AT DINNER I mention that a few days before I had been to the Middlesex Music Hall in Drury Lane. My neighbour to the left tells me that it is the commonest theatre in all London, and my neighbour to the right says that of its kind it ranks as the poshest. My neighbour across the way, Herr Mess of Frankfurt, asks me to take him along, please, if I ever go somewhere like that again. Did I have anything on for tonight? I say I meant to go to a music hall in Whitechapel. He is wildly enthusiastic, but takes so long to put on his overcoat that we shall be too late. Meanwhile we are joined by a young French Swiss and we go to the Middlesex Music Hall. Neither gentleman seems to have the foggiest notion of what sort of place it is. The dances bore them, the music isn't pretty enough for them. The girls on stage are too young for them, the audience too loud, they don't hear the tunes, they don't see the costumes and they don't feel the century-old atmosphere surrounding them. One of them takes his hometown paper out of his pocket, the other regrets he is unable to strike up an ‘acquaintance’ in his vicinity.