in her life. And Miss A., a teacher, cannot associate with Miss B., a nurse, unless, indeed, the nurse be sister or matron. And the more impecunious Miss A. is, and the more dependent on other people's charity, the more contemptuous is she of Miss B., who may be making every bit as brave a struggle in the battle of life, though in a different regiment. The fact is, ladies often dare not strike out for fear of sinking, and so remain in the shallows all their lives.

The remedy seems to lie in clearly estimating individual limitations, and in making up one's mind to turn to the best account such capabilities as are possessed. And it should always be remembered that wages in this weary world are not paid both in meal and in malt.' A very desirable position and agreeable life generally mean poor pay; while work that is unpleasant and a position that is unattractive have to be balanced against good pay. Neither men nor women are highly paid for doing that which they like, but for toiling steadily at that which is for its own sake undesired. My own experience here is exactly to the point. After a long training and some disappointments, work under the poor-law guardians was proposed to me, and I entered this workhouse very depressed indeed. I heard the big gates clang behind me. 'All hope abandon, ye who enter here!' The very gate-porter's name is Death. Shall I ever forget the first night-how I lay awake and heard every quarter strike, and longed for morning? Then, to my utter astonishment, I found out that the bugbear was in my own imagination. Friends came to see me. 'Well! you can't get much lower,' said one. Another did not choose to address letters to me here. And some took an undercurrent tone of patronage, which was most disagreeable as soon as it ceased to be amusing. Gradually they assorted themselves; and I cannot say that (though at times I am very much depressed by the hopelessness of the people around me) I ever really regret having entered on my duties in one of the great retreats for the incompetents of this puzzling world.

Whatever else we may forget here, face to face with the deepest depths of the world's great problem, we can never forget that we have the weak and the incompetent to consider. No one can live in daily contact with these people without recognising the fact that it is possible to be willing and eager for work; and yet, alas! it is also possible at the same time to be absolutely incompetent to meet the first requirements of this workaday world, or to adapt oneself to the simplest of its ever-changing needs.

Miss Low proposes the establishment of a bureau for middle-class women's work, and it might be useful, though the scheme has not been altogether a success in the lower ranks of labour. Moreover, there are already some such bureaus, conducted on business principles, and called registry offices, and others in connection with the Working Ladies' Guild, and such semi-charitable bodies. But the abiding

difficulty is, that many poor ladies bring to market wares not good of their kind, and wares for which, even granting them to be good, there is no effective demand.

To limit the number of workers to those compelled to be breadwinners would be undesirable, even were it possible. Paradoxical as it may seem, though the world likes its labour cheap, and though the best labour never is, and never can be paid for, employers in their hearts believe the labourer is worthy of his hire,' and like to discharge their debts. Unpaid labour is apt to be irresponsible, unreliable, and dilettante. Again, for the remedy of many existing abuses we need those who are not withheld from speaking their mind by any fear of dismissal and probable starvation. If the well-to-do workers receive lower wages, they do lower the market all round, and their needy colleagues suffer; but in all cases they can, and in many cases they do, exact higher wages and better treatment than did before their time rule in the market.

As for pensions, it is to be feared that directors of schools and other employers would only subtract the value of the pension from existing salaries; and if they did not, it would simply amount to a rise all round, which does not seem likely to come about. Furthermore, it is not found that the average woman worker, getting a rise of salary, uses it to buy a pension, so the presumption is that a small pension is not what she cares most to have. Miss Low's ' young, able, and by no means pessimistic' teacher lived 'decently and not like an animal' on 70%., and now that she has 85l., she spends that to 'live like a lady.' Twenty pounds a year seems to her worse than no provision, though it is the sum that charitable folk subscribe to grant through the United Kingdom Beneficent, Governesses' Benevolent, and such institutions. Another woman bought a piano for her sisters and helped them in various ways,' and sold out her annuity to give the money to her father. Will women never understand that they cannot both eat their cake and have it, and that the luxury of giving away costs money, which, spent in that immediately pleasant fashion, cannot also be spent on the dull purchase of a pension for old age. There are plenty of sound offices now doing business in deferred annuities for women, and what is wanted is to make the working woman look ahead and eager to live at her own charges. For the older women who have fallen by the way there is nothing for it but systematic, generous charity, until we get the new scheme for old-age pensions all round. But it is not amiss to remind ourselves that the sum proposed is five shillings a week only. It is hopeless to make the old independent-their time for that has passed. Homes seem to promise well on the face of them, but they would have to be brought to those who need them; for it is a risky matter to transplant old people; nothing kills them off sooner. Old haunts, old associations, well-known faces, go to make up their home; take them away, and

they pine like plants deprived of sunshine, no matter how bright the new surroundings may be. Far better give them a pension, however small, and let them live their own lives, however limited and lonely they seem. They are not easy to deal with in masses, for what they really need is the most difficult thing to give-the understanding of their old life by the new. Modes of work, of thought, and almost everything that makes life, have changed since they were young. They are troubled at the new development; they prophesy evil things; they want peace in a rushing, whirling age, where very little peace is to be found; and their sun is going down over a troubled sea, with nothing to betoken what the future dawn may bring for the young life they leave behind.

EDITH M. SHAW.

Girls' Public Day School Company, Limited, 21 Queen Anne's Gate, London, S.W.

On p. 406 of the March number of the Nineteenth Century Miss Frances H. Low makes certain statements with regard to the Girls' Public Day School Company, Limited, which need correction. She says that the Girls' Public Day School Company, Limited, 'has now after fifteen years' existence opened twentyfive schools,' and that, 'as a fact,' a salary of 804., 90l., or even 1107., is about the maximum that a non-resident assistant mistress reaches.'

What are the actual facts?

The Company was started twenty-five years ago. It has now thirty-four schools in London and the provinces, in which above 7,000 girls are being educated. It employs, besides its 34 head mistresses, 324 form mistresses, and 408 teachers on probation, junior teachers, and visiting mistresses and masters for special subjects, who give only part of their time.

The salaries of the high school head mistresses vary from 250l. to 7007. per annum, the average at the present time being over 4001.

The salaries of the assistants on the staff vary, according to qualifications and length of service, from 70l. to 2507. (in exceptional cases), the average being nearly 1207. Of the 324 teachers of this class only 7 are receiving as little as 701. The student teachers, who are completing their own education and learning how to teach, pay a small fee in some cases for their training, and in others receive free instruction or a small remuneration.

During the year 1896, 70,5577. was paid in salaries in the Company's schools to the teachers, who are nearly all women. The total amount paid to teachers by the Company up to December 1896 was 1,099,7801.

On the whole, it may fairly be claimed that the Girls' Public Day School Company has done much to provide well-paid appointments for women, and will compare favourably in this respect with similar institutions.

WILLIAM BOUSFIELD.

(Chairman of the Council, Girls' Public Day School Company).

March 16, 1897.

GOETHE AS A STAGE MANAGER

WHAT are the qualities of a good stage manager? What purpose in the cosmic scheme ought to be served by the drama? Is the theatre nothing more than a place of mere solacement and amusement, or should it be all this and yet help us to a most blessed companionship of wise thoughts and right feelings'? Is that country sage which allows the great majority of its playwrights to make appeal to the meanest level of an uneducated taste, or should it really follow the course of the drama with as much interest and anxious care as it now lavishes on the management of its free schools? For may not that education which the State fosters so generously and subjects to such wise discipline be rendered worthless by the simple act of leaving both the theatre and the music-hall altogether at the mercy of the people, who in all matters, ranging from their conduct in a public park after dusk up to the treatment of their little children, need to be controlled by watchful societies, by stern regulations, or by laws of State?

In some form or other these questions have long been the subject of much controversy, and it is the purpose of this essay to show, in a short and direct way, how Goethe answered them, not merely in theories as a writer, but actually in practice as a stage manager.

I

'With a mere change of emphasis,' says Lowell, Goethe might be called an old boy at both ends of his career.' The truth of this remark is confirmed by the fact that Goethe was stage-stricken from the beginning to the end of his laborious and eventful life. He said of himself that in his childhood a puppet-show kindled his imagination, and we learn from Eckermann how, at the age of six-and-seventy, he designed a new theatre for Weimar. The lad was only ten when he first became acquainted with the singular customs and manners ruling in those days behind the scenes. It was then that the French troops swaggered into Frankfort, bringing with them a rabble of comedians, and the worthy Germans, true to their national character, turned even their humiliation to good advantage, for, by going to the theatre regularly, they gained freedom and mastery over their conquerors'

language. Little Goethe sat in the pit, listening eagerly to his French lessons, but Chance willed that he should learn a great deal more about the actors themselves than about the plays in which they all looked so well and spoke so finely. For Chance introduced him to Darones, a small braggart belonging to the French company, and the two boys soon found their way into forbidden parts of the house, and particularly into the uncomfortable room where all the women and the men dressed and undressed together, with fixed blushes of rouge on their cheeks.

This early intimacy with the stage and its ways Goethe continued at college, and thus he was well aware that the life of the wings was usually a demoralising life. He had seen, too, like Lessing, that tə manage any company of players, whether amateur or professional, was a task requiring infinite patience and tact. Yet all this knowledge never discouraged him; he believed always in the possibility of transforming the artisan-actor into a genuine artist, and the degraded theatre into an elevating and instructing agency. Even in his old age, as he looked critically back upon his six-and-twenty years of theatrical management, the poet was very well pleased with himself, and could honestly set before Eckermann a most inspiriting ideal of the high office of the Playwright. Consider this passage: 'A great dramatic poet, if he is at the same time productive, and is actuated by an unwavering noble purpose that gives character to all his work, may succeed in making the soul of his plays the soul of the people.' Thus, for example, 'the influence exercised by Corneille was capable of forming heroes. This was something for Napoleon, who had need of an heroic race; and hence he said of Corneille, S'il vivait encore, je le ferais prince!"›

66

Like a wise general, Goethe the stage manager took just account of all the difficulties and dangers hanging about his first tentative steps; and ever afterwards thought and action went hand in hand together. In the beginning, as he told his Boswell in after years, two troublesome enemies lurked within his own character and temperament :

The one [said he] was my ardent love of talent, which might easily have made me partial and indiscreet. The other I will not mention, but you will guess it. At our theatre there was no want of ladies, all beautiful and young, and with winning graces of mind. I felt toward many of them a passionate inclination, and sometimes I was met half way; but I held myself back and said, 'No further!' If I had involved myself in any love affair, I should have been like a compass, which cannot point aright when under the influence of a magnet at its side.

But in the meantime, whilst Goethe was thus triumphing over the Don Juan part of his nature, a host of financial difficulties had nearly thwarted his talents as a man of business. Weimar was a very small town, and its scattered inhabitants had had no chance of learning to appreciate good plays; hence Goethe could not expect that his theatre would support itself. The Grand Duke, it is true, had