It would not be easy to fathom the reason for the employment of girls as
ushers in the London theatres. Perhaps it is to heighten the glamour of
a place whose glamour hardly needs heightening, or more probably it is
to soften the asperity of the play-goer who finds himself asked sixpence
for that necessary evil, the programme. But, now I come to think of it,
most of the play-goers in London are Englishmen who have been always
used to paying, ancestrally and personally, sixpence for their
programmes and feel no asperity at being so plundered. The true
explanation may be found, after all, in the discovery, akin to the
government's, that their service is cheaper than men ushers' would be.
Children of as tender years as those who manage the postal-stations,
go round with tea and coffee between the acts, as with us the
myriad-buttoned ice-water boy passes; but whereas this boy returns
always with a tray of empty glasses, I never saw a human being drink
either the tea or coffee offered by those female infants in any London
theatre.
Let it be not supposed, however, that I went much to London theatres.
I went perhaps half a dozen times in as many weeks. Once settled in my
chair, I might well have fancied myself at home in a New York theatre,
except that the playing seemed rather better, and the English intonation
not quite so scrupulously English as that which our actors have produced
after a conscientious study of the original. I heard that the English
actors had studied the American accent for a play imported from us; but
I did not see this play, and I am now very sorry. The American accent,
at least, must have been worth hearing, if one might judge from the
reproductions of our parlance which I heard in private life by people
who had sojourned, or merely travelled, among us. These were so
unfailingly delightful, that one could not have wished them more like.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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