Book Description

Managers assure those of us who try to write plays nowadays that we must lay our scenes in well-to-do circles if we wish to attract an audience. The scene before us now has few recommendations, either as a romantic or a tragic background. It is not quite wretched enough to suggest dark deeds; it is not nearly old enough to convey a hint of mystery: it is merely the back parlor of a London lodging-house of the meaner kind. On a certain murky day in March it lay bare to the eye of anyone who was desirous of exploring. The street of which it formed a narrow section was small and dreary. The front parlor window of this particular house was discreetly veiled with curtains which had once been white. Between them stood an artificial aspidistra in a ginger-colored pot, envied by some of the other dwellers in the immediate neighborhood. This front parlor, at the date in question, was unlet. It had folding-doors, affording the sole entrance to a very small room behind, generally let as a bedroom, with the front room as sitting-room. For the past month this back parlor had been tenanted by one who was far too poor to think of needing more than one room in which to starve. Moreover, he was there on the understanding that he would vacate should a better let offer itself. Had the curtain risen on that back room, the eye would have taken but one glance to feel assured of destitution on the part of the absent occupier. There was a bed, a washstand, a table, a chair. There was a cupboard, the door hanging open on one hinge, revealing the fact that an empty mug formed its sole contents. There was no carpet on the floor, no cloth on the rickety table—the only trace of occupancy was in a penny bottle of ink and a few sheets of paper which lay upon the table. The smoke-dimmed window looked sheer down upon a mazy labyrinth of railway lines. Day by day trains rumbled by, and sent up each its contribution of soot and grime to choke the atmosphere and darken the unlovely prospect. This window—it was more correctly a glass door—was open; and without was a mean iron railing, with a flight of corroded steps, which, at the time the house was built, probably led to the garden. The encroaching line had shorn away all the garden, leaving the iron steps overhanging the abyss with a futility that moved to pity the soul of the present occupier when he had a thought to spare from the anguish of his own condition. So much for the stage. The actor, when at last he made his abrupt appearance, bursting in, as an actor should, dramatically, through the center doors—seemed to have been cast by Nature for a leading part.