"But I don't see how your scheme will encourage authors."
"I shall pay them too, sir. I should say to Mr. Byron: 'Sir, you air a clever and a witty man. Go right away, sir. Sit down for a twelvemonth, and do nothin' at all. Then write me a play; put your own situations in it, not old jokes; put your own situations in it, not old ones. Give me somethin' better.' Then I should say to Mr. Gilbert: 'Your pieces have got the real grit, young gentleman; but you write too fast. Go away too for six months and do nothin'. Then sit down for six months more, and write a piece that will be pretty and sweet, and won't be thin.' And there's more dramatists behind—only give them a chance. They shall have it at my house."
"And what will the other houses do?"
"The other houses, sir, may go on playing pieces for four hundred nights if they like. I leave them plenty of men to stump their boards, and my Theatre won't hold more than a certain number. I shall only take a small house to begin with, such a house as the Lyceum, and we shall gradually get along. But no profit can be made by such a Stage, and I am ready to give half my Ile to keep it goin'. Of course," he added, "when it is a success in London I shall carry it away, company and all, to New York."
He rose in a burst of enthusiasm.
"Gilead P. Beck shall be known for his collection of pictures. He shall be known for his Golden Butterfly, and the Luck it brought him. But he shall be best known, Mr. Dunquerque, because he will be the first man to take the Stage out of the mud of commercial enterprise, and raise it to be the great educator of the people. He shall be known as the founder of the Grand National American Drama. And his bust shall be planted on the top of every American stage."
CHAPTER XXXIV.
"In such a cause who would not give? What heart
But leaps at such a name?"
People of rank and position are apt to complain of begging-letters. Surely England must be a happy country since its rich people complain mostly of begging-letters; for they are so easily dropped into the waste-paper basket. A country squire—any man with a handle to his name and place for a permanent address—is the natural prey and victim of the beggars. The lithographed letter comes with every post, trying in vain to look like a written letter. And though in fervid sentences it shows the danger to your immortal soul if you refuse the pleading, most men have the courage to resist. The fact is that the letter is not a nuisance at all, because it is never read. On the other hand, a new and very tangible nuisance is springing up. It is that of the people who go round and call. Sir Roger de Coverly in his secluded village is free from the women who give you the alternative of a day with Moody and Sankey or an eternity of repentance; he never sees the pair of Sisters got up like Roman Catholic nuns, who stand meekly before you, arms crossed, mutely refusing to go without five shillings at least for their Ritualist hot-house. But he who lives in chambers, he who puts up at a great hotel and becomes known, he who has a house in any address from Chester Square to Notting Hill, understands this trouble.