But one’s heart bleeds for the poor Pharisee when the theatre is mentioned. I remember some Bolton Guardians passionately endeavouring to hinder the little workhouse children from seeing a Christmas pantomime. One asserted that theatres “brought ruin to thousands,” and another that “he could not ask God’s blessing on a child whom he took to the theatre.” Fortunately, there was a majority of sinners among the Guardians, the holy men were defeated and the little children were suffered to see the pantomime.
One of the wildest outbursts of fanaticism that I have ever witnessed arose over the licensing of the Palace of Varieties. To anyone who had lived in a healthier and more normal civilisation the affair seemed impossible. For what was the situation? Manchester had a few old-fashioned, out-of-date music-halls and a very large number of singing-halls attached to public-houses――not the most desirable places of entertainment. The directors of the Palace of Varieties proposed to erect a large modern music-hall and give the best entertainment of that kind that could be given. It was a London company, and, from a business point of view, it made a mistake in not interesting Manchester men in the company in a business sense. But there was no doubt that such a hall was badly wanted by the general body of citizens, and that the men who were going to run the show would never allow any performance that the average Manchester citizen would not like to see, just as his average London brother did. You would have thought that any citizen of foresight would have welcomed such a change. For years the magistrates and rulers of the city had provided this class of entertainment in most undesirable places, and the complacent Pharisee passed by on the other side; it did not come between the wind and his nobility. But this “centre of vice,” as a prominent Pharisee called it, was to be in the Oxford Road. It was to be open and honest, and that was its offence. The Pharisee knew that the Manchester citizens were evil people, that the music-hall was going to be an evil thing, and, therefore, certain to be popular among evil people, and so he opposed it with a vitality of strenuous abuse that was the admiration of all who take pleasure in such manifestations.
