Pedal Distress The drawing-room comedy has its conventions such as
the ceaseless intake of liquid refreshment and a propensity for gentlemen callers to be ushered in wearing overcoats and carrying their hats. These lapses from realism are under- standable, one being an excuse for circulating the cast about the stage, the other to establish the fact that Lord Withers has just come in from the street. The latest convention how- ever—and it is becoming very popular—that of gentlemen putting their feet on chair and sofa seats, can have little dramatic significance unless, which is not usually the case, the characters concerned are supposed to be unmitigated cads. Male feet in stout outdoor shoes do not often, in real life, come to rest plumb in the middle of satin (or indeed cretonne) chairs, and until someone convinces me of the necessity for such bad manners I shall continue to deplore all this foot- looseness on the stage.
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