which the whole strength of the establishment had been employed for many months past. Mademoiselle Stephanie Boisfleury would be supported by Mesdames Celine, Julie, Blondette, Brown, Estelle, O'Callaghan, Schmidt, &c. MM. Anatole, Renaud, Pierre, W. H. Sims, Raphael, and McNish, and one hundred coryphées. Immediate application was to be made for seats. The box-office was open daily from 10 to 5, under the direction of Mr. Clark, &c., &c.
Mr. Grimshaw had managed very adroitly with Mademoiselle Boisfleury and her friends. The "enormous outlay" was, of course, supposititious. He found the lady anxious, for various reasons, to visit London. He immediately reduced his proposals to a minimum. In fact he did not care about the thing at all, he said; he had made other arrangements; he had so many other matters pending. But if she liked to come to Long Acre, and dance for a week for nothing, he would engage her for two months afterwards, at a salary of fifteen pounds a week, with liberty to him to terminate the engagement at a week's notice. He added that he would "mount" the ballet for her, first-rate, and would throw in the clear half of a ticket benefit. Upon these not high terms the services of Mademoiselle Boisfleury were eventually secured for the great national establishment in Long Acre.
Mademoiselle Boisfleury was a great success.
"We're pulling in the money now, sir, like bricks," Mr. Grimshaw informed his intimates, ordering glasses round after his manner. "We shall be able to run the bally right up to the pantomine, if we take care, and get through the year splendidly."
Indeed, out of the profit accruing from the engagement of Mademoiselle Boisfleury, he was able to avert altogether a bankruptcy that had been long impending, to compound with his creditors, and to commune with himself whether the surplus was not sufficient to justify the carrying into execution of a scheme he had long been plotting, for the leasing of two other theatres, and the purchase of three music halls, a circus, five public houses, and a chapel. It was the dream of Grimshaw to possess all these properties: the field for billing that then would be open to him seemed to him grand and glorious indeed.
"I should be able to turn round then; a fellow ain't got elbow room at the Long Acre. It's as easy to manage four theatres as one. If you know how to drive, a four in hand isn't harder, while it's much pleasanter, than one 'orse—isn't it, old follow, you know about 'orses? Will you have a private box for the missus, for Toosday? I'd give any money if I could get respectable people into my private boxes. However, we can't have everything—at the pit we turn away money every night."
I have always admired very much the first, second, and third gentlemen whom Shakspeare has now and then brought upon his scene; who are so bland, and amiable, and courteous, and convey so much information to each other and the audience; particularly the audience. What very agreeable background figures are these gentlemen, filling up chinks and crannies in the narrative; keeping out the draught, as it were, and yet, like the gilded leather we nail round the doors to make our rooms snug and comfortable in the winter time, useful the while they are ornamental. In a court of justice how important are those scraps of evidence which seem so trivial in themselves, and yet which form the links binding the big manacles together very tightly round the prisoner's wrists. I should like to summon indifferent but respectable witnesses to give the kind of "putty" evidence that fills up the chinks of the history. But I know that I cannot expect "first, second, and third gentlemen" to perform such an office for me, so far as this portion of my narrative is concerned. Of course, Nec deus intersit, &c. All know the line; if only from meeting with it so constantly in newspaper articles. It is very well for the first, second, and third gentlemen to give information touching the execution of a Duke of Buckingham, or the coronation of a Lady Anne, but may we question them concerning the performances of a Mademoiselle Boisfleury at the T. R., Long Acre, under the management of Mr. Grimshaw? Fie! It is true they may discuss such matters; but they would do so in their private apartments, or in the smoking-room of their club j we are not members probably, and may not listen and report, even if we are. But they would not talk over Mademoiselle Stephanie for half an hour in the public streets. Yet there are some people who do this kind of thing, and so will serve our turn as well. They form almost a class, yet they have no distinctive title. The word "gent" was at one time suggested as applicable to an individual of this class; and he has been termed a "snob;" but the latter was found to be of so elastic a significance that it could be stretched to comprehend the whole universe almost. The former was preferable principally on the ground of its being a diminutive; to designate something considerably less than a gentleman, the word gent has certainly its recommendations. But we have a want of something like the Italian method of arriving at a diminutive. Taking "swell" as a starting point, we desire to reach some such word as swellino, or swelletto, to signify a cheap or little swell. There is a sense of endearment, almost of a nursery character, implied in such a termination as we find in the word swellikin, which at once renders it unfit for our purpose. Perhaps we might follow the system of musical nomenclature; and as quaver is diminished into semi-quaver and demi-semiquaver, we might reduce the power of the word swell by making it occasionally, semi-swell and demi-semi-swelL Any one who, by his cheapness and littleness, is stayed from rising even to this last humble level, must, I think, regard himself as too far removed from the original distinction to have any, the remotest title to it whatever.
It is not necessary for me to describe the semi, and the demi-semi, swell. Many specimens of the genera are about. Let it be said that they are generally young in years, and—to their credit—clean in person. But their taste in dress, in cigars, in language, is not to be commended. They may be useful citizens between ten and four; behaving tolerably, writing good hands, and alto-