"Or better still, let the old man be the Managing Director of an hotel Trust: that would account for her clothes." Unfortunately I put the thing aside for a few months, and when I was ready again the public taste had still further advanced.

The doors of the British Drama were closed for the time being on all but members of the aristocracy, and I did not see my comic old man as a Marquis, which was the lowest title that just then one dared to offer to a low comedian.
Now how are we middle-class novelists and dramatists to continue to live?
I am aware of the obvious retort, but to us it absolutely is necessary.
We know only parlours: we call them drawing-rooms.

At the bottom of our middle-class hearts we regard them fondly: the folding-doors thrown back, they make rather a fine apartment.

The only drama that we know takes place in such rooms: the hero sitting in the gentleman's easy chair, of green repp: the heroine in the lady's ditto, without arms--the chair, I mean.

The scornful glances, the bitter words of our middle-class world are hurled across these three-legged loo-tables, the wedding-cake ornament under its glass case playing the part of white ghost.
In these days, when "Imperial cement" is at a premium, who would dare suggest that the emotions of a parlour can by any possibility be the same as those exhibited in a salon furnished in the style of Louis Quatorze; that the tears of Bayswater can possibly be compared for saltness with the lachrymal fluid distilled from South Audley Street glands; that the laughter of Clapham can be as catching as the cultured cackle of Curzon Street?
But we, whose best clothes are exhibited only in parlours, what are we to do?
How can we lay bare the souls of Duchesses, explain the heart-throbs of peers of the realm?
Some of my friends who, being Conservative, attend Primrose "tourneys" (or is it "Courts of love"?
I speak as an outsider.