From studio to stage Author:Weedon Grossmith Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER XIII My First Appearance In London I NOW applied for an engagement to every London manager, including Charles Hawtrey, who half promised me a part, b... more »ut it did n't come off. I was very anxious to get to work, for I still owed a lot of money, although I had been paying off my debts by degrees all the time I was in America. At last George Edwardes had the pluck to make me an offer to play Woodcock in the old two-act farce " Woodcock's Little Game" at the Gaiety in front of the short burlesque " Esmeralda." Nothing would have induced me to appear in such very antiquated stuff, as " Woodcock's Little Game," but the fact of being so hard up. I had no alternative, I could not refuse the part, but the play was so old-fashioned and silly that I suggested it should be played in the costume of that period, about 1860, with the tight trousers strapped down and tight coat sleeves, and a high collar and stock, the dialogue was so out of place and stilted and was so incongruous with modern dress. It was a period when gentlemen apparently thought it necessary to put on a velvet coat and a smoking cap when they wanted to smoke a cigar. I suppose the explanation is that in those days smoking was regarded more or less as a disgusting habit, and the smoking cap was to prevent the hair from smelling of smoke, and as the hair was worn rather long, — according to the pictures of the time — it might possibly retain the aroma to the prejudice of the fair sex, who usually had a horror of smoking in those days. How times have changed! As I have said, smoking was regarded more or less as a vice, but drinking immoderately was permissible, even to the extent of a gentleman getting intoxicated in the presence of ladies, who frequently professed to be amused rather than annoyed, but I need h...« less