entertainment, but am debarred that diversion by my relations
upon account of a sort of people who now fill or rather infest
the boxes. I went the other night to the play with an aunt of
mine, a well-bred woman of the last age, though a little formal.
When we sat down in the front boxes we found ourselves
surrounded by a parcel of the strangest fellows that ever I saw
in my life; some of them had those loose kind of great-coats on
which I have heard called _wrap-rascals_, with gold-laced hats,
slouched in humble imitation of _stage-coachmen_; others aspired
at being _grooms_, and had dirty boots and spurs, with black
caps on, and long whips in their hands; a third sort wore scanty
frocks, with little, shabby hats, put on one side, and clubs in
their hands. My aunt whispered me that she never saw such a set
of slovenly, unmannerly footmen sent to keep places in her life,
when, to her great surprise, she saw those fellows, at the end
of the act, pay the box-keeper for their places."

In 1730 the "Universal Spectator" notes: "The wearing of swords, at
the Court end of the town, is, by many polite young gentlemen, laid
aside; and instead thereof they carry large oak sticks, with great
heads and ugly faces carved thereon."

Elliston was, in 1827, lessee and manager of the Surrey Theatre.
"Quite an opera pit," he said to Charles Lamb, conducting him over the
benches of that establishment, described by Lamb as "the last retreat
of his every-day waning grandeur." The following letter--the
authenticity of which seems to be vouched for by the actor's
biographer--supplies a different view of the Surrey audience of that
date: