Fifty Years of a Londoner's Life

urn:iso:std:iso:639:ed-3:eng

109-110

text excerpt

It is safe to say that had Maud Allan's performance been casually introduced to the Palace programme it would have had a short shrift. Instead, it was managed with exquisite showmanship by Alfred Butt, with the assistance of the late Augustus Moore. For years Moore had professed the belief that an insidious and insistent journalist could make the London public form any opinion he chose as to the merit of a performance. He put his theories into careful practice with Maud Allan. The result was that for a year all London, high and low, swarmed to the Palace to admire and applaud an artist of whom it had never heard before and whose antecedents proved, upon investigation, to be quite curious. Mr Butt's first step was to issue invitations to a private performance. So aristocratic an audience has never filled a music hall, save at the command of royalty, as that which filled the Palace that afternoon in 1908. What persons of such high rank had applauded, should any common creature dare criticise?

Moore's part was the preparation of a pamphlet, insidiously circulated — and forming the basis of nine-tenths of the newspaper notices next day. Some critics ingenuously adopted its style and sentiment as their own. Some modestly placed inverted commas to choice extracts. Some interpolated a word or two of deprecation. But in one form or another Moore's work insinuated itself to every breakfast- table in London next day. The newspaper men had assimilated his ready-made raptures as readily as the dupe accepts the card chosen by the conjurer. And the Maud Allan boom began, and continued, as no boom did before in the history of the variety stage.

excerpt from 'Fifty Years of a Londoner's Life' pp. 109-110 (280 words)

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