these cruel

years !

Even the bad people,
who, as a rule, do possess
a little sense —
indeed, they are
the only per-
sons, in the
play, who ever
pretend to any
— are deceived
by singularly
thin disguises.
The detec-
tive comes in
to their secret
councils, with
his hat drawn
down over his
eyes, and, fol-
lowed by the
hero, speaking
in a squeaky
voice ; and the
villains mistake
them for mem-

HE IS THE ONLY MAN IN THE PLAY WHO CAN SEE THROUGH THE
DISGUISE OF AN OVERCOAT AND A NEW HAT.

hers of the band, and tell them all their plans.

If the villains can't get themselves found out that way, then they go
into a public tea-garden, and recount their crimes to one another in a
loud tone of voice.

THE DETECTIVE.

)Sing
les in

cruel

leople,
lossess
ense —
ley are
i per-
il the
lo ever
to any
leceived
5ularly
jguises.
1 detec-
tnes in
secret
with
drawn
3ver his
ind, fol-
by the
speaking
squeaky
and the
mistake
or mem-

they go
Iher in a

They evidently think that it is only fair to give the detective a chance.

The detective must not be confounded with the policeman. The Stage
policeman is always on the side of the villain ; the detective backs virtue.

The Stage detective is, in fact, the earthly agent of a discerning and
benevolent Providence. He stands by, and allows vice to be triumphant

RECOUNT THEIR CRIMES TO ONE ANOTHER IN A LOUD TONE OF VOICE.

and the good people to be persecuted, for a while, without interference.
Then when he considers that we have all had about enough of it (to
which conclusion, by-the-bye, he arrives somewhat late), he comes forward,
handcuffs the bad people, sorts out and gives back to the good people all
their various estates and wives, promises the chief villain twenty years'
penal servitude, and all is joy.

:ii

■\

t^t ^aifot.

DOES suffer so with his trousers. He
has to stop and pull them up about twice
every minute.

One of these days, if he is not
careful, there will be an accident
happen to those trousers.

If the Stage sailor will follow our
advice, he will be warned in time,
and will get a pair of braces.

Sailors, in real life, do not have
nearly so much trouble with their
trousers as sailors on the stage do.
Why is this ? We have seen a good
deal of sailors in real life, but, on
only one occasion, that we can
remember, did we ever see a real
sailor pull his trousers up.

And then he did not do it a bit
like they do it on the stage.

The Stage sailor places his right
hand behind him and his left in
front, leaps up into the air, kicks
out his leg behind in a gay and bird-
like way, and the thing is done.

The real sailor that we saw,
began by saying a bad word. Then
he leant up against a brick wall and undid his belt, pulled up his " bags,"
as he stood there, (he never attempted to leap up into the air,) tucked
in his jersey, shook his legs, and walked on.

STA(jE-LAND.

It was a most unpicturesque performance to watch.
The thing that the Stage sailor most craves in this life is that somebody
should shiver his timbers.

** Shiver my timbers ! " is the request be makes to everyone he meets.
But nobody ever does it.

His chief desire with regard to the other
people in the play is that they should
" belay there, avast ! " We do not know
how this is done ; but the Stage sailor is a
good and kindly man, and we feel convinced
he would not recommend the
exercise if it were not con-
ducive to piety and health.

The Stage sailor is good
to his mother, and dances
the hornpipe beautifully.
We have never found a real
sailor who could dance a
hornpipe, though we have
made extensive enquiries
throughout the profession.
We were introduced to a
ship's steward, who offered
, \ to do us a cellar-flap for a
>'• pot of four-half; but that
was not what we wanted.

The Stage sailor is gay
and rollicking ; the real
sailors, we have met, have
been, some of them, the
most worthy and single-
minded of men, but they
have appeared sedate rather than gay, and they hav'n't rollicked much.

DANCES THE HORNPIPE BEAUTIFULLY.

THE JAILOR.

ich.

The Stage sailor seems to have an easy time of it, when at sea. The
hardest work we have ever seen him do then has been folding up a rope
or dusting the sides of the ship.

But it is only in his very busy moments that he has to work to this
extent ; most of his time is occupied in chatting with the captain.

By the way, speaking of the sea, few things are more remarkable in
their behaviour than a Stage sea. It must be difficult to navigate in a
Stage sea, the currents are so confusing.

As for the waves, there is no knowing how to steer for them ; they are
so tricky. At one moment they are all on the larboard, the sea on the
other side of the vessel being perf'ictly calm, and, the next instant, they
have crossed over, and are all on the starboard, and, before the captain can
think how to meet this new dodge, the whole ocean has slid round and got
itself up into a heap at the back of him.

Seamanship is useless against such very unprofessional conduct as this,
and the vessel is wrecked,

A wreck at (Stage) sea is a truly awful sight. The thunder and lightning
never leave off for an instant ; the crew run round and round the mast and
scream ; the heroine, carrying the Stage child in her arms, and with her
back hair down, rushes about and gets in everybody's way. The comic man
alone is calm !

The next instant, the bulwarks fall down flat on the deck, and the mast
goes straight up into the sky and disappears ; then, the water reaches the
powder magazine, and there is a terrific explosion.

This is followed by a sound as of linen sheets being ripped up, and the
passengers and crew hurry downstairs into the cabin, evidently with the
idea of getting out of the way of the sea, which has climbed up, and is now
level with the deck.

The next moment, the vessel separates in the middle, and goes off
R. and L., so as to make room for a small boat containing the heroine,
the child, the comic man, and one sailor.

The way small boats are managed at (Stage) sea is even more, wonderful
than the way in which ships are sailed.

.-7

STAGE-LAND.

To begin with, everybody sits sideways along the middle of the boat, all
facing the starboard. They do not attempt to row. One man does all the
work with one scull. This scull he puts down through the water till it
touches the bed of the ocean, and then he shoves.

" Deep sea punting " would be the technical term for the method,
we presume.

In this way do they toil — or rather, to speak correctly, does the one man
toil — through the awful night, until with joy they see before them the light-
house rocks.

The lighthouse keeper comes out with a lantern. The boat is run in
among the breakers, and all are saved !

And then the band plays.

?^, ^^'^^"^^^^^r^^

T. Brettell & Co. Printers, 51, Rupert Street, Haymarket W.

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