“Oh, mummy!” he cried, in his eager, happy way, “daddy’s cut hisself shavin’.”
“H-h-h-has he cut himself much?” asked the woman, rising.
“Cut hisself much!” exclaimed the innocent child; “he’s cut his bally head off!”
Brough used to tell another story in which the same note of exaggeration was the salient characteristic. It had to do with a Scotsman and a kilt, and afforded a sort of current phrase in his clubs for a time. The quoted phrase was: “I’m a maun o’ few wor-r-r-ds!” The story is not of the kind that can easily be conveyed in cold print.
Some years before his death I went into the Eccentric Club with him. There had been a considerable making of theatrical knights at or about the time; and when we entered the club-room, we found a smart young journalist of the new school inveighing against the knighting of stage folk. Brough, who did not care a red cent one way or the other, but who felt himself bound to stick up for his order, asked:
“But why should not actors be made knights?”
“Because,” answered the adolescent Fleet Streeter, with professional glibness, “they belong to a wandering, a nomadic, race.”
“Sort of Arabian knights, I suppose,” suggested Brough, closing the discussion with the acquiescent ridicule that kills.
“Lal” Brough and John L. Toole were the especial favourites of Londesborough among the players, and they might frequently be seen on his drag—his lordship was an accomplished “whip”—driving down to race-meetings near London, or enjoying in his company the beauties of Scarborough.
Another indomitable patron of the stage in the seventies and eighties was the Duke of Beaufort. His Grace was particularly quick in discovering budding talent in pretty actresses. To his fostering care was due the great advance which Miss Connie Gilchrist made in an education outside the meagre accomplishments demanded in an actress of burlesque—an education which fitted her for taking that high place in Society which she was destined to fill. Ah, dear me! it seems but a little while ago since the Duke was giving those luncheons in the upper room at Rule’s in Maiden Lane, at which the time passed for all of us so quickly and so gaily. Yet how few of those who sat at the board have survived to tell the tale!
In a public-house kept by one Beck in that part of the Strand which backed on to Holywell Street, and has disappeared under the advance of the County Council improvements, there was established a small club of actors and journalists, called the Unity Club. This was a coterie to which admission was not quite so easy as its surroundings might suggest. The talk there was excellent because, I think, there were always a sufficient number of butts upon which to exercise the ingenuity of the wits. It was in this select assembly that George R. Sims was first enabled to give a taste of his quality. His butt-in-ordinary was a very boastful actor named Harcourt, and the verses—chiefly in parody of great poets—which Sims wrote on one of Harcourt’s big boasts will still be recalled by those who were privileged to read one of the few copies printed. The “house-dinner” at the Unity Club was one of the most enjoyable feasts to which I ever sat down. The fare, indeed, was plain and substantial, but the sauce provided by the cheery players and pressmen who sat round the table was the most piquant to be obtained in all London.
At the Unity might sometimes be met David James and Tom Thorne, of the Strand Theatre. The club was just opposite to the theatre. When James and Thorne left the Strand, and, in partnership with Harry Montague, took the Vaudeville, a great amount of public interest was displayed in the venture. The new managers relied on burlesque as an opening experiment, preceded by comedy. The comedy was provided by Andrew Halliday. I forget who wrote the burlesque—Byron, perhaps. But the fortunes of the managers were to be founded by the new work of a new man, and the two burlesque actors from the House of Swanborough were to be enabled to rely thereafter on comedy, and to dispense entirely with burlesque. The new author was James Albery; the new play, “Two Roses.” For this production the services of Henry Irving were engaged—an engagement which evinced considerable managerial discretion, and, incidentally, gave Irving his first real opportunity of making a hit with the London public. All the members of the managerial triumvirate were provided with strong parts. George Honey gave a memorable impersonation of a good-hearted bagman—the “Our Mr. Jenkins” of the bills. Some of his lines were delivered with great unction. He comes under the influence of his wife’s religious belief, and evolves into what he calls “a shining light.” He and his wife are encountered by the heroine of the play.
“How do you do, Mr. Jenkins—or perhaps I should ask, how do you shine?”
“With the mild effulgence of the glow-worm,” is the answer of Our Mr. Jenkins.
“We are all worms,” interpolates his wife.
“Yes, my dear; but we don’t all glow,” was the answer, given by Honey with a half-deprecatory, half exultant expression that was simply inimitable and delightful.
But the Digby Grand of Irving was, after all said and done, the gem of the production. In all his after-life he never surpassed it. Only once did he equal it. I have seen Irving in every impersonation he gave in London, and I shall always hold that he reached high-water mark with the selfish swell of “Two Roses,” and that he touched that mark for the second time with Matthias in “The Bells.”
Albery’s “Two Roses” was succeeded by a comedy from the same author called “Apple-Blossoms.” It was not a success. Nor, indeed, did Albery ever produce another play to equal his first. I came to know him well; collaborated with him in a small way; and visited him when he was living at Evans’s Hotel, and after he had furnished some pleasant chambers in Southampton Street, Bloomsbury. He was an admirable talker, a splendid listener, and possessed a pretty turn for unexpected epigram. The Suffragette existed in those remote days. But she practised under another name. And the questions of Woman’s Rights and Female Emancipation were argued as warmly then as now. The subject came up on one occasion at Albery’s rooms. His visitors were taking sides. One strong believer in tradition took his stand on Genesis, and asserted woman’s inferiority on Scriptural grounds.
“Woman was made out of the rib of Man,” he declared.
“And was thus a mere side-issue of creation,” suggested Albery.
Albery ended sadly. He became addicted to a habit which ruined a good many of the best fellows of a convivial period. His great gifts were wasted entirely in conversational sallies, and among boon companions at the Savage Club and other Bohemian resorts. He had married a lady who subsequently “went on the stage,” and greatly succeeded in her vocation, becoming one of the most popular actresses of her time and of our own. A story of the days of Albery’s decadence has come to me. Some time before his lamented death, and in a contrite mood, he called his wife to his bedside, and said:
“Ah, my dear, you should have married a different man!”
“I did, Jim,” was the tearful reply.
And there, I think, we plumb the very deeps of pathos.
It would be, however, an endless, exhausting, and uninteresting task to pursue my friends the players through their various theatres. The easier way is to catch them during their hours of relaxation in their clubs and in their pubs. The billiard-room of the Junior Garrick between half-past eleven at night and two in the morning was a covert always successfully drawn by those in search of theatrical game. Pool and pyramids were the games most in vogue, but more especially pool. Here you were sure of encountering “Jimmy” Fernandez (I never knew an actor, however sedate and inaccessible, who, being christened “James,” was not called “Jimmy” by his confrères), a devoted exponent with the cue; H. B. Farnie was rarely absent. He was a great hulking Scotsman with a slight limp, of which he hated to be reminded. He had originally been a medical student at Edinburgh. John Clarke, of the Adelphi—no relation to John Sleeper Clarke—was another of this coterie. He was a fine comic and character actor. He was the husband of Miss Furtado, a favourite Adelphi actress of the time. He played with unvarying success under many managements, including that of the Bancrofts, was of a grumbling disposition, and was known as Lame Clarke, to distinguish him from the other John Clarke—Sleeper of that ilk—lower down the Strand.
Clarence Holt, the tragedian, greatly fancied himself at the game of billiards, and had succeeded in cutting more billiard-cloths than any man living. Clarence Holt (his real name was Jo) was a barn-stormer of the old school; and although in general conversation he scowled, and made use of weird expletives, he was as good-hearted a fellow as ever lived. At the Saturday house-dinners of the club he invariably gave a recitation of “The Old Clock on the Stairs,” and always accepted with a sort of condescending and regal dignity the ironical cheers which it invariably evoked. His mingling of oaths with endearing epithets was one of the quaintest things in the world.
“How is Miss Holt?” one would ask.
“Oh, the dear, darling, bally little idiot—she’s well, dear boy, well!”
James and Thorne were also habitués of the billiard-room of the “J.G.,” as it was affectionately called by its members. And, indeed, in the stifling atmosphere of that room, which was situated in the upper part of the house, you would meet from time to time one half the actors in town. It was the favourite resort of the Swanboroughs, and of many others whose names have escaped my memory. In the Savage Club there was no billiard-room, but there was always a good attendance of actors after the closing of the theatres. The Garrick itself was never an actors’ club in the exclusive sense of the word. One or two of the upper crust of the “profession” always belong to it, to justify and perpetuate the use of the title. But to the rank and file of the calling it stands in the relation of Paradise to the Peri. So that, beyond the Junior Garrick and the Savage, the noble army of actors had no clubs. Their usual meeting-places, therefore, became pubs. And these seemed to be selected with a view to obtaining the utmost discomfort conceivable combined with the highest scale of charges possible. Thus, in the seventies the chief meeting-place of the theatrical fraternity was a wine-bar in Russell Street, Covent Garden, next door to the “Hummums,” and occupying a site now covered by a market tavern. From one to four o’clock of an afternoon the wine-bar at Rockley’s was crammed with all sorts and conditions of stage folk, and their contributory artistic aids—managers, costumiers, authors, artists, journalists.
About half a dozen times in my life did I visit Rockley’s, but I retain the most vivid recollection of the close atmosphere, the mingled smell of sawdust and port, the loud buzz of conversation, and the frequent laugh that followed the last new story or the smartly uttered retort. It will suffice here to record the impression of a single visit. The little man standing close to the bar, the centre of an eager group intent on his poignant utterance, is Shiel Barry. Barry was an Irishman, an actor of extraordinary intensity, and a man of considerable general knowledge. He was an omnivorous reader, and, when I first knew him, a great admirer of Carlyle, some passages of whose “French Revolution” he recited with a wonderfully lurid effect. I have recorded elsewhere in this book my impression of his masterly interpretation of the part of the miser in “Les Cloches de Corneville.” His rendering of certain of the characters in Dion Boucicault’s Irish plays was equally memorable and impressive. He was a master of pathos and ferocity, and could at once attract or repel by the strange realism of his embodiment of either emotion. The flamboyant gentleman with the Louis-Napoleonic moustache is William Holland, of the Surrey Theatre, the North Woolwich Gardens, the Circus at Covent Garden, and finally manager of the Corporation’s amusements at Blackpool, which became this particular Napoleon’s St. Helena. Conversing with him is Dr. Joseph Pope, familiarly known as “Jo,” and nicknamed “Jope.” Dr. Pope had been a surgeon in the army, serving in the Royal Artillery. He was a brother of Mr. Sam Pope, Q.C., of the Parliamentary Bar. Jo had been celebrated as the fattest man in the army, and Sam was distinguished as the fattest man at the Bar. Sam was a bachelor making an enormous income. Jo was a bachelor living on his half-pay; and it used to be said, that when Jo was in need of a remittance wherewithal to set right his balance at Cox’s, he would apply to Sam. If Sam proved irresponsive, Jo at once threatened to go on to the music-hall stage. That always “fetched” Sam, who hated the Bohemianism in which Jo wallowed.
William Brunton discusses costume designs with Alias, and Harry S. Leigh hums a new lyric which he has composed for a production at the Alhambra. Brunton, espying me, edges through the crowd to me.
“Have you heard George Hodder’s non sequitur?” he asks.
“No. What was it?”
“George was sent down to Stony Stratford by the Daily News. When he woke up in the morning, he had forgotten the name of the place. He rang the bell, and desired the chambermaid to send ‘boots’ to him. When that menial appeared, George asked: ‘Wh-wh-what’s the n-name of this p-place?’ ‘Stony Stratford,’ answered ‘boots.’ ‘Ah!’ said Hodder, ‘you may well c-call it Stony Stratford—for I never was so b-b-bitten with bugs in the whole course of my l-l-life!”
Rockley’s was at best a cramped and pestiferous inferno, ill ventilated, and without a chair to sit down on. But its customers made long stays, notwithstanding, and I understood that a considerable amount of theatrical business was done on the premises. It was a sort of rialto of the “profession.” From Rockley’s, the actor and those who do business with him migrated to the new Gaiety bar opened in the Strand. This was a horseshoe-shaped bar next door to the theatre, much patronized by the Brothers Mansell, by Henry Herman, by the then unknown D’Oyly Carte, by several of the Nationalist Members of Parliament, and by many of the shapely members of the chorus from burlesque theatres in the immediate vicinity. It was leased by one “Bill” Bayliss, who in after-years, and during the Beaufort period, conducted Rule’s, in Maiden Lane. For some years the Gaiety bar remained a great afternoon centre for the actors—particularly those who happened to be out of an engagement and to retain an expensive thirst. During a Gaiety entr’acte I have smoked a cigarette in the place, but regret that I have had no great personal acquaintance with it. Its history for ten or twelve years from its opening would be well worth writing by a man possessing the requisite qualifications.
It was the last public-house meeting-place of stage people. There are clubs now to suit every grade of actor. And chorus girls are no more seen in bars. They affect the swagger restaurants—and I, for one, cannot blame them. A greater propriety in attire is observed by the actor of to-day. He no longer affects a Quartier Latin Bohemianism. He takes himself quite seriously as a social unit. And with reason. For just as every citizen of the United States is a possible President, so is every actor a possible Knight, and every actress a possible “my lady.”
To record the number of my theatrical acquaintances, and my recollections, pleasant and unpleasant, of our forgathering, would fill many chapters. The foregoing stray notes on my friends the players are remarkable for the omission of many names which I recall with the most lively sentiments of gratitude for many a dull hour enlivened, and for many a joyous moment heightened and prolonged.
To the patrons of the music-halls of my early days about town, and to the performers in them, those places of entertainment were never known as “halls,” but always as “’alls.” Nothing should more eloquently indicate the vast change that has taken place in their administration. In those days the “’alls” were held in general disrepute. To-day their repute in the land is sweet and sound. They have, indeed, ceased to be halls; they have become palaces. And they have evidently come to stay, always widening their sphere of influence, and proving, as time goes on, an increasing source of anxiety to those who have invested their capital in playhouses.
For the evolution of the theatre has been very gradual. No great departure has been made on the boards since the playgoer was taught to demand accuracy of detail in staging. That was effected by the Bancrofts in the sixties. Managers have since their day “gone one better” in the cost of a production, in the gorgeousness of scenery and properties, in the numerical force of their stage crowds. But nothing since their production has been more appropriately acted and staged than the Robertson series of comedies. And no reproduction—whatever it may have cost—has proved an artistic advance on the Bancroft presentation of the “School for Scandal.” We have better theatres, and we have more of them. The comfort of the auditorium has been immeasurably increased. The space devoted to the stage by our newspapers has quadrupled. The playgoing public has grown enormously. But the playgoer has been marking time all the while. And the dramatist, in this particular respect, has been following the brilliant example of the playgoer.
But if the drama has ceased to show itself progressive, if, according to some, it even exhibits symptoms of decadence, the evolution of the music-hall has been that of recovery, progress, and reform. The music hall has risen “on stepping-stones of its dead self to higher things.” And only those who can recall the utter unloveliness of that “dead self” can properly appreciate the privileges accorded to the patrons of the halls and palaces as they are conducted in this present year of grace.
To begin with, no woman of the period with which I am dealing, with any regard for her reputation, would think of entering one of these places of entertainment. She would run the inevitable risk of being affronted by the patrons of the hall, and being outraged by the words and gestures of the performers on the stage. Phryne swarmed in the auditorium—poor soul!—and by the bars lounged or swaggered the shameless males, Jew and Gentile of his kind, who lived on the exploitation of female beauty. The smaller halls, such as the Pavilion (it was a small hall in those days); the Trocadero, which rose on the ruins of the Argyll Rooms, and was run by old Bob Bignell; the Oxford in Oxford Street; and Weston’s in Holborn—all were hot, ill-ventilated, and stuffy interiors; and the moral atmosphere was as warm as the physical.
Having once got his customer more or less comfortably seated, or propped up close to a bar, inside his “’all,” the main object of the proprietor was to induce him to drink as much as possible of very bad wine and spirits at positively fancy prices. Phryne, always hovering near, exhibited a nice solicitude in forwarding the proprietor’s views in this direction. The waiters, during the frequent “waits,” made a descent on the stalls, and, forcing their legs through the exiguous spaces, contributed largely to our discomfort. I recall the revenge of a friend of mine on a waiter who had forced himself past us for the fourth time. My friend was a Newmarket man, and was up in London for the Epsom Spring Meeting. A whisky-and-soda stood on the little ledge in front of him. As the waiter crushed past, my friend very neatly tipped his glass over on to the floor. The glass fell shivered, the waiter turned round, my friend denounced him for his clumsiness and demanded that his glass should be replenished. The waiter protested. But the manager of the “’all” decided against his menial. A fresh drink and a new glass were provided, and not again during the course of that evening did the waiter attempt to brush past our stalls. Not quite honest on the part of my friend? Perhaps not; but it was quite effective, and, under the circumstances, what would you?
Originally the “’all” was merely an annexe to a big public house. The thing commenced in “harmonic clubs,” “free-and-easies,” and the like, and many of the customs and traditions of the “free-and-easy” persisted for a long time under the altered condition of things. Thus, the programme was, as yet, an unknown document, and the singers were introduced by a bibulous person who sat on an elevated armchair with his back to the stage, and his eye roving over the house. To this day I never can quite make out to what class of society the individuals belonged who sat round the chairman’s table. They must have had money, for cigars and brandies-and-soda, and even that champagne which was innocent of grape, were consumed at their expense. An indifferent, honest crowd, no doubt. Sharks, exploiters, billiard-markers, sporting touts, reinforced from time to time by a contingent of moneyed “mugs.”
At the “Mogul” in Drury Lane—afterwards known as the “Middlesex”—presided nightly the king, emperor, titulary chief, of chairmen. This was a man named Fox. His face, encrimsoned by potations long and deep, was large, and beamed with good-nature. His nose was immense and pendulous—more a proboscis than a mere nose. But the boys in the gallery—a rough lot they were—took old Fox very seriously indeed. And it was quite amazing to witness the way in which, by merely rising and calling upon some delinquent by name, he could quell an incipient riot among “the gods.” Thieves and their trulls, the scourings of Drury Lane tributaries, and the lawless denizens of the turnings off the “Dials”—they were quelled by the menace in his eye, and trembled at the deep bass of his commanding voice. Fox once sat to an artist friend of mine, and the resulting picture was the very best Bardolph I have ever seen on canvas.
When I was a young man “seeing life”—ay, and tasting it, too, for that matter—I admit having gained some experiences that I would quite gladly have missed. It is inevitable that the memory will be charged with a reminiscence which is recalled with disgust, and that many of the so-called pleasures of youth leave a nasty taste in the mouth which is never entirely displaced. The “star comique” is one of those memories. George Leybourne was not at his zenith when I first saw him. He had essayed to live the life which he was supposed to depict on the stage—with the usual result. But he still held the first claim on the music-hall public. It is another circumstance marking the complete and rapid evolution of the music-hall to note that forty years ago George Leybourne held the same position with the patrons of these establishments as was afterwards held by Chevalier and Leno, and is at the present time of writing held by Harry Lauder.
Leybourne was still singing “Champagne Charlie is my Name” when I heard him, and the amusing sight was nightly afforded of lawyers’ clerks from Lincoln’s Inn, and shop-boys from Islington, and young men-about-town on twenty-five shillings a week, waving their mugs of beer or “goes” of whisky, and madly joining in the exhilarating chorus as though champagne was their daily beverage. But it was not to join in his bacchanalian choruses that the greater part of the audience crowded to hear Leybourne’s songs. The “star comique” was ever provided with offal for the pigs in front. And it was when the orchestra began on the opening bar of ditties like, “Oh, why did she leave her Jeremiah?” that necks were craned and ears set. For the pornographic part of the show was now “on.” The words of the song itself did not offend save by reason of their inanity. But between the verses the singer introduced long monologues known to music-hall bards as something “spoken.” It was in these “spoken” interpolations that Leybourne “let himself go.” He cheerily set out to discover how far a pornographic artist could proceed with a music-hall audience. Sometimes he played with suggestion and innuendo. But properly encouraged and liberally stimulated, he would spurt filth from his mouth as a juggler emits flames from the same orifice. The more reckless he became, the more delighted grew his audiences. That was Leybourne as I remember him. And Leybourne was typical of the music-hall as it then was.
Off the stage poor George was a good-natured, light-hearted, generous, and conceited fellow—the friend of bookmakers, Cockney sportsmen, publicans, and sinners; and the model of the mere middle-class boy in offices, who imitated his dress and peculiarities, and regarded him as the mirror of Society. The great man drove from hall to hall in a little carriage drawn by a pair of wonderfully neat ponies. The champagne of his evening ditties became the usual tipple of the artist during his afternoon calls at his favourite bars. He drank, indeed, many of the sweets of artistic success—adulation, flattery, the favour of women, and the jealousy of men. He lived hard and died hard-up. For even in his time the shadow of a change was visible, though it was no bigger than a man’s hand.
Other music-hall artists there were who, however disinclined they might feel in the matter, were obliged to follow in the wake of the “star comique.” Arthur Lloyd was a genuine humorist, and had a peculiar velvety quality of voice, which was conspicuous by its absence in the throats of his contemporaries. As an artist he was incomparably the most accomplished, and the most versatile of the music-hall men of his time. But though he got hold of some songs that enjoyed a wide and long popularity, he never made one of those sensational “hits” which have accidentally come in the way of less-accomplished performers. “The Great Vance” was another of the music-hall favourites. This wonderfully overrated person belonged to the Leybourne school of thought, and illustrated the swell of the period as accurately as was possible by a man whose aspirates were scarcely on a level with his aspirations. “The Great Macdermott” came a little later than the trio whom I have named, but was long singing on the same stage as Lloyd and Vance, the popularity of both of whom he was destined to eclipse.
Macdermott had been a sailor in the Royal Navy. I remember his giving me on one occasion a most dramatic account of how he came to leave the service. The general details I forget. But there is impressed on my memory the picture of Macdermott being rowed ashore in a jolly-boat, rising in the stern-sheets, and, shaking his fist at his ship, exclaiming: “Her Majesty’s Navy, adoo!” In the fo’castle there is a constant demand for the very class of song which was finding so much favour at the hands of the groundlings when this songster took to the stage. And as a follower of poor Leybourne, the sailor-man-turned-comedian made his first efforts. He was minded if he could to “go one better” than the creator of “Champagne Charlie.” But that wonderful impersonator had already sounded the depths. Macdermott, however, soon asserted his claim to a second place with such compositions as “Moses and Aaron sat on a rock.” These essays in an equivocal genre brought the singer quickly to the front. Yet it was not as an illustrator of pornographic minstrelsy that Macdermott was to make his “hit.” When that wave of patriotism which its detractors called “Jingoism” swept the country, Macdermott was to the fore as the laureate and bard of the patriots.
Macdermott, indeed, has enriched the dictionaries of more nations than one with a new word. That is the word “Jingoism,” as used in politics. He sang a chorus in which we hurled defiance at the wide world, and soon the wide world was singing it, too. Macdermott had a wonderfully distinct enunciation, and had a peculiar knack of emphasizing the initial letter of every word he sang. The chorus which created the furore, as sung by the great man, went in this way:
“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!”
While this ditty was the vogue, the Great Macdermott firmly believed that he and Lord Beaconsfield were the two principal Conservative forces of the day. With the capital he made out of his patriotism he retired from the music-hall stage. Unkind rivals declared that his patriotic howling had cracked his voice. He set up a “Music-Hail Agency” in the Waterloo Bridge Road, and joined the redoubtable Jack Coney in “making a book.” History holds no further record of him and his deeds.
About the same time James Fawn, Herbert Campbell, and Charles Coborn, began to demonstrate to the public—and this fixes their place in the elusive story of the evolution of the music-hall—that it is possible to have a song in which there shall be real humour, the nice delineation, a “taking” tune, without any appeal to that which is lowest and most bestial in the minds of the public. Then followed Chevalier, Dan Leno, and the comic singers of the present day, with whom, of course, these reminiscences have nothing to do.
Perhaps the most deplorable feature in the entertainments given by music-hall managers in the early days of my acquaintanceship with those places of entertainment was the lady performer. Those terrible young (or middle-aged) persons who were announced as the “Sisters” So-and-So, and were inevitable on every stage, always succeeded in putting a portion of the audience into a bad temper. Their short coloured skirts, their fixed smirk, the mechanical steps of their dance, their metallic voices—these things have left an impression not pleasant to recall. They couldn’t sing. They couldn’t dance. And their “make-up” proved that they couldn’t even paint. Still, there were women appearing before the patrons of the “’alls” who possessed the authentic gift. One of the earliest of these was Jenny Hill. “The Vital Spark” they used to call her on the bills.
In her choice of subject she allowed herself a wide range, alternating between the pathetic and the humorous. She was very clever in depicting the coster class. She was the forerunner of Bessie Bellwood in that department. And I have always held that she was possessed of much higher artistic qualities than fell to the lot of poor Bessie. And she had the same readiness of retort when the “gods” in the gallery felt called upon to interpose with humours of their own. At the “Mogul” Jenny Hill had frequent opportunities of exhibiting her skill in this direction, and never failed to score off her saucy admirers on the slopes of cloud-capped Olympus. Bessie Bellwood revelled in the same sort of conflict. But it must be admitted that the older artist had the command of a more subtle and good-humoured method. Bellwood’s retorts were often coarse, and always stung. But, although the less accomplished performer of the two, Bessie Bellwood made a quicker jump into fame and achieved a wider popularity than her older rival. It was another case of getting hold of a song that has a “hit” in it. “What cheer, ’Ria! ’Ria’s on the job!” lifted the unknown genius immediately into the front rank—a position which she kept till her death. The regard in which this absolutely untaught woman was held was shown by the thousands of the public that turned out to follow her funeral, and line the streets through which the procession to the cemetery passed.
It was with the utmost difficulty that Bessie Bellwood could be induced to study a new song. She had no love for music. She had plenty of money, she was fond of racing and Society and fun of all kinds. She could read and write, but that was about all. Arthur Williams was the only man I ever met who seemed to know anything of her early life, and he always declared that her occupation, before she went on the stage, was that of skinning rabbits in the East End. Notwithstanding the obscurity of her origin and the paucity of her attainments, she was the chosen domestic companion of a Duke and of a Marquis!
It may seem strange, to a generation possessing only an experience of the chastened variety theatre of the period, to learn that in my day a person entirely lacking in education should attain to a foremost position on the music-half stage. But the thing was by no means uncommon. An amusing case in point occurs to me. Hollingshead, of the Gaiety, was always on the lookout for “talent,” and he was not at all particular as to the source from which he drew it. Calling on him one day at the theatre, I found him considerably upset by a discovery which he had just made. He had long admired the performance of a certain music-hall artist, and, when an opportunity arose, he offered him a part in a burlesque then in course of preparation. Good terms were offered. The music-hall artist was flattered, and the offer was accepted. But when his part was handed to him by the stage-manager, it was found to be of no earthly use to him, for he could not read! Fortunately, the artist’s ignorance in other matters came to Hollingshead’s assistance in determining the engagement. For the contract had been signed in the gentleman’s name by a friend, and was invalid!
One of those incidents by which one may note the progress of an evolution comes in its natural order in this place. Albert Chevalier had failed to obtain from the general public supporting the theatre the amount of attention and critical admiration that was accorded to him freely by the judicious few. For years he was known at club banquets and the like as the writer, composer, and singer, of those coster songs which have since won for him fame and fortune. In a burlesque of “Aladdin” put on at the Strand Theatre by Edouin, Chevalier introduced his famous “’Armonic Club.” Its humours appealed for the moment, but it did not make one of those “hits” the impact of which sets all the town tingling. And for a long time after the run of the Strand “Aladdin” Chevalier was unable to obtain “a shop.” He was one of the many unfortunate artists whose peculiar vein of talent had not found the proper assay.
When he was at last offered an engagement as a music-hall singer, he naturally hesitated at taking a step which he rightly regarded as irrevocable. He recognized the fact that his acceptance meant a renunciation of the theatre. And to his profession—hard mistress though she had been—he was deeply attached. I was one of those friends to whom he repaired for advice over what appeared to him a momentous issue. I am glad to recall the fact that I strongly advised him to take the plunge. Nor was I ever in doubt as to the success of his songs with an audience even then emerging from under the spell of the raucous and “rawty” comiques. A number of us went to the Pavilion to witness his début. We had scattered ourselves all over the hall—it was the new building, and not the stuffy old hole of the seventies—and we were prepared to act as an unsalaried claque. But our services were never needed. With great judgment, Chevalier had selected as his first song “The Coster’s Serenade.” It went home at once. The delicacy of the art appealed alike to stalls and gallery. This refinement of treatment was novel. It was something like a revelation to the “gods.” The song went with a will. And Chevalier’s fortune was assured. We who had attended as unpaid and unwanted claquers were not without a vocation, after all. We were watchers at the parting of the ways. The old music-hall of the Great Vances and the Bessie Bellwoods was passing away. The new order of the Fragsons and the Margaret Coopers was imminent.
It is difficult, in tracing the course of any evolution, to attribute exactly the dates of transition, or to assign scientifically the contributing causes of change. But I think that one would not be far from the truth in attributing to three causes the wonderful improvement which has taken place in music-hall conditions and entertainments in the course of a generation.
In the first place, the erection of more modern, more pretentious, and more comfortable buildings on the ruins of the ancient pest-houses almost necessitated a performance from which should be eliminated the more objectionable features of the old pothouse programme. In the second place, due importance should be given to the persistent efforts of managers of the Charles Morton school, who, foreseeing the possibilities of the variety show, cherished high ideals, but cherished them on strictly business lines. In the third place, one must allow something for an improvement in public taste. This factor is—for reasons which I cannot discuss here—the least potent. But it is far from being negligible. It is a case, indeed, in which the supply created the demand, not where the demand created the supply.
Charles Morton, whose name must be imperishably associated with the transformation of the halls, was the least professional-looking manager in London. He was of short stature, wore ginger-coloured side-whiskers, dressed in a frock-coat and silk hat, and affected gold pince-nez. Asked to guess at his calling in life, a stranger would probably have put him down as the owner of a large suburban drapery establishment, who acted on Sundays as sidesman at the nearest church. And, truth to tell, Morton’s innate sense of decorum was so strong that his demeanour in the halls over which he presided would have done credit to a churchwarden. No man was ever half so respectable as Charlie Morton looked. His work was none the less efficient and permanent on that account. And it is satisfactory to reflect that he who had commenced the crusade against pornography at the Canterbury, on the other side of the water, should have lived to preside for years over the fortunes of the Palace, in the heart of the West End.
In the seventies the Alhambra was not reckoned—as it is to-day—among the “’alls.” The Empire and kindred establishments were as yet undreamt of by the pleasure-hunter. And the Alhambra was a thing apart. Leicester Square, on the eastern side of which it is situated, was then the most disreputable spot of earth to be found in the centre of any capital in Europe. Here on the sunniest summer days might be found promenading some of the most villainous adventurers from the capitals of Europe. They cloaked themselves like brigands, glared at the passing shop-girls with wicked black eyes, twirled their fierce moustaches, and rolled cigarettes with a diligence which they gave to no other innocent pursuit. They were the off-scourings of Europe. The swindlers, gamblers, political rogues, the souteneurs, the craven shirkers of conscription, the European riff-raff that chooses London as its favourite dumping-ground, were all to be found promenading in Leicester Square. John Leech has fixed the type in the pages of Punch. The interesting émigré may still be detected prowling about the vicinity. But he is a wonderfully ameliorated brigand—a tame and nearly normal invader. The improvement in the enclosure itself accounts for this. The squalor in which he throve as in his native element has gone. And the picturesque but filthy villain has happily gone with it. The “Lee-cess-tare Squar” of my salad days is no more!
The paling that surrounded the gardens in the centre of the square had been broken down. It became the receptacle of the least sanitary parts of the rubbish of the neighbourhood. And as the rubbish-heaps increased, augmented by contributions of dead dog and dead cat, the gamins of the place found it become more and more desirable as a rallying-point and a playground. A statue of one of the Georges bestrode an adipose charger (fearfully out of drawing) on a pedestal in the centre of the enclosure. Everything of a humorous and adventurous kind which took place in the West End in those days was put down to the medical students of the Metropolis. After a night of dense fog, the public passing through the square discovered that the King’s steed had been given a coat of white paint relieved by black spots. On another foggy night the same body of roisterers—or another—unhorsed the monarch, and broke him into pieces, scattering his remains on the ground; for the effigy was not carved out of marble, but was a case of moulded metal. The monarch was discovered to be a hollow mockery. For a time the spotted horse dominated the squalid enclosure, grotesque and riderless.
Then Baron Grant appeared upon the scene, and proceeded to abate this Metropolitan nuisance. Grant was a company-promoter of the well-known type. His real name was Gottheimer; and he sought, but failed to obtain, a seat in Parliament as a Member of one of the London divisions. He built an enormous house in Kensington, known as “Grant’s Folly.” Before the mansion was finished the owner went “broke,” and, as it was not found suited to the requirements of any of the few millionaires then in need of a town-house, it was pulled down and the materials sold. The marble pillars supporting the ceiling in the hall of “Grant’s Folly” now adorn the grill-room of the Holborn Restaurant. Grant, having obtained the necessary permission, set about the task of converting Leicester Square into a beauty-spot. He hoped, and, indeed, believed, that it would be opened to the public by Royalty, and that he would be rewarded with an English title. He desired, also, to further his designs on a Metropolitan electorate. He was disappointed in both directions; and his subsequent bankruptcy showed that both the Queen and the wooed constituency exercised foresight in disregarding his claims.
But, whatever the Baron’s motives may have been, Londoners owe him a considerable debt of gratitude in respect of the transformation of the most disreputable public square in all Europe. At no time has London shown itself over-anxious to acknowledge the obligation, and to-day it has probably forgotten all about its dead benefactor. I knew the Baron quite well. He was a dapper, well-groomed, ambitious little man. Had the tide not turned and swept him off his feet, he would have gained admission to the House of Commons—one of the few associations of English gentlemen by whom promoters of the Baron Grant type are not merely tolerated, but even made welcome.
Amid the filth and squalor of the un-reformed square the high edifice of the Alhambra rose, giving the absent touch of the Orient to a locality sheltering many swarthy sons of the East. And there was something Oriental in the entertainment, the chief feature of which was ballet. In the seventies, and before the coming of the Empire and kindred palaces, every man-about-town dropped in at the Alhambra at least once during the week. He was sure to find himself among friends. And in case that did not happen, he had offered to him the easy opportunity of picking one up. The establishment was owned by a company, the principal managing directors being a bill-poster called Nagle, a friend of Nagle’s called Sutton, and Captain Fryer, a wine-merchant in the City. Fryer had married the old Strand favourite, Bella Goodall, and was a member of the Junior Garrick and other theatrical clubs, in one of which I first made his acquaintance. John Baum was the manager, and the hard-working and inimitable Jacobi was chef d’orchestra.
John Baum, the manager, presented to the ordinary observer rather an interesting problem. He was at once manager of the Alhambra, lessee of Cremorne, and the owner of a glove-shop in Piccadilly, situated on or about, the spot on which the fountain now stands; for at that time the open space which spreads itself before the Criterion was covered by a triangular block of buildings, the back of which faced the London Pavilion, which then stood close by the Café Monico and a nasty anatomical exhibition known as Dr. Kahn’s Museum. The exhibitor eked out a bare existence by pandering to the prurient, and was at last compelled by the authorities to close his unspeakably sorry show. But I must not side-track Baum in describing his surroundings. He was a little, fair-haired person with a rotund figure. He invariably appeared in public in a tall hat, a black frock-coat, and a narrow black tie, carefully fastened in a bow. But for a scrubby moustache, he looked far more like a Dissenting parson than like a music-hall manager. No one could have inferred from his personal appearance that he could be in any way connected with two such establishments as the Alhambra and Cremorne.
Baum was a most reticent man. Little or nothing was to be got out of him in the course of conversation. He was at the same time quite polite, and even affable, in his manner. I once accepted his invitation to go and interview De Groof, the intrepid adventurer, who was about to make an aerial flight from Cremorne. At the present moment, when aerial navigation has just come back, and come to stay, a short reference to De Groof may not be considered out of place. About De Groof himself there was nothing particularly striking. His name notwithstanding, the aeronaut was a Frenchman, and he reposed, or affected to repose, the most absolute reliance on his machine. The latter was more of a parachute than anything else. It consisted of two enormous wings worked by pulleys. Between the wings a seat was fixed for the accommodation of the flyer. The machine was to be fixed to a balloon, from which it could be disconnected at will, when it was expected to descend gracefully to the ground. I did not witness the ascent, and so was spared seeing the catastrophe. The balloon failed to get away satisfactorily. The weight of the machine in tow was no doubt the cause; and De Groof, fearing collision with a church-steeple in Sidney Street, Fulham Road, detached his apparatus prematurely. The machine fell to the earth like a stone, and the unfortunate inventor was instantly killed.
The Alhambra audiences were drawn by an exhibition of terpsichorean art and female beauty. And establishments devoting themselves to such an exhibition will have lots of hangers-on. One of the most noticeable of these was an exceedingly well-known but ancient and cadaverous-looking Hebrew not wholly unconnected—if there was anything in current report—with West End usury. He was supposed to be the benefactor of beauty in distress—the guide, philosopher, and friend, of impecunious maidenhood. Nor was his philanthropy confined to members of the corps de ballet.
Certain of the habitués of the house had an admission behind the scenes to what was known as the “canteen,” enjoying the privilege, which, strangely enough, seems to appeal both to youth and old age, of drinking champagne made of gooseberries in the company of ballet-girls in gauze skirts and no bodices to speak of. It has always struck me as strange that men accustomed to luxurious surroundings in their homes and clubs can extract any pleasure in becoming temporary participants of an existence the dominant note of which is squalor, in which all the senses are disagreeably assaulted, and the inevitable consequence of which is a poignant sense of personal degradation! The “canteen” is, happily, a thing of the past.
Before Baum’s management of the Alhambra it was conducted for a time by a man called Strange. This gentleman had been previously a waiter at the St. James’s Restaurant—the “Jimmy’s” of later days—and he was running the show, I think, in 1870. During that lurid year the Alhambra made a lot of money, for the war feeling ran high, and the management astutely gave prominence in its programme to rival national airs. Partisanship was evoked. The house was nightly crowded by patriots on both sides, and scuffles and encounters were among the ordinary diversions of the evening. It is wonderful to see how doughty and valorous your fighting man who stays at home can be! Strange was supposed by the supporters of the house to be consumed by a hopeless passion for the première danseuse, who spurned his addresses. I never asked him about it, for, although he always made an effort to be civil to persons of my calling, he was a churlish fellow, and he wore flowing side-whiskers, which was in itself an offence. Both he and the object of his middle-aged affection have been dead this many a day.
My memory of the Alhambra stage is as a dream of fair women. Whether as ballet-girls, as singers, or as actresses in opera-bouffe, the women engaged were always lovely. They become visualized for me now in a procession of pretty faces and divine forms. There is Kate Santley, fair-haired and vivacious, and fresh from the music-halls and her success with “The Bells go ringing for Sarah!” There passes now Cornélie D’Anka, the golden-haired Hungarian, with the Amazonian figure and the exquisite voice; and behind her, as I look, looms, indistinct but recognizable, the figure of an Oriental potentate visiting our shores—that, indeed, of the Shah of Persia. Scasi, with her well-trained voice, passes from the Alhambra to the Surrey Gardens. Scasi, as will be seen, is Isaacs spelled backwards, and with the superfluous “a” deleted. She was the daughter of a furniture-dealer in Great Queen Street. The old Surrey Gardens, for which she abandoned the Alhambra, was the scene of the last appearance in public of the beautiful Valérie Reece—the late Lady Meux. Strange to think that the delightfully irresponsible little Bohémienne of the jocund days should have evolved into the owner of a Derby winner—Volodyvoski, which she leased to the American, Mr. Whitney—and the organizer and provider of equipment to a battery of artillery for service in South Africa. The name of Julia Seaman calls up to me that lady’s appearance in “The Black Crook,” in which fine production she played with extraordinary effect the part of the malignant fairy. A more inspiring performance than that in which I subsequently saw her at Paravicini’s theatre in Camden Town. She then essayed—not very convincingly—the rôle of Hamlet.
Pitteri was première danseuse for more years than it would be quite gallant to recall. Although assuming the chief place in ballet, this famous dancer possessed none of those sylph-like characteristics which are usually associated with the chief of the ballerine. She was a lady of opulent charms and large figure. In those days there was always engaged in the Alhambra production that epicene excrescence, the male ballet-dancer. At the Alhambra it was the duty of this individual to support the figure of Pitteri as she made a semicircle in the air, and to hold her when she assumed those poses which alternated her spells of purely terpsichorean exercise. The man ballet-dancer supporting Pitteri earned his wages whatever they may have been. Sara—known as Wiry Sal—was another favourite of the Alhambra ballet. This lady belonged to the high-kicking, athletic order of Corybantes. She was accompanied by two other high-kickers, and the three became known about town as “the world, the flesh, and the devil.”
After the reign of John Baum, the directors of the Alhambra were for ever changing their manager. All sorts and conditions of managers—from William Holland and Joseph Cave up to John Hollingshead—had a try at it. But not one of them seemed able to get along with the Nagles, the Suttons, and the Winders, of the board of directors. One by one these reactionaries died off, and under a reconstructed board and an enterprising and settled management the establishment at present flourishes like a green bay-tree.
One of the last occasions on which I visited the Alhambra in my capacity as a member of the Press was on the occasion of Sandow’s appearance at that establishment. He challenged and defeated a “strong man” who was then drawing the town. After the performance we were invited to a supper given in the champion’s honour in a café—the name of which I forget; it stood between the Alhambra and the Cavour—for even in those early days Sandow had a keen appreciation of the value of a réclame. Sir Reginald Hanson took the chair on the occasion, and the police paid us a domiciliary visit at one o’clock in the morning. Our names and addresses were solemnly taken down—a ceremony which occupied much time; but we never heard any more of the matter. Sandow has gone far since that frugal entertainment of the London Press.
The café at which we were invited to sup with Sandow must have occupied the site, or have been very close to it, once devoted to the squalid orgies of “The Judge and Jury.” Elsewhere in these rambling reminiscences I have alluded to ineffaceable memories which one would willingly expunge. Through life one looks back on experiences which one would gladly forget, but cannot. They cling like burrs, and pursue like an evil odour. My recollection of “The Judge and Jury” furnishes such an experience. I visited the place once. Nothing on earth could induce me to pay it a second visit. The entertainment was in two parts. The first consisted of a mock trial presided over by “Baron Nicholson.” Before this libidinous old president, “barristers,” duly arrayed in wig and gown, called witnesses, male and female of their kind, and proceeded to examine and cross-examine with an amount of licence and obscenity that set up in the hearer a sort of moral nausea. The “Baron’s” charge to the jury was a tissue of ribaldry and bawdry which to me seemed simply awful, but which appealed to the habitués of the squalid hall.
The trial at an end, Nicholson’s bench was removed, and behind it was seen to be a stage-curtain. To the strains of a piano this was drawn up, and on a revolving platform were discovered the figures of some women representing groups from the classics. The goddesses of Olympus were more sadly aspersed by this exhibition of shameless flesh than had been the Bench and Bar of England by Nicholson’s travesty. As the platform revolved, the women, with nothing on save their pink fleshings, smirked and leered at the audience in front. Needless to say, the figures in this exhibition of posé plastique were neither young nor beautiful. The pink fleshings could scarcely keep in place the sagging charms of a mature Venus, the lank limbs and scraggy neck of Diana. . . . Faugh! London knows better now.
People have short memories—particularly in the matter of benefits received. To-day, for instance, it is the usual and the correct thing to credit the London County Council with all that has been accomplished for the beautification of London during recent years. Yet the two greatest improvements carried out in my time were not done by the Council at all. The two municipal achievements to which I allude are the Holborn Viaduct, and that magnificent boulevard, the Thames Embankment. Now, these two enduring monuments of municipal enterprise and foresight we owe to the old—and much-maligned—Board of Works. When I gaze dismayed on the hideous structure at Spring Gardens, which now admits the public through its bowels to St. James’s Park; and when, entering and traversing the Park, I see the grim bastion that has been erected at the end of the duck-pond, with the object, apparently, of dwarfing Buckingham Palace into the likeness of a row of aristocratic almshouses, I wonder whether we were not safer, when all is said and done, in the hands of the reprobated “Board of Shirks,” as it was called by the comic papers of its day.
Give a man beautiful surroundings, and he will begin to live up to his environment. With the wonderful improvement effected on the face of London by the operations of the Board, there became heard the still, small voice of a demand for more beautiful living. The two main elements in living, I take it, are eating and drinking. And, rightly or wrongly, I have always synchronized the completion of the Viaduct and the Embankment with the first noticeable advance in catering. Before that point of departure there were in London but two restaurants of the first class at which one could obtain a French dinner. One of these was the Café Royal; the other was Verrey’s. Both were—and still, happily, are—situated in Regent Street. To-day we have restaurants which quite easily surpass in elegance and amplitude of interior the two houses I have named, but the Café Royal still holds its own both in the matter of cellar and of cuisine.
There were humbler retreats at which the French manner of dining might be enjoyed. Soho was full of these small eating-houses at which the customers might either dine à la carte at a moderate cost, or eat a dinner of the table d’hôte order for eighteen pence, with half a bottle of wine thrown in. For this you would get a soup maigre, a sole au vin blanc, an entrée, a bit of chicken, a morsel of Brie or Camembert, and the smallest possible collection of nuts and raisins on a Tom Thumb plate, which was written down “dessert” on the menu. As a rule the dinner was not half bad, and the wonder was how it could be done at the price. Of the wine one cannot talk so enthusiastically. Charles Lever once described a vintage which he tasted in Italy. He spoke of it as “a pyroligneous wine, distilled from vine-stalks, and agreeable in summer—with one’s salad.” This admirably sets forth the virtues of the sour but ruddy products of Bordeaux which were “thrown in” by the enterprising exiles who catered in Soho. The best of these smaller restaurants was Kettner’s, in Church Street, close to where the Palace Theatre now stands. It is difficult, when one enters the elegant rooms which are now known as Kettner’s, to call up its small beginnings. Many of its old customers cursed the day when it was “discovered” by Mr. E. S. Dallas, of the Times. Dallas was a man who could not keep a secret. Having found out what a wonderfully well-cooked dinner the little restaurant in Church Street could supply to the customer for a very trifling cost, he must needs go and proclaim the fact from the house-tops of Printing House Square. All London began to flock to Church Street, and all London was delighted to see Madame Kettner presiding as dame du comptoir, and to learn that the dainty dishes provided were prepared by Monsieur Kettner in the basement below. This influx of visitors brought about increased accommodation, improved service, a greater luxury in the surroundings, until Kettner’s became what it is to-day—a West End resort with some considerable support from fashionable society.
Prices went up, too. Dallas, who had very appropriately signed his letter to the leading journal “A Beast at Feeding-time,” could no longer get a portion of sole au vin blanc for sixpence, and the poor French exiles who were wont to forgather in Kettner’s little dining-room in Church Street were driven forth to seek sustenance elsewhere in the fastnesses of Soho. I wonder what those patient old émigrés would have said concerning an incident which happened to me some few years since at this famous restaurant? I was dining in a private room as the guest of a man who was wanting to “do business” with me. Beside myself there was one other guest. After dinner our host, who was a non-smoker, asked us to have a cigar. He called the waiter. Cigars were ordered.
“Wat price, sare?” inquired the servant.
“The best you have will not be too good for my friends,” declared our host in an expansive mood.
The cigars came—big things swathed in gold-foil. We took a cigar each, and St. Georgi, who had married the widow Kettner and was now running the show, came in to see how we were getting on. Him also our host asked to have a cigar. St. Georgi complied. That made three cigars in all. At last the time came for paying. The bill was brought in. The founder of the feast ran his eye over it. The document was quite in order—save for one item.
“Here, waiter, what the doose is the meaning of this fifteen shillings?” he asked.
“Three cigars, sare,” he replied sweetly.
“Fifteen shillings!” exclaimed our non-smoking host.
“I am sorry, sare,” replied the waiter, looking very sad indeed; “but we have none better!”
It was a palpable hit. Our friend joined in the laugh—and paid.
One of the most characteristic of these foreign eating-houses on English soil was the Café l’Étoile, in one of the streets—Rupert Street, I think it was—which run off Coventry Street, parallel to Wardour Street. This place was one half restaurant, and one half cabaret. A door and a passage led from the one to the other. In the restaurant the usual eighteen-penny dinner of many courses was served, and the usual bottle of vinegary wine was “thrown in.” The company, if not select, was at least sedate. Your Frenchman in London is by no means as gay a creature as on his boulevards at home. And the few English who joined him at his frugal meal in the Café l’Étoile as a rule maintained their insular mauvais honte.
But in the adjoining cabaret things were very different. Here the bearded exiles were enveloped in such an impenetrable cloud of smoke that they had forgotten all about their milieu. They had created here their own atmosphere, so to say. And a particularly villainous atmosphere it was—sulphurous and pestiferous. The chatter was incessant and strident. The clatter of the dominoes on the tables, the noise of the impact of the mugs and glasses—these mingled indistinguishably with the universal din. In this stifling atmosphere might be encountered some of the off-scourings of Continental cities. The political refugee, finding security in a country that could afford to treat him with absolute contempt, talked treason only when in his cups. Here was the practical politician also—the dynamitard, the artificer of bombs, the professor of the stiletto and the revolver. Scotland Yard had the dossier of every frequenter of the Café l’Étoile duly consigned by the police authorities of Paris, Berlin, and St. Petersburg. It was the most noisy, the most stuffy, the hottest, the dirtiest, the most polyglot, little hell in all London. I do not know, but I strongly suspect that a too constant solicitude on the part of Scotland Yard led to its disappearance. Its site is occupied by a restaurant called the West End Hotel, the reputable successor of an unsavoury progenitor.
To William Gorman Wills I owe my introduction to most of the Soho restaurants. Wills liked the company he found in these places, and he liked the prices; for he was seldom well off. Money flowed from him in all directions, so that he never had much for his own use. It was lent or given in lumps as soon as it was received, a good deal of it finding its way into the pockets of impostors. For Wills was a man of genius—one of the few I have ever met—and inherited that financial incapacity which is the birthright of men of genius. He was an artist first of all, and had a studio in the Brompton Road, in a crescent which stood where the Consumptive Hospital now stands. He was a musician of distinction. He wrote a novel which would have made the reputation of any man who paid attention to the social arts which expedite the arrival of Fame. He will, perhaps, be still remembered by the public for his many contributions to the stage. His “Charles I.,” produced at the Lyceum for Irving, was one of the most poetical acting plays of the last century—Byron, and Lytton, and Sheridan Knowles, to the contrary, notwithstanding. In his search after French cookery he was instant. And I remember the delight with which he took me to Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, where a new café had been opened. The dining-saloon consisted of the two ground-floor rooms of an ordinary house thrown into one. Wills waved his arm as if to indicate to me fine spaces—like those of the Louvre for instance.
“All the artists of the neighbourhood will dine here,” be declared with conviction. “If we could only get old Madox Brown to come here once, he would never go to the trouble of having dinners cooked at home!”
Madox Brown lived in Fitzroy Square, so that the convenience of the arrangement seemed indisputable. And Charlotte Street, as well as some other streets with long first-floor windows, was still a thoroughfare in which artists set up their studios. The Bohemia of “The Newcomes” was still existing north of Oxford Street when I first knew London, and when I have visited Madox Brown in Fitzroy Square it has given me pleasure to think that his might be the very building which was tenanted for a time by Colonel Newcome. But if a tithe of the artists then working in that part of the town were to demand a meal at the restaurant newly discovered by Wills, the majority of them must have had their dinner served to them in the street. An invasion even of the members of the Madox Brown family would have strained the resources of the tiny place to the utmost.
At the time when Wills was making daily discoveries among the little French eating-houses of Soho and Bloomsbury, he had few imitators in that field of gastronomies. The Englishman still pooh-poohed the French cuisine. He never hesitated to express his contempt for what he called “kickshaws.” Give him a basin of mock turtle soup, a bit of boiled turbot, a cut off the joint, and two vegetables, with apple pudding and Stilton cheese to end up with, and he wouldn’t thank you for the finest repast conceived by the first chef, and prepared by the most expert assistants in Europe! There are still fine old English gentlemen who hold this heresy; but they all held it then. The consequence is that half the population, over fifty years of age, suffer from indigestion. But while this most barbarous standard of dining obtained, it was faithfully catered for by the fine old English gentleman’s staunch admirer—the fine old English landlord. And to this day there persist a few establishments which make it their business to supply the fine old English dinner for the fine old English gormandizer.
In the early seventies all the hotels, and almost all the restaurants, supplied nightly the heavy meals that then represented the national taste. In an earlier chapter I have alluded to the Rainbow in Fleet Street, and to the Albion in Russell Street, Covent Garden. These were typical. Simpson’s in the Strand was run on the same lines. This was a very famous house of its kind. I have not visited the place since it was rebuilt during the alterations at the Savoy. But it carries on the old tradition, I understand; that is to say, a customer can still have his slabs of fish and his thick cuts from the joint, but he is granted an option. He may have his food served in daintier guise. The smoking-room at Simpson’s was a great rendezvous for men who knew good whisky and were judges of a cigar. For the cigar divan next door to the restaurant was really part of the concern. It was in that little smoking-room that I first met Charles Kelly, the actor. He became the second husband of Ellen Terry, and was one of the most charming men I have ever known. His real name was Wardell, and he had thrown up his commission in a crack cavalry regiment to “go on the stage.”
Simpson’s was celebrated for something beside its typical old English fare, its excellent whisky, and its incomparable cigars. In a certain upper chamber at Simpson’s there were accustomed to meet all the most eminent chess-players of the day. Steinmitz and Blackmore could be found there on most afternoons. And, although it was known in the outside world that they could be seen without any let or hindrance on the part of the proprietor, their privacy was never invaded. Only amateurs of the game entered the chess-room. Your true Londoner differs in this from the citizens of other towns: he never intrudes where he is not wanted. As to the restaurant below, the dinner there was served in a square saloon at the back of the building. The joints were trundled up to the customers on “dumbwaiters” running on castors. The meal was of the usual heavy, stodgy description. The older diners ate heartily, and, as a rule, suffered horribly from dyspepsia. The waiters breathed hard, exhibited signs of a bibulous habit, and possessed the largest feet of any men I have seen either before or since.
In Covent Garden, the Tavistock, the Hummums, and the Bedford—each of them hotels—served the same class of dinner. At these comfortable resorts the meal was generally followed by a bottle of port, thus insuring the achievement of that indigestion which the stodgy comestibles may have failed to set up. The ordinary English restaurant was supplemented by the chop-house. In the City, where quick lunching is a desideratum, these establishments flourished exceedingly. In the West End the most noted of them was Stone’s, in Panton Street, at that period a thoroughfare with a bad name, but at the present time purged of its earlier reputation. It has a theatre, some elegant restaurants, and exhibits few signs of its squalid past. Panton Street has forsworn sack, and lives cleanly.
But this chapter is not designed as a mere catalogue of the catering houses, but as the rough sketch of an evolution illustrated by examples, and illuminated here and there, I hope, by anecdotes, relevant and irrelevant. I have sufficiently shown that the Englishman of the early seventies, dining from home, liked to have served to him the same sort of meal which was provided for him on Sundays in the bosom of his family. The Café Royal catered mainly for foreigners. It and the Café Verrey were—so far as Londoners were concerned—but two voices crying in the wilderness. While as for the minor French restaurants in Soho, only artists, poets, and other degenerate Englishmen, affected those cheery little outposts of a great army which was presently to take possession of the town. To-day the conquest of London by the foreigner is complete. The French cuisine has been adopted in all the principal hotels and restaurants, and the old fish-joint-sweets-and-Stilton menu has been relegated to the howling wilderness.
I will give three instances of the progress of the reform. I select Gatti’s in the Strand, Romano’s in the same thoroughfare, and Pagani’s in Great Portland Street. Of the three, Gatti’s is the least characteristically French, although an excellent French meal may be obtained there. The Gattis aimed to be all things to all men; and I hope it may not prejudice the reader if I mention that it is to-day a favourite resort of Mr. Lloyd George, who may frequently be seen at the Adelaide Gallery in company with a brother Welshman, the esteemed proprietor of Ally Sloper. The growth of the Gatti concern is one of the commercial marvels of the day. It started as a café in Adelaide Street, where fried chops and steaks with chipped potatoes were served on marble-topped tables. The meal was washed down with generous draughts of coffee or chocolate, and the prices were strictly moderate. To-day the establishment has struck right through into the Strand, and spread itself halfway along Adelaide Street. Its proprietors own two playhouses in the immediate vicinity—the Adelphi and the Vaudeville—and supply half the Strand with electric current from their own dynamos. It is the culinary Mecca of the suburban, and actors as well as Chancellors find it a convenient place at which to lunch.
As a rule a restaurant fails or forges ahead on its own merits or demerits. But now and then the chance visit of an influential customer lifts it from obscurity into the warm light of popular favour. You have seen how E. S. Dallas made the fortune of Kettner’s. Carr’s, in the Strand, was made by an article which appeared in All the Year Round, an article which was generally attributed to Dickens, but was in reality the work of one of his staff—Sala, Halliday, Hollingshead, or another; in fact, the writers on that magazine had so entirely acquired the descriptive trick of “the Master” that it was a difficult thing to “tell t’other from which.” Poor Pellegrini was the man who discovered Pagani’s. It was a poky little place, indifferently patronized, when he first entered it. But he soon discovered that he could get there spaghetti cooked and served as in his native Italy. It was served, too, with a puree of tomato very different from the watery and acid preparation to which in this country we had become habituated. Tosti the composer followed where Pellegrini had led. The small refreshment-room was enlarged; an “artists’ room” was established upstairs. At last adjoining premises were acquired. Old Pagani’s was rebuilt into the handsome and popular restaurant as it is known to the present generation of diners. The Paganis have retired on substantial fortunes to the mountainous land of their nativity.