Milk of paradise

Saturday, December 26th., Waterloo Road, Burslem.

Yesterday I read "Falk" in Conrad's "Typhoon", and then several stories by Wells. I went to bed at 1.30 and was kept awake until 4.30 by a barking dog. Then at 7.15 my mother knocked on the wall. She was in the middle of a bilious crisis caused by overnight hare and bilberries, but I think she thought she was having a heart attack. She stays in bed. Hence the whole atmosphere of the house becomes special, and 'sick-roomy', and I can't proceed with my novel today as I had meant.

Last Wednesday I went with Frank to the Grand Theatre in Hanley. I entered with curiosity and not a little trepidation for, though it is the business of my life to keep an eye on the enthralling social phenomena of the Potteries, I had never been there before. Now I saw an immense carved and gilded interior, not as large as the Paris Opera, but assuredly capable of seating as many persons. I was impressed. My first thought was: "Why, it's just like a real Music Hall!"

I was so accustomed to regard Hanley as a place where the great visible people went into work at 7a.m. and emerged from public houses at 11p.m., or stood movelessly in mournful packed tramcars, or bitterly partisan on chill football grounds, that I could scarcely credit their presence here, lolling on velvet amid gold Cupids, and smoking at ease, with plentiful ash-trays to encourage them. I was offered chocolates and what-not at reasonable prices by a boy whose dress indicated that his education was proceeding at Eton. 

I was glad to see the vast gallery filled with persons who had paid their twopences and intended to have their monies worth. In nearly all public places of pleasure, the pleasure is spoiled for me by the obsession that I owe it, at last, to the underpaid labour of people who aren't there. It is a regrettable residual awareness of social injustice which I admit does me no credit in this age of capitalism. But I did not feel it here. Even the newspaper-lad and the match-girl might visit this Music Hall and, sitting together, drink the milk of paradise. Wonderful discoverers these new Music Hall directors all up and down the Kingdom. They have discovered the folk!