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MODERN LIFE 67
impart vividness and reality to the play down to the " most repulsive particulars " — significant Victorianese.
Realism was usually called revolting. It is not easy to understand why people who deliberately went to have their feelings harrowed, afterwards complained bitterly in terms of " too ". Perhaps they regarded the experience as necessary — rather like a visit to the dentist. Yet in fairness it must be reported that they found unalloyed delight in mild forms of realism, such delight that they paid the opera price of half-a-guinea a stall to see real bread and butter cut and spread; in fact they were as responsive to realism in pleasure as in disgust. Robert Buchanan observed how audiences thrilled with joy at the sound of the postman's knock, or the muffin bell, and rejoiced when they saw an actor, dressed like a real gentleman, open a real umbrella or smoke a real cigar. In the scene of a park at dusk, when the chairs for visitors were gathered together and put away by a boy in buttons, the scene was " recognized at once with delight, but the great point was the appearance of the real boy who after his real work was done, repeated it on the stage nightly ".
To see the park on the stage was pleasant. To see the police-court was not. The very playgoers who insisted on seeing life's seamy side at the footlights knew that it was too grim for make-believe. Yet they did, during the period of national prosperity, flock as readily to dramas of crime as to cup-and-saucer comedies. They had the outlook which made puritans acquire a thorough-going acquaintance with the scandals of night-life.
On the other hand, flourishing trade did create a very natural optimism. Philanthropy promised a better land. Following the example of George Peabody, an American merchant who gave money and houses to the London poor, the City Corporation built a lodginghouse for the poor; international and industrial exhibitions opened; slums were cleared to make way for new thoroughfares, railways, hospitals, embankments, viaducts and approaches to new bridges. Faith in Progress was shocked when disclosures were made that paupers were dying in workhouses through neglect. Strikes became frequent and unemployment increased until there was no ignoring the distress of the East End. There were also the bank failures of 1866 to bring poverty nearer home. But more and more exhibitions, and various associations for reforming and preventing, showed the general feeling of hopefulness in the most fashionable part of Town. What the most unfashionable part felt could find melodramatic expression because it had theatres of its own, vast in size, distinctive in character, not dependent on others for plays and players like the earlier theatres of the East.