e
group of turns, collectively. As for the Hippodrome and the
Coliseum--non-licensed houses--their show and their audience are what
one would expect: a first-class show, and an audience decorous and
Streathamish. I think we will not visit either, nor will we visit the
hall with its world-famous promenade, about which our bishops seem to
know more than I do.

Let us try the Oxford, where you are always sure of a pleasant crowd, a
good all-round show, and alcoholic refreshment if you require it. There
are certain residentials, if I may so term them, of the Oxford, whom you
may always be sure of meeting here, and who will always delight you.
Mark Sheridan, for example, is pretty certain to be there, with Wilkie
Bard, Clarice Mayne, Phil Ray, Sam Mayo, Beattie and Babs, T. E.
Dunville, George Formby, and those veterans, Joe Elvin and George
Chirgwin.

There is a good overture, and the house is comfortable without being
gorgeous. There is a sense of intimacy about it. The audience, too, is
always on form. Audiences, by the way, have a great deal to do with the
success of any particular show, quite apart from its merits. There is
one famous West End hall, which I dare not name, whose audience is
always "bad"--i.e. cold and inappreciative; the best of all good turns
never "goes" at that house, and artists dread the week when they are
booked there. I have seen turns which have sent other houses into one
convulsive fit, but at this hall the audience has sat immovable and
colourless while the performers wasted themselves in furious efforts to
get over the footlights. At the Oxford, however, the audience is always
"with you," and this atmosphere gets behind and puts the artists, in
their turn, on the top of their form. The result is a sparkling evening
which satisfies everybody.

It is a compact little place, as the music-hall should be. In those new
caravanserai of colossal proportions and capacity, it is impossible for
a man to develop that sense of good-fellowship which is inseparable from
the traditions of the London hall. Intimacy is its very essence, and
how can a man be intimate on a stage measuring something like seventy
feet in length, a hundred feet in depth, with a proscenium over sixty
feet high, facing an auditorium seating three thousand persons, and
separated from them by a marbled orchestra enclosure four or five times
as wide as it should be. It is pathetic to see George Mozart or George
Robey trying to adapt