rapid passage from one theatre to another, flaming
playbills on every adjacent wall, listening all
day to tales of past theatrical successes and
brilliant theatrical projects for the future, I have
come to regard Liverpool as a town where the
energies of the people are wholly absorbed in
theatricals, where the inhabitants are divided
into two classes—those who get up and act plays,
and those who go to see them.

When I enter my hotel, I feel that I am merely
entering it to dress for the theatre. When I
encounter in the street waggons laden with
cotton, I have no other idea in connexion with
the soft white raw material protruding from the
bales, except that it has been grown, and is now
about to be spun and woven into a fabric,
expressly to form drops, and "clothes," and wings,
and sky- borders, and green banks, and sea-
pieces for the theatres. When I see people
coming down in the morning on omnibuses, I
conceive that they are all going to rehearsal.
When, taking a walk in Bold-street, I notice
that there are shops of all kinds there, doing a
brisk business, the same notion pursues me. The
laces, and flowers, and gloves, and boots those
ladies are buying, what can they be for, but to
be worn at the theatre? Why are those gentlemen
buying shirts, and neckties, and patent-
leather boots? That they may shine in the
stalls. Gibus hats are being bought, to be folded
up in private boxes; bonbons, to be munched in
dress circles. And can there be a doubt that
tea and sugar, eggs and bacon, are going off to
satisfy the cravings of those who desire a
comfortable meal before proceeding to the pit?
The toy-shop does not put me out at all. How
are the children to be amused until it be time
to go to the play? Nor does the stationer's.
How is a man to write for orders without
paper, pens, and ink? Nor does the water-
proofer's. If any of the male inhabitants, having
business in Birkenhead—in connexion with the
new theatre there—were to cross the Mersey
in such a wet day as this—and it is always wet
in Liverpool—without a mackintosh or a patent
symphonia, they would assuredly catch cold and
be unable to go to the theatre on their return.
And why do those tradesmen, those mercers, and
lacemen, and glovers, and tailors, and hatters,
and grocers, and the rest, stand all day
behind counters and sell their wares? Why!
That they may earn money to pay for places at
the theatre, that they may "have the evening"
to enjoy the representation of the works of
Shakespeare and other more or less—on the
whole, less—immortal dramatic bards.

Liverpool was my first baiting-place on my
autumnal ride for the Health Cup. I intended
merely to rub down, bait, sleep, and start again;
but I had scarcely begun to rub down when the
ostler—waiter, I mean—brought me a card.
On it was inscribed the name of one of the
Liverpool "managers."

I pause here to remark that the word
manager, when it stands alone, is universally accepted
as meaning the conductor of a theatre. There
are managers of banks, and firms, and railways,
and works of all kinds; but when you say a
manager, a becomes for the nonce a definite
article, and you mean the great man who is
sole lessee and director of a temple of the
drama. And it may be remarked that the
manager generally comports himself in his
temple as if he were the god of it. After the
queen, I know no individual in the state who
enjoys so high and unapproachable a position
as the manager of a theatre. Write to the
prime minister, seated in Downing- street,
managing that vast empire on which the sun
never sets, and by return of post you will
receive from his secretary a courteous reply,
perhaps not accepting your farce—I mean your
scheme for the extinction of the national debt—
but at least acknowledging your favour. Write
to a manager of a theatre, governing a world
comprised within four dingy brick walls, and
having for his subjects—over whom he rules
despotically—a leading man, a leading lady, a
singing chambermaid, a low comedian, six or
eight male and female general utilities, a dozen
supers at a shilling a night, a prompter, and a
mangy bear of a doorkeeper—write to this
mighty potentate, and you are treated with the
silence and contempt which are due to your
audacity and presumption. Being a disappointed
dramatic author—all dramatic authors are
disappointed—I hold these views with regard to
managers as a matter of course. Injury is the
badge of all our tribe. What if they have
accepted my farces? they have rejected my
tragedies; what if they have accepted my
tragedies? they have declined to give me my price.
Judge, then, of my wonder and surprise when
I, who had been so often sent away, with a
rejected manuscript, from the stage-door, who
had written so many letters destined never to
be answered, was actually waited upon by a
manager, coming to me frankly and fearlessly
of his own accord. I was beginning to think
it a most extraordinary circumstance, when I
suddenly remembered that the manager waiting
below was a provincial one, that he was a
dramatic author, and that he was new to his
dignity. As a provincial manager, he might
have some respect for an author, not because
he was an author, but because he was fresh
from London; as an author himself, he might
have some fellow-feeling, though I have observed
that that soon wears off; and as having only
recently become a manager, it was not to be
expected that he should yet know to the full
extent what was due to him.

However, there he was at the foot of the
stairs, smiling and extending a friendly hand.
The proceeding was altogether so unsophisticated,
that I could scarcely forbear giving him
a bit of advice. I was just about to say to
him, "My dear sir, this is most imprudent
of you—most dangerous. You should never,
now that you are a manager, call upon an
author. You put yourself at a disadvantage by
so doing. What if at this friendly moment the
fellow should, from his breast-pocket, produce
a piece? At an hotel, too, where you might