I am not sure where we go next. New Zealand,
if the holiday were mine; for I have always believed
New Zealand to be the most beautiful country in the
world. Also it is from all accounts a nice clean
country. If I were to arrange a world-tour for
myself, instead of following some other traveller
about in imagination, my course would be settled,
not, in the first place, by questions of climate or
scenery or the larger inhabitants, but by consideration
of those smaller natives—the Tarantula,
the Scorpion, and the Centipede. If I were told
that in such-and-such a country one often found a lion
in one’s bath, I might be prepared to risk it.
I should feel that there was always a chance that
the lion might not object to me. But if I heard
that one might find a tarantula in one’s hotel,
then that country would be barred to me for ever.
For I should be dead long before the beast had got
to close quarters; dead of disgust.
This is why South America, which always looks so delightful
on the map, will never see me. I have had to
give up most of Africa, India (though, as I have said,
this is a country which I can spare), the West Indies,
and many other places whose names I have forgotten.
In a world limited to inhabitants with not more than
four legs I could travel with much greater freedom.
At present the two great difficulties in my way are
this insect trouble, and (much less serious, but still
more important) the language trouble. You can
understand, then, how it is that, since also it is
a beautiful country, I look so kindly on New Zealand.
But I doubt if I could be happy even in a dozen New
Zealands, each one more beautiful than the last, seeing
that it would mean being away from London for a year.
The number of things which might happen in the year
while one was away! The new plays produced, the
literary and political reputations made and lost,
a complete cricket championship fought out; in one’s
over-anxious mind there would never be such a year
as the year which one was missing. My friend may
retain his calm as he hears of our distant doings
in Kiplingized India, but it would never do for me.
Even to-day, after a fortnight in the country, I am
beginning to get restless. Really, I think I ought
to get back to-morrow.
The State of the Theatre
We are told that the theatre is in a bad way, that
the English Drama is dead, but I suspect that every
generation in its turn has been told the same thing.
I have been reading some old numbers of the Theatrical
Magazine of a hundred years ago. These were the
palmy days of the stage, when blank verse flourished,
and every serious play had to begin like this:
