To the Editor of the St. James’s Gazette
Sir,—In your Gazette of this day (July 16) I see an account of a meeting of ladies, held in South Kensington, in support of a movement the object of which is to make it illegal for children under ten years of age to be engaged in performances at theatres and pantomimes.
One of the speakers (with a true ladylike disregard for that law in statistics, which tells us that numbers are only relative magnitudes, and have no argumentative value unless stated as percentages) informed the meeting that “there were known to be 10,000 children employed in connection with pantomimes throughout the country,” and that “the physical strain of this work on very little children was exceedingly heavy, and she had personally known cases in which it had led to fatal results.”
With the utmost respect for the motives of this lady, I cannot but think that her audience must have been in the same frame of mind as the judge who declined to hear the pleadings on both sides “because it confused him so,” if they accepted without question such sweeping assertions as that “the physical strain is exceedingly heavy,” or the deduction evidently meant to be drawn from the statement that certain cases “had led to fatal results.” As, in these days, ladies know everything (a category in which Latin may fairly be included), I may perhaps without pedantry address her with the words audi alteram partem.
As to the fact that the fair speaker “had personally known cases in which it had led to fatal results,” I would venture to suggest that if she would devote a short time to tabulating (with a due regard for percentages) the “cases” of high pressure in Board-Schools which “have led to fatal results,” or even the “cases” of “three children sliding on the ice” which “have led to fatal results,” it might perhaps cause her to modify her views.
As to her assertion that “the physical strain is exceedingly heavy,” I demur to it altogether as a matter of fact. The “cases” of children “personally known to” myself, some in shools and some in theatres, are very many—as many, possibly, as those known to the speaker whose words I have quoted: and I deliberately assert that, while I have known several cases of complete break-down in health, due to the physical strain of competitive examinations, I have met with none, where the strain could even be called “heavy,” among children employed in drama or pantomime.
Such counter-arguments as that stage-children are well-paid, and that they bring sorely-needed help to very poor parents who are straining their utmost to support large families of young children, are well enough in themselves, but go for nothing unless the “physical strain” objection can first be disposed of.
May I relate my experiences of yesterday, and thus, even if I cannot “point a moral,” at least “adorn a tale”?
I spent yesterday afternoon at Brighton, where for five hours I enjoyed the society of three exceedingly happy and healthy little girls, aged twelve, ten, and seven. We paid three visits to the houses of friends: we spent a long time on the Pier, where we vigorously applauded the marvellous under-water performances of Miss Louey Webb, and invested pennies in every mechanical device which invited such contributions and promised anything worth having, for body or mind, in return: we even made an excited raid on head-quaters, like Shylock with three attendant Portias, to demand the “pound of flesh”—in the form of a box of chocolate-drops—which a dyspeptic machine had refused to render. I think that any one, who could have seen the vigour of life in those three children—the intensity with which they enjoyed everything, great or small, that came in their way—who could have watched the younger two running races on the Pier, or have heard the fervent exclamation of the eldest at the end of the afternoon, “We have enjoyed ourselves!”—would have agreed with me that here, at least, there was no excessive “physical strain,” nor any imminent danger of “fatal results”!
But these, of course, were not stage children? They had never done anything more dangerous than Board-school competition? Far from it: all three are on the stage—the eldest having acted for five years at least, and even the tiny creature of seven having already appeared in four dramas!
But, at any rate, it is their holiday-time, and they are not at present suffering the “exceedingly heavy strain” of work on the stage? On the contrary. A drama, written by Mr. Savile-Clarke, is now being played at Brighton: and in this (it is called “Alice in Wonderland”) all three children have been engaged, with only a month’s interval, ever since Christmas: the youngest being “Dormouse” as well as three other characters—the second appearing, though not in a “speaking” part—while the eldest plays the heroine, “Alice”—quite the heaviest part in the whole play, and, I should think, the heaviest ever undertaken by a child: she has no less than 215 speeches! They had been acting every night this week, and twice on the day before I met them, the second performance lasting till after half-past ten at night—after which they got up at seven next morning to bathe!
That such (apparently) severe work should co-exist with blooming health and buoyant spirits seems at first sight a paradox: but I appeal to any one who has ever worked con amore at any subject whatever to support me in the assertion that, when you really love the subject you are working at, the “physical strain” is absolutely nil: it is only when working “against the grain” that any strain is felt. And I believe the apparent paradox is to be explained by the fact that a taste for acting is one of the strongest passions of human nature, that stage-children show it nearly from infancy, and that, instead of being, as these good ladies imagine, miserable drudges who ought to be celebrated in a new “Cry of the Children,” they simply rejoice in their work, “even as a giant rejoiceth to run his course.”—I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
Lewis Carroll.
July 16.