There is heredity for you. CHAPTER THE THIRTEENTH It was melancholy--but Atheist Friswell alone was to blame for it--that we should sit out through that lovely evening and talk about tawdry theatricals, and that same tawdriness more than a little musty through time. If Friswell had not begun with his nonsense about having seen my Temple somewhere down Oxford Street we should never have wandered from the subject of gardens until we lost ourselves among the wings of the Lyceum and its “profiles” of its pines in _Iolanthe_, and its “built” yews and pomegranates in _Romeo and Juliet_. But among the perfume of the roses surrounding us, with an occasional whiff of the lavender mound and a gracious breath like that of “The sweet South That breathes upon a bank of violets Giving and taking odours,” we continued talking of theatres until the summer night was reeking with the smell of sawdust and oranges, to say nothing of the fragrance of the _poudre de ninon_ of the stalls, wafted over opera wraps and diamond-studded shirt-fronts--diamond studs, when just over the glimmering marble of my temple the Evening Star was glowing! But what had always been a mystery to Friswell as the extraordinary lack of judgment on Irving's part in choosing his plays. Had he ever made a success since he produced that adaptation of _Faust?_ Beautifully staged and with some splendid moments due to the genius of the man himself and the never-failing charm of the actress with whom he was associated in all, yet no play worth remembering was produced at the Lyceum during that management. _Faust_ made money, as it always has since the days of Marlowe; but all those noisy scenes and meaningless moments on the misty mountains--only alliteration's artful aid can deal adequately with such digressions from the story of Faust and Gretchen which was all that theatregoers, even of the better class, who go to tire pit, wanted--seemed dragged into the piece without reason or profit. To be sure, pages and pages of Goethe's _Faust_ are devoted to his attempt to give concreteness to abstractions. (That was Friswell's phrase; and I repeat it for what it is worth). But in the original all these have a meaning at the back of them; but Irving only brought them on to abandon them after a line or two. The hope to gain the atmosphere of the weird by means of a panorama of clouds and mountain peaks may have been realised so far as some sections of the audience were concerned; but such a manager as Henry Irving should have been above trying for such cheap effects. _Faust_ made money, however, and helped materially to promote the formation of the Company through which country clergymen and daily governesses in the provinces hoped to advance the British Drama and earn 20 per cent, dividends.