IT is never well for the public interest that the originator of any
social reform should be soon forgotten. Further, it is neither wholesome
nor right (being neither generous nor just) that the merit of his work
should be gradually transferred elsewhere.
Some few weeks ago, our contemporary, the _Pall Mall Gazette_, in certain
strictures on our Theatres which we are very far indeed from challenging,
remarked on the first effectual discouragement of an outrage upon decency
which the lobbies and upper-boxes of even our best Theatres habitually
paraded within the last twenty or thirty years. From those remarks it
might appear as though no such Manager of Covent Garden or Drury Lane as
Mr. Macready had ever existed.
It is a fact beyond all possibility of question, that Mr. Macready, on
assuming the management of Covent Garden Theatre in 1837, did instantly
set himself, regardless of precedent and custom down to that hour
obtaining, rigidly to suppress this shameful thing, and did rigidly
suppress and crush it during his whole management of that theatre, and
during his whole subsequent management of Drury Lane. That he did so, as
certainly without favour as without fear; that he did so, against his own
immediate interests; that he did so, against vexations and oppositions
which might have cooled the ardour of a less earnest man, or a less
devoted artist; can be better known to no one than the writer of the
present words, whose name stands at the head of these pages.