London, with its scramble, its pressure, its hustle of engagements, of
preoccupations, its long distances, its late hours, its nightly dinners,
its innumerable demands on the attention, its general congregation of
influences fatal to the isolation, to the punctuality, to the security,
of the dear old playhouse spell. When Florentia said in her charming
way--

Florentia. Here's my dreadful speech at last.

Dorriforth. When you said that you went to the Theatre Libre in the
afternoon because you couldn't spare an evening, I recognized the
death-knell of the drama. _Time_, the very breath of its nostrils,
is lacking. Wagner was clever to go to leisurely Bayreuth among the
hills--the Bayreuth of spacious days, a paradise of "development."

Talk to a London audience of "development!" The long runs would, if
necessary, put the whole question into a nutshell. Figure to yourself,
for then the question is answered, how an intelligent actor must loathe
them, and what a cruel negation he must find in them of the artistic
life, the life of which the very essence is variety of practice,
freshness of experiment, and to feel that one must do many things in
turn to do any one of them completely.

Auberon. I don't in the least understand your _acharnement_, in view of
the vagueness of your contention.

Dorriforth. My _acharnement_ is your little joke, and my contention is a
little lesson in philosophy.

Florentia. I prefer a lesson in taste. I had one the other night at the
"Merry Wives."

Dorriforth. If you come to that, so did I!

Amicia. So she does spare an evening sometimes.

Florentia. It was all extremely quiet and comfortable, and I don't
in the least recognize Dorriforth's lurid picture of the dreadful
conditions. There was no scenery--at least not too much; there was just
enough, and it was very pretty, and it was in its place.

Dorriforth. And what else was there?

Florentia. There was very good acting.

Amicia. I also went, and I thought it all, for a sportive, wanton thing,
quite painfully ugly.

Auberon. Uglier than that ridiculous black room, with the invisible
people groping about in it, of your precious "Duc d'Enghien?"

Dorriforth. The black room is doubtless not the last word of art, but it
struck me as a successful application of a happy idea. The contrivance
was perfectly simple--a closer night effect than is usually attempted,
with a few guttering candles, which threw high shadows over the bare