continued, "is the daughter of a seaside lodging-house
keeper. My public do not recognize seaside lodgings. Why not the
daughter of an hotel proprietor? Even that will be risky, but we might
venture it." An inspiration came to him. "Or better still, let the old
man be the Managing Director of an hotel Trust: that would account for
her clothes."

Unfortunately I put the thing aside for a few months, and when I was
ready again the public taste had still further advanced. The doors of
the British Drama were closed for the time being on all but members of
the aristocracy, and I did not see my comic old man as a Marquis, which
was the lowest title that just then one dared to offer to a low comedian.

Now how are we middle-class novelists and dramatists to continue to live?
I am aware of the obvious retort, but to us it absolutely is necessary.
We know only parlours: we call them drawing-rooms. At the bottom of our
middle-class hearts we regard them fondly: the folding-doors thrown back,
they make rather a fine apartment. The only drama that we know takes
place in such rooms: the hero sitting in the gentleman's easy chair, of
green repp: the heroine in the lady's ditto, without arms--the chair, I
mean. The scornful glances, the bitter words of our middle-class world
are hurled across these three-legged loo-tables, the wedding-cake
ornament under its glass case playing the part of white ghost.

In these days, when "Imperial cement" is at a premium, who would dare
suggest that the emotions of a parlour can by any possibility be the same
as those exhibited in a salon furnished in the style of Louis Quatorze;
that the tears of Bayswater can possibly be compared for saltness with
the lachrymal fluid distilled from South Audley Street glands; that the
laughter of Clapham can be as catching as the cultured cackle of Curzon
Street? But we, whose best clothes are exhibited only in parlours, what
are we to do? How can we lay bare the souls of Duchesses, explain the
heart-throbs of peers of the realm? Some of my friends who, being
Conservative, attend Primrose "tourneys" (or is it "Courts of love"? I
speak as an outsider. Something mediaeval, I know it is) do, it is true,
occasionally converse with titled ladies. But the period for
conversation is always limited owing to the impatience of the man behind;
and I doubt if the interview is ever of much practical use to them, as
conveying knowledge of the workings of the aris