I opened a drawer and took out what we called the “Ushers’ Returns” for each night that week. We used to have, as means of checking the receipts of the house in addition to the tickets, a set of returns made by the ushers. Each usher had a sectional chart of the seats under his charge, and he had to show which was occupied during the evening, and which, if any, were unoccupied. I had not gone over these as all the seats having been sold it did not much matter to us whether they were occupied or not. To my surprise I found that on each night, growing as the week went on, were quite a number of seats unoccupied. On reference to the full plan I found that most of these were seats sold to the libraries, but that a good proportion of them had been booked at our own office. Neither of us could account for such a thing in any way. When the next, and then the third agent came there was a strong sense over me that something was happening in the great world. As a rule when there is pressure in a theatre the seats belonging to agents remaining unsold can always be disposed of in the theatre box office.
That night Irving had a little supper party of intimate friends in the Beefsteak Room; amongst them one man, Major Ricarde-Seaver, well skilled in the world of haute finance. In the course of conversation I asked him:
“What is up? There is something going to happen! What is it?” He asked me why I thought so, and I told him.
“That is certainly strange!” was his comment. “Then you don’t know?”
“Know what?” I asked. “What is going to happen?” His answer came after a pause.
“You will know soon. Possibly to-morrow; certainly the next day!” The mystery was thickening. Again I asked:
“What is it?” The answer came with a shock:
“Baring’s! They’ve gone under!”
Now any one of a speculative tendency in London, or out of it, could have that day made a fortune by selling “bears”—and there is no lack of sportsmen willing to make money on a “sure thing.” And yet for three days at least there must have been in business circles some uneasiness of so pronounced a character that it for the time obliterated social life with many people. Had they knowledge where the public pulse lay, and how to time its beats, they might have plucked fortune from disaster.
In the Lyceum we became wide awake to the situation. In a time of panic and disaster there is no need for mimetic tragedy; the real thing crowds it out. The very next day we arranged to change the bill on the earliest day possible. As we were booked for six weeks we arranged to change the tragic Ravenswood for Much Ado About Nothing—the brightest and cheeriest comedy in our répertoire—on Monday, January 3.