When he went to the provinces
or to America, the theatres to which he went were swept and
garnished for him, and their staffs replaced--as far as he came
in contact with them--by his own lieutenants. In the end, there
was hardly a first-nighter in his gallery who did not know more
about the London theatres and the progress of dramatic art than
he; and as to the provinces, if any chief constable had told him
the real history and character of many provincial theatres, he
would have denounced that chief constable as an ignorant libeller
of a noble profession. But the constable would have been right
for all that. Now if this was true of Sir Henry Irving, who did
not become a London manager until he had roughed it for years in
the provinces, how much more true must it be of, say, Mr. George
Alexander, whose successful march through his profession has
passed as far from the purlieus of our theatrical world as the
king's naval career from the Isle of Dogs? The moment we come to
that necessary part of the censorship question which deals with
the control of theatres from the point of view of those who know
how much money can be made out of them by managers who seek to
make the auditorium attractive rather than the stage, you find
the managers divided into two sections. The first section
consists of honorable and successful managers like Mr. Alexander,
who know nothing of such abuses, and deny, with perfect sincerity
and indignant vehemence, that they exist except, perhaps, in
certain notorious variety theatres.
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