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72 MELODRAMA ♦
mostly changed although the author was still " Inspector Buckett of the Detectives " and Kate Lee still Guster, she started another run the next year, and from then on there would be no slackening in the demand. Nor would there be any slackening of the attempts at imitation, beginning in 1876 with Bleak House at the Pavilion, Eliza Thome's Bleak House ; or, Poor Jo at Sheffield, and Joe The Waif at Greenwich. The next five or six years would produce Jo The Waif; or, The Mystery OfChesny Wold at the Liverpool Rotunda, and James Mortimer's Move On ; or, The Crossing Sweep at the Fulham Grand. Burnett wrote Midge as a successor, but the public wanted Jo and nothing but Jo as far as this particular Jennie Lee (there was then another Jennie Lee on the stage) was concerned. She toured first the provinces, then Australia, Africa, India and China, with greater triumphs than ever awaiting her at Drury Lane.
More helpful feelings towards waifs and strays might reasonably be ascribed to one actress. There must still be taken into account a similar influence over a still greater public by the irrepressible Dennery. With another collaborator in 1874 he wrote for the Porte-SaintMartin Les Deux Orphelines, which for blood and thunder was the best version of the Babes in the Wood ever acted. It is a melodrama of the eighteenth century in Paris, with view of the Seine, bureau of the minister of police, and cells in the Salpetriere all complete. From the frou frou of silk and satin, the clatter of glasses and laughter, during a midsummer night's fete in a petite maison an bel-air, the scene changes to deep winter in the parvis of Saint-Sulpice. The evil Marquis de Presles has robbed Louise of her inheritance. Now she begs in the snow on the church steps. But she has faithful friends. Both Henriette, the other orphan who is her constant companion, and Pierre Frochard, the crippled knife-grinder, are resolved to protect her. When the helpless girls are sent to the Salpetriere, Pierre discovers that his brother, the wild, burly ruffian Jacques, holds the power of life and death over Louise. In the garret of La Frochard (their horrific mother) villain and hero draw their knives for the finest duel in the whole struggle of virtue against vice. Nobody protested.
That September Oxenford brought out Two Orphans at the Olympic. In the October Paul Meritt and George Conquest put on The Blind Sister at the Grecian Theatre ; in the November the East London followed with The Blind GirYs Fortune. What Jo was to one actress The Two Orphans was to pairs of actresses by dozens. In New York a version " specially adapted " for the Union Square Theatre (which Jennie Lee had just left on her way to meet fate) ran from the December of 1874 to the following June. Kate Claxton, the blind orphan,