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[Illustration:  IDLERS.]

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“LIONS IN THEIR DENS.”

No.  II.—­GEORGE GROSSMITH AND THE HUMOUR OF HIM.

BY RAYMOND BLATHWAYT.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY GEO. HUTCHINSON.

(Photographs by Messrs. Fraddle and Young and Alfred Ellis.)

[Illustration:  MR. GEORGE GROSSMITH.]

A little, slight man, with a thin, clever, mobile, clean-shaven face, a sharp inquisitive nose surmounted by a perpetual pair of pince-nez, and a rather sarcastic mouth, from which wit and humour as light and airy as the cigarette smoke which accompanied each remark continually flowed.

Mr. George Grossmith, the well-known actor and society clown.

He stands on the hearthrug of his own special sanctum in his handsome house in Dorset Square, with his back to the fire, cigarette in his mouth, his hands now in his pockets, now waving in the air, as he vivaciously tells me the story of his busy, energetic and wonderfully interesting life.

[Illustration:  MRS. GEORGE GROSSMITH.]

“I was born,” said he, “in 1847.  I come of a family of actors and reciters.  My father, whose portrait you see there on the wall, was a well-known lecturer and entertainer.  Sixty or seventy years ago my uncle created a great sensation as a child actor, and he was commonly known as the ‘celebrated infant Roscius.’  Come out into the hall,” continued the lively little entertainer, “and I will show you some old engravings which represent him in his favourite characters.  Then my brother Weedon, as you know, is, of course, a well-known actor, as well as a clever artist, and part author with myself of several sketches which have appeared in Punch.  My eldest son now begins to display the family tendency to a most alarming extent.  For my own part, I started my career as a reporter at Bow Street Police Court, a training which I have found invaluable in many respects ever since.  My subsequent history as actor and society clown is so well known that I need not trouble you with it any further.”

“I suppose you find the taste of your audiences has gone up considerably within the last twenty years, do you not?”

“Why, yes,” he replied.  “They wouldn’t stand to-day what they used to roar at then.  My music is quite elaborate compared with the two or three chords which easily satisfied people in the sixties and early seventies.  Listen to this,” continued my host, as he sat down to the piano and struck a couple of very simple chords.  Then he glided softly into what he termed a modern accompaniment.  It was all the difference between “Ten Little Niggers” and a slumber song of Schubert.

[Illustration:  MR. GROSSMITH’S HOUSE.]

“And do you find the public very critical?”