Byron used to boast that he had never given offence to delicate ears. And, as a matter of fact, he said a million of nonsensical things but not a single indecent thing. Yet he helped to depreciate the moral tone of the theatre by lowering the standard of decency in regard to female costume upon the stage, and by bringing on to it those pseudo-actresses whom, in the slang of the green-room, we call _grues_.
In this connection I ought to point out that the social ostracism under which the stage then suffered was due less to the bad morals of the actresses than to the bad manners and vulgarity of the actors. The former were much nearer to being ladies than the latter were to being gentlemen. Watched and warded, first by a father, then by a husband connected with the theatre, obliged to give their first thoughts to their professional and domestic duties, they had neither the power, nor the leisure, nor the inclination to think of evil. Tom Hood, in his _Model Men and Women_, paints a picture of the theatrical woman which reminds one of the biographies of the _Prix Montyon_. She goes late to bed, rises early, learns her rôles while washing her children's linen, rehearses in the afternoon, performs in the evening, and has no time to eat or to attend to her _toilette_, still less to think, or make merry, or make love. "School mistresses and governesses, shop-girls, dressmakers, cooks, housemaids,--what are your fatigues to those of an actress?" So spoke a writer[8] who was well acquainted with theatrical life.
These habits were now to be changed. Burlesque, pantomime, comic opera, were throwing open the stage to actresses of a new type who posed but did not perform, and who were called upon to fill not rôles but tights. The respectable woman would not suffer herself to be vanquished on her own ground; she competed with the newcomers by the same means: sometimes she won--and lost. This was the transformation which Byron abetted. But it was the public, of course, as always, that was most to blame.
Poor Byron was not without the ambition of an artist: he aspired to raising himself above the level of the _genre_ to which he owed his first success,--to writing a comedy. And it so happened that by his side on the stage of the Strand there was a quaint little body whose hopes ran parallel with his. This was Marie Wilton. I do not know how old she was then. In her pleasant Memoirs, written in collaboration with her husband, she has quite forgotten to give us the date of her birth. So much we know, however, that she was the child of somewhat obscure actors, and that she herself made her _début_ when she was five years old. At Manchester she had the honour of playing some small rôle with Macready, who was then making his last rounds before finally quitting the stage. The great tragedian sent for her to his dressing-room, lifted her on to his knee and questioned her.