Mrs. Jarramie's Genie

[2] The fashion in the late Victorian era was to present long evenings in the theatre, and so producer Richard D'Oyly Carte preceded his Savoy operas with curtain raisers.

The Era printed this summary of the plot in its review of the first performance: Mr and Mrs Harrington Jarramie are fashionable parvenus who are elevating themselves in society by the lever of politics.

Daphne, their daughter, is secretly engaged to one Ernest Pepperton, an enthusiastic young Radical, who has incurred Mr Jarramie's dislike by his unorthodox politics.

She has, by patience and diplomacy, secured a duchess as her guest, and Elie (Mrs Jarramie) condones her butler, Smithers's, pilfering of his choice imperial Tokay in order to keep him in good humour on the great occasion.

Daphne thoughtlessly runs out to get Smithers to clean the article, and that worthy soon appears and remonstrates with his mistress on the subject, winding up by giving "notice."

and the female name which serves as a key-word to the safe, for a communication from a lady; and when she finds that Mr Jarramie has taken her chef away to use him as a canvasser, she orders Ben-Zoh-Leen to take her husband to – Timbuctoo.

Ben-Zoh-Leen cannot conscientiously obey any one not "holding" the lamp, and Mr Jarramie is in an uncomfortable position, as the Genie amicably placed him in the midst of a tribe of natives of cannibalistic propensities.