T^¥T""^fT'*'' T"i' ^ i^X ■^ 1 i n "X^r^ QJornell HttiuBraitg SItbratg IMtatn, Jfeoj ^oek <^&Sc/a/'/^eiJ!i PN 2596.L6H625"™"'"" '■"'"^ ™iVfiNYS3f,?.,A,,?.,,.Londoners Kfe 3 1924 026 124 648 Cornell University Library The original of tiiis bool< is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924026124648 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE H. G. HiBHF.RT PJiotogiapJi by Cavvndish Mo}-ton FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE BY H. G. HIBBERT WITH A PREFACE BY T. P, O'CONNOR «r WITH EIGHTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1916 P|AS^aa^ PREFACE If this book and its author make the same appeal to the public as they do to me, then this certainly wUl be one of the books of the year. As to the author, I have known him for nearly a quarter of a century ; he was once my colleague, and a more energetic, competent, trained joiumalist I have never met, nor a more loyal and steadfast friend. His book is an epitome of the side of journalistic work to which he has devoted most of his professional life — though not all, for Mr Hibbert belongs to the same old- fashioned school of journalists as myself, who had to go through the severe mill, and to turn their hands to everything that tmned up, from an execution to a grand opera. But the subject that has attracted his attention more than any other is the stage. For many years he spent some hours of every night of the year in some form or other of a theatre or a music hall ; I believe he is one of the men who would prefer, if stranded in a small town, going to a penny gaff rather than remain amid the futile gossip of a smoke-room. This passion for the play is due to an iaexhaustible interest in the many forms of art which the stage presents, and to an equally in- exhaustible interest in the multiform and often thrilling drama that goes on within a play — ^namely, the men and women be- hind the scenes. Add to these qualities a passion for accuracy — ^a memory for names, dates, plays, even an interest in the financial side of dramatic production — and you will PREFACE understand how Mr Hibbert is a walking encyclopaedia of everything and of everybody who for close upon forty years have figured before the public. This, book, into which he has concentrated thousands of articles contributed to various journals, may well stand as perhaps the most complete and the most trustworthy record of the stage for recent years. To me, however, the chief interest of the book is its long series of portraits of the favourites of the public, not merely as they appeared before the footlights, but on their other side — what they were as men and women when they doffed the buskin and wiped oft the paint. That world behind the scenes owes little as yet to literature, for the romances in which the mummers have appeared, have hitherto been of either of two classes — those which professed to paint the sordid side and those which have depicted the people of the stage in the alluring colours of the matinee girl. Mr Hibbert is too sane and too conscientious a writer to describe the men and women of the stage, most of whom he has known per- sonally, from the one angle or the other. They live in his pages, not in lurid colours, but just as they are — ^men and women — living for the most part the commonplace and regular lives of the typical British family man or woman, with their own corroding cares and devastating sorrows in the midst of their absorbing work ; weeping behind the scenes when they have to smile to the public ; spending, in horn's of exhausting labour, the time that the rash public imagines to be devoted to mere pleasure-seeking ; with more ups and downs — ^largely owing to the precariousness of employment, which is the curse of the actor's or actress's life — ^than those of the average man of the other professions ; and often rising to dazzling heights of popularity and wealth to descend, owing vi PREFACE to change of taste, or to loss of health, to the abysses of poverty and premature death. There are chapters in this book, accordingly, which it is impossible to read without a quickening of the breath, with- out encountering many of the most tragic ironies of life — ^little and big. All of the chief figures are known to men of my generation ; most of them even to this generation. And as I read in these fascinating pages their real lives, learn their real selves, there comes to me the always saddening thought about the stage performer — ^that these beings of light and joy, who have made so many of our hours pass in tense and fine emotion or in healthy laughter, or amid the rapture that comes from fine elocution or melodious singing, have had in their own lives so little of the happiness they gave to others. How, often, they have vanished, forgotten and neglected, with such poor return for all the past hours of happiness, the imperishable memories, they have left to their fellow- beings. Some of the portraits are very striking. I refer the reader particularly to the life story of Jenny Hill — " the Vital Spark," as she was called — ^whose dash to the stage used to set so many hearts beating with expectation of really hilarious enjojmaent. There is a little scene with George Leybourne — ^who once set all the town roaring — ^in his closing days of illness, which is as dramatic as any scene the pen of a dramatist has painted of poignant pitifulness. I might go on referring to page after page of this kind, but as most pages have some such fascination for me, I might well make my preface as long as the book. I have dwelt on the dramatic side of the book, for it is its chief feature, but not its only one. Though provincial by vii PREFACE birth, Mr Hibbert became, like myself, the Cockney more devoted to the great capital than many of those born within its frontiers. London constantly is the background of the whole volmne, and many a time there rises that strange old London — now vanished — ^through which I lived myself in the seventies and the eighties. It is an almost incredible London, though so near, to those of this generation, with its public-houses open almost at all hours, its pot-houses, its poor buildings, its general air of a siu^vival from the hiccough- ing and roystering eighteenth century. Mr Hibbert gives a realistic though restrained picture, and the old city of dead things lives again. Finally, there are pages which describe the life of the old- time journalist, with figures now renowned, such as that of Barrie, once a subordinate in an ancient newspaper office. That school of journalists is now almost as dead a thing as other institutions of those past days ; and again one has a picture of a past in newspaper evolution, which will be interesting to a new generation. I feel, in standing between the reader and those pages, like the Manager that comes before the curtain in II Pagliacci ; like him I must with- draw before I have kept the audience too long waiting. So "Let the curtain rise " and the moving figures in Mr Hibbert's dramatic pages make their entrance. T. P. O'Connor. vui CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER I A London Backwater ..... i The Honourable Society of Gray's Inn ; and Gray's Inn Society— W. S. Gilbert's Early Days— Poets at Play— Nesbit of The Times CHAPTER II An Old Stock Company . . . . 7 George Dance's First Play — Mrs Kendal's Girlhood — Suicide of Walter Montgomery — Cremome Gardens CHAPTER III In a Provincial Newspaper Office . . -15 The Beginnings of J. M. Barrie — Stories of Dean Hole — Bendigo the Prize-fighter — Bernal Osborne's Wit CHAPTER IV Of Critics, Old and New . . . -23 Clement Scott's Influence — Lyceum First Nights — Irving and Wilson Barrett — The Fight of La Dame aux Camdlias CHAPTER V The Story of the Music Hall . . -32 From Pot-house to Palace — Early Comic Songs — " Champagne Charley " — Charles Dickens at the Music HaUs CHAPTER VI The London Pavilion . . . . .40 Concerts in a Stable-3rard — Dr Kahn's Museum — Early Joint Stock Companies and their Fate — The Oxford and the Tivoli ix CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER VII The Old Mogul . . . . -46 Nell Gwynne in Drury Lane — The Chairman — Dan Leno's First Appearance — Marie Lloyd's Noviciate CHAPTER VIII The Vital Spark . . . . .51 Jenny Hill ; A Sordid Girlhood — A Dramatic Debut at the London PaviUon — A " Memorable At Home " — Bessie Bellwood CHAPTER IX Music Hall Society . . . . -56 Dan Leno's Drawing-room — The " Great Lion Comique " — The Modesty of Genius — A Series of Sisters — Peer and Peri CHAPTER X East End Entertainment . . . • 63 The Britannia Festival — " Saloons " and their Style — Champagne Charley and Hamlet — Pavilion Celebrities — Grand Opera at the Standard — Kate Vaughan's Origin CHAPTER XI The Lost Theatres of London . . .70 Old-time Death-traps — ^Value of Theatre Property — Growth of the Suburban Houses — Boucicault at Astley's — Adah Isaacs Menken — ^Mrs Langtry and the Methodists — Mr Keith of New York CHAPTER XII Round Leicester Square . . . -83 Early Victorian Horrors — Prize-fighters at the Alhambra — Leotard and Blondin — King Edward and the Empire — Winston Churchill — Prudes on the Prowl — Murder of Amy RoseUe CHAPTER XIII Singers who are silent . . . -91 The first "Great"- Men of the Music Hall — Lions Comique — Music Hall Morals and Manners — Saved by a Song CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER XIV Half-a-Century of Song . . . -97 The Ditties of Demos — Slap Bang, here we are again — The Tichborne Claimant—" Motto " Songs CHAPTER XV Ballets and Ballet Dancers . . . .104 The Cancan at the Alhambra — Police Interference — Some Old-time Favourites — Genee's Arrival — Kate Vaughan and the Gaiety School — Booming Maud Allan CHAPTER XVI American Cousins ..... 113 Early American Visitors to London — Augustin Daly and Charles Frohman — The American Chorus Girl — Edna May's Girlhood — Negro Minstrelsy — Mr Gladstone as a Comic Singer CHAPTER XVII Night Clubs ...... 122 The Receptions of Madam Cornelys — Early Victorian Night Houses — The Corinthian Club — Two Lovely Black Eyes — Sergeant Ballantyne behind the Scenes CHAPTER XVIII Dead-heads and Claquers .... 128 How Theatres are packed — Some Subterfuges of Seat- beggars — Henry Irving and the Bailifi — The Chorus that sang too soon — M. Quelquechose, Organiser of Success CHAPTER XIX Princes and Palaces . . . . .135 The " Royal Command " to the Music Hall — A Noble " Chairman -' — King Edward a Prisoner — Dan Leno at Court — A Terrible Tragedy xi CONTENTS FAGB CHAPTER XX Music Hall Agency ..... 142 Hugh Jay Didcott — His Extravagance — Where Cele- brities were discovered — Many Marriages — The Quarrels of Artists and Managers CHAPTER XXI Counterfeit Presentments .... 147 Stories of Stage Caricature — Oscar Wilde in Comedy and Opera — The " darned mounseer " — Irving and his Imitators — The Sensitive Sultan CHAPTER XXII One-horse Shows ..... 153 Some Popular Entertainers — Cheer, Boys, Cheer — " Protean " Artists — Henry Irving as a SpirituaUst — Frederick Maccabe — ^Death in the Workhouse CHAPTER XXIII Empire-building ..... 158 The AU-Conquering Music Hall — Edward Moss's Boy- hood — How a Piano was procured — His Vast Fortune, and Early Death CHAPTER XXIV Notes — or Gold ?..... 162 Failure of the Royal Enghsh Opera — Palace Theatre Flotation — Its Early Struggles, and Eventual Profits — Living Pictures — And one of Charles Morton CHAPTER XXV Feverish First Nights ..... 168 How a great Journalist died — The Marquis of Queens- berry on Marriage — Guy Domville — Actors'- En- counters with Audiences — Poet and Painter fight — An Interview with Queen Victoria xii CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER XXVI Some Editors ...... 177 A Famous Philanderer — Practical John HoUingshead — His Gaiety Confession — The Marquis de Leuvllle — Augustus Harris and Literature— Edward Ledger as Lucullus CHAPTER XXVII The Westminster Aquarium . . . 185 Church and Stage — ^Labouchere as a Showman — Many Monsters — Gymnastic Sensations — A Fight with the County Coimcil — M'Dougall CHAPTER XXVIII Concerning, Choristers .... 193 Antiquity of the Show Girl — The First " Professional Beauty " — The Gaiety Stage Door — Erudite Chorus Girls — Training a Dancer — From the Chorus Room to Fame CHAPTER XXIX Musical Comedy ..... 202 The First Musical Comedy — In Town — ^How " Owen Hall " arrived — Collaboration according to Gilbert and Sullivan — The George Edwardes Method CHAPTER XXX The Salaries of Celebrities .... 207 Harry Lauder's Figure — Stage Stars in Variety — What Premiere Danseuses eaxn — Red-nosed Comedians' Reward CHAPTER XXXI Memorable Productions .... 215 Gamblers in Management — Expenses and Earnings of West End Theatres — The Romance of Charley's Aunt — The Brave Days of Opera BoufEe — Irving's Extrava- gance — The Merry Widow xiii CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER XXXII A Study in Stoll ..... 229 Manager at Thirteen — Leybourne's Last Days — The Fantastic Frock Coat — Lessons in French — Literary Efforts CHAPTER XXXIII Society — Fifty Years Ago .... 234 The Beginnings of the Bancrofts — Robertson and his Comedies — Tyranny of Burlesque — The Stage in the Sixties CHAPTER XXXIV The Gaiety and its Managers .... 246 The Discovery of Nellie Farren — The Famous Quar- tette — Edward Terry's Oddities — A Pageant of Dead Drolls — The Real George Edwardes CHAPTER XXXV My Old Album ...... 257 Three Famous Clowns — The Queen's Jester — An In- teresting Interview — Eccentricities of Celebrities — Mrs Weldon and Gounod CHAPTER XXXVI The Romance of the Cinema , . . 265 Its Introduction to London — A Protege of the Music Hall — Millions Made, and Lost — Its Wondrous Future CHAPTER XXXVII Meditations among the Tombs .... 271 A Fleet Street Graveyard — Fortunes sunk in News- papers — Popular Fiction and its Purveyors — Comic JournaUsm — The Halfpenny Press — The Sunday Dinner of Demos APPENDIX Alhambra Chronology ..... 279 Empire Chronology ..... 282 INDEX 285 xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS H. G. Hibbert .... Cremorne Gardens : " Maypole Dance " Cremorne Gardens The Banqueting Hall : " Cremorne " George Leybourne Jenny Hill .... John C. Heenan : " The Benicia Boy " . The Panopticon : Predecessor of the Alhambra Howes and Cushing's Circus at the Alhambra George Leybourne : " Champagne Charley,' Arthur Lloyd : "The German Band " Arthur Orton : " The Tichborne Claimant " Harry Clifton : " Paddle your own Canoe " ; John Hollingshead Mabel Gray .... Evans's Music Hall Sergeant Ballantyne " The Fight for the West End Stakes " (Charles Morton, Edward Weston, Jonghmans and Corri) . . . . . H. G. Hibbert (Caricature) H. J. Byron . . . . . Frontispiece To face page lO 12 14 36 52 76 84 86 94 98 102 122 124 126 166 204 234 XV CHAPTER I A LONDON BACKWATER The Honourable Society of Gray's Inn ; and Gray's Inn Society — W. S. Gilbert's Early Days— Poets at Play— Nesbit of The Times NOBODY," said a whimsical creature at a dinner- party the other night, "is bom in London." And he proceeded to prove his statement by challenging the twenty guests. None of them could claim London birth ! The Registrar-General just romances in miUions. You can almost certainly confound him any time you range the fellows in the smoke-room at the club. But, if London have no children, with what tenderness and devotion her stepsons seek to attach her ! For my own part, I have not left her side a clear week in five and twenty years. Some kindly light led an uncouth youngster from the provinces, still dazed by the splendour of his appointment as acting editor of The Sunday Times, to domicile in Gray's Inn. As I write, I look through the same attic window, across the greensward where Francis Bacon marches in solitude, eye averted from the outrage of his Mount. Noise of the great world just reaches this quiet backwater — in infinite seduction of alternative ! " Do you know," said Clement Scott to me a while before his death, " that you are Uving in the very chambers which W. S. Gilbert occupied as a briefless barrister, where he wrote the Bah Ballads, and where he and I and Tom Hood used FIFTY YFARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE to work on Fun ? " Gilbert enlarged the memory, as to a " small and obscure coterie of yomig dramatists, critics and journalists," which made his chambers its home. "We caUed ourselves ' The Serious Family.' Tom Hood was the head of the family, and I was the enfant terrible. I was absolved from a two-guinea subscription in consideration of supplying a Stilton cheese, a rump-steak pie, a joint of cold beef, whisky and soda and bottled ale, every Saturday night for the term of my natural life. It was the worst bargain, financially, I ever made ; but I never regretted it." A reference to the club books, which he preserved, drew from Gilbert the mournful remark that he alone survived. His tragical end, it proved, was very near, completing the tale of " Jeff " Prowse, one of the convives, indiscriminately a rough writer on sport and of tender verse : -' Oh I friends, by whose side I was breasting The billows that rolled to the shore — Ye are quietly, quietly resting, To laugh and to labour no more."- Gilbert's joyous days in the Inn were busy days too. He was London correspondent and dramatic critic, black-and- white artist, fugitive poet and struggUng dramatist. Whether he still lingered in these shades when Pinero came to drive a quill in the office of a neighbouring lawyer, as Dickens once had done, I know not, nor whether the respectable William Black ever came over from No. 2 South Square. " The Serious Family " seems to correspond roughly with the roll of Fun's contributors, though Gilbert's list is notably richer by Artemus Ward. I lately heard a sordid youngster appreciating a conversation he had heard as " worth sixpence a line " to him. He clearly writes for 2 A LONDON BACKWATER good papers. I recall Edmund Yates's World fivepence a line as the high-water mark. But what would not any editor pay for an eavesdropping of " The Serious Family " ? I could beat my walls for an echo of its talk, and curse them for their dumbness. Among a hundred deUberately comic papers, Fun was the one real, long-lived rival of Punch. Bumand left Fun in dudgeon for its historic predecessor because the proprietor, a picture-frame maker and glass merchant, declined Mokeiana ; but Punch, on the other hand, scorned the Bab Ballads, and so, Gilbert, imdertaking to supply a column of matter and a half-page picture weekly, joined Hood's happy party, which included H. J. Byron, Tom Robertson, Arthur Sketchley (the parson-player who became famous as the creator of " Mrs Brown "), Henry Leigh, the sweet singer of Cockaigne, Charles Godfrey Leland (The Breitmann-Balladist), Jeff Prowse, J. F. SuUivan, with his eccentric art studies of the British workman, Matt Morgan the cartoonist, and Paul Gray, a young Irish painter of rare promise, whose early death from consumption seems to have eclipsed the sun a while in Bohemia of the sijcties. Matt Morgan came of theatrical folk, and acted a while ere he became a scene-painter. He bolted to America, it was said, because a wicked cartoon of the Prince of Wales had caused offence. So it had. But Morgan was in a general mess. He lived in America twenty years, and died there. Is there, I wonder, any part of London so stubbornly resisting the march of time as Holbom does ? In 1825 The Sunday Times congratulated the authorities on " a step toward civilisation " in the way of a macadamised pave- ment. One of the last memorials of Dickens went lately, 3 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE indeed — ^the Bell Inn with its galleried yard ; and Ridlers — swallowed up by new buildings, with its greater neighbour, Fumival's Inn — ^where the city fathers still gathered of an evening to drink hot brandy from huge tumblers, by the old-fashioned shillingsworth ; varying it with gin punch. When the Mercers' School fitted itself into Barnard's Inn, the watchman, who for years had sung the hours and the weather, was pensioned, but climg to his duties, and would linger through the night in the shelter of the closed gate, uttering his tunes until, with gentle force, they moved him on. But his brother of Ely Place still lingers ; and, in the extremity of that quaint cul de sac, which long retained the quality of Sanctuary, the Church of St Ethelreda is devoted to the Ancient Faith, as it was a thousand years ago. On the last Sunday of each April it speeds the procession of devout Catholics on their Walk from Newgate to Tyburn, in the path of a hundred martyrs. When for a few minutes the old houses of Staple Inn form the background of the pilgrims, no city of the world could, surely, set a picture so incongruous against the glare of the nineteenth century. My early visits to Staple Inn were to join the symposia of a group of young Oxonians, full of the disposition to teach old Fleet Street a new journalism. They would end a wild night by sallying forth from the chambers wherein tradition says Johnson wrote Basselas at fast hand, to provide the cost of his mother's funeral, and, in pyjamas, dance around the plane-tree in the small hours. Maybe the ghost of their great patron was not disturbed unkindly. "What, my lads, are you for a frolic ? " said he, and joined a merry party to Marylebone Gardens, urging them with voice and cudgel 4 A LONDON BACKWATER to destroy the fabric of an illumination which he declared dishonestly below the advertised specification. For years Nisbet of The Times was a resident of Staple Inn. One night he crossed Holbom to borrow a bottle of whisky, for, mircMle dictu, he had run out, and, in the terms of the transaction, invited a contingent from Gray's Inn to join a party made up of three poets, drunkenly defining God — one major, one minor, and a "tweenie." Swinburne is dead ; but the others hve, and so they shall not be identified. Nesbit was an amazing creature — a. Scotch reporter, grim and monstrous, who had attracted old Macdonald, manager of The Times, the " die-hard " of the blimdering Pamell campaign. When Mowbray Morris, that dilettante critic of the drama, who invented the immortal phrase " chicken and champagne " retired, Macdonald gave the post to Nisbet, who had never been credited with any special sympathy for the theatre, but who proved a sane and just judge. He ate heartily, drank heartily, turned out literary work of all kinds in prodigious quantities, and snatched intervals of deep slumber anywhere, in the club, or at the theatre. His reading was as voracious as his other appetites. He seemed able to master any subject, and to write on it with authority. The sexual afifinities of genius were his obsession. As a " side- line " to The Times, and in characteristic indifference to its protest, Nisbet edited one of the first of the hal^enny morn- ing papers, choosing his men with rare insight, and producing a paper of variety and interest. The Morning died, as the earlier Despatch had died. But it is safe to say that but for The Morning there would never have been a Daily Mail, which annexed most of its ideas and many of its men. Nisbet was the second of The Beferee's " Handbookers." 5 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE Barring experiments, there have been but four in nearly thirty years. Not in the history of journalism has a feature of such worth and importance maintained the distinction that Henry Sampson, J. F. Nisbet, David Christie Murray and Arnold White have given it. More sedate is the social life of the Inns to-day. Never more, I suppose, will a porter waking from his cups at three o'clock in the morning bethink himself that he forgot to ring Curfew, and noisily repair his error. Never again shall we see a world-famous comedian ride home in the small hours from the Artists' Ball at Chelsea, astride the horse he had attached to himself on deposit of a sovereign, from the wreck of his hansom. And, certainly, no more will one travel to the City for a penny beside a jolly coachman who drove the first bus over Holbom Viaduct, and who after fifty years — that ended, it seems, but yesterday — ^was still in the service of the London Omnibus Company, courteously saluted at every encounter by all his comrades. CHAPTER H AN OLD STOCK COMPA>fY George Dance's First Play— Mrs Kendal's Girlhood— Suicide of Walter Montgomery — Cremorne Gardens PREDESTINATION to the life of the theatre can alone explain the fact that the first clear memory of one whose youth was spent in puritanical repres- sion should be of a pantomime ; his earliest impression of London, visited at seven, Cremorne Gardens. In each case the agent was a nurse, cruelly admonished, I doubt not, for these surreptitious pleasure-makings ; but now, so gratefully thanked ! In 1865 Nottingham was provided with a New Theatre Royal — become a musty and dingy Theatre Royal last time I saw it. It opened with a pantomime entitled The House that John and William Built, in punning reference to the brothers Lambert, wealthy lace manufacturers, who owned it, and loved to haimt its shades. A scene, a song, a comedian, the principal girl, and a Cow with a Crumpled Horn are still vivid in my mind's eye, from my third year. Many of the great cities of the provinces have supplied material for thick volumes of theatrical history. Perhaps the turn of Nottingham will come. It is rich in story of the Robertsons, through three generations, to Mrs Kendal, whom I remember as the idolised ingenue of the stock company. There was an earlier Theatre Royal, which lingered years in degradation, as a music hall, the Alhambra ; then became 7 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE a lace warehouse. At the Alhambra George Dance's first dramatic work was produced. It was a patriotic spectacle ; and, in return for the manuscript, he was to receive a prize- bred bull terrier. Either he got nothing ; or, a mongrel. I know there was bitter trouble. Dance was at that time engaged in local commerce, but diligently writing comic songs. One of his early works was : " His lordship winked at the counsel, Counsel vrinked at the clerk. The jury passed the wink around. And murmured ' Here's a lark.' " Another song has been erroneously attributed to him of late. I note the fact, because it had a melody so bewitching that Queen Victoria, hearing it played by a military band, asked for the words. They proved to be : " Come where the booze is cheaper. Come where the pots hold more. Come where the boss is a bit of a joss. Come to the pub next doo^." One might trace the history of the old Theatre Royal, Nottingham, to circuit days. Let a memory of, I think, its last lessee, Mrs John Fawcett Saville, suffice. She was a sweet woman, who sat in the parish church o' Simdays, her grey silk gown matching the curls carefully disposed about her cheeks. She gave the world two charming actresses. Miss Kate Saville and Miss Eliza Saville. Whenever her plans miscarried she revived " By Special Request," for EaM Lynne had not then been written, a play shaped from Cruik- shank's temperance broad-sheet The Bottle, and played herself the character of the drunkard's patient wife. " The bottle ! What shall I do with the bottle ? " she cried, hearing the 8 AN OLD STOCK COMPANY unsteady brute approach, and eyeing with apprehension the gin bottle, most carelessly exposed. " Break it, missis ! We're blooming weU sick of it," was the quick response from the gallery Wilson Barrett was a member of the stock company here. An old playgoer in the town cherished the photograph of a slim harlequin, mask down — ^his sceptical friends assured him that " it might be anybody." When I referred it to the then famous actor manager of the Princess's he cried : " That's me ! " And, duly authenticated, the picture was restored to its delighted owner. Barrett added a pathetic story of £ainting on the stage when first he joined the Nottingham company. A long walk and an empty stomach were re- sponsible. Here is a specimen week's work from his diary : Monday, Brabantio ; Tuesday, Cotieres in Louis XI. ; Wednesday, Stukeley in The Gamester (with Pizarro as an after-piece); Thursday, Baradas in £«cAZieu; Friday, Edmund in King Lear and Sir Charles in The Little Treasure ; Saturday, Sir Francis in The Bobbers and Major Galbraith in Rob Boy. An early, probably the first, manager of the New Theatre Royal was Walter Montgomery, who came to London, made what seemed to be a brilliant marriage, and, in a few hours, blew out his brains. The older men still discuss the tragedy in the Green Room Club ; but I believe the mystery has never been solved. Not long before Montgomery had written to his old Nottingham manager : " I am the happiest man alive." Of critical playgoers who saw him play Romeo, I have known none admit that he had seen a better. Once, in Nottingham, Montgomery used five Juliets in a week — ^Miss Madge Robertson, Miss Mattie Reinhardt, Miss Kate Saville, Mrs Scott Siddons and Miss Clara Denville. Miss Denville was a 9 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE lovely creature, a member of an old theatrical family. She was engaged to that Lord Arthur Pelham Clinton who, half - a-century ago, disappeared under a cloud of scandal, and was reported dead, though a clerk with a firm of solicitors in the town told me it was his duty to make a regular remittance to the young nobleman, still living abroad. Clara Denville died ere, hardly, she had emerged from girlhood. Between her and Miss Madge Robertson there was eager rivalry ; and Montgomery was vmderstood to take Miss Denville's side. Anyhow when there was a question of a benefit for Miss Robertson the manager forbade it. There was a furious exchange of letters in the press. The Madge Robertson Benefit became a burning question. But neither abuse nor entreaty moved Montgomery ; and so a subscription was started, with the result that a respectable sum was raised. With part of the money a souvenir of the occasion was purchased, and the balance was put in a piu-se. Cash and testimonial were together handed to Miss Robertson by a deputation of friendly citizens, who made speeches that the reporters saved up scrupulously for posterity. Here is the interesting record of Mrs Kendal's work in Nottingham in 1866 : Laura Leeson in Time Tries All ; Cupid in Burnand's Ixion, "looking," as a local journalist said, "very pretty in. her pink dress and tights " ; Helen in The Hunchback ; PauUne in Delicate Ground ; Madeleine in Belphegor ; Annette (with song, / have a Silent Sorrow here) in The Stranger ; Pauline in The Lady of Lyons ; Opheha in Hamlet ; Maria in George Barnwell ; Mrs Lionel Lynx in Married Life ; Volante in The Honeymoon ; Nerissa in The Merchant of Venice ; Desdemona in Othello ; Mary Thorn- bury in John Bull ; Ninette in The Maid and the Magpie ; 10 AN OLD STOCK COMPANY the Singing Witch in Macbeth ; Margaret Ehnore in Love's Sacrifice ; May Edwards in The Ticket-of-Leave Man ; Julia Mannering in Guy Mannering ; Mrs Fitzsmyth in The Nottingham Ladies^ Clvb ; Miss Madge Robertson in the Chair ; Lady Percy in Henry IV., Part I. ; and Kate O'Brien (with songs. The Beating of my own Heart, and Kate Kearney) in Perfection. A fellow-actress with Madge Robertson was a Miss Hathaway, who created something of a sensation by pubUshing (twenty years later) The Diary of an Actress ; or. The Realities of Stage Life, a morbid, sordid story of professional life, of which Mrs Kendal accepted the dedication. Madge Robertson's successor in local esteem was Lottie Venne. A later lessee of the New Theatre Royal, Nottingham, was Lady Don, a vivacious actress, whose husband, a seven-foot soldier, adopted the profession of the stage, being, I imagine, the first person of title to use his aristocratic style as an actor. The pair came to bankruptcy. On the occasion of a farewell benefit somewhere in the west of England, Sir William Don, from the stage, delivered a passionate exhorta- tion to young men to avoid the fast life which had brought him to ruin. Almost my last memory of the Nottingham stage was that, visiting the town in the eighties as the en- gaging hero of The Lights of London, Mr Leonard Boyne married the local beauty. Miss Mary Everington. Their son distinguished himself lately in action in the European War. Cremome was the last of the " tea-gardens " which for centuries played so important a part in the popular entertain- ment of London, Its history just overlaps that of Vauxhall, fimaUy dispersed in 1859, after years of decay and tawdriness. But Vauxhall had a splendid history, extending over two II FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE centuries. Cremorne Gardens were destined to endure no more than thirty years. There is some uncertainty as to the exact date of the closure. In the Era Almanack, for years, appeared the statement, opposite 4th October : " The Licence of Cremorne lapsed for ever, 1877 " ; and this has been accepted as the date of the closure, though it is not. John HoUingshead had the impression that after the licence lapsed the gardens were kept open in a casual way, and that it would be hard to say when the gates were definitely locked. Not long since I tried to beat the bounds of the Cremorne for the edification of an American visitor. The once picturesque and beautiful estate of twelve acres is covered by uninteresting streets. There remains the Cremorne Tavern, once a kind of lodge to the gardens, but it is bare of relics, nor had the Hebe of the bar the least knowledge of her heritage. The expansion of Chelsea Farm began early in the eighteenth century. It came into the possession of Earl Cremorne in 1803 and took his name. In the forties it was an unsuccessful Stadium. In 1845 " Baron " Nicholson, better known in connection with an obscene kind of song-and-supper room entertainment called Judge and Jury, acquired Cremorne, and reconstructed it on the lines familiar to-day at Earl's Court and the White City. There were theatres and ball-rooms and circuses and dancing platforms and bandstands. But the natural beauties of Cremorne were greater than those of its successors, and the Thames completed them — its steamer service bringing a contingent of patronage too. Money troubles caused Nichol- son to associate with him Mr T. B. Simpson of the Albion, a famous theatrical tavern near Drury Lane Theatre. At the neighbouring Harp, Sheridan " took a glass of wine by his own fireside " while Drury Lane burned. At the Albion, 12 o $ o AN OLD STOCK COMPANY lessees of Drury Lane remained faithful to the old London coffee-house tradition till Harris's day. For a long time a charming comedy was enacted weekly at the Albion. Harris never lost the opportunity of employing an old-time actor fallen upon evil days, though it often meant for him a troublesome encounter with the veteran's dignity. A decrepit celebrity, to whom he paid four pounds a week, would rather starve than present himself at the treasury with- out a sovereign which he would tender to the paymaster in addition to his " packet " with the remark : " H'm ! Ha ! Can you oblige me with a five-pound note ? I want to send it away." A few minutes later, before the assembly at the Albion, it would be " H'm ! Ha ! A little of the wine of Scotland, dearie, and " (after a rustling in his waistcoat pocket) " I'm afraid I shall have to trouble you for change." And so a pleasant fiction that he was still paid in bank-notes was maintained. James Albery, the writer of one comedy that was nearly a classic, Two Roses, was an alumnus of the Albion ; Albery, who wrote his epitaph, invariably misquoted : " He revelled 'neath the moon, He slumbered 'neath the sun. He lived a life of going to do And died, with nothing done." Pettitt told with great gusto the story that he and Paul Meritt were discussing, in one of the Albion " pews," the details of a melodrama — ^in particular, planning a robbery with murder, when a horrified countryman in the next com- partment yelled for the police ! It reads well, but my old friend had the mischievous habit of inventmg these yams for receptive interviewers. 13 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE In time Nicholson retired from Cremome with a grievance, and Simpson remained, to make, as he admitted, a himdred thousand pomids. In 1861 Cremome Gardens were ac- quired by E. T. Smith, one of the last entrepreneurs of Vauxhall — lessee and manager of almost every theatre, opera-house, music hall, circus and tea-garden in London in his day ; ex- police constable, auctioneer, publican, money-lender, news- paper proprietor and parliamentary candidate. He promoted at Cremorne a ludicrous reproduction of the Eglinton Tourna- ment. I recall a Man Fly, who thrilled me by walking across the lofty ceiling, head downwards; and a flying machine, which was a huge oiled silk envelope of a man. It was in- flated, and carried him a few feet from the ground from end to end of the great ballroom. A female Blondin crossed the river on a tight rope. A Fete of the Four Elements associ- ated the Fire King and the Man Fish, ingeniously eking out the quartet with a company of ground tximblers and a troupe of aerial gymnasts ! A painful sensation was caused in 1874 when De Groof, a Belgian, attempting a parachute descent, fell and was killed. There was always a good ballet at Cremorne, mostly provided by the Lauri family ; and employ- ing Kate Vaughan and her sister, Susie, as members of the Vaughan troupe, which did a much admired Black Dance. But the night scenes grew more and more disreputable. King's Road was rendered well nigh uninhabitable by the stream of hansoms bearing noceurs and naughty dames from east to west, and back. Smith retired in 1869. John Baum was his successor. In 1877, on whatever date, decency forbade Cremome. And London was left ten years without alfresco entertainment till the Health Exhibition took up the tale. 14 o o CHAPTER III IN A PROVINCIAL NEWSPAPER OFFICE The Beginnings of J. M. Bar rie— Stories of Dean Hole— Bendigo the Prize-fighter— Bernal Osborne's Wit THERE was a diffident knocking at the door of The Nottingham Daily Journal on a Sunday night. On the dark landing, a-top of a broken stair- case, stood a small delicate youth unmistakably from Scotland. " My name is Barrie. I am the new leader writer ! " He proceeded to explain that he was " a-awfully tired," after the long journey from Edinburgh, He had taken the precaution of writing, in the train, a leading article which he hoped would satisfy the occasion. And he would like to go home to bed. The leading article was written in pencil, on both sides of the two fly-leaves, yellow glazed, of a pocket edition of Horace. The writing was minute and regular and most legible — apparently; Actually, it was the tonic record of a Scottish drawl, softly extended, and sweetly imintelligible. Barrie's association with " the oldest provincial daily paper," thus begun, extended over two years, and was terminated, it may be, because of the ultra-fantastic quality of the con- tributions of " The Little Minister " ; it may be because he asked for an increase of salary at a moment when dubiety as to the commercial worth (in Nottingham), and saneness, of his humour had become acute. 15 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE Barrie first asked three pounds a week in response to an advertisement. "H'm, ye-es," said the senior proprietor. " We pay monthly. That will be twelve poimds a month." Barrie, I got to know, was a spendthrift in generosity of certain kinds. But the ingenious reduction of three pounds per week to two pounds seventeen and fourpence first perplexed and then eternally angered him. An interval of two weeks divided our installation. I was twenty ; and, conscious that I had lied a little about my age, I modestly asked two pounds per week, getting, by the same process of reckoning, a fraction less than thirty-seven shillings ! The proprietors were two estimable and kindly men, very rich, who had inherited the paper from their father, an eccentric solicitor of great account in midland counties politics in the fifties. They grimly watched the fine old paper die. My instructions were to take up my duties at four o'clock on a Sunday afternoon. The key of the vast building, contain- ing thousands of pounds worth of machinery, was left for me under the front door mat. In imdisturbed solitude I got together the basis of the next day's paper from contributed manuscript and predatory snipping, on which material the composing staff set to work at half-past eight, for the rule was that the mechanical workers must have an opportunity to attend evening church. Literary souls had to arrange salvation at a morning service — or, not. At a quarter past eight the foreman printer, immortahsed, as all the details of the establishment were, in Barrie's first pubhshed novel. When a Man's single, entered the room. " Good-evening," he said. " I suppose you're the new sub- editor. I'm the foreman printer. I might say I run this i6 IN A PROVINCIAL NEWSPAPER OFFICE place. I've been here, man and boy, for thirty-nine years, and I've seen thirty-seven young fellows in your chair. I hope we shall get on." It was aU true. He spoke of the senior proprietor as " W. " and the junior proprietor as " Him." He had two names for "copy." There was "noos," to which he attached im- portance according to its local application. To be sure he could cite Macaulay as a precedent. And there was mere literary matter, which he called " tripe." Barrie's work, acutely literary, was always in peril ; and he suffered horribly. Our autocrat had a soft spot, but Barrie refused to negotiate it. For myself, I once procured the insertion of an historic speech on Protection by Henry Chaplin by marking it the introduction to Mansfield Flower Show. So it became " preference copy." Barrie's contract, for, " say, twelve pounds a month," was to supply two columns of literary matter per day. One was to consist of a leading article, as to which general, but never particular, instructions were given, in an eight-page letter from the senior proprietor. Barrie often remarked that he had managed to decipher everything but the rehgion of the worthy man. One day he told me he had arrived at a conclusion on the point. A splendidly generous act, perpetrated in secrecy, was his key to the cipher. We had another important contributor — a man of a good £amily, become garrulous on sport, about which he wrote a weekly article, for seven and sixpence, sacro sand, at what- ever length it came in. Dean Hole, then Vicar (and Lord of the Manor) of Caunton, had delivered a delightful speech — he used to write his addresses and carry them in his pocket. B 17 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE Whether or not he learned them I know not, but manuscript and oration compared with verbal exactitude. He lent me this speech, for liberal quotation in The Journal. But the sporting article came in, as the deluge. I penned an apologetic note to Dean (then simply Canon) Hole, explaining that if he found his speech curtailed he would at any rate find " Diophantus's latest notes on the St Leger " available. He replied : " Dear yoxjng Friend, — Delightful Diophantus ! Desolate — Reynolds Hole ! " As a preacher, as a great Anglican, as a gardener, as a littera- tem-, as a wit. Dean Hole is well known. A schoolfellow of mine was his curate and once entered the cottage of a bed-ridden dame. A broad, black-coated back obscured the fireplace. " Hullo, Tom ! " said the vicar, looking over his shoulder. " Come to read old Betty a chapter ? Wait till I've made this linseed poultice." Dihgent research into the files of The Nottingham Journal would probably disclose, just as the columns of its prosperous competitor. The Nottingham Guardian, enclose, in its " Poet's Comer," some of the gems of Mortimer Collins, many char- acteristic sayings of that corrosive wit, Bernal Osborne, who contested the borough from time to time. " I stand before you," he said to the soon fascinated electors, " the only candidate without a handle to his name." His competitors were Viscount Amberley and a Mr Handel Cosham. Those were the days of the hustings, and I well remember being taken as a child to inspect the debris in the great market- place — eggs, stones, what not, were hurled at the candidates i8 IN A PROVINCIAL NEWSPAPER OFFICE as they appeared on the temporary platform to return thanks for the great or little support they had received. In that same great market-place I recall the prize-fighter, William Thompson or " Bendigo." He had been converted by a local evangeUstic pork butcher, " Jemmy " Dupe, and he sat, a gaimt grey old man wearing a broad-cloth suit, but his colours of " bird's-eye " blue, beside a barrow, on which were displayed his championship belts and the Bibles that he sold. Ever and anon he would spring to his feet and sing : " Ho I The Devil had me once But he let me go I Yes he let me go I Bendigo I "- But we talked of joumaUsm. One of my early duties was to record a concert given by local scholars who had dis- tinguished themselves at the Royal Academy of Music. They brought a star — ^Miss Marie Etherington, who is now Miss Marie Tempest. Barrie wrote for The Nottingham Journal five leaders a week, a weekly colunm of gossip signed " Hippomenes " — many of these essays were reprinted in My Lady Nicotine, having in their early state been infinitely beyond the average reader of The Journal — and book reviews, carefully measured with a tape, to make up the tale of twelve columns per week. The Saturday " leader " was written for years by a local accountant of immense erudition, amazing views, and a literary style founded on Cobbett. His lucubration always filled two columns. I remember an article that began : "Gk)d moves ('tis said) in a mysterious way. But the Nottingham waterworks company . . ." Barrie used to open the Saturday paper and fling it from him in a rage. 19 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE Throughout his life in Nottingham he made no friends, was morbidly unhappy, and yet cherished the belief that he had a sacred trust in the editorial columns of The Journal. He had an immense sense of his importance. It was not vanity — just a natural contempt for all his surroundings and a natural consciousness of his superiority. There was a corresponding constraint towards him on the part of the local newspaper men. And yet there were such good fellows among them ! They had a curious little club, meeting in a tavern, called " The Kettle." I sought it out a while ago, but it had gone. Barrie went once or twice, but was frankly disgusted. One of its members is a well-known barrister now. Another is headmaster of a public school. Another is reader of fiction for a firm outpouring penny novelettes. Another became, indiscriminately, a fascinating writer about Parliament, and an exigeant judge of bull-dogs. Dear, eccentric Dick Mann, with whom I have shared my schoolboy himdred lines, a lodging-house bed and a scarce sovereign ! Fleet Street seemed to change when you went ! Barrie's first play was written in Nottingham, on approval, for Minnie Pahner. It " discovered " her, sitting on a mantel- piece. It was called, I think, Polly's Dilemma, and it was printed as a detail of the Christmas issue of The Nottingham Journal, so that we might borrow the type, economically make it into a booklet, and so try to sell the play. His first fiction was published in Bow Bells — twenty thousand words of succulent sentiment, for which he got three guineas. He bought some desired print, The Greek Slave, I think, with the money, and pasted the story on the back as indicating its fons et origo. 20 IN A PROVINCIAL NEWSPAPER OFFICE His lonely rooms in a suburban terrace backed on to the garden of my home. My sweet mother, in her expansive kindness, would go and signal to him that tea was a-going — midland counties tea, of many attributes. There was once an impossible interval and he made amends for his absence with a stiU treasured copy of David Elginbrod, inscribed " To the Face at the Window. He cometh not, she said." Dear soul ! She specialised on forlorn journalists. There is a millionaire newspaper man of to-day to whom she had no more to say than : " You poor, neglected thing ! Just turn out all your socks." And mended them. Barrie of those days fancied himself as an actor. He would on the slightest provocation give an imitation of Irving as Romeo and Modjeska as Juliet. In his playlet, Rosalind, I think I recognise an encounter with a well-known actress of that day, Marie de Grey, who once startled the supper-room of a restaurant by impulsively reciting the epilogue to As You Like It. His rooms were curiously devoid of books. There was a Horace — ^that very Horace of the yellow, leader- written fly-leaves — ^and there was Bartlett's Familiar Quota- tions. If ever he were tempted to use a quotation he turned to Bartlett, and if it were among the Familiar, out it went. He was the most shy, the most painfully sensitive creature, with an exquisite delicacy in regard to women. He drank nothing. And he used to assure me that after a most conscientious trial he found smoking detestable. Walking was a joy to him. I suppose we must have covered hxmdreds of miles of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire together. He was years ahead of me in setting that first, rapturous, proprietorial foot on the pavement of 21 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE Fleet Street in that proud ability to say, Civis Romanus sum. Fot the proprietors of The Nottingham Journal economised on him, and bought their editorial opinions from an agency at three shillings and sixpence a column all in type complete. Two years later they economised on me. 22 CHAPTER IV OF CRITICS, OLD AND NEW Clement Scott's Influence — Lyceum First Nights — Irving and Wilson Barrett — The Fight of La Dame aux Camilias WHEN Rejane last visited London its dramatic critics conferred upon her their new, super- erogatory distinction of a dinner. The most interesting feature of the occasion was the facility with which three of their number delivered speeches in French — ^under- stood, I believe, by most of their colleagues ! It is pretty safe to say that when, after much negotiation on the part of John Hollingshead, the Comedie Frangaise first visited London at the Gaiety in 1879, no then important writer about the drama could have performed such a feat. One or two had a literary acquaintance with the French drama. But even the adaptations from the French, by critics and others, which for a long time pervaded the English stage, were done from literal translations first made by a hack. Director Jules Claretie of the Comedie Frangaise was terrified by the prospect of English criticism ; and insisted on the importation of Francisque Sarcey as a detail of his contract — ^the one heavy expense which Hollingshead, a most liberal manager, deeply and for ever resented. Apropos : The Comedie Frangaise also brought on the scene Arthur Shirley, to become a most prolific writer of melodrama, 23 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE mostly suggested by French plays. Shirley was a North London rate collector, with a curiously intimate and facile knowledge of the French stage, and he was engaged as secretary to the visitors. One or two English newspaper proprietors sought the aid, in dealing with the French season, of men who speak French and write English. Such employ- ment brought into London journalism two of the most distinguished dramatic critics of to-day ! What Clement Scott loved to call the " critical bench " of twenty-five years ago presents a strange contrast to that of to-day. It is discreet to make the comparison general. Bench was Scott's word ; but he was the least judicial of critics — a passionate advocate, always ; sometimes in the attitude of prosecution, more often in the attitude of defence. The best criticism of to-day^ — ^most of the criticism of to-day — is infinitely superior to that of yesterday, in its desire to be judicial and in its effort toward literary distinction — one is particular to exclude the steadily degrading personal para- graph, and the " light, bright stuff," in substitution for a critical review, poured into some Fleet Street dailies to meet the exigencies of ever earlier publication, ere the performance in the theatre has well begim. But if the critic of to-day is an improvement on the critic of yesterday — what of the day before ? Until Clement Scott came into his own, criticism was, as it had been for years, say, from the disappearance of John Forster and George Henry Lewes, perfunctory, iminteresting, often inspired by strong prejudice, and the venal interest of playwriting or adapta- tion. I am not speaking, of course, from personal knowledge — from that acquired by casual research through old files, and from the report of old-time managers. To a man, the 24 OF CRITICS, OLD AND NEW Early Victorian critic was a hawker of plays — eking out one ill-paid employment by another. E. L. Blanchard poured forth his encyclopaedic knowledge for less money per thousand words than a badly sweated typist would charge for copjang to-day. Maddison Morton, the Lope de Vega of Adelphi farce, was content with a five-pound note. I believe that Henry Neville paid at the rate of fifty pounds an act for The Ticket-of-Leave Man, which might mean fifty thousand poxmds to a lucky author of to-day. It was, of course, an adaptation, made without " by your leave," or " thank you," or any form of acknowledgment, according to the custom of that day, when managers would subject a manuscript to detective inquiry, so that if it proved to be an adaptation they had a ready resort from an exorbitant " author," to some cheaper translator. Sidney Grundy, who had been a dramatic critic, mostly hated the fraternity, and to his friends made no secret of the originals of the two scamps he pilloried in An Old Jew. This savagery, and its unfortunate title, ruined a play of much merit. Tom Robertson, an earlier caricaturist of the craft, was kinder. Still, Oxenford of The Times was rendered furious by the Owls Roost scene, in Society. Sitting in the Arundel Club, a delightful symposium with a sub-Savage flavour, he declared that " Tom had no right so to disgrace his pals, depicting them with a clay pipe in one hand, and a glass of gin and water in the other." A shout of laughter brought to the notice of the old man that in one hand he held a clay pipe, in the other a glass of gin and water. He angrily threw them into the hearth, and left the club. Scott was certainly the first writer in a London daily 25 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE paper who appealed, on behalf of the theatre, to the popular imagination. He brought into use a new phrase, long, now, in disuse. The play-going public asked eagerly, as it has never asked apropos any other critic, not : " What does The Telegraph say ? " but : " What has Scott to say ? " though his work for the most part was anonymous. With his vivid column on the morrow, as compared with a dull paragraph on the ensuing Saturday, which had been the custom, a new interest in the theatre arose ; and the " first night " became a function. Celebrities grew common, eager to witness the actual production of a play, whereas the habit of the " best people " had been to wait a while. Managers were alert to the importance of this fact. Bram Stoker, Irving's indefatigable Heutenant, marshalled his distinguished guests ; and Willie Wilde formulated a para- graph for The World, which became the type for society journahsm : " Baroness Burdett Coutts was in her box with Mr Ashmead Bartlett in attendance ; Mr Chamberlain, who was accompanied by his pretty young wife, discoursed of orchids to Archdeacon Sinclair ; Mr Theodore Watts brought Mr Swinburne ; Miss Braddon outlined her new novel to Su- Edward Lawson ; Dr Morell Mackenzie congratulated Sir Edward Clarke on his speech in the Eenge mystery trial," and so on. After the play there would be an informal party on the stage. A nod and a beck from Bram Stoker was the invitation — ^naturally, abused in time. Stoker was a big, shambling fellow, red bearded, carelessly dressed, always in what he called a " ma-artal hurry " ; for the Lyceum, so apparently ecclesiological, was, as a business structure, chaotic. Stoker was a Dublin journalist when Irving appreciated and annexed him. He became the 26 OF CRITICS, OLD AND NEW actor's faithful and lifelong servant. Afterwards, it proved that he might have made a reputation as a novelist. At the Princess's Theatre, Wilson Barrett tried a foolish rivalry — celebrities, supper-party, society patron-saint and all. Lady Jeime was the good fellow's social sponsor — for he was a good fellow, with all his weaknesses. Nothing could emphasise the difference between the two actor managers so strongly as their dress did. Irving's huge silk hat, monkish fiice, iron-grey hair, loose Chesterfield were as subtly dis- tinguished as they were carefully imobtrusive. Barrett liked to march the Row in a velvet coat, a slouch hat and a Quartier Latin tie. So it was, all through 1 He made an income sufficient even for his extravagances till he produced Hamlet, which ruined him. He could not indulge this ambition qmetly, and get it over, but started angry scholars on an adventurous controversy — ^apropos his textual out- rages ; then finally began to take himself au sSrieusc as a Shakespearean conuuentator. Barrett was a genius all the same. How much his earlier authors learned from him we shall never know — nothing, according to their angry protests, when he preferred a modest claim. But years later he produced valuable evidence — The Sign of the Cross, to wit. He indubitably wrote that great play. I call it great for the reason that it put fifty thousand pounds into the pocket of the creditors who had driven him from London ; and another fifty thousand pounds into his own. Archer described it as " a combination of the penny dreadful with the Sunday-school picture-book ... a Salvationist pantomime, lacking a harlequinade." Hard luck, that after his noble struggle and eventual triumph he lived so short a time to enjoy his aftermath. I am afraid the 27 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE tjrpical appeal of The Sign of the Cross — pace its clerical recom- mendation, and even Gladstone's — was to the old lady who witnessed Miss Haidee Wright's torture scene many times, and would come panting up the stairs to the ticket-taker with the anxious query : " Has she shrieked yet, mister ? " Barrett had his Fidus Achates too — ^an amazing adventurer known as Henry or Daddy Herman, who had been half blinded as a Confederate soldier in the American War, and who used to play practical jokes with his glass eye. He held it out to an extortionate cabman once, who, believing he had maimed his man, drove away full speed. Herman's real name was not Darco, as it is generally given. He had yet an earlier. His mind teemed with play plots and stories. He was an admirable metteur en scene, and an ardent lover of Dickens. He quarrelled with most of his collaborators, though he was as generous as he was hot tempered. He squandered thousands ; and died poor. For fuller particulars, see Christie Murray's novel. Despairs Last Journey. Homeward, to my text, which was dramatic criticism; and, in conclusion : Scott's method was to abandon himself to a passion of praise, or invective. He was often imjust — as in his attack, shortly after he had become a Catholic, on Malcolm Salaman's fine play, A Modern Eve, which suc- cumbed — always extravagant, and always interesting. He claimed to be a super-missionary of the stage ; and got terribly vain of his power. I have heard actors and managers speak of him with passionate hatred. But I should say he doubled the importance of the theatre as a commercial enterprise, for no writer, before or since, has so stimulated the public interest. 28 OF CRITICS, OLD AND NEW One of Scott's earliest exploits in journalism was to procure the imprisonment, for libel, of James Mortimer, the founder of The London Figaro — prototype of all the smart penny papers of to-day, and training school of a second famous critic, William Archer. Its stand-by was a very character- istic humorist, known as O.P.Q. Philander Smith, actually Aglen A. Dowty, a good-looking civil servant, whose articles were wont to be illustrated by a monstrous caricature of the writer. Scott was eager to avow the offending article. Mortimer sternly refused to permit this, and chivalrously took his pimishment, as Edmund Yates did, later, in a less worthy cause. Mortimer was a grim old man, savage in speech, with a heart of gold. His unsuccessful plays numbered hundreds. He was one of the finest chess-players of his day, and an inveterate gambler at Monte Carlo. For many years he was the confidential secretary of Napoleon III. ; afterwards, the trusted friend of the Empress Eugenie. He was shockingly hard up in his old age ; but I can still hear the torrent of blasphemy he let loose when he was asked to write a vie intime of his beloved patrons. It is Mortimer's distinction to have secured the sanction of the Lord Chamberlain for a play pretty faithfully translated from La Dame aux Camelias — namely. Heartsease — in which first Helen Barry, then the Polish actress Modjeska appeared. There had been many previous attempts, but the censor even declined one which landed Margaret in the haven of respect- able matrimony. What Patti had been allowed to sing in Traviata, and what Bernhardt had been allowed to say in French on the intervention of the Prince of Wales (Edward VII.), Mortimer was tardily allowed to do into English, on 29 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE the condition that he did not exploit his play as an adaptation from Dumas'. Hence, Heartsease. Contemporaries of Scott were Joseph Knight, an immense, big-bearded barrister, who might have sat for a statue of Rabelais ; and Moy Hiomas, a coimterfeit presentment of Lord Wolseley. Moy Thomas had an entertaining habit of conveying his opinions, often in crude language, to his friend, sometimes across six rows of stalls. They were both men of great learning, and that gave their critical work its par- ticular value. Thomas was one of the old guard of The Daily News ; also a magazine writer. Knight wrote for The Globe, The Daily Graphic and The Athenceum ; also edited Notes and Queries. He ^ccimiulated many thousand books about the stage, and seldom left the Garrick Club till morning; both habits giving his daughter and devoted companion, Mrs Ian Robertson, grave concern. I own to a deep affection for the memory of one old Bohemian, who had seen and enjoyed much life, and who expressed conmionsensical views in strong language. He detested the new journalism, as I am sure the new journalist would despise him. He would step into the Savage on his way from the theatre to the office ; and, if someone tempted him to reminiscences of the prize-ring, imhappy play — it was forgotten ! But a kind friend would quietly slip up to Fleet Street and repair the default, by writing his notice. Picture him, then, marching into the Gaiety bar, one morning, emptying a tumbler of brandy-and-soda, then scanning his daily paper. " There, my brave boy," he cried to his neighbour. "That is what you call journalism, of the good old school. Half-a-column of Umpid English. God knows when, or where, or how I wrote it. I don't ! 30 OF CRITICS, OLD AND NEW When you can do that " But the other fled, lest the vainglory of the bibulous veteran should tempt an outcry that the " brave boy " in good-fellowship and secrecy had done that very thing ! A conceited youngster appealed to him at the first performance of The Best Man at Toole's. " I say, Mr ! Billington's hunting-breeches are all •wrong." " Each man to his knowledge, my lad," said the old Fleet Streeter. " The pawnbroking's rotten" These critics, and their colleagues of old time, were not the " guests of the theatre," to use Sir Herbert Tree's courtly phrase, but peremptory inspectors. Every newspaper of standing had a printed form, or " order," which its editor would sign, demanding seats for the bearer — the bearer being possibly the genuine critic ; or, any other body, from the signatory's mother-in-law to the lady who did his washing — and friend. When I joined the staff of The Sunday Times in 1890 there was a large stock of these orders still in hand. The Era used them still a few years ago. 31 CHAPTER V THE STORY OF THE MUSIC HALL From Pot-house to Palace — Early Comic Songs — "Champagne Charley " — Charles Dickens at the Music Halls IF the old-time critic of the theatre were of a perfunctory habit, the music hall was nearly ignored in the news- papers of the sixties and seventies — now and then a trivial paragraph, in an obscure niche ; now and then a trumpery " descriptive " article, lurid and iminformatory. In the eighties, whenever theatrical topics were few, the critic with space to fill would betake himself to a variety house, and write of it in a condescending way, professing surprise at the cleverness and interest of the entertainment he found there — though he 'had probably been a regular attendant. Finally, there was an invasion of the music hall by young poets, who wrote of it in foolish rhapsody. Somebody coined the delectable phrase, " From pot-house to palace," which is not indeed an unfair summary. And Charles Morton was styled the " Father of the Music Hall." He was hardly that ; nor was the Canterbury the exact origin of the variety theatre. The Canterbury was indeed the oldest music hall, of its distinction, with an uninterrupted history. But there were halls of importance in existence when Morton, who developed from a waiter into a sporting publican, took the Canterbury Arms. There were, notably, the not distant Winchester, and the Rotunda, near 32 THE STORY OF THE MUSIC HALL Blackfriars Bridge, now the Arena of prize-fights. The first song-and-supper room added to the Canterbury Arms, which had Vauxhall Gardens for a still active neighbour, was a very- modest affair. The vast variety theatre which we know is a third, or even a fourth, rebuilding of the original structure. Morton, at the outset, probably attached more importance to the betting list displayed in his bar — said to be the last ; though other " list men," for instance " Bob " Osborne, who died a while ago, in extreme old age continued in the business, pinning their lists to the trees in Hyde Park, and repudiating its legal definition as a " place." I would not identify the Canterbury as the first music hall — ^nor the others. Rather, I would trace its origin to Bartholomew Fair, as the earliest minister of a form of entertainment less conventional than that of the theatre. The Victorian song-and-supper room — ^the Coal Hole, and the Cider Cellars — ^provided a vessel, into which the fairs, the tea-gardens, the circuses, the saloon theatres each flimg an ingredient. And so you get the modem music hall, which was never in a state of evolution so active as, at this moment, it is. In ten years it will develop something differing com- pletely from what it is to-day — differing more than the music hall of to-day differs from its predecessors. Too much stress is laid apologetically on the glee-singing that certainly formed an important part of the Canterbury programmes, and on the fact that half-a-dozen vocalists standing in a row in preposterous evening dress gave the first performance in London of Gounod's Faust— this by way of reproach to the less exalted taste of the music hall patron of to-day. In truth, the Canterbury Music Hall owed its success not to " high class " music but, as all music halls have c 33 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE done in the meanwhile, to a comic singer or " vocal comedian" seduced from the song-and-supper rooms at the West End — Sam Cowell, an immigrant from America ; and, at the outset, a singer in Grand Opera. Cowell, to judge from his pictures, dressed his parts carefully. His favourite medium was a doggerel narrative running to many verses, such as Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : " A hero's life I'll sing ; his story shall my pen mark. He was not the King, but Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. His mammy she was young — the Crown she'd set her eyes on. Her husband stopped her tongue ; she stopped his ears with pizon." Here is his version of Faust : '-'■ Once upon a tin^e in Gottingen, A fine old German city, A student lived who, o'er his books, Each day and night would sit he. His mind and mem'ry were well stored With every kind of knowledge ; In fact, so long o'er books he pored. He was a walking college.- For forty years he struggled hard With spirits good and evil. He tried in vain to raise the wind — At last he raised the deviL" Take again Oliver Twist : " Now, gals and boys, I 'opes you're veil. Yes ! thankee, I'm the same. Of course you don't know me at all — The Dodger is my name.- You've read my adventures written by Boz. Says I, Who the Dickens is he? About a parish 'prentice lad Who was all of a twist — like me.'-* 34 THE STORY OF THE MUSIC HALL Such quaint ditties as The Bat-catcher's Daughter and Villikins and his Dinah, ill-starred lovers who " vos a-buried in von grave," were also favourites of Cowell's. The latter g^ts its vogue from the " great little " Robson, and was maintained in popularity within modem memory by Toole. Here is a typical song of Sam Cowell's, which every street boy knew by heart in its day : " As I was a-vaUdng down by the sea-shore, Vere the vinds and the vaves and the vaters did roar, With the vinds and the vaves and the vaters all round. I heard a sweet voice making sorrowful sound. Singing, Ri-fol-de-riddle-ol-de-ray, My love's dead — him I adore, And I never, no never, shall see him no more."- Clement Scott put it on record that Cowell was the " best comic singer he ever heard." Morton was never weary of singing his praises, and paid him eighty pounds a week, an immense sum in those days, when capable comedians would appear at the song-and-supper rooms for the honorarium of three half-crowns per night and two hot drinks. Cowell took great liberties with his audiences. His exit from Evans's was dramatic. "Mr Cowell is late again," cried angry old Paddy Green. " You've made him your god, gentlemen, but, by God ! he sha'n't be mine ! " CoweU took liberties with his constitution too, and died young. If the "vocal comedian" were not the product of the Canterbury, but borrowed, none can dispute its claim to that ineffable creature, the " serio-comic singer," for women neither performed at the song-and-supper rooms, nor were admitted to them, till Evans's was on the eve of dissolution. 35 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE The first serio-comic singer was Mrs Caulfield, and here, in jargon I have failed to translate, is the first serio-comic song : " Kemo, Kimo ! Where ? Oh, there ! my high, low ! Then in came Dolly singing Sometimes medley winkum lingum up-cat Sing song, Dolly, won't you try me, oh ! " In time there were acrobats at the Canterbury, and Blondin traversed the hall on his tight rope. And William Lingard gave impersonations of celebrities. But the prosperity of the Canterbury waned. Morton abandoned it — to be resuscitated by other enterprise, and de- voted himself to the Oxford, which, again, he enlarged from an inn, the Boar and Castle. He had a serious rival but a few hundred yards citywards, Weston's Royal Music Hall, also enlarged from a public-house, the Seven Tankards and the Punchbowl, absorbing a chapel in the process. This important characteristic of all the earlier halls — outgrowth from an inn — is not to be overlooked. It meant much ia morale. I remember Henri Gros, who did much for the music hall, standing on the pavement of Edgware Road and characteristically shaking his fist at the White Lion, which he declared to be the curse of its offspring, the Metropolitan. Champagne flowed river-like at Weston's. The earliest proprietor loved to hear it ordered by the case ! From the stage George Leyboume sang : " Champagne Charley is my name ! Champagne Charley is my name ! Good for any game at night, my boys ! Good for any game at night, my boys I 36 George Leybourne THE STORY OF THE MUSIC HALL Champagne Charley is my name I Champagne Charley is my name ! Good for any game at night, my boys ! Who'll come and join me in a spree ? '-'- Leyboume was a mechanic from the Midlands. His real name was Joe Saunders. He came to London by way of a holiday, was fascinated by the performances of the already popular Arthur Lloyd, and detennined to become a copaic singer. His early employment was to sing in eulogy of Tom Sayers, the prize-fighter. The song ran : " Hit him on the boko ! Dot him on the snitch ! Wot a pretty fighter ! Was there ever sich ! " Leybourne attracted the notice of the late William Holland, known as the People's Caterer, and was engaged to appear at the Canterbury Music Hall. His salary was twenty-five pounds a week, guaranteed for twelve months. He was provided with a carriage and four horses, quickly burlesqued by another performer with four donkeys, and encouraged to wear a fur coat. He also cultivated the habit of calling for champagne on the slightest provocation, and he died in his forty-second year in poor circumstances. Meanwhile he enjoyed amazing popularity and earned as much as a hundred and twenty pounds a week. Captain Cuff; Mouse Traps, a penny ! Who'll buy ? ; Up in a Balloon ; After the Opera is Over, and Riding on a Donkey, were some of his songs. And the Rollicking Rams : " Button up your waistcoat, button up your shoes. Have another liquor, and throw away the blues. Be like me, and good for a spree From now till day is dawning, 37 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE For I'm a member of the Rollicking Rams, Come and be a member of the Rollicking Rams. The only boys to make a noise From now till day is dawning. We scorn such drinks as lemonade, Soda, seltzer, beer. The liquors of our club I'd tell you. But I can't, for there's ladies here. Come along, come along, come along. For I'm a member of the Rollicking Rams, Out all night till broad daylight And never go home till morning. '- Leybourne's songs were primarily exploited of course in the then disreputable music halls ; but they found their way into the Strand and Gaiety burlesques — ostensibly with the idea of satirising their vulgarity and silliness, probably with the object of stealing their usually fascinating music, for no fee was paid. Captain Crosstree is my Name in Black-Ey'd See-usan is an instance. Leyboume was tall, handsome, elegant, with an infectious gaiety and charm. George Edwardes once told me that he would find a thousand pounds a week for this Cockney Horace, could he be restored to life and activity, as at his best. An artist of the present day might be cited for illus- tration — G«orge Lashwood, who has much of Leybourne's sentiment and style. Another of the pillars of the Old Royal Holbom was Stead, a queer creature who sang The Perfect Cure with an extraordinary, intermittent dance. Charles Dickens inserted an article in Household Words in eulogy of its performance, and professed to have counted the ballons of the dancer to the ntunber of sixteen hundred. Dickens wrote that he " strongly urged the case of the music halls against 38 THE STORY OF THE MUSIC HALL the prosecutions of theatrical managers," and advocated free trade in entertainment. When Morton opened the Oxford his ambition soared to Sims Reeves for his star. But Reeves somewhat scornfully declined the offer. Charles Santley was more amenable — Santley now full of years and honours. Sims Reeves's old age was deplorable. He was glad of music hall engagements ere yet the great ones of the stage had begun to consider them — ^first, of course, in missionary zeal ; eventually for their considerable emolimient. In a few years the first Oxford Music Hall was destroyed by fire, and Morton passed on, to become, at the Philharmonic, the father of Opera Bouffe. 39 CHAPTER VI THE LONDON PAVILION Concerts in a Stable-yard — Dr Kahn's Museum — Early Joint Stock Companies and their Fate — The Oxford and the Tivoli TEDERE is no more remarkable instance of the de- velopment of the music hall than that furnished by the London Pavilion, though it has no claim to antiquity, and though at this moment it seems to be back- ward in the race. Half-a-century ago it was a typical " sing- song." Many a still active noceur can remember when in return for a trifling payment at the door he received a voucher entitling him to its full equivalent in drink or tobacco to be consumed at scattered tables. Then, the Pavilion became the first music hall de luxe at the West End. It was floated as a limited liability company, and began an epoch of frenzjed finance, from the effects of which the variety theatre as a commercial enterprise has hardly yet recovered. The im- mense profits earned by the London Pavilion appealed to the imagination, especially of the ultra respectable in- vestor. Clergymen and district visitors abounded among its shareholders. Half the music halls in the city were seized upon by un- scrupulous promoters, who filled their own pockets and, lor the most part, left their dupes to face a scandalous liquiqa- tion. From such a debacle some of the finest properties of to-day were raised. But many music halls which in private 40 i THE LONDON PAVILION hands had prospered fairly well were long hampered by over- capitalisation and discredited by the unimpressive, or worse, character of their directorates. As for the Pavilion, it is built on the stable-yard of an iim, wherein some of the paraphernalia of the funeral of the Duke of Wellington was prepared. For a long time the adjoining Black Horse Inn enjoyed a right of light by way of a window, into the haU ; and a solicitor was sent to negotiate, with plenary powers and a cheque-book, the troublesome aperture. He found a new landlord, who rudely interrupted his overtures with the remark : " If you've come to talk about that cursed window you can save your breath. I've had it bricked up this very morning ! " The gallery of the first hall had but two sides. The third was occupied by a horrible collection of "scientific " specimens called Dr Kahn's Museum, whose last owner was the father of a now distinguished actor. The first proprietors of the London Pavilion, Loibl and Sonnhammer by name, made much money out of Arthur Lloyd, among the first per- formers habitually styled " Great," who persuaded them to abolish the refreshment coupon, and to establish a scale of admission prices. It is a curious characteristic of the London Pavilion that it has always been dependent on a particular comic singer — in succession, Leybourne, Macdermott, Charles Cobom, Dan Leno. Sonnhammer separated from Loibl, and established Scott's Restaurant. Loibl a while later made a monstrous deal with the old Metropolitan Board of Works, to whom he sold the property for £109,347. He set up his sons, Edward and Robert, in a weU-known bric-a-brac shop in Wardour Street, and himself ran Long's Hotel. The Pavilion was 41 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE leased to Edward Villiers, who had been a pompous and uninteresting comedian at the Haymarket, and one of many managers of the Canterbury Music Hall. First as lessee and manager of the Pavilion, then as the dominant director of its board, he proved a shrewd financier and an astute showman. In 1882 the Referee charged him with permitting " foul and festering stuff to be brazed forth in defiance of decency and decorum," and paid £300 for the privilege. Villiers lived to a great age ; so did his colleague and survivor, Hugh Astley, a brother of jolly old sporting Sir John. Astley's attitude as chairman of a board meeting, when an expensive engagement was under consideration, was masterly, " It's a lot of money," he would say, nodding sagaciously. " It's a devilish lot of money. Of course if the fellow's a draw — ^there you are. But if he's not — ^where are you ? " a pronouncement which always left him free to comment on the event : " What did I always tell you ? " For years the Oxford Music Hall was conducted on old- fashioned lines, without event, in the interests of the heirs of one Syers. After some Adcissitudes it was disposed of to a limited liability company and linked up with the Pavilion and the Tivoli — ^the " Syndicate," as it was simply known, having for its dominant spirit Henry Newson Smith, a city accountant, who first saw the possibilities of the music hall from the point of view of high finance ; and who let its strenuous life kill him just as he neared supremacy. Where once the Tivoli stood, at the corner of Adam Street and the Strand, is now an impleasant pit, its future all un- certain. During its brief life of twenty-five years no star arose at the Tivoli, no name is inseparably associated with it 42 THE LONDON PAVILION as that of Sam Cowell was with the Canterbury, that of Leyboume with the Royal, Holbom, that of Macdermott with the London Pavilion. Truly enough, most of the popular favourites of its generation appeared there. But its programmes were shaped in accordance with routine rather than distinguished by sensational discoveries. The nearest approach to one was the exploitation of Lottie Collins in her dance, " Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay," which had already been done elsewhere and which had had an unspeakable origin in America. Its English edition was deftly and discreetly made by Mr Richard Morton. What may be said of the Tivoh was that it developed from the model of the London Pavilion, a type then new to the West End, and it retained to the last, in entertainment and in entourage, a certain characteristic of the music hall as distinguished from the variety theatre. It was another outgrowth of an inn. Many a still young Londoner can recall the four streets — John, Robert, James and WUliam Streets — built by the brothers Adam, who gave their Christian names to their handiwork, and after whom this particular district was called the " Adelphi," from the Greek word signifying brothers. The site was occupied by Diu-ham House, a palace built by Anthony de Beck, Bishop of Durham in Edward L's reign. Here Henry VIII. gave a great tournament on his marriage with Anne of Cleves. And here, after centuries, young London learned to drink lager beer in the so-called Tivoli Bier Garten, a saloon adorned by vast and daring pictures. The cellars ran towards those mysterious "Dark Arches" beloved of sensational writers about London hfe in Mid-Victorian days. Should the Tivoli disappear (with that inestimable benefit 43 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE of a liquor licence, for which the London Hippodrome and the London Coliseum so desperately strive), it will leave the Strand without a music hall ; though there were predecessors. The Tivoli stood within a stone's throw of the Coal Hole and the Cider Cellars, from which Thackeray drew his Cave of Harmony and Back Kitchen — ^not exactly, it should be noted. They combined to form an impression. Farther east was the Dr Johnson, another prehistoric music hall. And there was actually the Strand Musick Hall, where the " Great " Alfred Vance, and " Jolly John " Nash alternated with the masque of Comus ! The Strand is often cited as the forerunner of the Gaiety Theatre. The truth is, the Strand Musick Hall occupied a site which formed little more than the entrance hall of the first Gaiety. Here, maybe, Vance sang : " Slap, bang, here we are again. Here we are again ; here we are again, Slap bang, here we are again — Such jolly dogs are we ! " The Tivoli Music Hall, with an associated restaurant, opened, just short of twenty-five years ago, with great ^clat Edward Terry was the chairman and added to words of condescension toward the new art a pious hope that there was money in it. There was not. The Tivoli came to grief. It was seized upon and reconstructed by Newson Smith, and it became, in his hands — the quotation is apt in that it fitted him too — ^the " fair embodiment of fat dividends." Its social side was important. It was the rendezvous of managers and artists from the world over. Once, it became the rendezvous of a particularly smart kind of " sportsmen," but that is another story and comes into the history of the great Goudie bank frauds, not of this occasion. The veteran 44 THE LONDON PAVILION Charles Morton was the figure-head of the new Tivoli — his half-way house between the Alhambra and the Palace. And the late George Adney Payne, ensuing to Newson Smith, was its dominant influence — a big, cavalry kind of man, to whom the greatest artist was " my lad," and who was prob- ably the last music hall magnate whom a hundred-guinea serio respectfully but affectionately addressed as " Guv'nor." With Payne's death the genius of showmanship departed from the Tivoli. Its difficulties and dissensions became acute. It fell, languid and grateful, into the arms of the Strand Improvement Schemers. 45 CHAPTER VII THE OLD MOGUL Nell Gwynne in Drury Lane — The Chairman — Dan Leno's First Appearance — Marie Lloyd's Noviciate WHEN lately the Old Mogul, or " Mo," in Drury Lane became a palace too, and black-ey'd beauties from Montmartre tripped impudently adown a " joy plank " to the amazement of the old inhabitants, some historian sought to identify Nell Gwynne with the Middlesex. I fear he had little better authority than his imagination. But truly enough the Mogul Tavern, with its twin, the Middlesex Music Hall, can go a long way back. It seems pretty certain there was some place of entertainment on this site in the days of Charles II. And shouting oranges makes dusty throats. All through living memory there has been a music hall in Drury Lane, homely and elemental, the robust mother of celebrity. Describing a visit paid to the Mogul in 1838, the editor of The Penny Paul Pry said : " We were agreeably surprised to notice the improvement which had taken place as regards the order kept in the room. We did not see a fight all the evening, neither did we see any police officer enter the place. We cannot in justice help acknowledging that the room is fitted up with good taste, and is really about as well adapted for its purpose as any concert-room in London." I did not, without regret, share in the opening festivities 46 THE OLD MOGUL at the new hall, when Mr Oswald StoU's arms were quartered with those of the ancient proprietors. For the Middlesex was a place of many memories. I suppose Mr J. L. Graydon made the first advance toward civilisation when he displayed the legend : " No person can be admitted to this hall unless suitably attired." A sweep, in inky trappings, tendered fourpence at the pit door, and was sternly bidden by the Madam Graydon of that time to read the notice. He admitted that he could not. When it was read to him, he still asked for an explanation — ^the words were infinitely beyond him. He was gently reminded that he lacked, for instance, a collar. " Collar, missis ! " he cried. " Collar ! Do you take people for blooming dogs ? " When the Chairman had retired from nearly every other hall he lingered at the Middlesex, a genial, jovial, diplomatic person, who introduced each artist with deft laudation, who watched the temper of his audience, and, with the infinite intonations of his hammer encouraged its applause, or over- whelmed its discontent. He foimd plentiful leisure to shine upon a little court filling the eagerly sought chairs aroimd his own particular table. Their occupants shed cigars and drink upon him ; and more substantial tokens, at seasons. Ever and anon passionate cries of his Christian name would come from the gallery : " 'Arraye ! 'Arraye ! " He would vouchsafe an occasional bow, in response. He could be stem. Two unfortunate artists had been soundly hissed. But when he procured silence he declared, with dignity : " In spite of all, ladies and gentlemen, the Sisters Trippit will oblige again." Pictures of Harry Fox, the historic chairman of the Middlesex Music Hall, stiU aboimd in music hall land. He had a nose that might shame Cyrano, and a complexion of 47 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE rich old mahogany. On Sunday nights he still presided in the smoke-room of the Mogul Tavern, which became a mart for music hall artists. An obliging little man, by name Ambrose Maynard, offered for a fee of a shilling to note in his memorandum-book the contracts effected at these Sunday gatherings. He was the first music hall agent ; and out of his memorandum-book has grown a business now putting hundreds of thousands a year into the pockets of its professors and lately needing an Act of Parliament for its regulation. A music hall manager of the day bitterly reproached a " lion comique " with allowing Maynard to intervene in their hitherto pleasant (but probably one-sided) relations. " D'ye see, guv'nor, I can't read, nor write, myself," was the complete, and no doubt perfectly truthful, explanation of the artist. I have a collection of the Middlesex programmes bating back to 1872 — ^a priceless record. On 5th October 1885 the announcement is made of the first appearance in London of Dan Leno, " the great Irish comic vocalist and present champion dancer." 1 believe the honour of Dan's introduc- tion to town is claimed also by the Foresters' Music Hall, but he may have worked both halls. Milk for the Twins was the delectable ditty he sang. But neither hall can really claim his first appearance, for " Little George, the infant wonder, contortionist and posturer," appeared at the Cosmotheca Music Hall, Paddington, in 1864, being then somewhat short of four years. Meanwhile he served three hard apprenticeships, separated from the vagabond and versatile Leno Family ; and married. Miss Marie Lloyd was a popular favourite at the Middlesex before she was so eagerly sought after, farther west, as an 48 day were : " Oh ! Jeremiah, don't you go to sea 1 Oh 1 Jeremiah, stay along o' me ! " — ^and an audacious essay in mischievousness which never failed to do its work — The Boy I Love is up in the Gallery. I read the other day, incredulously, that Marie Lloyd, whose very own name is Matilda Wood, was a pupil teacher ! I think in fact she learned dressmaking — an art in which she has commercial proficiency still, and fine taste. But she began her professional career so early in life that there can have been no really important chapter preceding. She was little more than a girl when she married ; and a tiny thing in long clothes was the strange companion of the " Queen of Comedy" when I had the honour of my introduction, at the Oxford. Naturally, her age was over-estimated in the days of her celebrity. She presented herself, with a fine, family entourage, at the office of a theatrical newspaper, and deposited in the safe keeping of its editor a certificate of her birth, on 12th February 1870, so that he might confound all future calumniators. One of the very rare tragedies of the music hall occurred at the Middlesex, when an unhappy human target was shot by a rifle expert. But the hall has often been a battle-groimd for less sanguinary encounters. Times and again have the elaborate comic and dramatic " sketches," which for years formed the staple of itsprogramme, induced legal proceedings. The magistrate on occasion sympathised with Mr Graydon, and gave his show a certificate of good character and salutary influence. But fined him all the same. We have changed D 49 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE all that, if by an irregular process. The dramatic sketch, for which music hall managers have fought and bled during half- a-century, is now recognised, not by statute law, but by grace of the Lord Chamberlain. Sir Herbert Tree is just as free to play Trilby at the Middlesex as Mr Granville Barker is to play Shakespeare, or something like Shakespeare, or Shakespeare like nothing, at the Savoy. 50 CHAPTER VIII THE VITAL SPAEK Jenny Hill ; A Sordid Girlhood — A Dramatic Debut at the London Pavilion — A " Memorable At Home " — Bessie Bellwood A WAN and stricken woman, in dull apartments at Brixton, told me the story of her life, soon to end, in its eariy forties. She had made the worid laugh and sometimes weep. She had earned thousands — and not deliberately squandered them. With trembling fingers she turned over photographs, and treasured newspaper cuttings, to adorn her tale ; and one document, her apprenticeship indenture, the most wicked bond I have ever encountered, as between an artist and a manager. Poor Jenny Hill ! How grim in its satire seemed then the name she had gloried in — ^the Vital Spark. Without hesitation, without fear of contradiction from my contemporaries, or her colleagues, I would claim for Jenny Hill that in her day and generation she was the supreme genius of the Variety Stage. The public knew it too — ^the eager public that has taken the horses from her tiny brougham, its lamps always quaintly endorsed with her name. I have heard a dozen stories of her origin, which was very himible, certainly — ^that her father was a cab-minder, hanging about a rank in Marylebone. She worked in an artificial- flower factory in that neighbourhood, whereof the pro- prietor also owned the neighbouring Marylebone Music Hall, 51 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFI one " Bob " Botting. And he would throw a few cop] to little Jenny, to make her sing : it so encouraged the o1 workers. Strangely, in her last illness, she foimd pleas in twisting the paper flowers again. Her first appearance on the stage (on the authority of b the parties) was made at the Aquarium Theatre, W minster, in a pantomime produced by Joe Cave, who died lately in the Charterhouse, to which the fine old actor '. been admitted by the intercession of King Edward. Mo Goose was the pantomime, and little Jenny was the leg a goose. Fearful of losing their clothes, the ballet child would make them into a bundle, to be carried on the hea over all, the goose mask. Jenny lost her way in the m of the pantomime, lifted the mask, and found herseli solitary, weeping, half-naked urchin, in the centre of the fi lights, the conductor swearing freely, the audience shou1 with laughter. Soon, Jenny was apprenticed, for seven years, to a nc country publican, to learn the trade of a serio-comic sin] and otherwise to make herself generally useful as the hoi hold drudge. It is all set out in the bond. The licens laws were very lax in those days, and on market days farmers would sit over their cups till one and two o'clocl the morning. While ever they lingered, the poor little se comic singer and dancer must be ready to take the stagi the "free and easy." And at five o'clock in the mora she must be alert, to scrub floors, polish pewter or bo beer, at which she became quite an adept. At noon, performances began again. She married an acrobat, and he taught her his trade, too kindly, as she had reason to remember throughout 53 Jenny Hill: singing "The Coffee Shop Gal PhotograpJt: Saronv THE VITAL SPARK life. Hardly out of her teens, she found herself haunting the offices of the agents, in York Road ; standing unnoticed, day after day, a child in her arms, in the crowded waiting- rooms. One morning, with fearful courage, she waylaid the autocrat of the community ; and he gave her a note, which he bade her take full speed to Loibl of the London Pavilion. He advised a cab, lest the opportunity be lost. But Jenny walked, baby in arms, because Loibl read the note, and told the girl she might try her luck in the evening. She did, with such success that the " Great " George Leybourne was kept waiting at the wings. The audience wanted more of its new favourite, and was not appeased till Leybourne, who was a pleasant fellow, took the slender creature in his arms, and held her up to view. There was a roar of laughter, and Champagne Charley was allowed to proceed. * Then Loibl was as good as his word, and gave Jenny an engagement, adding a glass of wine which made the starving woman light-headed. He congratulated her upon the agent who had brought her to his notice. " You might like to keep his letter," said the manager; " for it certainly com- pelled me to see you." And this is how it read : " Dear Loibl, — ^Don't trouble to see the bearer. I have merely sent her up to get rid of her. She's troublesome. Yours, A. M." Jenny Hill's fortune was made ; but a modest fortune, comparatively. Alive, to-day, she would certainly command from two hundred to three himdred pounds a week, not to speak of America. But I doubt if her normal salary, 53 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE excluding " benefits," pantomime engagements, and African excursions, ever exceeded a hundred pounds a week. She was Uttle, sharp-featured, and pretty on the stage, but terribly scarred by illness, on inspection. She could sing a tawdry ballad, as Sweet Violets, with effect ; and she made a brilliant pantomime boy. But she was at her best in Cockney impersonation, as of 'Arry, describing the joys of Southend, and particularly of " The Coffee Shop Gal," a weary slut, with humorous impressions of her customers, and skill in that unleamable dance the " Cellar Flap." Such things induced the belief that Jenny Hill might become a star on the "regular" theatre, as Nan in Good for Nothing, for instance. But she was a failure. In her brave days she lived at a pretty place called the Hermitage, at Streatham, a straggling, secluded bungalow with a little farm-land, where a royal person had once hidden a romance. Jenny Hill used to bring the farm produce to town in her brougham, and assiduously vend it to her friends; but the adventure proved a costly failure. The Hermitage was the scene of one of the most wonderful gatherings ever seen in music hall land. It was on a Sunday in 1890 ; and the guest of honour was Tony Pastor, then the important music hall manager of America — ^its modem magnates, the Keiths and the Williamses and the Becks, were still unheard of. The vast commerce of English and American artists had not begun. And Jenny Hill's visit to the States about that time was almost the first of a London favourite to New York. To the Hermitage that summer Sunday went every music hall celebrity of the day. The arrivals began at ten o'clock in the morning, and everyone was greeted under the Stars 54 THE VITAL SPARK and Stripes with a freshly opened pint of champagne. There was a luncheon ; there was afternoon tea in the grounds, there was a dinner, with many speeches, and there were early morning travellers to London by the workmen's train. But, indeed, there was no note so human as Bessie Bellwood's shriek of delight when she heard a hawker crying winkles down the lane. His stock, on a japanned tea-tray slung round his neck, was promptly commandeered. The shocked footmen, handing round tea, were dispatched for pins ; and the immortal singer of Wot cheer, Eia, whose real name was Mahoney, and who claimed to be a descendant of " Father Prout," but who, more certainly, began life as a rabbit skinner, in the New Cut, carefully divided her spoils among many applicants. Poor Jenny Hill ! Prosperity was to leave her, but never popularity. Illness overtook her, and she faded away from the gaze of the public, which surely never knew her adversity, or it must have rallied in its thousands. She tried a visit to Africa, but came home worse than she went and finally foxmd a refuge with her daughter, Peggy Pryde, who is not without her talent. Jenny Hill's supreme weakness was speech- making. At the London Pavilion her four or five songs were always supplemented by a voluble address of thanks to her dear public, which never occupied less time than her con- tracted performance had done. And an audience, admiring her skill, knowing of her good heart, and truly loving her, never foimd her tiresome — or at any rate admitted it. 55 CHAPTER IX MUSIC HALL SOCIETY Dan Leno's Drawing-room — The " Great Lion Comique '-' — The Modesty of Genius — A Series of Sisters — Peer and Peri WHEN I remember that wonderful party at Streatham, with its ingenuous ostentation, its polychromatic vulgarity, its sincere and hearty generosity, I am tempted to wonder if the new society of the music hall is preferable to the old society. Perhaps the moment is not fairly chosen for a comparison. Years must pass ere the new generation of music hall perfonpers has really arisen. The change of the old order is not complete. The new order has yet to develop any characteristic charm and interest. It is full of its own importance — ^artistic and economic ; purse-proud, and rather illiterate. It is nothing to its discredit, quite the contrary, that the genius of the variety stage was bred in the gutter, and bom in a pot-house. If the same cannot be said of the theatrical artist, still, it is true of him that nine-tenths of the well- known actors and actresses of yesterday, and the day before, were of very himible origin. The fact that such a man as Dan Leno, without education, without the inspiration of an author, without the discipline of a stage manager, without any adventitious aid, should have been able to make so tremendously effective an appeal to the imagination, is the greater tribute to his genius. 56 MUSIC HALL SOCIETY I shall never forget my first meeting with him. I was ushered into a wonderful drawing-room, all yellow and green plush, and bronze figures, and marble vases, and flower-pots on bamboo tripods ; so dimly lighted that I fell headlong across the skull of a tiger still attached to the skin forming the hearthrug. Dan came from his liiding-place behind a screen, wreathed in smiles. " They mostly does that," he said. Thanks to many circumstances, Dan Leno did not leave a great fortune. A dozen performers of to-day have probably accumulated ten times his ten thousand, own town and country houses, and snobbishly inform a new acquaint- ance that they prefer to cultivate their private friendships outside the profession. I would give much to have seen the first music hall artist begin a banking accoimt. The old stager drew his " packet " in gold and notes, and carried it on his person, till it was spent. He was reckless and thriftless. Most of the old-time celebrities died poor ; some of them in the workhouse — ^all wrong of course ; and yet, there was some- thing about those joyous children of the night that has gone. When William Holland, the " People's Caterer," took the Canterbury, he covered the entire floor with a carpet of quality. One of his advisers remonstrated. The rude fellows affecting the pit woxild surely spit on it. The instinct of one of the greatest, although one of the most unfortimate, showmen of our time was aroused. Half London was gaziag in a few hours at this invitation on the hoardings : " Come and spit on Bill Holland's thousand- guinea carpet." In such an atmosphere, kind hearts beat freely; and coronets sometimes fell awry. Buy a pro- fessional newspaper to-day and read its sedate, its sordid 57 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE announcements. Then compare them with the delicious riclame of a thirty-year-old Era. Who was first styled " great " ? It may have been Mackney, the " delineator of negro character," who certainly never saw a nigger at home. Or it may have been Alfred Vance. Which of them added " lion comique " to the description ? Cole, the ventriloquist whose Merry Men are a clean and precious memory of the old-time music hall, called himself Lieutenant Cole ; and no self-respecting ventriloquist thereafter neglected to provide himself with a naval or a military title. " Viscount " Walter Munro doubt- less emulated " Lord " George Sanger. A queer little comic singer encouraged romantic surmise by describing himself as ' ' The Nobleman's Son. " Papa, I have heard , was a prosperous Birmingham tradesman. He bought old shoes, mended and varnished them, and retailed them alfresco. " Clobberer " is the technical description of this industry — honourable, but hardly noble. Jenny Hill established a fashion when she called herself " The Vital Spark." These indeed were " few, well-chosen words," but there was no significance in a rival's selection of "The Vocal Spark." My old Era reminds me of "The Glittering Star of Erin," a clever Irish vocalist, NeUie Farrell ; of " The Gem of Comedy," Ada Limdberg, a de- hghtful exponent of Cockney humour who must have sung Tooral-addy, the while she polished a boot and her nose alternately, thousands of times at the London Pavilion. Miss Vesta TiUey, "The London Idol," was soon confronted by Miss Millie Hylton as "The People's Idol." Miss Kate Harvey had the disagreeing distinctions of being a " Simple Coimtry Maid " and also " London's Leading Serio-Comic 58 MUSIC HALL SOCIETY Lady." She proceeded to state that she was " allowed to be one of the finest figures on the music hall stage. Proportion, perfection, natural golden hair (not a wig) which so many of the serio-comics have copied." Miss Lily Mamey " wished to avoid mistakes " by the record that she was " the original lady to wear comedy stockings and spring side boots ; also, the original ' There's 'air.' " Miss Lizzie Villiers briefly stated : " There is Only One Champion Lady Clog Dancer — Our Liz." I like " The acknowledged Sarah Bernhardt of the music halls — vide Press." Another lady with dignity condensed her qualities into the line: "None but herself can be her parallel. — Shakespeare." On leaving Leeds the " Original Tootsie Sloper " was twice grateful. She thanked her manager, whom she described as "Esq.," for a "most comfortable engagement," and wished to assure "all pros." that they would find the best lodgings at an address she gave. I am afraid that a postscript to the advertisement of one well- known comedian reminding another well-known comedian of " the sUght service rendered at Manchester on Saturday night, six weeks ago " had reference to a benefit forgot. What domestic tragedy was enclosed between these parentheses of a beamish pantomime boy " The only and original Mrs . . ." Quite conclusive was the assertion :" They may pinch my talent but they can't spoil my beauty." A frenzied favourite asked : " What price this, you blooming kippers ? Went better than ever at Bolton last week. All dates filled for two years," but added the inharmonious postscript: "Monday next unexpectedly vacant. Wire offers." Another lady declared that she was " going bigger than ever after her recent bereavement. Kind regards to all friends." The catholicity of the profession is exhibited 59 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE in " Pianist wanted for a free-and-easy. One who can brew preferred." And again, candidates are invited for inclusion in a guitar band. There is the inevitable P.S., meant obvi- ously for a rival impresario, " I said players ; not string ticklers." Conning this old Era, I am constrained to wonder what has become of all the Sisters. Two or three girls singing and dancing in unison were an inevitable feature of every music hall programme for years. There were sisters even in old Canterbury days — the Sisters Brougham, two beautiful women, accomplished musicians, one of whom became the mother of Violet Cameron. The greatest vogue was that of the Sisters Leamar, who collaborated with the staff of The Sporting Times in the establishment of a restaurant, originally of modest style and dimensions, legally described, but never known, as the Cafe Vaudeville — " Romano's, Italiano Paradise in the Strand " — sang these buxom beauties, who will be more readily associated with — " Two girls of good Society, We dance, we sing ! We're models of propriety, Too wise to wear the ring.'- Their songs were wont to be paraphrases of waltz refrains. Mind you inform your Father, for instance, is akin to My Queen Waltz. As for the " good society," the Leamars were the daughters of one " Cokey " Lewis, whose trade, followed in the New Cut, is apparent from his nickname. He became the devoted attendant of his prosperous girls. When, having settled 60 MUSIC HALL SOCIETY into their first substantial house at Brixton, they gave a great party to their West End clients, the old man was foimd by an expeditionary guest toying with the taps of the bath. He watched the copious flow of water in wonder and amaze. Then looking over his shoulder at the intruder remarked in a grimly humorous way : " Someone's going to be drownded in this blooming thing ; and it won't be me ! ". I am not aware that the Sisters Richmond or the Sisters Grosvenor — " The Daisy Cutters " vide advertisement — were related to the ducal families whose names they bore. But one of the Sisters Bilton, who used to sing : " Fresh, fresh, fresh as the new-mown hay," married the Earl of Clancarty. Poor Countess Belle is dead. One hears she made an exemplary wife. These unions are not apt, however, to make for happiness. A popular favourite of the burlesque stage, who married into the peerage too, used to address to her old friends savagely humorous letters, descriptive of the society she enjoyed in the Seclusion of her stately home — ^just an insolent annual, ostentatiously parochial visit from the rector, whose " wife, thank God, declined to accompany him ; otherwise, cut by the Coimty ! " My lady's state may still have been more gracious than that of the music hall agent who, after three years' residence in a fashionable suburb, gleefully reports that he is now received everjrwhere, " except at the golf club." Experience has not proved the music hall artist to be a very effective club-man. Attempts to associate him in this fashion have failed, from the Junior Garrick Club onwards. At several of the old-time music halls the police used to over- look the fact that a private bar was kept open for the use of 6i FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE the artists and their friends till one or two o'clock in the morning — ^just harmless conviviality. This did not conduce to early rising. A stroll to the " York Corner," a stretch of pavement off Waterloo Road where there was once a regular colony of agents, would kill the day. On Simday a drive to Hampton Court was the correct thing. And then a joyous gathering at the Kennington or Brixton home of the " lion comique." Charles Godfrey was one of the last of the irresponsible roysterers. A game pudding of Gargantuan size used to grace his Sunday evening board, and one night a bibulous cook served it by the simple process of rolling it down a flight of stairs. Each hungry guest contrived to intercept a fragment. A superior person once thought to snub Godfrey by remarking that he had never heard one of the great man's favourite songs. Next day forty-six piano-organs played it outside the incautious creature's house. A nightly attendant at the Canterbury was a convivial undertaker whose pride it was to have buried most of the music hall celebrities of his time ia a manner befitting his fame. " Don't let make a blooming circus of me when I'm gone," were nearly the last words of the forlorn and forgotten comedian. For years the inner life of the music hall artist was un- noticed by the novelist, excepting F. W. Robinson, who is said to have " discovered " Barrie, and to have opened to him the pages of his magazine. Home Chimes. Robinson wrote moderately, and even affectionately, of music hall life, which has recently furnished material for quite a good deal of lurid fiction. Dickens, of course, had " done " the circus in Hard Tim£s. But circus people never allowed his picture to have merit. 62 CHAPTER X EAST END ENTERTAINMENT The Britannia Festival — "Saloons" and their Style — Champagne Charley and Hamlet — Pavilion Celebrities — Grand Opera at the Standard— Kate Vaughan's Origin EAST is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet " ; but the disposition of the entertainments of East and West London is to bely the poet. They used to differ not only as to East and West. South of the Thames, " transpontine " was the word, lay another colony more akin to the eastern group, still with a distinction. But the old tj^es have disappeared. The East-ender and the Surrey-sider come west, or indulge the picture palace habit, with an occasional divagation to a suburban empire. The pleasure palaces of the east and of the south-east are metragobolised, or missing. The world- famous Britannia Theatre at Hoxton, after many vicissitudes, has become a picture palace of sorts. The Surrey Theatre is a " popular " music hall, the Pavilion Theatre, once proudly " The Drury Lane of the East," opens its doors occasionally to casual visitorswith Yiddish drama. The Standard Theatre is a Hippodrome or an Empire. To the old stager what memories these names recall ! Nor need he be such a very old stager. In the nineties what play- goer worth his salt would have willingly missed the Britannia pantomime, in which the septuagenarian Sara Lane would 63 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE play principal boy, in all the bravery of tights and trunks, to the delight of the gallery boys, who worshipped her ; or the still more interesting Britannia Festival, which was in the nature of a benefit and a levee. Old-fashioned fare was served up with old-fashioned liberality at the Britannia — a farce, a melodrama, an extravaganza, the interstices stuffed with songs and dances and acrobatic antics still failed to surfeit an audience which began to assemble at six o'clock and went home hungry at midnight. No ! Hungry " is not the word." For few restaurants get rid of so much solid food as the Britannia audience would consume during its five or six hours' dramatic debauch. Men walked to and fro incessantly with trays groaning beneath the weight of pies in infinite variety, thick slices of bread plastered with jam, chimks of cheese, slabby sandwiches, fried fish, shell-fish, jellied eels. Gallons of ale washed down mountains of food. The Festival was a function unique in my recollections of the stage. Toward midnight, the regular programme having been faithfully worked off, the curtain would rise again in a strange moment of silence. The shouts of waiters, the grunts of satisfied hunger, the recriminations of gallery critics, the shrieks of babies — all were hushed. Enthroned in the centre of the stage was her Britannic majesty — ^the tragedy queen, Prince Pretty-pet, grand almoner and all combined, of Hoxton. I believe Sara Lane divided with Father Kelly the freedom of Nile Street. Aroimd her on the occasion of the Festival were ranged the members of her company, each dressed in a " favourite character " ; a polychromatic court whose constituents came forward one by one to make dutiful obeisance to the Queen, what time a pompous old elocutionist recited an appropriate, original verse of a yard-long doggerel 64 EAST END ENTEHTAINMENT a presentation to Madam from her grateful servants ; presents from her in exchange, approving yells from all parts of the theatre, and, most interesting of all, "well-chosen" gifts showered on the members of the company by their admirers, as each retired from the presence — ^not ephemeral flowers or tawdry trinkets, but joints of meat, rolls of flannel, packets of tea, mnbrellas, stockings — selected, I doubt not, with exact knowledge that Juliet was a respectable married woman, really, with a large family; and that Claud Melnotte's salary was not calculated to overload the Sunday dinner-table. Sara Lane died a few years ago, advanced in years and wealthy. I am not concerned with the adventures of her old home after her death. She received the Britannia as a sacred trust from her husband and former manager, Samuel Lane, who had secured the services in perpetuity of a pretty soubrette, Sara Wilton, by marrying her. The Britannia Theatre developed from the Britannia Saloon, as the Britannia Saloon, after narrowly escaping extinction for an illegal performance, had developed from the Britannia Tavern. The saloons were fore-runners of the music hall. They had a particular licence which prevented the praformance of Shakespeare but per- mitted the consumption of food and drink and tobacco indiscriminately. In the course of time the saloon licaace was aboUshed — ^the proprietors had the alternative of rising to the dignity of the theatre or sinking to the level of the music hall. The only other saloons of much interest for these presents were the Grecian Saloon, which became the Grecian Theatre, in City Eoad, and the Eflingham Saloon, Whitechapel, which became the East London Theatre, and was lately destroyed by fire, as Wonderland, an East End correspondent E 65 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE to the National Sporting Club. The popular idol at the East London Theatre was one Harry Simmons, who in the course of a melodrama inherited a million of money. " What shall I do with it, what shall I do with it ? " he mused. " Well, 'Arry, I should buy a pair of boots, first," said a gallery boy with friendly candour. George Leyboume, the " lion comique," owned the East London Theatre at one time, and to brace up business would drive down from the west to sing Champagne Charley whenever the opportunity occurred. Time being precious, any performance was peremptorily halted directly his brougham was heard. He rattled off Champagne Charley and away again, it might even be as an interlude to Hamlet's soliliquy. His leading man, Raynor, would give vent to furious rage on these occasions. One night he tapped Leybourne on the breast with the ponderous statement : " The difference between me, sir, and you, sir, is the difference between heaven and hell." With incredible aptitude Ley- bourne cried : " Facilis descensus Avemi — ^and don't you wish it was true, my hoy ! " Across the road is the vast Paragon Music Hall, telling again the story of attenuated dividends. Built on the site of an old tea-garden it was for years the objective of a fanatical apostle of temperance, who used to exhort its patrons to turn their backs on hell, and who defied all attempts at police restraint. Mr Frederick Charrington, who is under- stood to have sacrificed a million of money rather than participate in the profits of the drink trade, distinguished himself quite recently again by an incursion to the House of Commons. A few hundred yards westward from the Paragon, the 66 EAST END ENTERTAINMENT Pavilion Theatre once had a reversion of Drury Lane drama, and did it uncommonly well. I have seen three generations of the Lloyd family disport in pantomime here. Bessie Bellwood once asked a friend to prompt her in a few words of Yiddish so that, on the occasion of her benefit at the Pavilion, she might suitably retimi thanks to her loyal Hebrew supporters. " Wish 'em a meese meschinna," said the rascal. She did, and there was a riot ; for it means " A sudden death to you ! " The Pavilion doubtless occurs to many only in association with "The Whitechapel Murder," as it was called, before there were other Whitechapel murders more horrible. A sanctimonious commercial traveller, Henry Wainwright, murdered his mistress, Harriet Lane, a ballet girl at the Pavilion, and believed he had burned her body in destructive chemicals, whereas he had used a preservative ! It is, I believe, the fact that the Standard Theatre, in Bishopsgate, was rebuilt by the elder Douglass without the aid of an architect. It used to find support for an opera season, doubtless from the many Jews in the neighbourhood. At another time H. J. Byron, seeing the house half empty, asked Douglass what had become of his audience. " Gone west, to Covent Garden," said the old man. "To pick pockets, I suppose," commented the irrepressible Byron. John Douglass, a later proprietor, had a genius for stage effect, and for years jealously watched Harris's productions at Drury Lane, which he claimed habitually reproduced his "sensations." A letter from Douglass to The Era was the inevitable sequel to a Drury Lane first night : " Seeing that a hansom cab is used in the new drama at Drury Lane, I beg to state that a hansom cab, drawn by 67 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE a live horse, was first employed in my drama . . . produced at the Standard Theatre in . . ." — and so on, with real rain, a real flood, a real balloon. The little man's statements were mostly indestructible. One moiety of the Victoria Theatre, near Waterloo Station, is now a temperance lecture hall ; the other, shops and ware- houses. Originally the Coburg, it was known to its more respectful patrons as "Queen Victoria's Own Theayter," and to the more affectionate as " The Bleeding Vic," from the character of the plays most accustomed. A particularly popular performance here was that of Oliver Twist, with a Nancy capable of being dragged round the stage by her own hair. The gallery would follow her progress with the foulest imprecations. It may interest the curious to know that the original of Henry Leigh's poem. When I 'played the Villains at the Vic, was John Bradshaw, a ponderous tragedian of that house. The Victoria Theatre was the alma mater of incomparable Nellie Farren. I recall a rich and rare comedian in the melodrama called Grace Darling : The Wreck off the Goodwin Sands. He had little to say except : " I've had two of rum shrub," and therefrom to increase, as he got drunker : " I've had two twos of rum shrub," up to, it may be, " I've had twenty-two twos of rum shrub." Cave, then the manager, afterwards identified this genius for itne as James Fawn, to become famous as the singer of // you want to know the Time, ask a Policeman. If the Surrey Theatre, built as a circus in the long ago to compete with Philip Astley, thereafter a Shakespearean house, had done no more for the popular entertainment, it might claim consideration as a wonderful training school for 68 EAST END ENTERTAINMENT writers of melodrama, in succession to the Grecian, fromwhich the Conquests migrated. George Conquest was a remarkable man — a daring acrobat, an inventive stage mechanician, an ingenious maker of " properties," a fair actor (though he stuttered badly), a shrewd manager, and a clever writer of melodrama — say, rather, clever in the adaptation of drama from the French stage, of which his knowledge was extensive and peculiar. In the days when three-fifths of our "original " plays were unacknowledged adaptations from the French, critics of importance knew of no better expedient when they were in doubt of being fooled than to hurry off to George Conquest, summarise the story, and be sure that in an instant he would enlighten them as to the French original. When an English author read to him the first half of a play founded on Leonard, which we know as The Ticket-of-Leave Man, Conquest blandly took up the recital and summarised the second half for his discomfited visitor. Paul Meritt, originally a salesman in a carpet warehouse, Henry Pettitt, Arthur Shirley all frankly and gratefully acknowledged George Conquest as their preceptor. And Madam Conquest, in her capacity of a ballet mistress, gave us Kate Vaughan. But that was at the Grecian, a tea-garden and theatre attached to the Eagle Tavern. " Up and down the City Road, In and out the Eagle. That's the way the money goes. Pop goes the weazel ! " — ^ran the old song. The weazel is an instrument used in tailoring, I believe ; the suggestion, that its deposit with the pawnbroker was the last resort of the drunkard. 69 CHAPTER XI THE LOST THEATRES OF LONDON Old-time Death-traps — Value of Theatre Property — Growth of the Suburban Houses — Boucicault at Astley's — Adah Isaacs Menken — Mrs Langtrv and the Methodists — Mr Keith of New York WHAT a change in the architecture of the London theatres a generation has seen — ^not merely an increase in external beauty and importance, but an improvement in every structural detail, and in the safeguards against disaster. Honour to whom honour is due. And that is, chiefly, to the London County Council. No doubt it overworked its powers. Acts of official tyranny and eccentric insistence were not unknown. The disposition of the theatrical manager was to exaggerate and to antagon- ise this phase ; to piteously resent frequent and heavy demands upon his purse — ^which, after all, was of no public concern — ^to fulfil requirements grudgingly, and to represent the County Council, on all occasions, as a malignant autocrat, whereas it is now generally recognised as mainly a public benefactor. Many of the theatres of thirty years ago were death-traps. Some of the most pretentious were foully insanitary. En parenthese : when the County Council insisted that its powers extended to the Augean stable of music hall humour, it did not a little good there, also ; though the cleansing process is still terribly incomplete. 70 THE LOST THEATRES OF LONDON With the Savoy Theatre, built with money coined at the Opera Comique out of the early Gilbert and SulUvan operas — ^as the earnings of The Colonel built the Prince's, as those of Dorothy built the Lyric, and as those of Sweet Lavender made Edward Terry the owner of the house to which he had prematurely given his name — ^D'Oyly Carte was allowed to have said the last word in theatre structure. Recent County Council specifications for improvements peremptorily de- manded after an interval of little more than thirty years, formed an interesting commentary on the praise so lavishly bestowed upon the original Savoy. What, again, is remarkable is the fact that the nxmiber of the London theatres does not appreciably increase. The music halls grow. But for almost every new theatre, one can cite an old one that has disappeared. One His Majesty's to another His Majesty's succeeds ; and Gaiety to Gaiety. Li several cases, to the perplexity of the historian, if not of to-day, of to-morrow, an old name has been clapped on to a new house. There have been half-a-dozen Queen's Theatres, three Globes, or more, two Strand Theatres, two Prince's Theatres, two Prince of Wales's ; and so on. When Toole took the Folly, which was originally the Charing Cross Theatre, he borrowed a fashion from America, and re-named the house once more — ^Toole's Theatre. In London this identification of a theatre with a person seems fatal. Toole was soon on his travels ; and the house was eventually overwhelmed by the expansion of Charing Cross Hospital. So with Terry's — ^the house stands ; theatre no longer, but picture palace. Daly hardly endured a season in Daly's Theatre. Sir Charles Wyndham mostly chooses a domicile other than Wyndham 's Theatre. The Hicks 71 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE Theatre soon became the Globe. The Whitney Theatre figiu:ed but for a short interval between the Waldorf and the Strand. London playgoing, per head of its population, is small compared with that of New York, for instance. Were it equal there could be no more profitable investment of a million than in the building of ten new theatres in the West End. It were wise, perhaps, not to dedicate one to music. That seems fatal. The National Opera House, projected by Colonel Mapleson, on the Embankment, hung for a long time between heaven and earth, and then became the head- quarters of the detective system, as New Scotland Yard. The Royal English Opera House went a little further. It even produced an English opera ; then declined to opera bouffe. Now, the Royal English Opera House is the Palace Theatre. The tragical story of Hammerstein's London Opera House is still incomplete. But, although fortimes are lost in foolish stage speculation, most of the actual owners of the London theatres draw regular and satisfactory dividends on the bricks and mortar outlay. Old John Lancaster, the cotton spinner from the north who built the Shaftesbury Theatre to gratify the ambition of his beautiful wife, Ellen Wallis, would grimly contemplate the balance-sheet of a Shakespearean production ; but always consoled himself with the reflection that the Shaftesbury, as a real estate investment, had never failed to yield a satisfactory return. There was an amusing contretemps on the first night there. The iron curtain stuck' — ^it even refused to be demolished by hammers ; and the manager, one J. C. Smith, crippled by gout, had to be wheeled on, in front of the recalcitrant safety curtain, to dismiss the audience. 72 THE LOST THEATRES OF LONDON Shaftesbury Avenue emphasises the disposition to central- ise in theatre buUding. In the sixties and the seventies the suburban theatre was undreamed of. There were a dozen houses remote from Charing Cross, but there was nothing parochial in the style of their entertainment, or in the personnel of their patronage. The West End playgoer, including the Prince of Wales, cheerfully made the pilgrimage to Islington to see Dolly Dolaro and Emily Soldene ; or to Sadler's Wells, or to Marylebone, or to the Surrey, where Phelps and his seceded comrades, Mrs Warner and Creswick respectively, most creditably revived Shakespeare ; or to the Grecian, where at one time the pantomimes shamed Drury Lane. These theatres were technically " London theatres " in their day, just as the remnant of the suburban theatre is actually provincial. One said the remnant ; for, of the thirty suburban play- houses that suddenly encircled London, half were soon in financial difficulties, and now are music halls or picture houses, or anything. The idea of the suburban theatre was bom when the Grand Theatre, Islington, abandoned " pro- ductions," and began, for the sake of economy, to entertain the touring companies formed to visit the provincial theatres. Mr J. B. Mulholland, an assiduous actor, with a genius for management, came to London in charge of a provincial company, adventuring a season at the Princess's ; and saw , , the possibilities of the London suburbs. He spent his leisure on bus tops, ranging from Uxbridge to Homerton, from Hiainpstead Heath to Greenwich; and his eye fell on Camberwell Green, where he built the Metropole, and made a fortune. He had a hundred imitators ; and the suburban theatre was disastrously overdone. 73 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE None of the earlier outlying theatres has survived. The Grand Theatre, Islington, which, as the earlier Philharmonic, played so important a part in the history of the English stage, has for long been an " Empire " tributary to one of the great music hall trusts. But it was here that opera boufte took deep root, first, to be nurtured by Charles Morton. Its neighbour, Sadler's Wells, now also a music hall, with the aid of the Batemans, evicted from the Lyceum, and of Miss Marriott, the incomparable Jeanie Deans (who used to advertise with pride the number of thousand times she had played Hamlet), long tried to live up to the traditions of Phelps's thirty-four fine revivals of Shakespeare. After Mrs Warner, a much esteemed lady at whose disposal, during her last illness. Queen Victoria placed a royal carriage, ceased to manage the Marylebone, Joe Cave made a brave struggle, with the aid of such artists as Ben Webster, Toole, Paul Bedford, Phelps, James Anderson, George Honey, Walter Montgomery, John Ryder, Charles Warner, Herman Vezin, Miss Litton, Celeste and Mrs Sterling. But the famous house sank to the level of a gaff, and finally became, of course, a music hall. Within living memory, the City had its very own theatre, the City of London Theatre, in Cripplegate. It enjoyed its greatest distinction under Mrs Hormor; its greatest pros- perity under Nelson Lee and Edward Johnson — ^the last proprietors of an authentic Richardson's Show. On its site stands an educational institute. Farther east, the Garrick Theatre in Whitechapel and the Park Theatre, at Camden Town, both of which have disappeared — ^the former (never so distiaguished as its name) in flames — ^have no particular interest for us. 74 THE LOST THEATRES OF LONDON When Dion Boucicault acquired Astley's Amphitheatre in 1862 he meant to teach the West End managers a lesson. He addressed a letter to The Times contrasting the dinginess, ill ventilation and general discomfort of the London theatres of that time with the Winter Garden of New York — ^the direction of which he had then recently relinquished. He offered to head a subscription with five thousand pounds for the purpose of erecting a suitable and comfortable London theatre ; and in the meantime he experimented with Astley's. He converted the circus ring into stalls, pit stalls, and pit. He laid out a little garden, with intermittent foimtains, between the stalls and the orchestra. Adjoining the theatre, on the site of what had been known as Astley's Cottage, he projected a huge cafe, which was to be con- structed with foyers for promenaders between the acts ; and an open-air restaurant, on the flat Moorish roof, commanding the river. All this, if you please, more than half-a-century ago ! Boucicault never really approached the latter part of his scheme. He produced a play taken from The Heart of Midlothian as The Trial of Effie Deans. He was soon in monetary difficulties and agaia he came west — ^to the St James's. As for Astley's, it enjoyed a vogue which Boucicault had been unable to procure, while Adah Isaacs Menken, the beautiful American Jewess, whose four husbands included John C. Heenan, the " Benicia Boy," played Mazeppa. London lost its head about her. Dickens accepted the dedication of a volume of poems which it was said Swinbimie helped her to write — ^though the evidence is more than doubtful. And after a few years of exultant recklessness she died penmless, in Paris. The still living 75 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE Kate Santley was a member of her company, and James Fernandez, who died but recently, Fernandez agreed to decide a bet made by some noble sportsmen, as to whether the lovely form nightly posed on the back of a moderately wild horse, to traverse an ingeniously terraced " rake," was all Menken's, or partly due to what the costumiers call " symmetricals," in plain English, padding. Fernandez, to secure his evidence, gripped the actress with a cruel firmness when he lifted her to the horse that night ; and, deeply enraged by his incomprehensible conduct, she cut his cheek open with a short riding whip she carried. For five and twenty years Astley's, acquired by the circus family of Sanger, alternated between popular drama and equestrian shows. In 1902 it vanished before street improvements. Over the bridge to the Westminster Aquarium — ^to concern ourselves, for the moment, with its associated theatre only. Theatrical property has coinpelled some strange bedfellows. General Booth, when he bought the Grecian Theatre, found to his great discomfiture that he had to maintain the Eagle Tavern as a licensed house. And when the governing body of the Wesleyan Methodists acquired the Westminster Aquarium it had to take over Mrs Langtry and her lease of the Aquarium Theatre, and to connive at their continuance. But Madam, who had spent a fortune on the reconstruction and chaste decoration of the theatre, and on a series of productions which she hoped might resuscitate it, was already a little tired. She proved amenable to reason, and ready money. So the Imperial Theatre was merged in the ruin of the Westminster Aquarium. 76 John C. Heenan : "The Benicia Boy' THE LOST THEATRES OF LONDON Henry Labouchere, who had graduated in theatrical management at the Queen's Theatre, Long Acre — now a seed warehouse, memorable for the first association of Ellen Terry and Irving — was the presiding genius of the Aquarium Theatre, which he opened with Jo, a version of Bleak House which was not intrinsically better than other adaptations from Dickens but in which Jenny Lee achieved an historic success. For a few years, the Imperial Theatre, if it did not prosper, enjoyed a considerable distinction, by reason of Miss Marie Litton's revivals of old comedy. Thereafter, it took to bad ways. The neighbourhood would be flooded with free tickets, or "orders." Unhappy man who used one! When he entered the theatre he was waylaid for a " fee " of some kind at every turn. His hat, coat, umbrella, were torn from him by the cloak-room attendants. "Thank you, madam, I prefer to keep my hat — ^I have neither coat nor umbrella ! " said a bold fellow of my acquaintance. " Then you ought to be damned well ashamed of yourself," promptly retorted the lady. For fifteen years the Princess's Theatre has been to let. About that time it was purchased by Benjamin Franklin Kdth, the maker of the American music hall, who meant to run it, after the fashion of his New York and Boston houses, with what is called " continuous vaudeville." The enter- tainment begins midday, and is incessant till midnight, though the " stars " have appointed times much as they would have here, say at four o'clock in the afternoon, and ten o'clock at night ; and intervals are ejected, during which the building clears, by the performance of specially unpalat- able artists, or " chasers " as they are vividly described. Your admission fee entitles you, however, to endure the 77 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE twelve hours' performance, if you can ; or you may seek relief in many apartments adjacent to the main hall — ^tea-rooms, reading-rooms, writing-rooms. The domestic woman — ^who would, indeed, hardly overcrowd any American institution — may bring her baby for deposit in Keith's nursery, complete her shopping (parcels care of Keith's), summon papa from his office to meet her at the " family resort " ; then make for home. Whether London would ever have taken to the idea, we can only surmise. Keith was obstinate in his structural scheme. The Coimty Coimcil did not see eye to eye with him, and he just let the Princess's stand. His most intimate associate never dared ask him his intentions. But he once assured me that he had bought at a price which forbade a serious loss, reckoned by the immense increase in the value of the land. Recently, it was stated that a vast hotel would replace Keith's. But this scheme fell through. Keith spent much time in London ; but never mixed with music hall " magnates " here, or received music hall per- formers. He came and went unknown, though he could never be mistaken, after one encounter — ^a heavily built man, very bald, with a thick moustache, habitually wearing a black frock coat, a black " bow," an old-fashioned silk hat. He was shrewd, inquiring, reserved. He began life with what is called a " privilege " to sell pea-nuts in the enclosure of the Bamiun and Bailey circus, saved enough money to buy a cheap " freak," which he exhibited in Boston, entered New York when there were but two music haUs — ^Koster and Bials, corresponding in style to oxir Pavilion, or the defunct Trocadero, and Tony Pastor's, more like the old-time Canterbury — ^and in the twenty-five years he had to live, 78 THE LOST THEATRES OF LONDON built up a system that eventually employed millions of money in the exploitation of hundreds of music halls throughout the United States. But the Princess's : It seems certain that the famous old house belongs to the lost theatres of London now. A hundred years will soon have passed since Mr Hamlet, silversmith, of Princes's Street, Piccadilly, rashly ventured a panorama here. Fire procured him an issue out of his affictions, happy or otherwise. At any rate, having built a new house, at a great cost, he promptly became bankrupt. For ten years, opera was mostly the attraction. Then came Charles Kean's over-loaded revivals of Shakespeare. He introduced a bear to The Winter's Tale, and caused the British Museum to be ransacked for authorities. But his aims were noble ; and his companies (which included the Terry children) were distinguished. Thereafter, Stella Colas, the French actress, whose Juliet an eminent critic described as " no better than she should be," made her first appearance at the Princess's. Henry Morley declared her to be " abominable . . . employing the stage artifices and ghastly grimaces of a French ingSnue." Many of Boucicault's melodramas were produced here, notably The Streets of London, Arrah na Pogue and After Dark ; and Charles Reade's prison play. It's Never Too Late to Mend, which led to a fierce altercation between Vining the manager, on the stage, and Oxenford of The Times, in his box. Vining reminded the critics, one of whom had verbally denounced the prison scene, that they had come in for nothing. Oxenford demanded a public apology, and, with the support of the audience, got it. An immense fortune, made out of Charles Reade's Drink, 79 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE enabled the Gooch family to rebuild the Princess's Theatre. One of Phipps's characteristic well-shaped, or three-tier houses, considered to be most beautiful at the time, was erected, but was conspicuously unfortunate, till Wilson Barrett, who had captivated London by a still unequalled performance of Mercutio, supporting Modjeska, at the Court Theatre came along. He began a new chapter in the history of melodrama with The Lights of London, and continued it with The Silver King. I suppose they still remain the two best plays of their genre since The Ticket-of-Leave Man. Barrett is credited with many failures at the Princess's. I believe he had but two of serious import — Hamlet, and Lytton's posthimious Brutiis. And on neither did his fortune disappear, in truth. His followers at the Princess's have no interest. Barrett cherished the ambition to return to the Princess's, when his star again ascended. Fate took him instead to another dilapidated temple of Thespis, the Olympic, which, later, caught the fever of variety, and was kindly enveloped in the Strand Improvement Scheme. Grass, meanwhile, hides its ruins. Near here was Craven House, where Eliza- beth of Bohemia hved — the guest, but not the wife, of its owner — and there was an eventual tavern, " The Queen of Bohemia," which Philip Astley merged in a circus, to be replaced by a theatre whose early history was written in a roimd dozen bankruptcies, rapidly succeeding. Vestris gave the Olympic its first vogue. Then, it had for lessee one Walter Watts, who cut a great figure with eighty thousand pounds stolen from the Globe Insurance Company ; and hanged himself in gaol, while awaiting his trial. Alfred Wigau managed the Olympic for years. Tom Taylor's So THE^LOST THEATRES OF LONDON historic melodrama, The Ticket-of-Leave^Man, ran here foiir hundred and six nights in the sixties. Henry Neville prob- ably lived to play the part as many thousand times. He suc- ceeded to the management ; and produced a score melodramas only less remarkable than The Ticket-of-Leave Man. Traversing the Strand from west to east one misses the Folly, formerly the Charing Cross, later Toole's Theatre, the Gaiety, the Olympic, the Globe, the Opera Comique and the Strand — if the pilgrim should persevere to Fleet Street he would come upon the remnant of an old music hall, the Doctor Johnson. Few theatres have done so little to justify their existence as the Folly — once the scene of Mr William Woodin's Entertainment. Lydia Thompson procured it a vogue, with burlesque. But the ramshackle old place could have had no more fitting end than the hospital ! Jerry-built and dangerous, those unhealthy twins the Opera Comique and the Globe were short hved. The wonder is that they endured so long. The Opera Comique contrived, however, to impress Gilbert and Sullivan on London. The Globe is associated with two remarkable runs — of Les Cloches de Corneville and Charley's Aunt, the former brought forward from the Folly, the latter from the Royalty. And both theatres recall a " scene " to be considered later. Burlesque is nowadays habitually associated with the Gaiety. Really, the Strand has the prior claim to its origin — ^though the most successful burlesque of all, Black-Ey'd Susan, was done at the Royalty, in 1866, before the Gaiety was thought of, with Charles Wyndham as a Deal Smuggler. The Strand stood nearly a hundred years. But it has little interest for us till the Swanborough family settled in to F 8i FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE do Byron's early burlesques, with Marie Wilton for their star. Madam Swanborough had a pleasant disposition, and the way of Mrs Malaprop— if the quaint things she said, and the quaint things Byron said she said, and the encrustations of a swarm of smaller wits were collated they would fill a book. But the Swanborough family was prob- ably too large to live on one small theatre, and came to grief. John Sleeper Oarke, the rich and rare American comedian, took the Strand, but mostly let it. Here then, Florence St John achieved some of her greatest triumphs in Opera Bouffe ; a woman demonstrated the ability of her sex to write farce with Our Flat, receiving, they say, fifty pounds for her share of the spoil, and A Chinese Honeymoon ran upwards of a year. Two historic melodramas were produced at the Duke's Theatre, Holborn, The Flying Scud and New Babylon. In the latter play Caroline Hill, of the wonderful golden hair, appeared. Then the Duke's considerately caught fire, and made room for the First Avenue Hotel. The neighbouring Holborn Amphitheatre has disappeared. Dr Distin Maddick's romantic attachment for the old Prince of Wales's Theatre, where the Bancrofts revolu- tionised the stage and made a huge fortune by the produc- tion of Tom Robertson's " tea-cup comedies," has saved this from becoming a lost theatre. With a fortune nearing a quarter of a million, 'tis said, made out of surgery, he built the Scala Theatre — a disappointing realisation of his dreams, one fears. 82 CHAPTER XII ROUND LEICESTER SQUARE Early Victorian Horrors — Prize-fighters at the Alhambra — Leotard and Blondin — King Edward and the Empire — ^Winston Churchill — Prudes on the Prowl — Murder of Amy Roselle I SUPPOSE there is no square mile containing so much of interest to the student of the history of popular entertainment as that of which Leicester Square is nearly the centre. Circus, theatre, music hall, panorama, waxwork exhibition — they hem it in, on every side. Hither came the disgraceful Judge and Jwy show from the Strand — ^a mock trial of a scandalous cause — ^the Poses Plastiques (particular patrons welcome to the dressing-room) and other delights of the Early Victorian noceur. Let the Alhambra and the Empire, dominating respectively the east and the north side, suffice for this chapter. There was a design to complete \lcie quadrangle with theatres ; but new buildings, meanwhile erected, prevented this development. In one, the Green Room Club — ^probably the most exclusively theatrical club in the world, clinging convivially to the tradition of one room — ^has foimd a home. Not long ago the Alhambra might have commemorated its jubilee ; for it had a music hall licence years earlier than some slipshod historians seem to know of ; and indeed rims the Canterbury very close for seniority. Projected as the Panopticon, in more or less friendly rivalry with the 83 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE Polytechnic, it was incorporated by Royal Charter, and opened with prayer. " While the eye is gratified with an exhibition of every startling novelty which science and the fine arts can produce, and the ear is enchanted with soul-stirring music, the mind," said the prospectus, " shall have food of the most invigorating character." Alas ! the Panopticon soon found its way into bankruptcy, Its scientific toys were scattered from an auction-room ; and the enterprising E. T. Smith turned the splendid Moorish structure into a music hall. He did not long endure — but he distinguished his term by exhibiting the prize-fighters, Sayers and Heenan, still scarred by their historic battle at Famingham. Amid a scene of wild enthusiasm, they were presented with tokens of the occasion. Smith had meant to utilise the Royal Opera House, of which also he was the lessee and manager, for this interlude ; but allowed friends with a keener sense of propriety to dissuade him. A Mr Wilde ran the Alhambra, indiscriminately as a music hall and as a circus. Under his management Leotard, the famous aerial performer, made his first appearance in London, to eventually receive a salary of one hundred and eighty pounds a week. None is so apt to play the part^of Laudator temporis acti as the circus veteran. And he is never so firm as in the assertion that Leotard's grace and daring have not been equalled, even by " Little Bob " Hanlon, whose ease and skill are but an experience of yesterday. Leotard was trained to the trapeze in childhood at Toulouse by his father. He followed his dangerous trade immune from accident, and went home to die, quite young, of small- pox. Incidentally, he established an interesting precedent 84 The PANOPTirON : PrKDECKSSOR of the ALtrAMKRA ROUND LEICESTER SQUARE in the way of artists' salaries. Giovanelli, the proprietor of Highbury Bam, demurred to Leotard's demands, but jumped at the artist's suggestion that he should receive one half- penny per head of the attendance. The manager had cause to repent his bargain, for the salary first quoted was much less than the aggregation of the capitation fee. Roughly, fifty thousand people yield a hundred poimds. The fact that Leotard died in his bed leads me to remark that the authenticated instances of fatal accidents to " sensational " performers are singularly few ; and have mostly been due to carelessness, to the slovenly fixing of apparatus, or to incompetence. There is the case of gymnastic partners, one of whom himg by his feet from a lofty trapeze, holding in his teeth a gag attached to a swivel, which carried his partner by the belt. The lower man, in a horizontal position, face downwards, swung roimd and round, but became so in- different to his circimistances that his eye wandered over the hall. " Bill," he said to his bearer, " your girl's here." As thoughtlessly. Bill said : " Where*? " and, as he opened his mouth, lost hold of the gag, precipitating his imhappy comrade many feet to the earth ! Think of Blondin, another of the Alhambra alumni — though his more brilliant feats were at the Crystal Palace. The old man died peacefully in his bed at seventy-six, having followed his hazardous calling from his fourth year. But he refused to regard it as hazardous. " A net is a very proper precaution," he agreed with me one day, " — pour ler autres." He declared that a net would make him nervous. Blondin, no doubt, had a supernatural sense of balance. He also had the forearm of a giant, which enabled him to manipulate a balance pole of inunense weight and utility. On the ground 83 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE he was unimposing, and ungraceful in his walk. Suffering agony from rheumatism, he one day looked affectionately at a rope stretched across his garden at Ealing — ^where he kept rabbits, experimented in sweet-peas, and what not — ^and assured me he would never be well till he could get "up there," being then seventy odd. He performed within a few months of his death. Frederick Strange was Wilde's successor at the Alhambra, in which he is said to have invested a fortune made as a refreshment contractor at the Crystal Palace, which is quite true ; but, like Morton, he was a waiter first. Two more of the men destined to play a great part in the development of the modem music hall were publicans' cellarmen ; and two more were policemen. Strange was disposed to make ballet a popular feature of the Alhambra progranune, and this speedily involved him in a quarrel with the theatrical managers, who sought to get his first spectacular production, L'Enfant Prodigue, founded on Auber's opera, condemned as a stage play. Strange won the day, but failed to get a really useful judgment ; and, after an interval of forty years, the still unsatisfactory state of the law permitted similar prosecutions against the Alhambra and the Empire in 1905. During a part of Strange's manage- ment John HoUingshead, as stage manager, got his first practical experience of theatrical life ; and may also have got the idea of the Corinthian Club from the very convivial gatherings in the Alhambra canteen. He found a humorous relaxation in writing articles for Good Words as he sat in his office of observation, adjacent to the stage. Strange turned his enterprise into a limited liability com- pany — ^the first of note in the history of popular entertainment. 86 Howes axu Cushin(;'.s American Circus : at the Alhambra ROUND LEICESTER SQUARE The prospmty of the house was checked by the loss of its music hall licence in 1870. This was not restored till J884. Meanwhile, the directorate exploited a theatrical entertainr ment — comic opera with incidental ballets, of which M. Jacobj, a rej6igee at the time of the Franco-Prussian War, supplied more than a hundred during his reign as chef d'orchestre. In the autumn of 1870 the Alhambra was the scene of nightly demonstrations by French and Germans, for which the management generously provided a musical accompaij.!.- ment of national airs ; and later there was counter-rioting on account of two favourite actresses, Kate Santley and Rose Bell. Touching the site of Leicester House, tiie " Pouting place of princes," the Empire mainly occupies that of Saville House, where Peter the Great may have drunk his strange mixture of brandy and pepper, and from the steps of which George in. was proclaimed King. Whoi Saville House — say, rather, the ensuing Eldorado Music Hall of evil famer=- was destroyed by fire, two young bloods drove up with the firemen. They became the Duke of Sutherland and King Edward VII. In years to come, other yoimg bloods de- molished a partition erected by order of the Coimfcy Coimdl, and marched down Piccadilly bearing fragments of the wreck, headed by Mr Winston Churchill, not yet, of course. Right Honourable. After the Saville House fire a panorama was projected, and the Empire of to-day follows its circular line. But the panorama came to naught. There was an Alcazar scheme, and a Pandora scheme. " Empire " was the inspiration of Mr H. J. Hitchins, manager from the opening of the house, in 1884, to the day of his death. He was the nominee of 87 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE Nichol, of the Cafe Royal, the original leaseholder and dominant shareholder of the Empire. For years that grim old man, sitting in his box, and rolling a semi-paternal eye over the ballet, formed a familiar picture. At first the Empire was devoted to opera. Chilperic was the first production, with a cast including Herbert Standing, Paulus, Walter Wardroper, Harry Paulton, CamiUe D'Arville, Agnes Consuelo, Sallie Turner, Madge Shirley, and Sismondi. Hayden Coffin joined the company as a chorister. But opera and extravaganza failed to attract ; ballet became the staple fare, with a liberal supplement of music hall "turns." The Empire grew world-famous, and its share- holders divided profits at the rate of sixty per cent. — on a small capital, it should always be remembered. It was probably the first music hall to which Royalty, in the persons of King Edward and Queen Alexandra, resorted in a casual and friendly way. It was the scene of a Lucullan entertain- ment, given by the Sassoons to the Shah of Persia. It was the first hall to which a famous actress of the regular theatre, Amy RoseUe, came, with recitations. It was the first hall toward which Sims Reeves unbent. It was the battle- ground of the Nonconformist party apropos its promenade, inspiring Qement Scott to pen his diatribe. Prudes on the Prowl. Amy RoseUe took her engagement very seriously, also a thirty-poimd salary ; and received the interviewing reporter with effusion. She professed to believe that she was doing missionary work — ^" elevating " the naughty halls. The truth was that the directors of the Empire were in mortal terror of jtheir licence at that time, and made frantic efforts ROUND LEICESTER SQUARE to secure any pallid star, for citation to the authorities. The habitual attendants at the Empire were bored stiff by Madam RoseUe's recitations. Poor, poor Amy RoseUe ! She was shot, fuUy acquiescing, by her husband, Arthur Dacre, who immediately cut his throat, in Sydney. Refusing to recognise the fact that their charm and popularity had waned, they stubbornly continued in importance, till starvation stared them in the face ; and then staggered the world by their protest against its declining appreciation. Mrs Ormiston Chant headed the " purity " campaign against the Empire, and naturally came in for a good deal of abuse, and more cheap satire. She overstated her case, and exaggerated her evidence, of course. But George Edwardes, though naturally he would not admit her con- tentions, knew that she was sincere, and immensely able. I heard him offer her a fine engagement, as a sequel to their fight She had a secret sympathiser in Augustus Harris, who had retired in anger from the board of the Empire ; and wa§ again disappointed when he found he could not make the Palace its effective rival. Music hall management was not his mMier. He sought revenge in the melodrama, A Life of Pleasure, which he produced about that time. One of the scenes was enacted in the Empire promenade, the naughty lady of the episode drenching the viUain with champagne. Pettitt, the author, was well aware that Harris meant to be vicious toward the Empire. But the curious feature of the situation was that the actress was Mrs Bernard Beere, who, as Fanny Whitehead, presided in her girlhood over a glove stall on the first circle of the Alhambra, and had doubtless assisted 89 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE at many scenes such as she was now called upon to enact. It is a ghastly reflection that George Scott and Charles Dundas Slater, acting managers respectively of the Alhambra and the Empire, two pleasant and popular men, both blew out their brains. go CHAPTER XIII SINGERS WHO ARE SILENT The first " Great "- Men of the Music Hall — Lions Comique — Music Hall Morals and Manners — Saved by a Song FEW and short are the records of the early music hall ; and so the would-be historian seizes every fragment. Not long before his death, well advanced in the eighties, Joe Cave, manager, actor, author, and pioneer of minstrelsy, whose chief pride it was to have been the first English banjo player, carefully " made up " as W. G. Ross did to sing Sam Hall, and warbled that weird ditty for the instruction of a party of his friends. It was an interesting experience. Still living is a member of one of Morton's early companies at the Canterbury, William Lingard. He was acting, at any rate a few months ago, with one of the companies proceeding from the Shaftesbury Theatre. Lingard used to do impersonations of celebrities, with songs, a form of entertainment which again became popular a while ago. He married a pretty girl in the company, Alice Dunning, and they wait to America, to return as Miss Lingard, a charming emotional actress in the eighties, and as Horace Lingard, an important impresario of comic opera. He must be the last link between the old music hall and the new. Mackney, the negro-impersonator, sedulously cultivated a public alternative to that of the music hall. He organised concert parties, and was often included in St James's Hall gi FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE programmes — ^musical, not minstrel. He saved a good deal of money, though he lost some of it in unfortimate speculation. Still he was able to " husband out life's taper " in great happiness at Enfield, where he cultivated show roses. It seemed incredible that the weather-beaten old gardener, with a shock of white hair, expatiating on Marechal Niels and Gloires di Dijon could be the original exponent of : " I wish I was with Nancy In a second floor, for ever more I'd live and die with Nancy In the Strand, in the Strand, in the Strand 1 -' — and of : " Oh, lor 1 gals, I wish I'd lots of money. Charlestown is a mighty place. The folks they are so funny And they all are bound to go the whole hog or none." Mackney may be forgiven a spice of malice in the chuckle with which he read of Sims Reeves's decision to take to the music hall stage, in his decline ; for the great tenor had once peremptorily declined to appear on the same programme with him. Whether the "Great" Alfred Vance or the "Great" Arthur Lloyd first appeared upon the horizon of London I do not know — Vance, probably. He was a lawyer's clerk, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, then a provincial actor, Alfred Peck Stevens being, actually, his name. In a long-ago pantomine at the St James's Theatre he played clown. All this experi- ence stood him in good stead when he took to the variety stage. The " vocal comedians " of that time adopted crude expedients of make-up and costume. Vance — ^my authority 92 SINGERS WHO ARE SILENT is the late Hugh Jay Didcott — was always cap a pied. He preceded, and succeeded, Leyboume, of whom, for a long time, he was the rival. Leyboume struck a note with Champagne Charley. Vance responded with Clicquot, Clicquot, that's the Wine for me. And so they ran through the card, with ; Moet and Chandon's the Wine for me ; Cool Burgundy Ben ; Sparkling Moselle. Vance was first with the stage portrait of the " swell of the period " — ^fair hair, eye-glass, " faultless evening dress " — ^which has imitators to this day. But he had versatility. He was the first coster singer, with his Chickaleary Bloke. He could sing a moral, " motto " song with effect. Act on the Square, Boys ; act on the Square. Of course his name is inseparable from Slap Bang. He declined in popularity, and his death occurred at a hall he would hardly have considered in his great day, the Sun, Knightsbridge. In a barrister's wig and gown he sang a topical song, with the refrain, uttered as an appeal to the gallery, " Are you guilty ? " He fell un- conscious on the stage. A troupe of singers and dancers tripped lightly over his body, and carried on the show. A scene, quickly lowered, divided them from a dead man. Arthur Lloyd lived to earn the description, " last of the lion comiques." He was a Scotsman — ^rather a dull heavy man in social intercourse. His father was for years the favourite comedian of Edinburgh — an actor after the old Compton style, with a quince-Uke flavour of humour. The fact that this proud position never brought him in more than five pounds a week induced his son to take to the music halls, where I suppose the younger man soon ranked as a hundred- a-week man. He had a knack of song-writing, and published not fewer than two hundred songs, all of a considerable 93 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE popularity, Arthur Lloyd had a passion for managing theatres, which generally failed, and a tremendous sense of his responsibility to a vast number of relations. The result was a life never free from money troubles in spite of his earnings. Of Leyboume I have spoken elsewhere. Another of this group was " Jolly John " Nash, a midland counties iron- master whose jovial songs had been in great demand at Masonic gatherings in the day of his prosperity, and who bravely entered professional life when ruin overtook him. Nash was one of the first music hall singers commanded to appear before Royalty. But of that anon. In succession to Arthur Lloyd and George Leyboume at the London Pavilion came G. H. Macdermott, the immortal singer of We Don't Want to Fight. Macdermott was a person of humble origin, Farrell by name — a bricklayer's labourer at the outset. He served in the Navy, and left an A.B. Success as an amateur actor on board ship induced him to try the regular stage, and for years as Gilbert Hastings he was a popular favourite at the Grecian Theatre. It was his pride to have there forestalled Irving as Becket, in a play — ^I believe of his own writing, for he developed the literary knack — called Fair Rosamund. Macdermott's migration to the variety stage, where for years he earned an immense income, was brought about by accident. Henry Pettitt, a young schoolmaster serving his noviciate as a dramatist at the Grecian Theatre, gave Macdermott a song with the refrain, " If ever there was a danmed scamp," with which the actor procured an engagement at the London Pavilion, meant in the first instance to fill up a holiday. But the holiday continued indefinitely. The Scamp became the talk of the 94 a < z ►J 2 < feu a M ^ 'J o •< SINGERS WHO ARE SILENT town, and incidentally drew from the headmaster of the North London Collegiate School a hint to his junior master that playwriting was clearly his vocation— not pedagogy. Pettitt took the hint, wrote a hundred melodramas, but died in the prime of manhood, leaving fifty thousand pounds. Macdermott had a commanding, as the years advanced rather brutal, presence. He had the rare gift of articulation, singing so clearly and sonorously that never a word escaped the most distantly located member of the audience. He had free views as to the quality of song that might be sung in a music haU. The directors of the London Pavilion — ^not then by any means particular persons — ^had other views, and effectually excluded the once idolised singer from the West End variety stage. The speech in which their chairman summed upj at the judicial meeting, laid down in clear language the point in suggestiveness which he thought a vocal comedian might safely and properly reach, enumerated the matters on which he thought the freest humour should not play in public, and gave precise meanings to Macdermott's double meanings. As a vade mecum of music hall art and morality this de- hverance woxild have been invaluable, and in lists of " rare and curious books" it would have been thrice starred. But, naturally, it did not achieve verbal record. Macdermott bought a series of halls at the East End, and prospered to his death. His second wife. Miss Annie Millbum, was, it is interesting to recall, a mimic of almost uncanny skiU, before Miss Cecilia Loftus was thought of. To the end of his days Macdermott cherished a grievance. He felt that he had done the state an immense service by the exploitation of We Don't Want to Fight. Perhaps he had. 95 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE But he complained that it was never " recognised." What form he expected the recognition to take I know not. He beUeved that Disraeli and Montagu Corri once visited the London Pavilion and heard his song from a box. But he had not clear proof even of this. Sam Collins, nS Vagg, was a singer of Irish songs, of a lost type. He wore a caubeen, green dress-coat, drab breeches, worsted stockings and brogues, carried a shillelagh and a bundle and warbled The Rocky Road to Dublin. He began life as a chimney- sweep, and ended it as owner of the Islington Music Hall, which still bears his name. Old-timers speak kindly of the charm of Georgina Smithson, Louie Sherrington and Annie Adams, serio-comic singers. But I have no more precise information. Nelly Power had rare fascination, and West End managers eagerly tempted her to burlesque. She had a curious experience of fortune. It seemed that she had passed her zenith, and was steadily making downward. Then Mr E. V. Page, a city accoimtant with a wonderful facility in comic song writing, provided her with : " He wore a penny flower in his coat. La-di-da ! A penny paper collar round his throat, La-di-da ! In his hand a penny stick, In his teeth a penny pick. And a penny in his pocket. La-di-da I '-'- The St Martin's Siunmer of Nelly Power's prosperity due to this song was probably the best time of her life. 96 CHAPTER XIV HALF-A-CENTURY OP SONG The Ditties of Demos — Slap Bang, here we are again — The Tich- bome Claimant — " Motto " Songs WHEN one is writing of songs it is proper to recall " that very old man " known to Fletcher of Saltoun — slipshod citation says it was Fletcher himself — ^who cared not to make the laws of a people so long as he might be its bard. Time has given us more exact means of comparing the cash worth of each occupation. And Fletcher's friend, though his spirit was that of pure patriotism, might prove to have chosen the more profitable employment, for a song that really grips the popular imagina- tion has the making of a fortune. Not for me is it to discuss the ditties of Demos from a critical standpoint. This I will maintain — ^the composition of the music hall song is a very definite form of art, and when, on occasion, a person of Hterary distinction has made an in- cursion to the field with a song he has conceived to be of an " elevating " tendency, he has mostly failed. To quote one of his own favourites, the patron of the music hall " wants what he wants." Song pubUcation on modem lines began seriously with that of Not far Joe. Its sale of eighty thousand copies established, and long held, a record. Probably most of the profits went into the pockets of the publisher. It was many G 97 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE years ere the lyrist and composer appreciated the potentialities of a royalty. Song popularity is measured in millions now. Arthur Lloyd, the composer and expositor of Not for Joe, travelled townwards from his suburban home on an omnibus driven by the original Joe, a London character whose habitual negation was "No, thankee — ^not for Joe." So simple is the history of songs that have moved the world ! " Not for Joe " was for years the pet phrase of the Londoner, ho has often been indebted in that way to the music hall. Where did you get that hat," " Let 'em all come ! " " Get your 'air cut," " Ask a pleeceman," and " There's 'air " will occur to the veteran Cockney. " There he goes with his eye out," the special satire coined for the early volunteers, never claimed relationship with a lyric. Arthur Lloyd was already famous when he wrote Not for Joe. His diploma ditty was The German Band : '■' I loved her, and she might have been The happiest in the land. But she fancied a foreigner who played a flageolet In the middle of a German band." Lloyd sang a Japanese nonsense song with which the topers of the time were wont to test their sobriety : " PoUsrwollyamo, nogo, soki, PoUjnvo-a-lumpa shoes two tees, Slopey in the eye ; flat-nosed beauty, Poll3nvollywolly 1 Jolly Japanese.'' Vance is best remembered by : " Slap bang, here we are again, here we are again ; Slap bang, here we are again — and We always are so joUy, so joUy, Yes, we always are so jolly. As joUy as can be.'- 98 Arthur Okton : The " Tichbokne Claimant HALF-A-CENTURY OF SONG A verse of his coster song is interesting, if only as an example of the strange mutation of London slang. It is incompre- hensible, now, to any other than an " earnest student " of argot : -' I'm a chickaleary bloke, vith my von, two, three; Vitechapel vas the village I vos born in. For to get me on the hop, Or on my tibby drop, You've got to get up early in the mornin'."- Casual writers overlook the fact that there was a changing chorus to Pettitt's Scamp song. " If ever there was a damned scamp, . I flatter myself I am he. From William the Norman to Brigham the Mormon, They can't hold a candle to me '■'■ is obvious. But modem readers may be baffled by the reference of -- From Roger to Odger — the artful old dodger — They can't hold a candle to me."- Roger is Arthur Orton, otherwise Sir Roger Tichbome, the " Claimant," who himself lived to become a music hall artist, lecturing on his wrongs, when he had completed his sentence of fourteen years — ^as to seven years for fraud and as to seven years for perjury. Odger is Greorge Odger, would-be working man Member of Parliament. One night Odger's son hissed the singer, and promoted a disturbance which brought him up at Bow Street ; but the magistrate held that the defendant was justified and dismissed him. This after his coimsel had said : " It is an insult to patrons of the theatre 99 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE to compare them with the patrons of the music hall. If the latter were closed a great service would be done to the State, for they are the bane of modem London — corrupting and debasing youth and creating a distaste for all intellectual pastime." Macdermott's later song : ■ ' We don't want to fight, but by Jingo if we do. We've got the ships, we've got the men. We've got the money too. We've fought the Bear before, and While Britons still are true The Russians shall not have Constantinople," No song, I will not even except Tipperary, had an experience so remarkable. We Don't Want to Fight was translated into every language employing the printing press. It was mentioned in Parliament. It was quoted in a Times leader. It provided Punch with cartoon after cartoon. Learned men engaged in controversy as to the origin and meaning of the word, " Jingo," which, anyway, acquired and still has an exact significance as describing politicians of a certain temperament and method. We Don't Want to Fight was written and composed by G. W. Hunt, a little man with a flamboyant moustache, who had been manager of the Cambridge Music Hall. ,Hunt more often than otherwise composed the music of his songs too. He would borrow a hint from a popular waltz, or even from a Lutheran hymn — just as, in later years, a prolific com- poser of music hall songs betrays to the expert his intimate knowledge of Jewish melody. Himt had a nose for the topical, as he proved in We Don't Want to Fight, which he dashed off after a perusal of his morning paper, disturbing Macdermott 100 HALF-A-CENTURY OF SONG in his second sleep, or maybe his first, for he was a convivial creature, in order to strum the tune. Hunt was especially the lyrist for George Leyboume, for whom he wrote fifty songs — ^but not Champagne Charley. That was the work of one Alfred Lee, who, when he came to town with the manuscript, had to search the remote comers of his pocket to produce the toll then demanded of every passenger across Waterloo Bridge, and felt his heart sink to his boots while Sheard the publisher very slowly made up his mind to advance twenty pounds on the deal. Elderly folk will catch, again, the topical references of such songs as Walking in the Zoo, The Flying Trapeze, Zazel! Zazel! Up in a Balloon, Riding on a Donkey — ^all Hunt's contributions to the Leyboume repertory. His Captain Cuff, designed as a companion study to Champagne Charley, failed to secure an equal popularity, but had a considerable vogue : '' Some coons go in for whiskers, some For most unpleasant dogs. Some fellows have a weakness for The most outrageous togs. I'm very strong on linen — yes. And wouldn't give a doUar For life without a splendid show Of snow-white cuff and collar." (Spoken) " Which has earned for me the title of : '• Captain Cuff, Captain Cuff, you can tell me by my coUar. Captain Cuff, Captain Cuff, though I'm not worth half a dollar, I'm awfuUy stiff in style, as my cigarette I puff. They cry, ' Hi I clear the way, here comes Captain Cuff.' " Another singer of the Cockney-Horatian school was Harry Rickards — a mechanic again, from Woolwich, who was lOI FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE famous for Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines ; still more for: " Cerulea was beautiful, Cerulea was fair. She lived with her gran'ma In Gooseberry Square. She was once my unkydoodleum, But now, alas, she Plays kissy-kissy with an officer In the artiUer-ee.'' Rickards got into apparently inextricable difficulties, and went to Australia in a hurry. There the music hall was imknown. Beginning in a small way, he added palace to palace, and, lately died, on the way to a millionaire. Godfrey was good at the " Hi-tiddly-hi-ti-ti " business, but there was the " heavy man " of the old school in him still, and he was at his best with such songs as On the Bridge at Midnight : " Next a form approaches at a halting pace. Grief had failed to shatter the beauty of her face. Promises and falsehoods fondly she beheved ; Now her dream is ended — forsaken and deceived. Silently to Heaven she offers up a prayer. Gazes at the river, then shudders in despair. Clutching some love token in her withered hands, Like an apparition on the brink she stands. ' Why did he forsake me. Him I loved so well ? '- — Hark, the beU is tolling ; Bidding earth farewell, Frantically her hands, high In the air she throws ; A sigh, a leap, a scream, 'tis done ; As o'er the bridge she goes.'-' What a bright page in music hall history is that filled by 102 c X HALF-A-CENTURY OF SONG Harry Clifton. His cheery "motto " songs, faulty in form but faultless in sentiment, were mostly adapted to his friend Charles Coote's waltzes. Paddle your Own Canoe, for instance, utilised the melody of Queen of the Harvest. To the Innocence Waltz, Harry Clifton sang : ' Then do your best for one another, Making hfe a pleasant dream. Help a worn and weary brother Pulling hard against the stream." Another of the genial philosopher's songs was Wait for the Turn of the Tide: " Then try to be happy and gay, my boys, Remember the world is wide. And Rome wasn't built in a day, my boys, So wait for the turn of the tide.'' Herbert Campbell's fat, confidential way lent itself to a topical song with the refrain : " They're all very fine and large, They're fat, they're sound and prime, If you fancy you can beat 'em. It wiU take you aU your time. They're the widest in creation, And I make no extra charge, Now who'U have a chance for a dozen or two. They're all very fine and large." lo CHAPTER XV BALLETS AND BALLET DANCERS The Cancan at the Alhambra — Police Interference — Some Old-time Favourites — Genre's Arrival — Kate Vaughan and the Gaiety School — Booming Maud Allan THERE is no brighter gem in the crown of the music hall than the ballet, which it rescued from the neglect of the opera house, and sedulously- nurtured. Ballet during the earlier half of the nineteenth centm-y was an adjunct of the opera, often, indeed, the more important constituent of the programme. But Le Corsair, in which Rosati danced during the season of 1858, was the last of the great opera ballets, and dancing bade fair to become a lost art till the expanding variety theatre offered it an asylum. At the Canterbury Music Hall, at the Metropolitan and at the South London large cor'ps de ballet were maintaiaed. When Strange became manager of the Alhambra an Oriental ballet, foimded on Auber's opera, Azael, and entitled VEnfant Prodigue, was his first production of importance. A little Hungarian ballet had among its exponents the brothers Imre and Bolossy Kiraefy, destined to become famous metteurs en scene and company promoters, and their sister Anita. The legitimate theatres developed a furious jealousy of the Alhambra and invoked the law. But the Alhambra wrought its own undoing. In the late summer of 1870 a ballet called Les Nations was produced. The 104 BALLETS AND BALLET DANCERS theatre had just previously lost its popular premidre danseuse of several seasons, Pitteri, a beautiful Venetian, who died in poverty, and by way of giving ^clat to the new ballet, Mademoiselle Colonna was engaged to head a Parisian quadrille, in fact the cancan, a performance of which the Prince and Princess of Wales had previously contemplated at the Lyceum without complaint or hurt. Colonna and her friends footed it merrily for five weeks at the AUiambra. It was an unfortxmate coincidence that at the end of that time the Alhambra had to apply for a renewal of its licence, which, without a word of warning, and after very little discussion, was withheld ! A series of promenade conceri;s was instantly inaugurated. The Franco-Gennan War was then at its fiercest encoimters, and there were nightly scenes at the Alhambra far more dangerous to the public morale, one thinks, than the cancan could have been. M. Riviere's band played The Watch on the Rhine, and the Germans roared approval ; it proceeded to the Marseillaise, and the French coimter<^ cannot spell the word, more cannot understand it, and most cultivate a Teutonic materialism. At any rate, Didcott discarded the managers, and called a meeting of the performers. A policy of cohesion was agreed upon. It was the cohesion of a fine, dry, silver sand. The unhappy agent, who may have been sincere in his adherence to the then weaker side, or who may have desired to hunt with the hounds and run with the hare, was left friendless, on either side, and led a troubled, improfitable life to its end. But he stood erect, invincibly resourceful, gay, sarcastic, a careful and well-restrained viveur — ^the most exigeant customer at Shipwright's, an indifferent player at billiards, more efficient at poker, a lively, instructive companion — a man the mention of whose name still always sounds the siunmons of apologetic loyalty ; but whose memory can always command the tears of one friend, imforgetting. 146 CHAPTER! XXI counterfeitTtresentments it. stories of Stage Caricature — Oscar WUde in Comedy and Opera — ^The " darned mounseer " — Irving and his Imitators — The Sensitive Sultan WHEN Dr Johnson heard that Foote proposed to caricature him he gripped his cane and briefly stated the course he would take in such an event. He is understood to have had no further provocation. The cane should properly take the form of the Lord Chamberlain, who has been brought into use on many occasions by persons of importance, aggrieved by coimterfeit presentments. It is probable that the name of Mr Ayrton would long ago have been forgotten did it not survive in connection with an historic instance of stage caricature. In Happy Land — of which, it being a burlesque of his own Wicked World, W. S. Gilbert was part author — ^produced at the Court Theatre in 1873, there was a wild dance by three members of the Govern- ment, Mr Gladstone, Mr Robert Lane and Mr Ayrton, the for- gotten Commissioner of Works, which caused a terrible to-do. Having begun thus early, Gilbert may be said to have become an habitual offender. One of his biographers speaks of the " aesthetic craze " as having been " killed " by Patience. Bunthome was at any rate clearly meant for Oscar Wilde, who was always a convenient mark for the satirist. He made his theatrical debut in Where's the Cai, at the 147 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE Criterion. His representative, as Scott Ramsey, was then Sir Herbert Tree, destined to be caricatured himself ad nauseam. Wilde appeared again as Lambert Streyke in The Colonel, and again in The Charlatan at the Haymarket — written, by the way, around Home, the spiritualist. Gilbert's very obvious attack on the Kaiser in the dancing hussar episode introduced to The Grand Duke passed without remark. But his Mikado caused diplomatic exchanges — after a respectable career of thirty years on the stage ! Mrs D'Oyly Carte contemplated a revival of the opera about the time of Prince Fushima's visit to this country, but she received an imperative hint to abandon the revival, and shortly an official order was promulgated that during the visit of his Japanese Highness not a note of the music of The Mikado should offend his ear. In an earlier instance, France was called to arms in respect of Gilbert's ribaldry ; and it is said that twenty brave officers offered to " meet " him. This was apropros to a phrase, " the darned mounseer," in Ruddigore. Really, Gilbert meant to satirise our insular contempt for foreigners, but the London correspondent of The Figaro construed the verses otherwise, and telegraphed them to his paper with angry comment. Poor M. Johnson ! In spite of his name he was exceedingly French. He lived here forty years, but never imderstood us, or our language, though he made many friends, being an amiable old creature. To " see ourselves as others see us " one had but to read the contributions of M. Johnson to The Figaro. He took the deepest interest in Guilbert's first visit to London, and it may be his exertions hastened his death, which took place during the course of her engagement at the Empire. 148 COUNTERFEIT PRESENTMENTS Eastern potentates have always been super-sensitive. In an old-time Strand burlesque, by Sir Frank Bumand, called Kissi-Kissi, Henry Corri, one of a large, musical family, now represented by the redoubtable referee of the National Sporting Club fights, presented a faithful likeness of the Shah, with the curious adornment of a necklace of pawn tickets. There was an immediate remonstrance, to which the management opposed the explanation that Mr Corri reaUy couldn't help himself. He was natiu-ally so dark, and habitually wore a moustache. What he did not habitually wear was a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles, a turban, and so forth. Corri is known, in fact, to have made a careful and intimate study of the Shah. The management promised to tone down the picture, but went no further than to introduce to the stage a bucket labelled " Whitewash for Corri." Ap- parently the Lord Chamberlain's office was content to have given Kissi-Kissi a bold advertisement, as in the case of Vert-Vert at the St James's Theatre. The dresses of a ballet having been adversely criticised — ^it was, in fact, the can- can, which was denoimced in Vanity Fair and led to a libel action, which the paper won — ^the late Richard Mansell demurely asked for a suggestion as to their alteration ; and, having received a word of advice, announced that the ballet would henceforth be danced in costumes designed by the Lord Chamberlain. His indifference to authority was eventually punished by his banishment from London, as a responsible manager, at any rate, for a term of many years. Another burlesque, at the Gaiety, provoked the wrath of another sunburnt sovereign. In Don Juan there was a suggestion of a Grand Vizier on a round of the town. Quickly, 149 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE George Edwardes was brought to book, and the character was modified out of all likeness to its original. Perhaps the revision of the play robbed it of its charm. Certain it is that the life of Don Juan, in which Cissie Loftus made her stage debut as the sweetest Haidee, was short ; and Mr Edwardes chose this moment for the parting of the ways. Modem musical comedy replaced the form of burlesque which Hollingshead quaintly associated with a " sacred lamp." A second time the Sublime Porte was concerned with a piece of much popularity in the provinces called Secrets of the Harem. The proprietor met the case by simply reducing the title to Secrets. George Edwardes was called over the coals again in respect of " Owen Hall's " original book of The Gaiety Girl. The censor objected to many lines, and to the de- scription of a judge as Mr Justice May — ^it was so nearly Jeune. A rearrangement was effected at the eleventh hour — or later; and the actors forgot to forget. So the first- night audience really heard the unexpurgated edition at the Prince of Wales's Theatre. It was playing with fire to touch even gently on Sir George Lewis, but this was done on several occasions, notably in Marriage, at the Court Theatre. Arthur Roberts was quickly stopped in a caricature of Lord Randolph Churchill — I'm a Regular Randy, Pandy Oh. Throughout his career Irving was an easy mark for the mimic. • Probably Edward Righton set the fashion, with a travesty of The Bells, in a burlesque called Christabelle, at the Court Theatre, proceeding immediately to " take off " Mademoiselle Sara, otherwise "Wiry Sal," the cancan dancer, Sal, by the way, was Miss Wright, an original member of 150 COUNTERFEIT PRESENTMENTS Colonna's troupe, who became, " on her own," the town toast. In Richelieu Redressed, produced at the Olympic on the eve of a General Election in 1873, and declaring that " In the great lexicon of politics there's no such word as truth," Righton again attacked Irving, and so it went on to the day of the great actor's death — ^then still continued. Irving detested mimicry, and is imderstood to have invoked the aid of authority to suppress it in the case, again, of Fred Leslie and Ruy Bias. There was an audacious pas de qvMre, with Ben Nathan as Toole, Fred Storey as Edward Terry and Charles Danby as Wilson Barrett. Some men have taken caricature as a compliment. In- credible as it may seem, a well-known city man was delighted to be identified with the philandering old fool, Lionel Roper, in The Mind the Paint Girl, and used to make up parties of his friends to contemplate his degradation. Whether Sir Arthur Pinero or Mr Dion Boucicault was really guilty of the photography, deponent sayeth not. The old clergyman, a friend of the Hawtrey fanaily, caricatured in The Private Secretary, never missed a chance of seeing the Reverend Robert Spalding. In the Adelphi melodrama, London Day by Day, one recalls Lord Ailesbury; in later Drury Lane dramas the Duchess of Montrose, Sam Lewis the money-lender, Carlton Blythe, a once well-known man about town, the Duke of Beaufort, and Marie Lloyd — ^who was first asked to impersonate herself. That what are called " character studies " often have originals, deliberately chosen, or imconsciously, is certain. Edward Terry was once asked by a barrister friend to come over to the Law Courts and look at Dick Phenyl, a derelict 151 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE who was believed by his colleagues to have provided the actor with his original. Terry protested his ignorance, just as he assured me that he was ignorant of the likeness of his Egerton Bompas in The Times to a weU-known newspaper proprietor. It was dog eating dog when Willie Edouin " took off " Augustus Harris in Our Flat, and history re- peating itself when, at Chelsea lately, a sketch introducing half the Government was suppressed. Sir Arthur Pinero has a clever drawing by Frank Lockwood, recording and forgiving an accidental likeness to a member of his family, I think in The Cabinet Minister. 152 CHAPTER XXII ONE-HORSE SHOWS Some Popular Entertainers — Cheer, Boys, Cheer — "Protean'" Artists — ^Henry Irving as a Spiritualist — Frederick Maccabe — Death in the Workhouse WITH the recent death of Barclay Gammon a long line in the succession of " entertainers " is broken. Miss Margaret Cooper, the Clapham music teacher who took one step to celebrity, may be con- sidered, " with a difference. " Mr Gammon curiously recalled Comey Grain in appearance, in manner and in method — but conunanded ten times his fees. Grain would do a good deal for a ten-poimd note, having precautiously made his way to his host's in overshoes, with the assistance of a bus. He left but a modest fortune, though his death made a void, in the affection of the public, as great as his own unwieldy form. His mild and trivial humour, his extra-deliberate satire, his ingenuous dogmatism, his invariable propriety made up a pleasant and even fascinating personality. He would cari- cature an old gentleman proposing the toast of the Queen at great length, and then, with serious importance, remark, as his biographer records, with unsmiling approval : " Would it not be just as loyal, and much more satisfactory, if chairmen were simply to rise and say : ' I give you the toast of the Queen, God bless her.' " No doubt Barclay Gammon's frequent engagements at the 153 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE Palace Theatre, for which he got upwards of a hundred pounds a week toward the end of his brief career, reacted upon his " society " work, increasing the number of his engagements and the amoimt of his fees. So, George Grossmith was an entertainer on a very modest scale before he went to the Savoy. When he became an entertainer again, with the cachet of Gilbert and Sullivan, he quickly amassed five and twenty thousand pounds. His imkindly boasting of his prosperity provoked from Charles Brookfield, who could never make, or keep, money, a cruel comment, in the Beefsteak Club : "But, George, we don't all look so damned funny in evening dress." Foote, with his Afternoon Teas, at the Haymarket Theatre, was probably the first of the entertainers. The elder Mathews seems to have had uncanny skill in rapid and com- plete disguises for his characters. Albert Smith deprecated what he called the " ducking business " as exemplified in Mr William Woodin's Carpet Bag. The artist would " duck " behind his table to make the necessary change in his appear- ance. Smith's own method in The Ascent of Mont Blanc seems to have been preserved for us in Mr R. G. Knowles's charmingly illustrated travel lectures. Henry Russell, a splendid veteran, was quite a familiar figure in London of the eighties, although he was singing Cheer, Boys, Cheer to Crimean recruits. Russell composed the music ; the words were by Charles Mackay, who adopted Marie Corelli, the daughter of an old friend, educating her for a musician ; and who also lived, poor and blind, into his seventy-sixth year. John Parry was the model of the Grossmiths, the Cecils (for Arthur Cecil began his professional career in this manner too), the Corney Grains. He enjoyed a tremendous 154 ONE-HORSE SHOWS vogue, and is discussed by contemporary critics among the most important musical and dramatic artists of the day. His most famous song was : -'- Wanted a governess, fitted to fill The post of tuition with competent skill In a gentleman's family highly genteel, Where 'tis hoped that the lady will try to conceal Any fanciful airs or fears she may feel In this gentleman's family, highly genteel I "- Dickens wrote Village Coqtiettes for Parry and his company. Most of the early music hall performers tried the " enter- tainment." It enabled them to appeal in Com Exchanges, Assembly Rooms, and such like, to audiences that would not dream of visiting music halls then. So Cowell, Mackney, Vance, Arthur Lloyd, Harry Liston, and even Leyboume went on toxu". I have a vivid memory of Clarence Holt, who used to do " a night with Shakespeare and Dickens " — Mr Bransby Williams's method is somewhat similar. Holt's good-night speech ended : " Of their immortal plumage may The feathers never moult. Your kind applause give Shakespeare, Dickens, Not forgetting Clarence Holt." Vance, one recalls, used to work up a " swell " song with the use of many handkerchiefs. Each, as it was lightly used, was thrown away. On the last he paused. When he opened it, it proved to be the Union Jack — ^no unworthy use for that ; roars of applause ! And then, in an anticlimax of sordid economy, a page boy would carefully collect the silk or linen with which the stage had been recklessly strewn. 155 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE Husband and wife would work together, as Mr and Mrs German (as Miss Priscilla Horton she had been an exquisite Ariel), Mr and Mrs Howard Paul, Mr and Mrs Harry Clifton. Two brothers, the Wardropers, utilised their likeness effect- ively; and two sisters, members of the Robertson family, whose tag was : " Amid your kind applause we now retire. Accept the grateful thanks of Annie and Sophia." Some little time ago there was an outbreak of so-called " Protean " art in the London music halls. I believe its - exponents were extremely well paid. Their leader, Fregoli, had a good deal of ingenuity and skill. He was an ugly little wretch, who, like many Italians, spoke English worse each day of his sojourning in our hospitable city. Other Protean artists appeared in rapid fashion, till music hall programmes became a tiresome procession of gibbering foreigners, who leapt from one mask into another, out by this door, in at that ; their characters were incompletely drawn, their antics unintelligible. Men with memories asked : " What has become of Frederick Maccabe ? " and the answer proved to be that he was dying in Liverpool Workhouse, from which he was rescued. The facility with which not less than a dozen men whose name is cut deep into the record of popular entertainment during the Victorian era foimd this refuge is remarkable. Maccabe was a Liverpool boy of Irish origin, whose first professional work was to play the piano, on which he had painfully acquired proficiency, in sheer love of music, at dances and dinners. So he acquired many of the characters which he afterwards depicted with such skill. Forty-mile 156 ONE-HORSE SHOWS walks between engagements were the healthy and not un- happy experience of many a yoimg artist in those days. In the early sixties Maccabe was a stock actor at Man- chester. So was Henry Irving, and the two men, as an out- side adventmre, took the local Athenaeum, where they gave an entertainment designed to kill, by caricature, the spiritual- istic pretensions of the notorious Brothers Davenport. Maccabe soon found his mStier as an entertainer. He was a skilful ventriloquist, and has left a treatise on the art ; he had a useful facility with his pen in literary and musical composition, could play many instruments, and would with lightning rapidity change from a pompous after-dinner speaker to a simpering girl at the piano, from a deplorable street-whistler to a gay troubadour, all vivid and con- vincing. Each sketch was a polished gem, and he could weave four characters into a play as illusory and convincing as though it employed four people. To tell Mr R. A. Roberts that he comes next in one's estimation to Maccabe is not tq pay that brilliant artist a second-class compliment, but to confer upon him the highest distinction that seems possible now. 157 CHAPTER XXIII EMPIRE-BUILDING The All-Conquering Music Hall — Edward Moss's Boyhood — How a Piano was procured — His Vast Fortune, and Early Death IN the entertainment of the provinces, the growth in popularity of the music hall has effected a complete revolution. It has ruined most of the theatres. It has killed the travelling circus. It has bereft a thousand Com Exchanges, Town Halls, Mechanics Institutes of panoramas, prestidigitators, Christy Minstrels — ^having absorbed them all. There is now no town so small as to lack its Empire. Large cities have a score of variety theatres. In 1878 the evolution of the music hall had hardly begun. The date is not written on my heart — rather it is cut into my back. For at sixteen, just emancipated from a " mortar board," and vainly dedicated to the profession of the law, I thought I was old enough to visit a Palace of Varieties ; my father thought I was still young enough to thrash ! Harry Rickards — " Great," of course — had sung of the beautiful Cerulea. He sang also of " a virgin, just nineteen years old," but her story is not for these pages. Vesta Tilley, a celebrity in her teens, also appeared, and a curiously versatile Frenchman, M. Trewey, mime, juggler, prestidigi- tator, who revisited London some five and twenty years later with the first cinematograph pictures. They were rejected as a Sunday-school show, of ridiculous pretensions, finally taken in at the Polytechnic Institution. Trewey, full of 158 EMPIRE-BUILDING faith, told me I would live to see the cinema actually repro- ducing an event on the stage within forty-eight hours. The good fellow said hours — ^not minutes ! In the provinces the music hall grew quicker, or at any rate more luxuriantly, than in London — ^though at Man- chester it encountered terrible opposition, the Nonconformist conscience possessing the local Bench. Still, Birmingham, Liverpool and Glasgow soon had great pleasure palaces, wherein the eventual " magnates " of the music hall world, the Stolls, the De Freeces, the Barrasfords, graduated. Paul, of Leicester, was a great " character," who gave inunense sums to charity. He habitually addressed his audience on Saturday night, in laudation of his company. Feeling that he had gone a little too far on one occasion, and tended to give the artists too high an opinion of their worth, he added, in a confidential way : " But I've got a crowd coming on Monday, ladies and gentlemen, as can wipe the floor with this lot." Oddly enough, the most important, or the most apparent influence, came from Edinburgh. For years James Moss adventured shows of all kinds, and soon he foimd his son, Horace Edward Moss, a useful assistant. The boy had a particular aptitude at music, and played the piano for a " troupe " which had painful vicissitudes. The Franco-German War of 1870-1871 brought about a change in the fortunes of the Mosses. They concocted a panorama which put them in possession of a little capital. And still, they were careful. This advertisement proved most attractive to the musical member of the firm : " Glenburn Abbey — An old piano by Clementini in tolerably good order for its age. Mr MacAUster will give it to any person who will take it away." 159 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE A conveyance, fitting the circumstances, was procured ; and the piano went into the Moss stock. Father and son entered into possession of the Queen's Rooms, Greenock, and transformed them into a music hall. They seemed on the way to success when the landlord, enamoured of their ideas, resumed possession, by virtue of a faulty lease. The con- ventions of melodrama demand that he should fail. He did. The Mosses got hold of another hall, this time at Edinburgh. It was the Gaiety, but the fact that every student in the University affectionately knew it as " Moss's " is a proof that it was a success on homely lines. Long after its more active director had given Edinburgh an Empire, he retained the hall wherein he had laid the foundation of a vast fortune. He associated himself with another enterprising impresario in the north of England, Richard Thornton, and eventually with Oswald StoU, whose methods were probably too individual, and who, after a time, withdrew from the coalition. Meanwhile Moss had established his enterprise in the heart of London. The Hippodrome, off Leicester Square, is the base from which upwards of thirty other places of amuse- ment are operated, in all parts of the kingdom, employing a capital in excess of two million poimds. At fifty-seven, he died in harness — ^long weary of work, if the truth must be told. His domestic life had more than its share of sorrows. Otherwise his career was successful, almost from the outset. He had acquired an immense and beautiful estate in Scotland. He had accumulated a vast fortime — ^nearly a quarter of a million, and procured a title. A pleasure-loving man, there is no doubt he had long desired to dissociate himself from the business of popular entertainment, and to devote himself to country life, and travel. Incidentally, the Hippodrome i6o EMPIRE-BUILDING had been something of a disappointment. The belief that the London public was eager for a revival of the circus proved to be unfounded. At any rate, it did not wax enthusiastic in respect of a circus, plus an Empire ballet, plus an unvary- ing water show, plus a variety entertainment. Time seems to have solved this problem with the revue. None the less, at the time of Mr StoU's severance, the Moss Empires were in the doldrums. The shareholders were uneasy, but cherished a belief in the foimder of the imder- taking. And so, with admirable good nature, he took the helm again, and stuck to it, till painful illness seized him, and, after no great while, bore him off. Sir Edward Moss was a keen man of business. He showed capacity in many enter- prises apart from the music hall ; business, no doubt, meant to him primarily his own enrichment. But he had pleasantry and charm. His was one of those cases in which the manners of a gentleman 1^ fallen gracefully on a person of himible origin and roughish experience. i6i CHAPTER XXIV NOTE S O E GOLD? Failure of the Royal English Opera — Palace Theatre Flotation — Its Early Struggles, and Eventual Profits — Living Pictures — And one of Charles Morton " 'W' "W" E built his soul a lordly pleasure house." With I 1 imction the musical critics passed the quotation -*- -^ round, when they inspected the Royal English Opera House, dominating Seven Dials. It was meant to establish English music ; to give London a theatre as nearly perfect, from all points of criticism, as might be — in beauty, in secure isolation, in equipment. As the late Mr D'Oyly Carte, by the inspiration of Madam, was one of the most astute men of business in his generation, or any other — ^he died worth two hundred and fifty thousand pounds — I doubt not the Royal English Opera House also enshrined other intentions. It opened on 31st January 1891, with Sir Arthur Sullivan's opera, Ivanhoe. Artists of rare distinction were engaged, in such a number that a different cast might be employed three times within the week. Immediately after the one himdred and fiftieth performance, Ivanhoe was withdrawn. The Opera House had failed in its mission, as regards English music. To France, then, for La Basoche, which an enthusiastic critic declared to be "the best comic opera ever produced in London." It did little better than Ivanhoe. So the 162 NOTES— OR GOLD hospitality of the theatre was tendored to Sarah Bernhardt for a season. Poor English Opera House ! In little more than a year they were bravely planning to raise a music hall out of the debris of its ambitions. For this purpose a limited liability company was formed, with the privilege of purchasing the theatre, freehold and paraphernalia, for the equivalent of two hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds. Augustus Harris entered into the scheme with enthusiasm. His energy was limitless. Drury Lane was the rock on which he built his enterprise ; but it included ItaUan Opera, in which, shouting at the chorus in four languages, he found his greatest delight ; touring companies, the world over, with melodrama, pantomime, grand opera, comic opera ; Olympia. And he kept an eye on every detail. Hales, a Covent Garden tradesman, specialised in the provision of animals for theatrical productions — ^packs of hounds for Cinderella, horses for Henry V., bulls for Carmen, sheep for Bo-Peep, and so on. Harris was doing a Forty Thieves pantomime, for which he needed a donkey. Sedger at the Lyric was doing La Cigale, for which he also needed a donkey. Hales had a superior and an inferior beast, and juggled with them a little. Harris would return from the Continent, his eye all over Drury Lane stage in an instant. " Where's that infernal Hales " — ^his voice would ring through the theatre — " where's that infernal Hales ? Sedger's got my donkey again ! " Harris had a deep-rooted belief in his power to run a music hall. He had cleared out of the Empjre in a temper. He found the notion of resuscitating the Palace fascinating. Perhaps there was a touch of malicious pleasure in knocking the bottom out of the Royal English Opera House. He 163 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE shaped a programme for the reopening, on 11th December 1892, which he supposed would revolutionise variety. It included an Oriental ballet. The Sleeker Awakened, which was actually the induction to The Taming of the Shrew, a little tragedy called The Round Tower and an extravaganza by Cecil Raleigh and " Jimmie " Glover, called London to Paris. There were a few music hall artists ; but the effect of the policy of other halls, in cornering popular favourites, was felt keenly. It was a long time ere the Palace directorate awoke to the fact that, to succeed, it must discover and exploit interesting personalities. Then the first manager of the Palace was oddly out of place. Harris was doubtless anxious to pay a debt of old friendship to a man who had done fine work in his time and failed. The name of Charles Bernard will be found on the old programmes of the Canterbm-y and the Oxford. He had not a romantic appearance — ^short, thick-set ; an indispens- able pince-nez surmoimting a nose which an ardent love of boxing had broadened — ^but he had a beautiful voice, and was a notable contributor to Charles Morton's operatic selections. Then, for years, he was an active partner in the control of Bernard and Vestris's Christy Minstrels, still singing ballads. He became a power in the provinces, con- trolling theatres at Manchester, Dublin, Glasgow and Carlisle, and running companies with comic opera, and Shakespeare, of which he was an erudite and tasteful producer. I believe he claimed to have discovered Florence St John. It was another discovery that brought him to grief. Neither his strength nor his sympathies were with the Palace, from which he retired, to die in Hanwell ! It was a whirligig indeed which brought Bernard's old 164 NOTES^OR GOLD manager to the Palace as his successor. Morton's supremely valuable asset was the public belief in his capacity and in his luck. He was the figure-head of the Alhambra when it was resuscitated ; again, of the Tivoli. Surely enough, when he got to the Palace, things began to look up, though it has remained for that brilliant young showman, Alfred Butt, to bring the house to a monotonous routine of twenty thousand pounds to profit per year. To think that Palace shares have been quoted in pence ! Kilyany's Living Pictures marked the turn in the fortunes of the house. And of them, a curious story is to be told. There have been living pictures since the bad old days of Leicester Square. But Kilyany, a Viennese, I think, did them on an heroic scale — ^with perfect mechanism and naughty daring, but with exquisite effect. Kilyany's pictures were offered to the Alhambra, and contemptuously declined by the manager of the moment. Popular imagina- tion accredited Morton with securing them for the Palace. But the joke is, they were the legacy, to his successors, of Augustus Harris. On the night of their production Morton stood in his accustomed place, at the back of the stalls, and watched one study of " the altogether " to another succeed, in terror. He cursed the living pictures, being sure there would be trouble with the authorities. So there was ; but it was not too serious for arrangement. Moreover, the Prince of Wales, who had known Morton since Philharmonic days, and permitted a good deal of familiarity, laughed at his terrors and told him the pictures would be the making of the house. Kilyany went to America and died. Living pictures became a mania. Of course there was no monopoly in the idea. Any stage carpenter of genius 165 FIFTY YEARS OF A LONDONER'S LIFE could do the trick, and immediately there were living pictures at every music hall in town and coimtry. The comic opera choruses were ranged for beauty, and some of the best-laiown actresses of the day could, an they would, confess to having aired their charms in these circmnstances. Harris left to Morton, or the Palace, another legacy — ^a genuine revue. Let that be scored up to his memory ! While we are on the subject of revues, the very first was con- cocted by Mr Seymour Hicks and the late Charles Brookfield — Under the Clock, for the Court Theatre. It was a full generation before its time, and still infinitely superior to the rubbish to which we have been habituated in the meantime. But Brookfield 's Pal o' Archie proved to be pretty poor stuff for the delectation of the new Palace audiences. It was many months ere the living pictures lost their attractiveness, if they ever did. And, so far as the Palace was concerned, another attraction was immediately forth- coming — cinematograph pictures of ciu-ious excellence, produced by a machine called the American Biograph. Charles Morton was, in those days, and for several years, one of the most familiar and respectable figures in London life. He had the air of a strayed banker — a snow-white wig, plentiful " mutton-chop " whiskers, a collar of the kind with which Punch endowed Gladstone, but which Gladstone never wore, a large bow-tie of shepherd's plaid, and an old-fashioned frock coat. His energy was remarkable — ^an eight-o'clock family breakfast in his suburban home was his insistence. He was an early arrival at the Palace, and " finicky " in business detail. He was obstinate in his views as to the value of a performance, declaring that no iadividual was worth more than a hundred pounds a week. No doubt he i66 o c s^ tit 1h !^ O V] H ^ X o z o la < a W a < "O BI, o q • BlP-l Sz