“A pretty sort of historical play, on my word!” exclaimed Selina.
“Oh, it wasn’t all historical, Selina, dear,” said Patty, sweetly. “A lot of it was thoroughly modern, and Mr. Robey wore a frock coat, and such a funny little bowler hat, and another time he was a street musician in Venice with a stuffed monkey pinned to his coat-tails.”
Selina looked at me. There was a silent pause that would have made anybody else feel uncomfortable, but I was equal to the occasion. I snatched Selina’s book out of her hand, and said, cheerfully, “You see, Selina, it’s all explained here. Wonderful fellow, Bergson. ‘Something mechanical encrusted upon the living,’ that’s the secret of the comic. Depend upon it, he had seen George Robey and the stuffed monkey. And if Bergson, who’s a tremendous swell, member of the institute, and all that, why not Patty and I?”
“And where,” asked Selina, with a rueful glance at the Bergson book, as though she began to distrust theories of the comic, “where was this precious performance?”
“At the Alhambra,” answered Patty, simply.
“The Alhambra! I remember Chateaubriand once visited it,” said Selina, who is nothing if not literary, “but I didn’t know it was the haunt of philosophers.”
I looked as though it was, but Patty tactlessly broke in, “Oh, I wish you two wouldn’t talk about philosophers. Can’t one laugh at Mr. Robey without having him explained by Bergson? Anyhow, I don’t believe he can explain Mr. Nelson Keys.”
“Another of your historical actors?” inquired Selina with some bitterness.
“Yes, Selina, dear, and much more historical than Mr. Robey. He played Beau Brummell and they were all there, Fox and Sheridan and the Prince of Wales, you know, all out of your favourite Creevey, and they said ‘egad’ and ‘la’ and ‘monstrous fine,’ and bowed and congee’d like anything—oh, it was awfully historical.”
Selina, a great reader of memoirs, was a little mollified. “Come,” she said, “this is better—though the Regency is another dangerous period. I’m glad, however, that Londoners seem to be looking to the theatre for a little historical instruction.”