Has it always been so in England? I think not. Garrick was a self-respecting, if a conceited, individual. He believed in his work and he had some dramatic sense. The theater had no credit then; even his genius could not raise it to the level of English institutions. But his genius made him independent, and still the theater was parasitic upon the Court. Subsequently the English Court, which, never since Charles II, had taken any genuine interest in it, repudiated the theater which then had healthily to struggle for its existence. I fancy that in Copas--(Matilda's uncle)--I found the last genuine survivor of the race of mummers of which Henry Irving was the last triumphant example. They strangled the theater with their own personalities, for only by the strength of their personalities could they force themselves upon the attention of an England huddled away in dark houses, grimly, tragically, in secrecy, play-acting. With every house a playhouse, how can the theater be taken seriously? With so much engrossing pretence in their homes, men have no need of professional mummers; with a fully developed Nonconformist conscience, an Englishman can be his own playwright, mummer, and audience. He grudges the money paid to professional actors, despises any contrivance they can show him, spurns the whole affair as a light thing, wantonness, a dangerous toy that may upset the valuations by which he arrives at his own theatrical effect. There was a time when the Englishman's home was his theater. My own home was like that: year in, year out there was a tremendous groveling before God, and a sweaty wrestling with the Devil, and a barometrical record of prowess in both was kept. Human relations sneaked in when no one was looking, took the stage when the curtain was down; I was lucky, and on the whole had a good time in spite of the show, which, I am bound to say, I thoroughly enjoyed. My father was a very fine man at the groveling and the wrestling (and knew it), but in his human relations he was awkward, heavy, and blundering in the very genuine tenderness which he could not always escape;--and I think he knew that, too, poor wretch.