The stalls of the Gaiety—more particularly the front row of the stalls—were filled with the _jeunesse dorée_ of the period. These young gentlemen were each interested in the career of one of the shapely vestals who tended Hollingshead’s “sacred lamp.” A somewhat lavish display of figure was then _de rigueur_ with the chorus ladies. It had not yet become the fashion for young men to marry into the chorus—so to say; but the young swells made other arrangements which—in those days—the chorus lady regarded as eminently satisfactory. So the fortunes of the chorus ebbed and flowed. I have called at the ineligible rooms of a chorus lady while she was lunching on fried liver and bacon; her hair was in curling-pins, and her principal article of attire was a far from cleanly peignoir. She has called me by endearing terms, and there was nothing in the world she would not surrender to me in return for a newspaper notice a line long. In a week’s time I have seen the same young woman drive up to the Gaiety in her own victoria, loaded with jewels, dressed in a Parisian inspiration, and with a crop of golden hair which spoke volumes for the prolific nature of the foreign soil in which it grew. Her attitude toward myself had changed as perceptibly as had her coiffure, “Hello, old chappie!” she has cried, with an amusing affectation of high-bred hauteur. The swagger stallites who had organized themselves into a beauty cult at the Gaiety displayed every variety of what Tennyson called “the gilded forehead of the fool.” These young gentlemen were known as “mashers” (the object of their temporary devotions was known as a “mash”); as “Johnnies” and as “members of the Crutch and Toothpick Brigade.” In this race for the overrated favours of the chorus lady they were often beaten by the elderly “masher”—the fatuous old _roué_ of the wig, the stays, the pigments, and the unguents. In these, as in all other civil contracts, it is money that matters, after all. If Hollingshead played burlesque as his trump card, it must be recalled, in justice to his memory, that he instituted the matinée in London; and that he instituted it, not as the vehicle for amateur authors who played with problems, and called the result “problem plays,” but as the means of introducing to the London public (or re-introducing) the greatest living exponents of the highest examples of dramatic literature. He brought over from Paris the entire company of the House of Molière. He engaged Charles Mathews to play in a series of his memorable and delightful performances. And if I don’t mistake, he gave that veteran actor the opportunity of enacting a new part in a new-play, “My Awful Dad.” He afforded us the opportunity of seeing Phelps in his rendering of Sir Pertinax MacSycophant in Macklin’s “Man of the World,” probably the finest all-round bit of acting I have even been privileged to witness.