London at the End of the Century:A Book of Gossip
a Beckett, Arthur William
1900
BOUCICAULT AND THE LONG STRIKE.
Strikes are more or less a modern invention. In the days of yore, when workmen were dissatisfied they resorted to violence, instead of depending upon Ages ago machinery used to be the foe, and the most popular mode of meeting the enemy was to utterly demolish the offending apparatus. Things are changed since then, although even now the tradition lingers upon the stages of theatres devoted to melodrama. And here, as I have mentioned things histrionic, I may refer to , which was produced at the Lyceum by the late Mr. Dion Boucicault some while after the success of . No doubt Mrs. Dion Boucicault (who was in the cast) will remember it. There was one scene in it which was immensely effective, but which would have been more effective still had the telephone been then invented. I have the vaguest recollection of the play's plot, but I call to mind that it was necessary for some one or other to be stopped from sailing from Liverpool. I fancy the some one or other was a missing witness required to save the hero's life or the heroine's reputation. The scene was a telegraph office. Enter the friend of the hero or heroine (as the case may have been), who asks the telegraph clerk if he can be put into | |
148 | communication with the operator at the other end. There is some delay, as the operator has to be found -he was on the point of leaving the office for the night. But soon he is at his post. Then comes the great effect. This was the climax, and on a grateful cry of the curtain fell amidst thunders of applause. Had Boucicault had the assistance of the telephone in those days how much would the dialogue have been. There was an air of unreality in the working of the needles, but with a telephone it would have been perfect. I wonder what has become of . Is it ever played now-a-days? As Mr. Tree says in , And here I may recount a little anecdote that is interesting, when we remember that Mrs. Boucicault is still amongst us. I was editor of in those days, and I called upon Dion Boucicault at the Lyceum, and saw him in his dressing-room. I was arranging for a , and thought he might write a story. He suggested novelizing , and novelized it was with the collaboration of the late Mr. Clarke, author |
149 | of I was standing behind a screen, when, unsuspicious of my presence, Mrs. Boucicault entered and said she wanted to intercede for one of the company who had been fined (Dion was a strict disciplinarian) for some breach of the rules. I shall never forget the sweet kindness of Mrs. Boucicault's pleading accents. Possibly with a wish to terminate the interview as quickly as possible the husband yielded, and Mrs. Boucicault departed, overjoyed at the success that had attended her mission. When she had left the room I emerged from my accidental ambush, and continued the negotiation about . |
said the author of . | |
And I agreed with him. | |
