Most of us outside the charmed circle have ideas of good society quite as exaggerated as the Biblical idea of Paradise. We may not fancy that fashionables go about with crowns of light and golden harps, but we do insist that on the stage they behave as little as possible like ordinary human beings.
That is why it is so difficult to write society plays. If the characters you create do not feel and think normally they become puppets, and if they do you are accused at once of having failed to suggest smartness. One night I stood in the lobby of the Criterion Theater as the audience came out after having seen "Her Great Match." A woman who passed me remarked: "I think it was charming, but that man didn't make love at all like a Prince." Just what are the peculiarities of royal love-making the lady didn't explain, and the idiosyncracies that got the only prince I ever knew into jail had to do, not with the _way_ he courted, but with the number of times. In any event, it was proved afterward that my friend really was descended from a respectable veterinary surgeon, which disqualifies me as an authority on the subject. When I mentioned the matter to him, Mr. Fitch observed that he had been quite chummy with a prince or two, and that, while he never actually had seen them make love, he judged from their consorts that their powers of amatory expression were quite ordinary. "However", quoth Mr. Fitch, "you can't expect the public to believe _that_."
It used to be a pretty general impression that nobody who had more than twenty thousand a year ever indulged in a show of emotion. I say "nobody", although, of course, you are aware that wealthy parents in society plays always are exceptions to the rule of good breeding. Otherwise, imperturbability of the John Drew kind was supposed to be a trade mark of culture blown in the bottle. Common folk might laugh or cry under stress of circumstances, but the souls of the elect were sheathed in ice. The approved manner of translating a crisis into the dialogue of the drawing room was something like this:
[Illustration: "_The peculiarities of royal love-making_"]
_Lord Dash_: Good afternoon! Rippin' weather, isn't it? (Bus. of stroking mustache.) I've a bit of disagreeable news for you.