s classical music or the "advanced" drama. Pray, in
pity's name, what is to be said against the commonplace man who hears
an accomplished musician play Beethoven, Bach, or Chopin in his--the
commonplace one's--drawing-room, and who says in agony, "Very fine!
Very deep! Very profound--profound indeed, sir! Full of breadth and
symmetry and that sort of thing! Now do you think we might vary that
noble masterpiece with a waltz?" Can we blame the poor fellow? Wagner
represents a noise to him, and the awful scorn and despair of the
first movement in the "Moonlight Sonata" only lead him to say, "Heavy
play with that left hand. Can't he go faster over the treble, or
whatever they call it?" He wants intelligible musical ideas, and we
have no right to begin "level-raising" with the unhappy and
remonstrant man. The music halls in London are now under strict
supervision, and some of them used to need it very much in days gone
by. Personally I should suppress the male comic singer who tries to
win a laugh from degraded listeners by unseemly means, and I should
not scruple to draft a short Act ensuring imprisonment for such as he;
but, so long as the entertainment remains inoffensive to the general
good sense of the community, we need not weep greatly if it is
sometimes just a trifle stupid. No one who does not know the inner
life of the working-classes can imagine how restricted are their
interests. Moreover, I shall venture on making a somewhat startling
statement which may surprise those who look on the surface of things
as indicated in the newspapers. The working-classes of a certain grade
cherish a certain convention regarding themselves, but they do not
understand their own set at all. If they heard a real mechanic or
labourer spouting sentiment in the shop or the club, they would
silence him very summarily; but the stage working-man, the stage
hawker, the stage tinker may utter any claptrap that he likes, and the
audience try to believe that they might possibly have been able to
talk in the same way but for circumstances. It is not at any time
pleasant to see people going on under a delusion; but, supposing the
delusion is no worse than that of the man who thinks himself handsome
or witty or fascinating while he is really plain or silly or a bore,
what can the mistake matter to anybody? We smile at the little vanity,
and perhaps pride ourselves a little on our own remarkable
superiority, and there the business may very well end