Some time ago there was a popular comic picture of the awakening of a young man who had been very drunk the night before, and was suffering from a headache and a black eye, and clearly had had some exciting adventures, of which his memory was faint; the simple legend attached was, "What a ripping time I must have had last night!" One can imagine the playgoer after the farce, rare, alas! which honestly may be called side-splitting, saying to himself next morning, "What a ripping time I must have had last night!" and advising all his friends to go and see the play.
[Smoking in the Auditorium ]
At last permission has been given, and the statement "You may smoke" can be printed on the programmes of the theatres licensed by the L.C.C.; and it is believed that the Lord Chamberlain is willing to follow suit. Some of our more important managers have already announced that they will not permit smoking in the auditorium of their playhouses, nor is this surprising. Some of us would sooner sacrifice our own smoke than get a headache from that of others; and the reason for the rareness of our attendance at music-halls is that we have to pay for every visit by a smarting of the eyes and a feeling in the head somewhat like that caused by the famous Sicilian torture.
What the ladies suffer goodness and they—the terms are perhaps synonymous—alone know. If and when the Suffragettes come into power, we shall have a prodigious counterblast to tobacco that would delight the Stuart James of unsainted memory or the now illustrious Balzac. For although the militant sex has many members who rejoice in a cigarette, the majority are bitterly adverse to an expensive habit, offensive to those who do not practise it, and exceedingly uncoquettish when indulged in seriously. Probably if the reign of My Lady Nicotine had never begun, and if no other enslaving habit of a like nature had taken a similar place, the theatres would be better off than at present. Permission to smoke will not deal with the difficulty; yet probably the habit of smoking keeps a very large number of people away from the theatre.
Without proposing to win any of the colossal prizes offered to people who guess the quantity of tobacco imported into this country in a particular month, one may venture to assert that there has been a tremendous increase in smoking during the last twenty years; and, indeed, we all know that the man who does not smoke is almost a curiosity nowadays.
The rules of offices, the customs of certain trades, the etiquette of some professions, and the like, prevent a great many men from having more than a trifling flirtation with tobacco till after dinner. The greedy smoker may get a pipe after breakfast, a whiff during lunch-time, and a pipe before dinner, which he takes distrustfully, because he has been told not to smoke on an empty stomach, but he looks to the hours after dinner for the debauch that turns his lungs from pink to brown. Moreover, there are many men who do not care to smoke till after dinner.
What a deprivation to all these to be bustled through a shortened dinner, to be scalded by coffee hastily drunk, and merely get a few puffs before they find themselves in a playhouse, where, by the way, so that insult may be added to injury, they often watch the actors smoking comfortably. A wise manager would not allow smoking on the stage except in very rare cases. The entr'actes amount to little; there is a rush of smokers, but many cannot leave their seats without giving offence to their companions, and some are too timid to fight their way from the centre of a row; and, after all, the entr'acte smoke, which takes place in a crowd so thick that you cannot tell the flavour of your own cigarette from that of other people, is rather irritating than satisfying. Of course there remains the period after the theatre, but it is comparatively brief for the man of whom we are speaking, since after the labours of the day and the fatigue of the evening he is tired enough to be rather anxious for sleep.
When the British householder is invited to take his womenfolk to the theatre, the thought that he will have to make such a sacrifice affects his judgment, a fact of which he is probably unaware. Very often it is the determining cause of refusal, and when he thinks consciously of it, of course he is not so foolish as to put it forward, but pleads this and that and indeed every other cause for keeping away. Many times have men said, "I don't care to go to the theatre unless there is something awfully good, because one is not allowed to smoke"; and the question may well be asked, What is offered to the man in place of his cigar or pipe? Shakespeare, unless severely adapted, and, in fact, treated as the book for a picturesque musico-dramatic performance, does not appeal very movingly to l'homme moyen sensuel, nor do the sentimental puppet stories which form the stock of our theatre fascinate him. A rousing farce will serve, but then the womenfolk do not want that. They are all for sentiment and dainty frocks which they may imitate—unsuccessfully—and for handsome heroes and love-making and other prettinesses which appeal to the daughters who live a kind of second-hand life in them, and to the mothers rendered for a while young by them, whilst paterfamilias looks on, uncomfortable in his seat, irritated very often by draughts which his décolletée dame does not notice—till afterwards—a little curious as to the cost of the whole affair, and after a while, in a state of semi-somnolence, thinking a good deal of the events of the day and the Alpine attitude of the Bank rate or the slump in Consols.
The poor dear man would be in a better humour if he were allowed his pipe. According to the French, the plain housewife looks charming to her husband when seen through the fumes of a good soup, and so too the plays of Mr —— (perhaps it is wise to suppress the name) might appear entertaining to the British householder if a cloud of tobacco smoke were to intervene.
One of the victims made a suggestion the other day which may be worth consideration. "Why not," he said, "add to the theatre a comfortable kind of club-room, where a fellow might see the papers, and perhaps have a game of bridge, or even billiards, when the curtain was up, whilst he could keep his wife in good humour by paying her a call during the intervals?" There is something rather touching in the idea of a little crowd trooping in instead of bustling out when the curtain falls.