My life; sixty years' recollections of Bohemian London

COLLECTION G.M.A.
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An Anonymous Donor

MY LIFE

MY LIFE

SIXTY YEARS' RECOLLECTIONS
OF BOHEMIAN LONDON

BY
GEORGE R. SIMS

LONDON

EVELEIGH NASH COMPANY

LIMITED
1917

TO THE MEMORY OF

JOHN THOMSON

BUT FOR WHOSE GOODWILL AND GOOD
GUIDANCE IN THE STREET OF ADVEN-
TURE I MIGHT NOW BE A PROSPEROUS
CITY MAN INSTEAD OF A STRUGGLING
AUTHOR

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

TO FACE
PAGE

GEORGE R. SIMS Frontispiece

ADELINA PATTI 24

LADY BANCROFT (MISS MARIE WILTON) 50

SIR JOHN ASTLEY 82

THE SIAMESE TWINS 122

MR. SERJEANT BALLANTINE 144

ALEXANDRE DUMAS AND ADAH ISAACS MENKEN 178

BARON GRANT 214

J. L. TOOLE 244

CHARLES FECHTER 278

T. F. ROBSON AND H. WIGAN 294

J. L. TOOLE AND PAUL BEDFORD 304

Vll

PROLOGUE

I BEGAN these reminiscences, written at the suggestion of
my friend the editor of the Evening News, in the first hour
of the year 1916.

The front door was flung wide at five minutes to midnight
on December 31, 1915, and as the last of the twelve
momentous shocks of sound died away a dark man in the
shape of a friendly policeman did me the kindly service of
being the first to cross my threshold.

And now that the New Year has come to us amid an
almost oppressive stillness, with no gay clang of church
bells, and only a far distant and apparently restrained
welcome by the steam-whistles and the hooters of the great
works where labour toils through the night, I sit down in
my grandfather's big cane-seated arm-chair and peer into the
dim and distant past.

In the hour that my land is athrill and athrob with the
alarums and excursions of the greatest war the world has
ever known, my memory carries me back to the day just
upon sixty years since when all London was abroad far into
the night celebrating the blessed peace that had come to us
after the agonies of the Crimea.

I gaze from my window into the blacked-out expanse of
the park, and I see once again the skies of that memorable
May night ablaze. From Hyde Park, from Victoria Park,
from St. James's Park, and from Primrose Hill a thousand
devices in golden flame have been hurled into the air.

But no fireworks of joy flame in the night skies above me
in the year that we have just entered upon.

The London that I look back upon is a Dickensy London,
a Cruikshank London, an Albert Smith London, a John
Leech London ; it is a London of " characters," a London

I A

2 MY LIFE

in which men of high degree and low degree alike wear a
high hat. The beggar begs in one, the burglar burgles in
one, the cricketer plays in a classic match in one, the swell
and the sweeper, the legislator and the lamplighter, the
Pentonville cornet player and the Pall Mall clubman, all
pass similarly headgeared in the human panorama of the
pavement.

I see a dimly lighted London, not quite so dim as it is
to-day, but nearly so. When Thomas Hood wrote " Where
the lamps quiver," for poetry's sake and as a rhyme to
" river," he might with equal truth have written " flicker."
The lights of London in those far-off days flickered in every
breeze.

But I see a gayer London by night than the twentieth
century has ever known. Long after midnight certain
streets of the West, and notably the Haymarket, are packed
with a roystering mob seeing life. But animal spirits are
not the only spirits that contribute to the riotous gaiety.

I remember the London of Sayers and Heenan, and the
last glory of the old prize-ring.

I remember a London of open betting and leviathan
pencilling, when a hundred thousand pound book would be
made on the Chester Cup, and horses that were literally
dead were backed for months after their decease.

I remember the Derbys of the green veils and dolled white
hats. Thormanby, Kettledrum, Caractacus, and Blair Athol
flash past the winning-post again. The snowstorm Derby
of Hermit is run again in my midnight dream of the past.
The figures of Admiral Rous, of General Peel, and George
Payne and the Marquess of Hastings and Count de Lagrange
rise from the turf to live and move and have their being
again upon it.

I think back to a London whose theatres were " half price
at nine o'clock " and where 12.30 was the ordinary hour for
the final curtain to fall.

And, after that, oysters were sixpence a dozen, and there
were more oyster shops in the Strand than there are in the
whole of London to-day.

I look back to the time when Charles Kean, Phelps, Ben
Webster, Charles Fechter, Wright, Paul Bedford, Charles

MY LIFE 3

Mathews, John Baldwin Buckstone, Helen Faucit, Mrs.
Keeley, Miss Glyn, Miss Woolgar (who became the wife
of Alfred Mellon), Mrs. Stirling, and Madame Celeste were
the footlight stars.

I am in a London that has gone mad in its enthusiasm for
Jenny Lind. I remember Adelina Patti's first appearance
and Mario's " Farewell."

I remember Astley's Amphitheatre when the programme
was " Horsemanship and Opera."

I see again in the theatre of St. Stephen's Lord Brougham
with a nose that Punch was never tired of dwelling upon,
and little Lord John Russell, and Palmerston — in Punch —
with the eternal straw between his lips. I listen to the
glorious voice of John Bright ; I delight once more in the
bulldog tenacity of Old Tear 'em.

I watch and listen while Gladstone and Disraeli gradually
come to their own.

I see a mighty mob of people marching behind a black
flag through the busy streets and pillaging the bakers'
shops.

I see the Iron Duke, the great Captain, borne through
the mourning populace to his resting-place at St. Paul's.

I pick my way over muddy, broken roadways, among
three-caped Jarvies perched upon ramshackle cabs, and I
watch the lumbering buses jolt and rattle over the stones,
and every bus is strewn inside with dirty straw.

I come to a Fleet Street in which literary Bohemia smokes
short clay pipes in the streets and lounges at tavern bars,
fortifying itself for the night's work with goblets of steaming
hot brandy and water and Irish whisky : " A slice of lemon
and one lump, please." Soda water is for the morning
reflection, not for the evening entertainment.

I pass a Newgate outside which the bodies of dead men
are swinging to make an early morning London holiday.

I see the London merchant and the London banker make
their way on horseback to the heart of the City for the
day's work, and I see them riding home again when evening
falls.

And as I look far away to the London of my boyhood old
familiar cries ring in my ears. I hear " Cherry Ripe " and

4 MY LIFE

" Who'll buy my Lavender ? " and " Buy a Broom," and
" Scissors to grind," and in the silence of the night I hear
the top-hatted policeman spring his rattle.

And looking back upon the living London of bygone days
I turn from the dark skies that shroud the cradle of baby
1916, and sit down to write my memories of a London that
in its wildest imaginings had no dream of Zeppelins or
motor-cars or phonographs, and only a dim idea of the
telephone ; a London so far away from X-rays that it was
filled with awe and wonder when it heard of the use of
chloroform for surgical operations.

The clock strikes one. The New Year is already an
hour old. It is time that for these reminiscences I should
be born.

CHAPTER I

" SOMEWHERE in London," at six o'clock on September 2,
1847, an event occurred which was to have a far-reaching
consequence. That consequence was the appearance in the
year 1916 of these reminiscences.

It was on the eve of the anniversary of the Battle of
Worcester that I first saw the light, the light of a soft
September evening. The anniversary was well chosen, for
my mother was a Worcester girl, and had intended that I
should be born in the Faithful City, but like the good Cockney
that I have always been, I preferred London.

It was not long, however, before I found myself in
Worcester, and it was there at St. Nicholas' Church that I
was christened.

But though I was christened at Worcester I have from
my birth been a Londoner, fated

To float on London's human tide,
An atom on its billows thrown.
But lonely never, nor alone.

I had quite youthful companionship from the very
beginning, for when I was born my mother was eighteen
and my father was nineteen, a circumstance which permitted
me to be present at his coming-of-age and make a speech,
and my speech bears eloquent testimony to the temperate
character of the celebration.

The words that I uttered — they were my first — were
" A bop o' tea." It was my first attempt to get the mono-
tony of a milk diet varied, and I have remained faithful to
the substitute ever since.

As I shall probably never write my reminiscences again,
I may as well avail myself of this opportunity and give a
few of the early details which are considered essential in an

5

6 MY LIFE

autobiography. If you do not place something of your
family history on record it is sometimes invented for you,
and it generally does you less justice than you would do
yourself.

For instance, I read not long ago in a weekly publication
that I was of Semitic origin and foreign extraction, and I
think the editor, a playful Irishman, was anxious to convey
the impression that the foreign extraction was Teutonic.
People will hint at anything in war-time.

Let me then say at once that I am not only a Londoner,
but quite English, you know. And yet I suppose there is a
little foreign blood in me — just a wee drappie— and it came
about in this way.

My great-grandfather, Robert Sims, was a sturdy, hand-
some and well-to-do Berkshire yeoman. To the Berkshire
town into which he rode regularly on market days there
came a Spanish grandee, Count Jose de Montijo, who was
of the family which gave us the Empress Eugenie. He had
left Spain as a political refugee, and his daughter, the
Countess Elizabeth de Montijo, had come with him.

My great-grandfather fell in love with the beautiful
Spanish girl, and married her. She was quite a young girl
when she became his wife, but she " lived happily ever
afterwards," and died a dear old English lady at the age
of eighty-five. That is the drop of foreign blood. There
is no more, and the rest of me is quite as English as it
could be.

My grandfather, Robert Sims, the son of the Berkshire
yeoman and the Spanish countess, married Mary Hope,
daughter of William Hope. She was one of the Hopes of
Brighthelmstone, or Brighton as we call it now.

The Hopes were the Pickfords of Brighton in the days
before the railways. They were strict Nonconformists, and
mortally offended the Prince Regent by refusing to convey
his race-horses on Sunday. In the family Bible I find that
William Hope, who was sprinkled at the Countess of
Huntingdon's Chapel, was in later life baptized by the
Rev. Mr. Gough at the Baptist Chapel in Bond Street,
Brighton, and became a deacon of that chapel.

Some of the Hopes, my great-uncles, lie in Bunhill Fields,

MY LIFE 7

and are buried in the coveted place of honour near the
tomb of John Bunyan.

Many a pious pilgrimage did I have to make as a child
to see the tomb of John Bunyan " with the Hopes around
him." The old burial-ground, the green garden of rest in
the heart of the City, was the Campo Santo of Dissent, and
the nearer you lay to the author of " The Pilgrim's Progress "
the more fortunate you were considered as a corpse.

Macaulay bore testimony to this fact when he said,
" Many Puritans, to whom the respect paid by Roman
Catholics to the reliques and tombs of their saints seemed
childish or sinful, are said to have begged with their dying
breath that their coffins might be placed as near as possible
to the coffin of the author of ' The Pilgrim's Progress.' '

In our family Bible I find the position of the Hope graves
duly noted.

" William Hope, son of William and Phoebe Hope, died
at his sister's at Peckham on Thursday, July 28, 1842, and
was buried at Bunhill Fields Burial Ground, situated 26 East
and West, 24 and 25 North and South, about one yard from
Bunyan's tomb, on Tuesday, August 2nd, 1842."

My father was the son of Robert Sims and the " sister at
Peckham," and there was no mistake as to the Englishness
of the family into which he married.

These are days when any man may be forgiven if he takes
pride in tracing himself back to Nelson. I cannot do that,
but on my mother's side I can get into very close touch
with the national hero.

Among my ancestors is an Admiral Parker. I was always
under the impression that it was Sir Hyde Parker, but I
find on consulting the family archives that it was not that
famous sea-dog. At any rate, my Admiral Parker had a
daughter named Margaret who married Charles Yardley of
Hindlip Hall in Worcestershire, the Hall with the famous
Jesuit's Hole.

It afterwards passed into the possession of the Allsopps,
and gave Lord Hindlip his title.

One of the young Yardleys — Tom Yardley — was a mid-
shipman on Admiral Parker's ship, and was killed at the
Battle of Copenhagen.

8 MY LIFE

The son of the Yardley-Parker marriage, Charles Yardley,
married Elizabeth Partridge, and this marriage eventually
gave me as cousins dear old William Yardley — " Bill of the
Play " of the Sporting Times, who was the first man to
make a hundred for his 'Varsity — and Samuel Partridge, of
the Religious Tract Society. Both of them had something
to do with my early introduction to journalism and the
stage.

Charles Yardley had by his marriage with Elizabeth
Partridge a daughter, Mary Yardley, who married John
Dinmore Stevenson, and was my maternal grandmother.

My father was riding through a London street one day
when his horse shied at something and nearly threw him.
He heard a musical female voice exclaim " Oh ! " and
looking in the direction of the sound he beheld a pretty girl
of seventeen at a window.

He thought she was the prettiest girl he had ever seen,
and determined to find out who she was, and obtain an
introduction. He found that she was Miss Stevenson, a
Worcestershire girl who was on a visit to London.

The shying of my father's horse provided the introduction,
and gave me an old English sea-dog for an ancestor.

Having disposed of my ancestors, and proved that in
spite of all temptations to belong to other nations I have
remained an Englishman, I am now free to indulge in my
own reminiscences of the " Hungry Forties " — and after.

CHAPTER II

OF life in London in the late forties I have, of course, only
a vague remembrance. My own experiences were rather
monotonous, but there was plenty of adventure going on
around me.

Among the family relics that I have preserved is a rather
elaborate staff of a special constable. It looks like a ruler
with a brass crown on the business end of it.

This staff is connected with a period of intense anxiety
through which my mother passed when I was still an infant
in her arms.

My grandfather, John Dinmore Stevenson, was one of the
leaders of the Chartist movement. An oil painting of him
with the Charter rolled up under his arm hangs in my
bedroom to-day, and whenever I gaze at it I remember
that he was looked upon as a very dreadful person simply
because he advocated reforms almost every one of which
has since been accepted as essential to the public well-
being. The Chartists demanded : (i) The extension of
the right of voting to every male native of the United
Kingdom ; (2) equal electoral districts ; (3) voting by ballot ;
(4) annual Parliaments ; (5) no property qualification for
members ; (6) payment of Members of Parliament for their
services.

But in 1848 the Chartists made the strategic mistake of
threatening to use force in order to obtain their demands.
That is where the story of the special constable's staff
comes in.

My maternal grandfather went off to join the Chartists in
the great demonstration on Kennington Common, and to
act as one of their leaders in the threatened advance upon
Westminster, and my father was at the same time sworn in
as a special constable, and armed with his staff of office went

9

io MY LIFE

forth with Louis Napoleon to protect London from my
grandfather.

The Kennington Common affair was a terrible fiasco. The
heavens, I believe, wept over it so profusely that the ardour
of the rebels was damped in the deluge.

At any rate, the fates preserved my father from having
to use his staif upon the head of his father-in-law. My
grandfather came back to our house soaked to the skin,
changed his clothes, and sat down to tea with the special
constable. And there was peace between them. I was the
olive branch on that occasion.

I do not know whether it was that my mother and father
were considered to be too young to have the direction of my
babyhood, but I know that during the first few years of my
life my grandfather was my constant companion, my guide,
philosopher, and friend.

In those days naughty little boys were always denounced
as " little Radicals." If you broke the nursery window or
hit your little sister on the head with a hair-brush, or used
your shilling box of paints to heighten the effect of the
pattern on the drawing-room paper, the first words of
remonstrance you heard were, " Oh, you little Radical !
What have you been up to now ? "

You see, Radicalism did not rank so high in public estima-
tion in those days as it did, say, at the last General Election.

But my grandfather's companionship made me a little
Radical in the sense in which the word is used to-day. It
was my grandfather, the old Chartist, who shaped my early
political views.

I have a dim remembrance of his reading aloud to me
from certain of the Radical papers of the period, and a vivid
remembrance of his reading to me the story of Garibaldi's
sufferings, and I can see the tears running down his cheeks
as he read.

I remembered that incident very distinctly when I saw
Garibaldi drive in triumph through the streets of London
amid the frantic cheers of the people, and I regretted that
my grandfather had not lived to see his hero face to face.

Garibaldi remained in the memory of the English people
for years after that. The Garibaldi shirt was adopted by

MY LIFE it

the fair, and has never been abandoned by them, but to-day
we call it a " blouse/' and the Americans call it a " shirt-
waist." And the Garibaldi biscuit is still with us.

It revived old memories when I saw some of the ancient
Red Shirts turn out and march through London under the
Italian flag when Italy had decided to throw in her lot with
the Allies in the great fight for the freedom of the world from
the tyranny of the Huns.

Of the very early days my memories are naturally rather
misty, but I have a vivid remembrance of an event that
happened when I was five years old.

On November 18, 1852, the great Duke of Wellington was
buried at St. Paul's, and I was taken by my father and
mother and my grandfather to see the funeral procession
pass.

I think it must have been very early in the morning when
we left our home in Islington, for the impression of a grey
atmosphere has always remained with me. I can see the
soldiers now as I saw them then, misty figures in that grey
atmosphere.

But clearly and distinctly I can see the funeral-car bearing
the body of the great Duke, and more clearly still a riderless
charger that was led immediately behind the car. The
reversed boots that hung from the empty saddle stirred my
childish imagination so strongly that the picture has never
faded.

The silence of the great crowd, the car, and the riderless
horse are all that I can remember distinctly of the funeral,
but there are details connected with the day which I also
remember.

We had seats in a shop window in Fleet Street. I
believe it was a coffee-shop. The shop was closed in
by an old-fashioned window with a number of panes of
glass.

Every seat behind that window was occupied, and after
an hour or two the occupants began to feel the effect of the
atmosphere. It was suggested that some panes of glass in
the window should be broken to admit a little fresh air, and
it was proposed that every one should make a small contri-
bution to compensate the proprietor. Every one agreed

12 MY LIFE

with the exception of an elderly Scotsman, who absolutely
declined to part with a bawbee.

It was decided to do without his contribution and admit
the fresh air, and the moment the first pane had been
knocked out the old Scotsman thrust his head through the
aperture and gasped, " Thank goodness. In another minute
I should have been suffocated."

It is sixty-three years since I saw the dead Duke borne
through the sorrowing multitude to his last resting-place,
yet there is another incident which, though it took
place after the funeral was over, has remained in my
memory.

As soon as the procession had passed, my father and my
grandfather left us — the one to go to the office in the City
and the other to the office of the Reform Freehold Land
Society, in which he was interested. And then my mother
took me home to Islington.

I was very tired. I had been up since four in the morning,
and I began to cry. Street hawkers were standing along
the kerb in Fleet Street, and some of them were selling penny
coloured picture-books.

In the hope of distracting my mind and stopping my tears
my mother bought one of the books and gave it to me. It
was the story of " Puss in Boots." It was intelligent
anticipation on my mother's part, as sixty-three years later
I was one of the collaborators of Mr. Arthur Collins in
reproducing that story for the Christmas pantomime at
Drury Lane.

It was soon after I had seen the Duke of Wellington's
funeral that I paid my first visit to the play.

We were living in Islington, not very far from Sadler's
Wells Theatre. My father had taken an old-fashioned house
there because he was in the habit of riding to and from
Aldersgate Street, where, at London House, the former
residence of the Bishop of London, he carried on his
business.

Sadler's Wells, which was within easy walking distance of
our house, was then the equal of any of the West End
theatres.

Samuel Phelps had become the lessee, and had revived

MY LIFE 13

the fame and fortune of the once famous playhouse. Under
his management it had become the home of Shakespearean
drama.

What Henry Irving was to the English stage in my young
manhood Samuel Phelps was to the English stage in my
childhood.

The Sadler's Wells audience was in those days an audience
of keen critics, with a wonderful textual knowledge of the
plays of Shakespeare. If an actor forgot his lines there was
always an amateur prompter in the pit or gallery to give
him the missing words.

My mother was an enthusiastic playgoer, and found the
proximity of Sadler's Wells, with its fine productions and
the admirable acting of Phelps and his company, a great
blessing.

And so it happened that on one memorable occasion, after
extracting from me a solemn promise that I would be good
and sit as still as a mouse and not ask questions out loud,
she took me with her.

It was a memorable occasion, not only in my annals, but
in the annals of the British drama, for it was the first night
of Phelps's magnificent production of A Midsummer Night's
Dream.

That was on October 8, 1853, so that when I made my
debut as a playgoer and first-nighter I was six, and Sadler's
Wells, Shakespeare, and Samuel Phelps had the honour of
being associated with the event.

Samuel Phelps controlled the fortunes of Sadler's Wells
for eighteen years, and I was present as a youth of fifteen
at his final performance in the theatre, at which, during his
successful and artistic management, he had produced thirty-
four of Shakespeare's plays.

In connexion with my early association with Sadler's
Wells there is an event in which the long arm of coincidence
was at work.

At my first school, which was " somewhere in Islington,"
there was a boy named Hoskins, who was my first real
" chum." Young Hoskins shone among his little school-
fellows and playmates with a reflected glory. His father
was an actor at Sadler's Wells, and he, because I was a

14 MY LIFE

friend of his little boy, would often stop and talk to me in
the street.

Now my first public appearance as a journalist was in
the dock at the Guildhall Police Court. I had written
something in Fun which was intended to be satirical and
humorous. It was a letter addressed to "a fashionable
tragedian," and it called attention to the number of plays
produced at the Lyceum Theatre in which Henry Irving
had played the part of a murderer.

One paper — I fancy it was the Saturday Review — said that
the article had been written " by a young gentleman named
Sims of whom nothing has been previously heard, and of
whom nothing will probably be heard again."

But all the newspapers quoted one line of the luckless
letter. I accused the fashionable tragedian of having
" canonized the cut-throat and anointed the assassin."

" Papa " Bateman — we called him " Papa " because of
his three clever children, the Bateman sisters — was the
manager of the Lyceum, with Irving as the star, and Bate-
man, who was a good showman, saw in the undoubted
libel the article contained a chance for bold advertisement.
So on Christmas Eve Mr. George Lewis — he was not Sir
George then — applied at the Guildhall Police Court for a
summons against the printer of Fun.

The first intimation I had of the fact was when I bought
the Western Morning News at Penzance railway station on
Boxing Day morning. I had gone to Penzance to spend
Christmas with my mother, who was wintering there.

The summons against Fun was returnable the day after
Boxing Day, so I took the first train to town, and presented
myself at Guildhall Police Court on the next morning, went
into the witness-box and confessed myself the author of the
libel.

" I am the author of this letter," I said, " and I have
come five hundred miles to say so."

It was a good little speech, but George Lewis marred its
effect by jumping up and handing me a Bradshaw, and asking
me to look at Penzance.

" Now, sir," he said, " you tell us that you have come
five hundred miles, and you say that you have come from

MY LIFE 15

Penzance. Penzance, according to the official railway
measurement, is three hundred and twenty-six and a half
miles from London. A liberal discount has evidently to be
taken off any statement you may make."

The result of my admission was that I was accommodated
with a seat in the dock by the side of Mr. Henry Sampson,
the editor of Fun, who also acknowledged his liability, and
together we listened to the evidence.

It was really more of a theatrical matinee than a judicial
inquiry. Sir Robert Garden made humorous remarks which
were intended to be serious from the Bench, John L. Toole
gave comic evidence which was interrupted by roars of
laughter, Frederic Clay, the composer, who was afterwards
to be my great friend and collaborator, came into the
witness-box to testify that he had read the article and was
convinced that it referred to Henry Irving, and Dion
Boucicault, who arrived late to say the same thing, had to
fight his way into the court through the mob which had
gathered outside to see the celebrities.

Towards the middle of the second day's hearing Henry
Irving, who had quite unwillingly taken part in the affair,
insisted that the thing had been carried quite far enough,
and that he would be satisfied with an apology. And
that is how my first public appearance as a journalist
ended.

The editor published a nice little apology in Fun, and I
went round the next day to Irving's chambers in Grafton
Street and had a chat with him, and he was afterwards my
very good friend.

And now the long arm of coincidence comes in. Soon
after my friendly meeting with Irving I learnt that it was
through a visit to Sadler's Wells in 1855 that he became
acquainted with an actor named Hoskins. Irving told me
that in those days he had to be in a City office at nine o'clock,
but Hoskins would let him come to his house at eight in
the morning to have a lesson.

Hoskins, the first actor I ever spoke to and whom I knew
in my childhood, had been the first stage tutor of the actor
whose first manager of the Lyceum issued a police court
summons against me in my young manhood, and it was

16 MY LIFE

on a letter of recommendation from Hoskins that Irving
obtained his first engagement on the regular stage.

But I was more than seven when the Irving adventure
brought back to my memory the little Hoskins of my first
school, and so far as these reminiscences are concerned I
have not yet attained that interesting and classic age.

CHAPTER III

ALL through my life there has been a remarkable re-entrance
of characters associated with the prologue of my little
everyday drama into the later acts.

One of my earliest reminiscences after the Duke of
Wellington's funeral and Shakespeare at Sadler's Wells is
that of a first visit to a little chapel in Hare Court, Barbican.

My grandfather, Robert Sims, was a Sandemanian or
Glassite, and his greatest and dearest friend was Michael
Faraday, the famous chemist, who was one of the elders.

My father was never a member of the little community.
Both he and my mother were Church of England, but they
used occasionally to take me and my sister to the chapel
on Sundays to see our grandfather.

Among the elders of the chapel whom I knew as a child
were Professor Faraday and John Boosey, the uncle of the
William Boosey of the present day. Another of the elders
was Benjamin Vincent, who was, I believe, the secretary of
the Royal Institution, of which Faraday was the shining
light.

The Sandemanian service was a curious one, and the
elders used to preach or " expound " in a curious way. The
idea was to use as few words of their own as possible, and
so their sermons or expositions consisted of a series of
passages from the Scripture strung together by the aid of a
" but," a " though/' or an " and."

At this little chapel in Hare Court Michael Faraday once
stood up before the congregation to apologize humbly for
having in one of his lectures at the Royal Institution formu-
lated an idea which was in a way opposed to the teaching
of the Scriptures as accepted by the Sandemanians.

The Sandemanians came, most of them, from distant
parts of London for their Sunday services. There was no

i8 MY LIFE

Underground Railway in those days, and no swift motor-
buses, and as the morning service was not over till one
o'clock the question of the midday meal had to be con-
sidered.

In order that the members of the congregation who lived
far away might remain for the afternoon service a meal was
prepared and served in a room attached to the chapel. The
meal was served cold with the exception of the soup, which
was always Scotch broth.

To the Feast of Friendship, as it was called, children were
not admitted, so I and my sister and the other children who
had been brought by their parents remained in the pews
and were there served with Scotch broth and sandwiches.

Among the children who took Scotch broth on Sundays
in the pews of the chapel in Hare Court was, I am told, a
little boy named Fred Barnard. Another child was Miss
Alice Faraday, a daughter of James Faraday, the Professor's
brother. I do not know if they first fell in love with each
other over the Scotch broth at Hare Court Chapel, but I do
know that when they grew up pretty Alice Faraday became
the wife of Fred Barnard, the young artist.

I did not go to the Sandemanian Chapel after I was ten,
being mostly away at school, but when long years afterwards
Mr. Gilbert Dalziel commissioned me to write for the
Pictorial World a series of articles on the conditions under
which the poor were living in certain parts of London, he
introduced me to the artist who was to accompany me and
make the sketches.

The artist was Fred Barnard, who had won great fame
by his black-and-white work and the clever pictures he had
painted and exhibited at the Royal Academy.

The best known then were The Crowd Before the Guards'
Band, The Barber's Shop, and Saturday Night in the Borough.

Of the wonderful trips we made together into the darkest
byways of a London that would be impossible to-day I
shall have something to say later on.

To his artistic soul the monotony of " the scenery and
costumes " did not appeal.

Poor Barnard's fate was a sad one. He undoubtedly
became mentally unhinged. On one occasion he went to

MY LIFE 19

stay with a friend, and was discovered leaving the house
early in the morning with nothing on but his boots, trousers,
and hat. He had painted his body scarlet to represent a
Salvation Army vest, and he had adorned his chest with the
words " Blood and Fire."

In September 1896 he was staying with a friend at
Wimbledon. On Sunday, the 27th, the maid called him at
half-past eleven. He said that he would be up shortly, but
he evidently went to sleep again.

Two hours later smoke was seen coming from the window
of his bedroom. The door was locked, and all attempts to
open it failed till the fire brigade arrived. But they had
come too late, for the clothes were one mass of flame, and
Fred Barnard was found in the midst of them, still alive,
but unable to utter a word before he died.

A pipe found lying on the floor gave the clue to the
tragedy. He had been smoking in bed and had set fire to
the clothes.

I do not know if Mr. William Boosey, of ChappelTs, ever
attended a Sandemanian service. He is a younger man
than I am, so he could not have had Scotch broth with me,
but his uncle, one of our elders, was a member of the firm of
music publishers in Regent Street, and my first musical
venture, " A Dress Rehearsal," with Louis Diehl as the
composer, was published by the Booseys and is still sold
by them.

And when I wrote my first comic opera with Ivan Caryll
it was William Boosey, John Boosey's nephew, who secured
the publishing rights for Messrs. Chappell.

It is curious that out of such a small community so many
should, after the lapse of over a quarter of a century, have
become associated with me when I took to journalism and
dramatic authorship.

It is the more curious seeing that it was a community
with very strong views concerning Sunday newspapers and
the theatre. The Bible was the only book the eyes of the
religious might rest upon on the " Sabbath," and a visit to
the Polytechnic or the Colosseum in Regent's Park was the
nearest approach to dissipation permitted to the young at
holiday time.

20 MY LIFE

Appreciating the strictness of the Sandemanian views it
is a remarkable circumstance that it is in the theatrical
world that the names borne by the Sandemanian elders
survive to-day.

The Michael Faraday who gave us The Chocolate Soldier
and The Girl in the Taxi at the Lyric Theatre is named after
his relative, the famous scientist and the humble Sande-
manian elder. And the name of William Boosey is famous
in the world of light opera and musical comedy.

It was when I was nine that I went to my first real school,
a boarding school. It was " A Preparatory School for
Young Gentlemen/' situated in The Grove, Eastbourne, and
was kept by the Misses Shoosmith.

Nearly sixty years ago ! And as I write these lines there
lies before me a message of thanks for a Christmas remem-
brance that an old lady at Eastbourne sent me in the last
week of nineteen-fifteen. And the old lady was one of the
Misses Shoosmith of The Grove Preparatory School.

Eastbourne was then a very different seaside town from
what it is to-day. The residential portion on the front did
not extend far beyond the Burlington Hotel at one end,
and at the other end the Albion Hotel was the last residential
building of any importance. Beyond the Burlington were
cornfields, and beyond the Albion was beach.

Where the magnificent motor rolls its lordly way were
Sussex lanes, along which plodded the Sussex peasant in a
white smock and a high black hat, rendered rusty by wind
and weather.

The railway station was quite a rural affair, and op-
posite it was an old-fashioned inn which was the Railway
Hotel.

Eastbourne was then a fashionable resort, especially in
the late autumn, but it had not achieved the fame and the
popularity that it enjoys to-day.

There was an air of old-world peace about it always, a
peace which was occasionally disturbed by the sea, which
had a habit at certain periods of the year of invading the
" front/' and hurling angry billows plentifully charged with
pebbles against the windows of the picturesque little houses,
and leaving sufficient of itself behind to enable the tenants

MY LIFE 21

to have sea-water baths in their own apartments without
the trouble of going to the sea to fetch the water.

In those days the then Duke of Devonshire was referred
to affectionately by Eastbourne as " My Uncle," and was
in frequent residence at his lovely place, which bore locally
the charming name of " Paradise/'

The sudden development of Eastbourne made many local
fortunes. Some of the tradespeople who had bought land
found themselves on the high road to a wealth of which
they had never dreamed. One of the tradesmen, who used
to supply my school and leave his goods himself, made
enough money out of the boom to have a carriage and pair,
a carriage of the chariot order, with a coachman and footman
in gorgeous livery.

The Grove is now a busy shopping thoroughfare. When
I first made its acquaintance it was a leafy lane, and my
old school-house stood in spacious grounds. The front of it
looked on to hedgerows, and the back of it on to the green
hills.

There was no Duke's Drive to Beachy Head. The only
way to go was by the coastguard's track along the cliffs.

In South Street, which is now a thriving thoroughfare,
there was an old inn, and adjoining the inn a field separated
from the roadway by a low pebble wall. In this field there
was a little wooden theatre to which every now and then a
company of strolling players would come and perform to, I
fear, but scanty local patronage.

I remember that a few bills of the play were stuck about
on five-barred gates and the backs of wooden buildings, and
they generally announced " a thrilling drama."

I was never allowed to witness a tragedy at the wooden
theatre, but I had a very narrow escape from being mixed
up in a real tragedy as terrible as any the strolling players
had in their repertoire.

I went to Eastbourne a white-faced weakling, and there I
grew into a healthy lad. When, after a time, I became too
old for a preparatory school, my mother wished me to
remain at Eastbourne, and my father was on the point of
sending me to another scholastic establishment in that
charming sea-coast town when a friend strongly recom-

22 MY LIFE

mended him to send me to a college at Hanwell kept by the
Rev. J. A. Emerton.

But for this change of plan I should have been transferred
from the Grove to No. 22 Grand Parade, where there was
also " A School for Young Gentlemen." The proprietor
and head master was a Mr. Thomas Hopley. When we little
boys of The Grove were taking our daily walk along the
Parade, walking two and two, we used constantly to meet
the Hopley boys walking two and two.

On April 22, 1860, it became known all over Eastbourne
that a terrible tragedy had occurred the previous night at
22 Grand Parade.

One of the pupils, a boy of sixteen, named Reginald
Cancellor, had been found dead in his bed, and the rumour
went round that he had been thrashed to death by Mr.
Hopley.

An inquest was held on Cancellor, and the verdict was that
there was no evidence to show how he came by his death.

But the police took the matter up, and Mr. Hopley was
brought before the magistrates on a charge of manslaughter,
and there was plenty of evidence to show that the poor boy
had been brutally done to death by a merciless master who
had thrashed him for two hours with maniacal fury.

At the end of two hours' thrashing the boy died, and
Mr. Hopley summoned his distressed and horrified wife to
assist him in rearranging the scene of the tragedy.

The blood with which the floor was spattered was wiped
up, the battered body of the boy was covered with a white
nightgown, long white stockings were drawn over the
lacerated legs, and the bruised and bleeding hands were
thrust into a pair of white kid gloves.

Hopley 's idea was to give out the cause of death as heart
failure, and to get the body buried as quickly as possible
and without an inquest.

When he was tried for manslaughter Hopley contended
that he had been compelled to chastise the boy in order to
drive the wicked spirit out of him. He had thrashed him
mercilessly for two hours, and at the end of that time he
had succeeded in his object. The spirit had left the body
for ever.

MY LIFE 23

Hopley's defence was a farrago of such canting hypocrisy
that the case became a sensational one all over the country.

He was tried at Lewes before Lord Chief Justice Cockburn.
Serjeant Parry prosecuted, and Serjeant Ballantine defended.
Hopley was found guilty of manslaughter, and sentenced to
four years' penal servitude.

In Lewes Gaol he wrote a pamphlet in which he defended
his conduct from the point of view of the disciplinarian.
The unfortunate boy had refused to learn as rapidly as the
schoolmaster wished him to. He had been so stubborn in
his wickedness that he " would not even make an effort to
repeat the prismatic colours in their proper order."

I was very glad, when I read the evidence, that my father
had at the last moment decided not to send me to Hopley's.
I do not think that even now I could repeat the prismatic
colours in their proper order.

A few years ago my old school, The Grove, had its little
day of fame again.

The Duke of Devonshire had decided that the old house
should be pulled down. One of the Misses Shoosmith who
still remained in it resented the order, refused to leave,
barricaded herself in, and for a time The Grove was a
miniature " Fort Chabrol."

The Duke was very considerate and very kind to the old
lady, but the old place had to go, and eventually it was
levelled to the ground.

And from one of the old ladies who kept my first school,
and who on more than one occasion took the birch out of
the drawer where it was kept — I can see that drawer now —
and administered it for my special benefit, I received a kindly
greeting only last Christmas Day.

After leaving Eastbourne I went to Hanwell College. On
the note-paper it was called " Hanwell Military College."

The head master was the Rev. Dr. Emerton, and he took
in a number of boarders to be crammed for the Army. That
is how it became a military college, and it was there that
I had my first experience of military life, for very soon
after I had joined I was wearing Her Majesty's uniform, and
being trained for home defence.

There was a good deal of talk about invasion in the early

24 MY LIFE

'sixties, and the volunteer force became highly popular. Of
course it was very unfavourably regarded by the military
authorities — volunteer forces always are — and it came in
for a tremendous amount of chafi from the ready-witted
urchins of the pavement.

The pride of many a whiskered warrior as he strutted
along with his rifle on his shoulder and his Piccadilly weepers
sportively toyed with by the breezes, was hurt by the cry of
" Who shot the dog ? " which pursued him relentlessly as
he went his martial way.

It was one of the whimsies of the masses, and had as
great a vogue as " What a shocking bad hat ! " " There he
goes with his eye out ! " and " Where are you going on
Sunday ? " the correct answer to which, I believe, was,
" Up the river in a hansom and down the Old Kent Road in
a steamboat/'

It was Louis Napoleon, the special constable of the
Chartist riots, who caused the invasion scare.

It was generally believed that, forgetting the hospitality
England had given him in his days of exile, he had determined
to copy the first Napoleon, and in furtherance of this idea
had oompleted a magnificent scheme for the invasion of the
shores of perfidious Albion.

Wimbledon had become the volunteer war centre. The
Queen had reviewed eighteen thousand volunteers there and
eleven thousand in Hyde Park, and all over the country
thousands of citizens were donning uniform and drilling and
learning to use the rifle effectively.

The Hanwell boys became the Cadet Corps of, I think,
the 30th Middlesex Rifles. We wore pepper-and-salt
uniforms and high shakos adorned with dark green cocks'
feathers.

Monsieur Obert, our French master — he had translated
" The Deserted Village " into French — wore the uniform of
a captain, although, as we told him on more than one occasion,
he was a " froggy " himself.

Herr Kruger, our German master, pleaded that he was an
officer in his own country and could not wear the trappings
of an amateur in ours. But most of the other masters wore
pepper and salt, and our Colonel was Mr. Wolseley Emerton,

ADELINA PATTI

MY LIFE 25

the principal's son, who was " all Sir Garnet " because he
took his front name from the Wolseley family to which he
was related.

We wore our uniform every day and all day long, only
abandoning it on Sundays, when we wore civilian clothes
and mortar-boards.

We drilled three times a day, and those of us who were
old enough were instructed in the use of the rifle.

All went well for a time, but gradually the uniforms wore
out. The trousers, as will happen with the best regulated
boys, went first, and the shakos, owing to the unceremonious
manner in which they were treated, went next, and then
Hanwell boys were to be seen in the village wearing the
volunteer tunic, check or fancy pattern trousers, and a
billycock or straw hat. And, just as I had been raised to
the proud position of sergeant, the cadet corps came to an
inglorious end.

An old Indian colonel who lived at Hanwell saw a party
of us one day in mixed civilian and military costume. He
was scandalized, and gave Dr. Emerton a piece of his mind
on the subject. As some of the boys' parents were not
inclined to find new uniforms for their sons, the corps was
disbanded, and I bade adieu to military life for ever.

But a goodly number of Hanwellians when they left the
College joined a grown-up corps, and many others went into
the Army, and so the two years' steady drilling they had at
the old school was of good service to them.

One of the young men who came to the College to cram
for the Army was the son of Mr. Weston, of Weston's
Music Hall. We called him the " Star of the Weston
Hemisphere."

At the time he was with us his father opened a sort of
Cremorne on a small scale somewhere in Kentish Town or
Highgate Road. It was called Weston's Retreat, and on
Saturday evenings young Weston generally went up to town,
taking a certain number of the boarders with him, and a
young English master, Mr. Martin, who was the son of the
editor of the then popular Peter Parley's Annual.

Young Martin, who was a charming fellow, "rather like
Lord Dundreary in appearance, had only one fault. He

26 MY LIFE

always came back on Saturday night with a desire to go to
bed in his boots.

He slept in a little room off the dormitory of which I was
the captain, and it was frequently my midnight task to get his
boots off after he had fallen into a sleep disturbed by dreams
in which he gave off snatches of the latest music-hall songs.

He appreciated my services, and, knowing that I was
always " scribbling " little things which were intended to
be humorous, he promised that one day he would show
some of my stuff to his father, the editor.

I wrote quite a number of " things " in anticipation of
the event, but " Peter^Parley's " son left suddenly, and then
I gathered my literary efforts together and sent them in a
large envelope to the editor of Fun.

I bought the periodical regularly every week to see if
anything of mine was in it. I thought that as my manuscript
had not been returned it had been accepted. At last I gave
up all hope of ever seeing my work in Fun.

But the ambition was gratified after all. Ten years later
I was on the staff of that then popular " penny comic," and
among the members of the staff of Fun and Hood's Annual
when I joined were W. S. Gilbert, H. S. Leigh, George
Augustus Sala, Austin Dobson, Ambrose Bierce, Charles
Leland, Arthur Sketchley, Godfrey Turner, and Ashby
Sterry. But this is another story.

I left Hanwell at the end of 1863, and in 1864 I went to
Germany — the Germany of the 'sixties that was never to be
the same Germany again after the dawn of the 'seventies.

In Bonn I was placed by my father in the house of
Dr. Stromberg, in the Weberstrasse. My fellow-students
were a number of young men who were studying German
and attending lectures and amusing themselves.

Walter Ballantine, Serjeant Ballantine's son, who after-
wards became M.P. for Coventry, was a fellow-student of
mine, and so was one of the Rowntrees.

Walter Ballantine and I had certain habits in common.
We were both great readers, and it was our delight to spend
a summer or an autumn afternoon sitting under a fruit-tree
reading a French novel and eating cherries or peaches or
apricots.

MY LIFE 27

Fruit was very cheap in Bonn in those days. You could
buy as many ripe apricots as you could conveniently eat
in an afternoon for a couple of groschen, and cigars were
eight pfennige — about a penny — each. Wine was sixpence a
bottle, and not bad if you mixed it with sugar or strawberries
or peaches. Oh, the economical luxury of those happy
days !

In the intervals of reading Balzac, my favourite French
author, and eating apricots, I translated Freiligrath and
Schiller and Uhland into English verse of sorts, and smoked
German tobacco in a long German pipe, and fell in love with
a pretty fraulein behind the counter of a shop where the
penny cigars were sold.

We went to nearly every kermesse within a dozen miles,
and danced with the village maidens. We made a point of
attending most of the students' duels, and played against
the English elevens of Diisseldorf and Essen.

We sailed on the Rhine and we bathed in the Rhine, and
it was in the Rhine that one of my chums, an American
student at the University, went one evening to bathe and
was drowned, and the Bonn students in full uniform gave
him a torchlight funeral.

Every student in the procession, which started about
eight o'clock at night, carried a flaming torch, and after the
ceremony was over we returned to the banks of the Rhine
and every lighted torch was flung into the river opposite the
spot at which our comrade had met his fate.

There were a number of young Englishmen at Perry's in
Poppelsdorf Allee, and with the Perry contingent we were
frequently allied in frolics and escapades.

Lord William Beresford — he was Bill Beresford to us, as
he was afterwards to thousands of admirers — was one of the
most conspicuous of the bloods who were at Perry's, which
was the aristocratic house. He generally wore his hat at
an angle of forty-five degrees, and he was the champion at
a form of nocturnal sport which was known as a candlestick
match.

The old-fashioned bedroom candlestick as a weapon
requires a certain amount of dexterous handling.

The game was generally played by eight, four a side, and

28 MY LIFE

all in night attire. The combatants stood a certain
distance apart, and then sent their candlesticks whirling
through the air.

After the bout the lower limbs of the players were care-
fully examined for cuts and bruises. The side whose legs
had the fewest cuts and bruises were the winners.

It was a rule of the game and a point of honour never to
aim above the legs.

Bonn was a very different town in the 'sixties from what
it became after the Franco-German War. There were no
grand villas as there are to-day, and living was cheap and
good, and many English families came to Bonn to economize.

But even then the English were not popular.

And so it frequently happened that after our fellows had
spent a night at a popular Bierhaus we finished up with a
free fight outside. We fought fairly, in the good old English
fashion, but some of the lower-class Germans fought unfairly.
They used to wait for us at dark corners and open proceedings
by throwing empty beer-bottles at our heads.

When we had enough money for a week-end a select
party of us would board the midnight boat on Saturday and
disembark at Oberlahnstein for Ems early on Sunday
morning.

The roulette tables at Ems, Wiesbaden, and Homburg
had two zeros — single zero and double zero — but you could
stake as low as a florin, and that gave you a chance of trying
your luck a good many times.

My youthful experiences of the German gambling tables
were many and varied. I played more than once side by side
with " The Butcher Duke," as the Duke of Hamilton used
to be called on account of his fondness for wearing blue
shirts, and on one occasion I saw the notorious Garcia break
the bank.

But my early relations with roulette were summarily
snapped by an accident.

One wet evening I had no money to go out with, and so
I stayed at home.

I had previously arranged with a young Englishman who
lived in the opposite house a form of amusement for wet
evenings. We each took a supply of crab-apples up to our

MY LIFE 29

rooms, and from our open windows, which faced each other,
we bombarded everybody who passed along the street with
an umbrella up.

Unfortunately a famous German professor happened to
pass under my window. He put down his umbrella for a
moment to see if it had left off raining, and he received a
heavy shower of crab-apples on his intellectual brow.

He knocked at the door furiously, and insisted upon
having my name, and then, having expressed himself
towards me in unclassical language, he went away.

I was summoned before the Chief of Police, who gave me
a severe lecture in German, and fined me ten thalers. I did
not mind having to listen to the lecture, but I objected to
having to lose the thalers, and that night at Ruland's
Bierhaus, when it was packed with students, I delivered
myself freely of my views on German justice.

Some of the Germans made insulting remarks, and then
the English and Americans took the matter up, and there
was a certain amount of damage done to the glass and
furniture.

This time the authorities requested Dr. Stromberg not to
allow me out of the house after nightfall for a fortnight.

This was a disciplinary measure to which I strongly
objected, so after being locked in my bedroom at night I
opened the window, fastened my sheets together, and went
down them hand over hand to the ground, where I was
received with cheers by the English contingent.

Knowing that the police would be after me I did not stay
in the town, but made my way to the top of the Petersberg
— one of the Seven Mountains — and there in a comfortable
little hotel I stayed for three or four days ; then becoming
reckless I ventured down into the town, entered a Gasthaus
in a side street for some refreshments, and there I was
promptly arrested.

This time the fine imposed upon me was too heavy for
my depleted purse, and I had to telegraph home for money.

My father, who had heard of my previous escapades and
my gambling proclivities, thought that I might as well go
home and tempt fortune in London, where the odds would
be more in my favour. So I left Bonn one afternoon en route

30 MY LIFE

for London, and a cheering crowd of young Englishmen
who sympathized with me in my fight with Kultur saw
me off.

" Bill " Beresford was at the station, and he made a
speech congratulating me upon the bold stand I had made
against German tyranny.

Everybody insisted upon thrusting cigars — German cigars
— into my pockets. When the train started I hurriedly
pulled out my handkerchief to wave it to the boys I left
behind me, and in the process I pulled out the cigars, which
flew about in every direction, one hitting an elderly German
officer on the nose, and the others falling into a German
lady's lap.

I endured the withering scorn of their glances as far as
Cologne, and there I changed into another compartment,
and arrived in London with one cigar and one thaler in my
possession.

A month later I was on a high stool in my father's office,
extracting all the humour I could out of a situation which
I never took very seriously.

But I had sampled " life " in Bonn, and London with its
infinite possibilities lay before me.

CHAPTER IV

THE first thing that struck me when I entered my father's
office in Aldersgate Street to start a mercantile career was
that the environment presented facilities for the pursuance
of my pet ambition, which was to be a journalist and author.

I had written poetry of sorts from the age of ten. When
I was fifteen some verses of mine were printed on the back
page of the halfpenny Welcome Guest, with an encouraging
little note — it was on the Answers to Correspondents page —
from the editor.

Some years afterwards, when I was chatting with my
friend Miss Braddon at her Richmond home, she told me
that the encouraging answer to " S. R. G." had been written
by her mother, who was then editing the periodical.

I wonder how many people to-day remember that half-
penny Welcome Guest and its rival, the Halfpenny Journal,
to which Miss Braddon herself anonymously contributed a
thrilling serial under the title of " The Black Band, or The
Mysteries of Midnight " ?

I had written burlesques for my brothers and sisters to
perform in the Theatre Royal Back Drawing-room, and
though I had appropriated whole pages from the burlesques
of H. J. Byron, printed copies of which I bought at Lacy's
in the Strand, a good deal of the work was original, and
there were puns of my own in them which Byron would
have blushed to acknowledge.

All my father's friends said I was a nice boy, but it was
a pity I " scribbled." So to cure me of " scribbling " my
father decided when I came back from Bonn that I should
be placed in his office and instructed in the mysteries of
commerce. I did not like the idea, for I was a born
Bohemian, but I had to give way.

My father was at that time a wholesale and export cabinet

32 MY LIFE

manufacturer and plate-glass factor, and he carried on his
business on historical premises which were his freehold
property.

Aldersgate Street was from the time of the Plantagenets
to that of the Stuarts the Belgravia of London, the residence
of prelates and nobles, and I found myself in the heart of a
land of romance that was already dear to me as a lover of
London.

The premises at which my father carried on his business
covered a large space of ground stretching in one direction
nearly to Bartholomew Close, and London House itself,
which was the frontage of the area, was formerly the palace
of the Bishops of London.

It was supposed to have been at one time the town house
of the Marquis of Dorchester. During the Commonwealth
it was used as a State prison, and after the Restoration it
became the episcopal residence of the See.

The historical associations of London House appealed to
me greatly, and softened the first blow of having to enter
commercial life, for which I did not feel myself particularly
fitted, either by training or disposition.

There was a little dramatic story in connexion with the
superstition of " three " which also appealed to me.

In the middle of the eighteenth century London House
was occupied by Seddon, the eminent cabinet-maker, who
carried on his business there and lived in the palatial rooms
above. Even in my time these rooms were of the palatial
order, with magnificent solid mahogany doors and wonderful
ceilings.

The dramatic incident of " three " occurred in connexion
with Seddon, the cabinet-maker. At London House the
whole of his uninsured stock was burned on two occasions,
and some little time after, in order to complete the chain of
" three/' Miss Seddon was burned to death in the house by
her clothes catching fire.

The premises were so important and were of such extent,
a good deal of valuable ground at the back being covered
only by rambling workshops and packing-sheds and open
yards, that my father had many tempting offers for the
freehold, but for many years he refused to sell.

MY LIFE 33

I remember that at one time the General Post Office had
an idea that they would like to become purchasers, as they
were extending their premises and contemplating vast
building operations.

Mr. Frank Ives Scudamore was instructed to go over the
premises, and I had the honour of personally conducting his
tour.

I have read a good deal at various times about Frank Ives
Scudamore's wit and humour and his many quaint charac-
teristics. It will be remembered that he eventually left
the G.P.O. and went to Constantinople to establish the
postal system there, and that in his day he was quite a
celebrity.

But on the afternoon that I took him over London House
I had no opportunity of sampling his characteristic conversa-
tion. He went silently with me into the various portions
of the building, and during the journey he only indulged in
an occasional short grunt.

When he had seen everything he uttered one word :

" Damn ! "

Then he put out his hand in token of farewell, and we
parted.

I had more opportunity of conversation with a celebrity
a year or two later, when one of the Brothers Mayhew, who
was writing a series of commercial articles on great business
houses, I believe — I forget what the title was — came to
London House, and I was told off to be his guide.

On that occasion I remember that I took him into the
rooms where the quicksilvering process was going on, and
I told him such terrible stories of the effect of quicksilver
upon the workers that when the proof of the article came to
my father he held up his hands in horror.

I had indulged my romantic, or, as he called it, imaginative
faculty to such an extent that the article was considered
absolutely impossible.

Long years afterwards, when I was a prosperous author
and Henry Mayhew had ceased to be one, he wrote me a
letter reminding me of the first interview between the man
who wrote " London Labour and the London Poor " and
the youth who was later on to write " How the Poor Live/'

c

34 MY LIFE

and I was able to help him over one of the — I am afraid
many — critical moments of his career.

A good many years later my father did part with London
House and the adjacent land. The old palace of the bishops
has disappeared, and a huge block of business houses now
stands on its site.

It was my joy in the days before I combined journalism
with the City to roam around Little Britain and Barbican,
Bartholomew Close and Cloth Fair, and the ancient ways
where once reigned the glories of Bartholomew Fair, and my
early pilgrimages in old Aldrichesgate and the time-hallowed
haunts around it inspired me to gain the knowledge of
London which was to stand me in such good stead as an
author in later years.

But there was a very human side to my early life in the
City, and I came into it when the spirit of Dickens still
hovered over it.

You could see the Cheeryble Brothers ambling amiably
on one side of a street, and Mr. Dombey striding pompously
along on the other.

And a few of the City fathers still dwelt in the City and
lived over their business establishments.

There was one dear old Deputy who furnished me with
the material for one of my first stories. He and his elderly
daughters lived over a forlorn warehouse where he carried
on a business that had diminished year by year until it had
become practically non-existent. But to every feast and
function in the City the Deputy and his two elderly daughters
were invited.

These City luncheons and banquets must have been
salvation to them, for the current story was that in the
intervals of City functions they lived upon the stock which
still remained unsold in the warehouse.

It was a drysalter's business, and there were bottles of
anchovies and herrings and things of that sort displayed on
dusty shelves in the old-fashioned, small-paned windows.

The old Deputy and his daughters attended the functions
of the 'sixties garbed in the fashion of the 'forties, and the
old ladies, I remember, generally wore faded wreaths of
roses on their grey hair.

MY LIFE 35

The old Deputy died in his room above the warehouse,
and then the shutters went up, and when they were taken
down again the melancholy bottles of anchovies that had
stood for years, the last survivors of a once prosperous past,
had disappeared too.

The woe-begone windows of that City warehouse have
been to me for fifty years a haunting memory of my City
days.

Apart from the romantic atmosphere of my historic
surroundings in Aldersgate Street I did not find City life
such an unpleasant sort of existence as I had anticipated.
My father's office was filled with old gentlemen who had
been with the firm for many years.

The cashier and two of the principal clerks wore swallow-
tailed coats, a large expanse of frilled shirt, and high black
stocks. The cashier, in addition, wore a velvet skull-cap.

They took snuff out of a silver box, the lid of which they
tapped in quite the classical comedy style.

The Early Victorian, Dickensy, atmosphere of our office
appealed to my love of character, and when I discovered
that there was a delightful double of Mr. Micawber among
the artists who made the designs our travellers carried all
over the country I was quite delighted.

Micawber and I used to lunch together in the artists'
room. Sometimes we lunched on tinned lobster, and some-
times we cooked steak in a frying-pan on the stove.

But all our artist designers were interesting. One of
them was the son of G. W. Hunt, the composer of " We
don't want to fight, but, by Jingo, if we do ! " and at once
I breathed the atmosphere of the music-hall.

Another artist was Mr. G. J. Thompson, who encouraged
my literary aspirations and collected the verses which I used
to write in business hours.

Quaint characters came to the office and to the warehouse
from all parts of the kingdom, and I remembered them with
great advantage when I began to write stories professionally.

But my chief delight was my father's private office, in
which I had a big writ ing- table. The private office was
secluded and cosy, and it was there and upon that writing-
table that I wrote stories and verses and occasionally plays

36 MY LIFE

without the faintest hope of ever getting them published or
produced.

Among the stories I wrote in the City office was the series
afterwards published in the Weekly Dispatch, " Three Brass
Balls." The stories were inspired by the fact that there was
a pawnbroker exactly opposite us.

Among the plays I wrote on that office table was The Lights
o' London.

Of course I ought to have done my " fancy work " at
home in my own time. But I wanted to see life and know
life, and the process occupied most of my leisure after-office
hours.

Seeing life in London cost money, and I am afraid I had
extravagant ideas. At any rate, I found my salary, good as
it was, seeing that I lived in my father's house at Hamilton
Terrace, insufficient for my persistent programme of theatres
and music-halls, with Cremorne and the North Woolwich
Gardens, the Argyle Rooms and the Holborn Casino, Highbury
Barn and CaldwelTs in Dean Street, Soho, thrown in, and a
fondness for backing my fancy on the turf.

In my early City days when I began to follow the turf I
used to put my money on at " The Ruins " in Farringdon
Road in the day-time, and at a coffee-house in Foubert's Place,
Regent Street, in the evening.

A friend of mine who lived in Maida Vale had backed
Hermit at 66 to i, thrown up his position in his father's office
on the strength of his winnings and " gone racing/' and we
used to meet in the billiard-room at The Warrington, Maida
Vale, of an evening, and he would give me tips. They did not
often come off, but I generally had my half-crown on them at
The Ruins.

At The Ruins several well-known ready-money bookmakers
stood daily exhibiting their lists, and there the youth of the
City flocked to put their money on. And working among
the crowd were any number of sharps.

But the whole thing went on under the noses of the City
police, and this form of street betting was then accepted as
the habit and custom of a free people.

At the coffee-house in Foubert's Place the business was
fairly straight. The bookmakers would sit in the boxes with

MY LIFE 37

their lists in front of them, and you could put your money on
quite comfortably, and get it if you won.

There was another public betting-place at the back of the
brewery at the corner of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court
Road, and there were plenty of well-known " List Houses/'
where you could bet in ready money.

Seeing life and backing my fancy soon made me hard up,
and to relieve the situation I sought the assistance of an
accommodating gentleman in Holborn, a tailor who would
make me a suit of clothes and discount my bill for fifteen or
twenty pounds.

At one time I owed him something like a hundred and fifty
pounds, but I do not think that I had had more than thirty
or forty pounds cash. The balance was made up of interest
on renewals.

The incident was brought to my mind quite recently in a
curious way.

When the King of Italy made the amiable Mr. Oddenino
of the Imperial Restaurant a Cavaliere a number of his old
friends gave him a congratulatory banquet.

One of the vice-chairmen was Mr. Tom Honey, of Barnato
Brothers, who during the evening made a speech. I had
previously spoken and Mr. Honey took the opportunity of
telling a story about me.

One day in the long ago years he went to his tailor in
Holborn to try on a suit, and he found the tailor looking very
disconsolate.

" Hallo," said Mr. Honey, " you look sad. Have you made
a bad debt ? " " No," was the reply, " but I've been paid
off some money that I thought was going to earn interest for
a good many years to come. Young Sims has made a success
with a play, and he's taken up his bills. Just my luck ! "

The play that enabled me to pay off the accommodating
tailor was the one written on my office table in the City.

I got my first chance as a journalist and dramatist through
not liking the liquor or the company at Kate Hamilton's, a
night house in the neighbourhood of the then notorious
Panton Street.

Bad liquor and bad company were my stepping-stones to
Fortune. And this is how it happened.

CHAPTER V

SOME people used to go to Mitcham in the old days for the
Fair, and some for lavender. George Borrow's Sapengro or
snake man used to go there to catch snakes. I am bound to
confess that I have, so far as my memory serves me, only
been to Mitcham once in my life.

But it was a very momentous once, for it was a turning-
point in my " career." It took me out of Aldersgate Street
and put me down in Fleet Street. It gave me my start not
only as a journalist but as a playwright.

If I had not gone to Mitcham one winter evening long, long
years ago it is quite possible that I might have become a
fairly prosperous City man instead of a struggling author.

I was about five and twenty when my Fate found me. It
happened that some intimate friends of my family were living
at Mitcham, and the daughters of the house were anxious to
have some private theatricals.

They had selected H. J. Byron's Old Story, and they asked
me if I would stage-manage it. I agreed, and I was asked to
run over to Mitcham and meet the company and rehearse the
play.

Among those who were taking parts were Mr. J. F. Dillon
Croker, Mr. Westmacott Chapman, and Mr. George Canton,
all of them well known in amateur circles, and with a large
number of acquaintances in literary and theatrical Bohemia.

After the rehearsal we came back to London by the last
train. Dillon Croker bade us good night at Victoria. It was
only a little after midnight, and one of the party — I think it
was Canton — proposed that we should sample the night life
of London.

The programme of the " Won't go home till morning " boys
was generally in those days mapped out on pretty regular
lines.

38

MY LIFE 39

After the Holborn Casino and Argyle Rooms, where fair ones
of a certain type had their days — or shall I say nights ? — of
renown, closed their doors, which was usually at midnight,
the " Won't go home till morning " boys would make their
way to Mott's, which was just off Langham Place, or to
222 Piccadilly — an establishment which was colloquially
known as " The Three Swear- wordy Twos," and is now, I
think, absorbed in the Criterion building — and in these
establishments they would dance and otherwise divert them-
selves till daylight.

The Haymarket was as busy as a fair all the long night
through, and there were night houses in Panton Street and
Jermyn Street and the streets around Leicester Square where
you could drink bad spirits and worse wine till the early
morning sun streaming in through the back windows sent you
shamefacedly home.

It was quite the usual thing to come back from Cremorne
at four o'clock in the morning, and wind up by going " round
the houses " in the West, and thus stretching out the night's
amusement to five or six o'clock, a plan of campaign which
was known as " Home with the milk in the morning."

Cremorne ! All its comedy and all its tragedy have yet to
be written. The life-story of some of its proprietors would
make a Balzacian volume — I shall have something to say
about them later on — and so would the life-story of some of
its habitues, the fair and frail, the gallant and the gay, light-
hearted youth and wicked old age, frolicking Bohemia and
wild-oats-sowing Belgravia, the " lights " — and shadows — of
the bar, the stage, and the turf, youth having its first fling,
and the blase man about town, all frisking and frolicking,
drinking and dancing, pleasuring or prowling among the
shining lights. All are in the picture that comes back to my
memory across a gulf of forty years.

Of those memories among the outward and visible souvenirs
that remain to me are some verses written by H. J. Byron,
when all Cremorne's stock-in-trade and appurtenances were
advertised for sale by auction. Here is a verse :

" Cream-coloured charger," I exclaimed,
" I mourn thy lot forlorn,"

4o MY LIFE

And with a sigh I hurried by
The Gardens of Cream mown.

And I never sit down to my morning meal without being
reminded of the old " Gardens of Delight," for the silver dish-
covers that are used on my breakfast-table bear the stamp of
" The Royal Cremome Gardens " upon them. They were the
covers used for special and distinguished supper-parties, and
were given to me some years ago by a friend.

Cremorne Gardens were open in the day for a different sort
of patronage. The price of admission was one shilling Up to
10 P.M. and two shillings after that hour. It was one evening
that De Groof , the flying man, ascended with his newly designed
wings, and after attaining a certain height fell suddenly with
a terrible crash on to the pavement of a Chelsea street.

I was near the spot at the time and saw the crowd rush
towards the battered body and struggle to secure pieces of
the dead man's shattered wings as a souvenir. Several
leading articles were written in the daily papers on the tragedy,
and the verdict of all of them was that man would never
conquer the air.

But I have travelled from the night house to Cremorne. It
was generally the other way about. Let me hasten back to
the night house.

In the fulfilment of our intention to see life our little party
made its way first to Coney's in Panton Street, from there to
Sally Sutherland's, and thence to Kate Hamilton's, which was
not far off.

I can see the company in one of these night houses now. A
young man in mercantile marine uniform is leaning across the
bar exchanging breezy persiflage with the golden-haired,
highly coloured damsel behind it. A pretty faded girl of five
and twenty is sitting on one of the couches drinking cham-
pagne with a swell of the period who wears peg-top trousers
and long Dundreary whiskers.

An elderly woman with keen, evil-looking eyes is escorting
two very much made-up young girls who call her " Ma/' and
they are sitting at a table with an elderly man who wears
his hat very much on one side, and has a portion of his jnouth
in the same condition.

MY LIFE 41

The gaiety, such as there is, is forced. The voices ue
harsh, the atmosphere is bad, and the liquor is worse.

I sipped the stuff in my glass at three bars, and then told
my friends that I had had enough of that sort of thing andl
should go home. Then one of the party had an idea.

" Don't let us breakup yet," he said. " I know an awfully
jofly jdace where we can go. A dob I belong to. We can sit
there anH smnfa* and drink decent honor. It's quite a
Bohemian club— actors a«d authors and journalists and that
sort of thing, don't you know? "

I pricked up my ears. Authors, actors, journalists, and
amnng thfm there might be managers attd <dUoib ! To
mingle with such people, if it were only for a brief hour, would
be a delight tome.

I yielded to the suggestion eagerly. We hailed a four-
wheeled cab — there was no necessity to blow a whistle in
those days ; the cabs crawled past yon in I'lriBJJ procession,
and you didn't have to hafl them, the drivers hailed >uu me,
got into the cab, and the clubman whose guests we were to
be shouted to the driver, " Hoiywefl Street."

Half-way down Hoiywefl Street, that later on was niiiMMil
Booksellers' Row, we stopped at a little door, pushed it open,

~«Vi ^T-H iL- 1 n i" ^ 11L~r-2-i':: •* " ~ lilt" i -"HZ 7 ~% " .1 ~ 7 - ' ~* ~'-~ ' - ~ ' ~ ~ ~~-

room, ^ •"fc"'t^Hy fuiaidii il with easy chairs and a big sofa,
and filled with tobacco <smnfa> ar^f the clamour of voices.

Jne coinp^^y HXfrtSisfffl cfaiefiv of actors. anlliOHL and
journalists, and their invited guests.

This was *^ Unity dub, the bit of old-fashioned Bohemia
in Tx»iAifi that was to be my jumping-off place for th<^ world
cf l^ilJi C ~^ '~ : 7

Among the TUF^nnPTs to whom I ifc^*^ tnt rxKinfBd was A
iiaiifi^Mii^ voun? actor ^i^pajjy 3. Duboc favourite and HTTMT"
admired on the stage by the fair portion of the aodiencp

I should have Jpolnpd at him with even keener interest than
I did could I have foreseen the future and known that nearly
thirty years later I should be rung up by the Evonmg Nems
late one vuiln u^hL and asked by the editor to viile there
and then an ipyrrr FMWP of the
played the hero so often in my Addphi mekxiramas,
on that fateful evening of December 16, 1897,

42 MY LIFE

murdered at the stage door of the Adelphi by a player of
small parts who was suffering from the mania of persecution
and believed that William Terriss had kept him out of an
engagement.

Before I left the club on the night of my introduction to
it I had been proposed as a member. A fortnight later I
received a notice of my election, paid my guinea, and became
a " Unitarian."

Our house dinner at the Unity was at three o'clock. Among
the frequent diners were Arthur and Edward Swanborough,
of the merry little Strand ; David James, Tom Thorne, George
Honey, George Maddick, the founder of many newspapers;
Henry S. Leigh, the Caroller of Cockayne ; Wilford Morgan,
the singer : John Sheehan, the " Irish whisky drinker " ;
William Tinsley, the publisher ; Tom Catling, the editor of
Lloyd's ; George Spencer Edwards of the Era ; H. B. Farnie,
the librettist; George Barrett, Wilson's brother; Walter
Joyce, Savile Clarke, and occasionally Dan Chatto, who was
then with John Camden Hotten in Piccadilly ; Tom Oliphant,
the editor of the Weekly Dispatch ; and John Thomson, its
dramatic critic.

John Thomson, a big-hearted young fellow, with a fat,
baby face and large spectacles, had been Swinburne's secretary.

Thomson's mother had an apartment house in Bloomsbury,
and at one time Swinburne and Savile Clarke lodged there.

One night, going in late, Savile Clarke went down into the
kitchen to get some hot water for the whisky that he and
Swinburne desired to take as a nightcap. Clarke, finding the
kitchen door ajar, went in and was astonished to see a fat-
faced boy of about sixteen sitting in front of the fire and
reciting " Paradise Lost " from memory to the blackbeetles.

He went upstairs and fetched Swinburne down, and they
spent the night listening to the boy, who appeared to know
all the English poets, ancient and modern, by heart.

Swinburne took an interest in the boy and had him con-
stantly with him, and it was while he was Swinburne's secretary
that poor John first met Adah Isaacs Menken, the actress and
poetess, with whom he fell madly in love. But that is another
story.

When I first met Thomson at the Unity he was the dramatic

MY LIFE 43

critic of the Dispatch, and wrote a column of paragraphs called
" Waifs and Strays." Tom Hood had been writing the
column previously, but had given it up.

I wrote a poem which I called " Jack's Story." It was
inspired by Colonel John Hay's " Jim Bludso." I showed it
to John Thomson. He had it set up at the Weekly Dispatch
office and tried to get it published, but it was too daring for
London editors, and eventually Ambrose Bierce took it across
the Atlantic with him and got it inserted in the San Francisco
News Letter, a paper which was founded by an Englishman,
Frederick Marriott. He started the halfpenny Chat and
many other journals in London, but they failed, and he went
to America, and there he made a fortune.

The editor of Chat was Thomas Lyttelton Holt, a Cambridge
man of good family, but a journalist of the ultra-Bohemian
type, who had the reputation of having started more news-
papers and publications than any man of his day. But they
all started with very little capital, and Holt was always in
more or less desperate straits for money.

But fortune came to him at last when, in the first flush of
the railway mania, he started the Iron Times and railway
advertisements flowed in. Then the journalist who had
borrowed many a half-crown in the Street of Adventure was
seen driving along Fleet Street in a carriage and pair, with a
liveried footman hanging on behind.

When a Times leader pricked the railway bubble, Holt lost
the Iron Times and the hard times returned to him.

When Holt resigned the editorship of Chat he was succeeded
by a young man who was then a scene-painter's assistant at
the Princess's Theatre, where his mother was acting. The
name of the young man was George Augustus Sala.

At that time Sala was doing the illustrations for Edward
Lloyd's Penny Sunday Times and also for a number of
periodicals of a highly sensational order, but not of an
immoral tendency as some of the later penny dreadfuls
became.

My old friend Mr. Farlow Wilson, for twenty-eight years
the printing manager of the house of Cassell, has left it on
record that at one time Sala was told he must put more
vigour into his drawings. Mr. Lloyd wrote to the artist,

44 MY LIFE

" The eyes must be larger and there must be more blood,
much more blood."

I once heard Sala in an after-dinner speech refer to his early
adventures as an illustrator of penny fiction and to his first
appearance as an editor. The paper was Frederick Marriott's
Chat, of which, I believe, there is no copy in the British
Museum.

The first man who employed Sala as an editor was Frederick
Marriott of the London Chat, and the man who printed my
first Fleet Street effort was Frederick Marriott, the proprietor
of the San Francisco News Letter.

The poem that was published in the San Francisco News
Letter was the first of the series which afterwards became
known as " The Dagonet Ballads." I hasten to say that
" Jack's Story " is not to be found in any of the " Dagonet "
volumes now.

Poor Thomson was not a strenuous worker. He was
fonder of talking than of writing. Bandmann, the tragedian,
had announced a revival of Narcisse at the Lyceum for one
Saturday evening. Thomson wrote his notice for the Dispatch
on Saturday morning and went off to the seaside with a
friend.

At the last moment Bandmann decided to postpone the
production of Narcisse till Monday evening, but the Dispatch
came out on Sunday morning with a notice of the performance,
and it was a vigorous slate of Bandmann in the title r61e.

Bandmann placarded London with posters denouncing
critics in general and the dramatic critic of the Dispatch in
particular.

Thomson, to give me a chance, as he said, let me write his
column in the Weekly Dispatch. For some weeks I wrote the
paragraphs and he took the guinea, but one day he came to
me and said : " Look here, my boy, the public evidently like
your stuff. You had better keep the job and take the
guinea/' And I did. And that was my first appearance in
Fleet Street as a professional journalist.

There was a good deal of mystery about poor John Thomson.
He lived in one of the side roads of St. John's Wood, then
playfully referred to as " The Grove of the Evangelist," and
the house in which he lived was rather sumptuously furnished.

MY LIFE 45

It was in this house that Thomson fell ill with a feverish
cold. One evening a friend called to cheer John up, and they
began discussing the poets. Thomson began to recite from
memory Swinburne's " Atalanta in Calydon." When he
came to a certain passage the friend stopped him and said he
had not got the exact words.

Thomson, who said that he had and would prove it, got
out of bed, and, bare-footed, walked out of the bedroom,
down the stairs, across the hall and through a conservatory
into the little library in which he knew he could find the book.

He found it, brought it back, pointed to the passage,
proved that he was right, and got into bed. But he never
left it again. In a few days he was dead.

I went on writing the " Waifs and Strays " for the Weekly
Dispatch and drawing the guinea. But I was still in the
City.

I have said that " Jack's Story " was my first ballad.
That is not quite correct. I had previously written one
called " Harcourt's Dream," but it was much too personal
for publication. It dealt in free and uncensored language
with the habits and customs of the most eccentric member
the Unity had on its roll of membership.

We called him " The Bushranger," because he came from
Australia. He lived in Dane's Inn in the day-time and came
to the Unity about four o'clock in the afternoon, sat in a
chair by the fire, and drank his whisky and water steadily
until about nine o'clock in the evening, and then he would
gradually slip out of the chair into the fireplace.

At first the waiter or a guest arriving and discovering him
lying in such dangerous proximity to the hot coals would go
to his assistance, but the old gentleman's language on being
disturbed was of such a discouraging nature that it was
ultimately decided to let him rest in peace. But in order
that the fire might be properly made up he was sometimes
gently and delicately pulled a little on one side.

It was at the Unity that the habit among the members of
coming in and wanting chops and fried potatoes and other
delicacies between four and five o'clock in the morning
compelled the proprietor to have the following notice put up
in the hall :

46 MY LIFE

Members are earnestly requested not
to order hot suppers after 4 a.m.

Before I became a paid traveller in the Street of Adventure,
certain adventures had happened to me, both in the news-
paper world and the world of the footlights.

One night I had gone with a friend to the pit of the Queen's
Theatre, of which Mr. Henry Labouchere was the lessee — he
had taken it for Miss Henrietta Hodson, who was afterwards
Mrs. Labouchere — and there was a scene.

The play was Tom Taylor's 'Twixt Axe and Crown, and the
beautiful Mrs. Rousby was playing the heroine.

Seated near me in the pit was a shortish, square-shouldered
gentleman with long whiskers of a bright red hue. He was
making audible remarks during the progress of the play, and
when an official of the theatre, Mr. Morris Jacobs, the acting
manager, came to him and began to remonstrate with him,
the red-whiskered gentleman exclaimed, " Shut up ! I want
to hear Tom Taylor's history."

Thereupon the acting manager summoned his assistants,
and the red-whiskered gentleman was seized by the shoulders,
dragged backwards over the pit benches, and ignominiously
pushed down the stone steps that led to the street.

I was an habitual pittite in those days, with old-fashioned
notions as to the sacred rights possessed by the pit. I followed
the fray, and when the red-whiskered gentleman landed on
the bottom step I sat down beside him while he pulled himself
together, and handed him my card in case he required a witness
to the rough treatment he had received.

The red-whiskered gentleman was Leopold Lewis, co-editor
of the Mask with Captain Alfred Thompson, the brilliant
artist and caricaturist. Leopold Lewis was later on the
author of The Bells.

Lewis was a solicitor as well as a Bohemian and an author,
and his legal instinct prompted him to bring an action against
Mr. Labouchere, the proprietor of the theatre, in the shape
of a claim for damages.

The case was tried at Westminster, and I was a witness
for the plaintiff. There had previously been a Bow Street
case, in which Lewis had been charged with creating a dis-

MY LIFE 47

turbance in the theatre, and the official reporter at Bow Street
was Mr. George Grossmith, who was later known to fame as
a society entertainer and the leading comedian of Savoy
opera. He was not making enough money in those days to
give up his post at Bow Street.

George Grossmith, as the official reporter, was summoned
as a witness, in order that he might produce his shorthand
notes of the evidence in the police case.

While the case was in progress Lewis, who was sitting next
to me, whispered, " I shall win. There's one of my tenants
on the jury, and he wants me to renew a lease."

He did win, but it was a Pyrrhic victory, for the damages
awarded to him amounted to one farthing.

The evidence concerning the affray in the pit of the Queen's
by the witnesses must have been rather embarrassing to the
jury. Leopold Lewis's witnesses described it as one of the
most disgraceful assaults upon a British subject that had ever
occurred within the walls of a West End theatre. The
witnesses who spoke on behalf of the management described
it as merely an amiable attempt to induce a gentleman who
was disturbing the audience to quit the building quietly.

The judge in his summing-up humorously suggested that
one side or the other had given play to their fancy in the
witness-box in a direction which approached dangerously near
to deliberate perjury. What his legal mind failed to recognize
was that it was merely a difference of " point of view."

After the case was over Lewis introduced me to George
Grossmith, and I took him with me to the Unity Club. That
was our first meeting, but it started a friendship which only
ended on the day that the gay comedian played the last
scene in the tragedy with which his life closed.

When The Bells was produced at the Lyceum I was still
" unattached," but the Strand was my home from home.

Early on the evening of November 25, 1871, I was in the
Strand when I saw a pair of long red whiskers coming out of
a public-house, and Leopold Lewis, with a thick woollen
comforter round his neck, followed the whiskers.

He was preceded by a strong odour of rum. In a wheezy
voice he explained that he had a terrible cold, and he had
been taking hot rum and butter for it.

48

MY LIFE

Then he told me that a play of his was being produced at
the Lyceum that evening, and he asked me to accompany
him to the theatre.

" I don't think much of the thing," said Lewis, " but Irving
fancies himself in it. Come and see how it goes."

On the night of the production of The Bells I sat in the
stalls side by side with the author. He kept his overcoat and
his muffler on, and I wore among other things a pilot jacket.

The stalls were not nearly filled, and there was very little
evening dress about. It was the sort of thing that was the
rule at the opera and the exception at the theatre.

The programme was a long one. It began with a farce.
The Bells was the second item, and the third item was a
version of Pickwick by James Albery, in which Irving, having
died as the Polish Jew in The Bells, came to life again as
Jingle.

The audience on the first night of The Bells was not
enthusiastic. It was rather bored until the big scene of the
dream with the sleigh-bells effect came, then we were gripped,
and there was a big burst of applause.

Lewis thought Irving fine, but he did not fancy there was
much money in the piece. We had no idea when we left the
theatre that night that The Bells was going to take London
by storm and be Henry Irving's stepping-stone to a fame that
was to be world-wide.

But if The Bells made Irving it certainly did not make
Leopold Lewis. He did very little afterwards, and remained
to the end a disappointed and dissatisfied man. Irving
behaved admirably to him, and stood by him to the finish. But
the success of The Bells had given poor Lewis a false idea of
his own value as a dramatist, and he became a man with a
grievance, and gradually drifted out and died in the Royal
Free Hospital in February 1890.

Irving had been more than generous to him, for The Bells
was a translation of Erckmann Chatrian's Le Juif Polonais,
and it was up to any one to do a version, so that the play
itself was not in a commercial sense a property.

It was not the author who made it the enormous success
that it proved, but the actor, a fact which Leopold Lewis
failed unfortunately to realize.

MY LIFE 49

But enormous as the success was, every one did not
appreciate it. When the play was at the height of its drawing
power Irving was standing one day at the porch of the
Lyceum.

An old provincial actor passed by with whom Irving had
been associated in his early struggle for fame.

Irving stepped out of the portico, grasped the old actor
warmly by the hand and said, " Ah, my boy, I am pleased to
see you ! And how are things going ? "

" Oh," said the old actor, "I'm just jogging along in the
same old way. Are you doing anything ? "

The first night of The Bells was my first night in the stalls,
but long before I became a journalist I was an habitual
first-nighter in the pit.

I was in the pit on that memorable night in 1865 when
Charles Reade's Never Too Late to Mend was produced at the
Princess's, and Frederick Guest Tomlins, who was there as a
dramatic critic, rose in his seat during the performance and
loudly protested against the " brutal realism " of the treatment
of the boy Josephs in the prison scene.

There is a good story told of Tomlins when he was on
Jerrold's newspaper. He had an office close by, and employed
an office boy to go at eight o'clock to sweep the place out and
put everything in order.

One morning at nine Tomlins arrived at his office and could
not get in. The boy had the key and had not turned up.

When the boy did arrive he was very sleepy, and explained
that he had been up all night. He had had an uncle hanged
at the Old Bailey that morning, and he had thought it his
duty to go to the funeral — or as near as he could get
to it.

Tomlins was sympathetic in his reply. " Quite right, my
boy," he said. " Never forget your family duties. But the
next time you are going to see a relative hanged, call here
first and put the key under the doormat/'

Which reminds me that a somewhat similar incident oc-
curred under the roof of the late Mr. Abraham Cecil Fothergill
Rowlands, who wrote under the name of Cecil Raleigh.

One morning Raleigh came down to breakfast and was
quite justified in grumbling at the way in which it had been

r>

5o MY LIFE

prepared. He sent for the cook to remonstrate with her, and
the woman came to him in tears.

" Oh, please, sir," she said, " I hope you'll look over it, but
my husband, from whom I'm separated, was hanged this
morning, and it rather upset me."

I was in the pit at the Prince of Wales's in Tottenham Court
Road when it was opened under the management of Miss
Marie Wilton and H. J. Byron with a comedy, Winning
Hazard, and a burlesque of La Somnambula.

The Prince of Wales's, which Tom Robertson and the
Bancrofts made the most fashionable theatre in London, was,
when I first knew it, called the Queen's, and known as " The
Dusthole." There I used to see such old-fashioned dramas
as The Angel of Midnight, The Clock on the Stairs, and The
String of Pearls, a version of " Sweeny Todd," the Demon
Barber of Fleet Street, who, according to tradition, tilted his
customers out of the shaving-chair through a trap-door into a
cellar, where he pickled them and made them into pork pies.

The invention of the demon barber was at one time widely
attributed to George Augustus Sala, but " The String of
Pearls," in which Sweeny Todd and his barber's shop in
Fleet Street were introduced into the first chapter, first
appeared in the People's Periodical and Family Library,
edited by E. Lloyd, and was published in 1846.

Sala was on Edward Lloyd's staff, but he did not perpetrate
" Sweeny Todd." When the play was first produced it was
announced as " Sweeny Todd, the Barber of Fleet Street, or
The String of Pearls, a Drama in three acts founded on the
popular work of the same title by Fred Hazleton, Esq.,
Author of ' Edith the Captive,' ' Charley Wag,' etc."

As this drama can be traced back to the Britannia Theatre
in 1846, Sala, in the year in which he was alleged to have
written " Sweeny Todd," was only eighteen, so I am afraid
that the credit of having invented the immortal barber must
be denied to him.

Dear old E. L. Blanchard told me many years ago that he
was one of the authors who occasionally supplied The Dusthole
with a drama. The price paid was generally ten shillings
an act.

I was in the Strand Music Hall on the last night of its

LADY BANCROFT
(Miss MARIE WILTON)

MY LIFE 51

existence, and when John Hollingshead had obtained the
money to turn it into the Gaiety I was in the gallery on
Practical John's first night.

We were not a kind gallery, and we were not a kind pit,
and we did not like the version of L'Escamoteur which he
called On the Cards, and though Madge Robertson and Alfred
Wigan played delightfully, there was a good deal of hissing
at the fall of the curtain.

John Hollingshead stepped on the stage and held up his
hand.

" What do you want ? " he said.

" Something better for our money," we shouted back.

" You shall have it directly," replied Practical John — he
was not really practical, but he had a good heart, which was
much nicer.

The " something better " was a burlesque of Robert the
Devil by a young author named W. S. Gilbert. It was called
" An operatic extravaganza," and in it Nellie Farren began
her long and happy connexion with the Gaiety. She played
Robert, Emily Fowler was Alice, and Connie Loseby was
Raimbault. Joseph Eldred was Gobetto, and Richard Barker
— who was afterwards to be flung down the steps of the Opera
Comique in the famous Pinafore dispute, and to become a
great " producer " on both sides of the Atlantic, and to
stage The Merry Duchess, by Frederic Clay and myself, for
Miss Kate Santley at the Royalty — was Bertram.

John Hollingshead was a journalist — he was one of Dickens's
young men — and he was always issuing manifestoes.

In the early days of the Gaiety, when Talbot Smith was
generally to be seen during the day-time smoking a big
cigar at the front entrance, John Hollingshead used to sit in
his office at the theatre with his watch on the desk in front
of him.

Robert Soutar — Nellie Farren's husband — looked after the
stage, and Hollingshead generally had " appointments "
somewhere else. That was why he always kept his watch
on his writing-table.

I used occasionally to make my way over to the Garrick
Theatre in Leman Street, Whitechapel. It was a theatre run on
the lines of a gaff, and I saw Sixteen String Jack played there

52 MY LIFE

On this occasion the house was packed, and I was told that
the only seat vacant was one in a private box for which the
charge would be sixpence.

I paid my money and was put into a box which had four
seats. The other three were occupied by a black sailor the
worse for drink and two ladies whom nothing could have
made worse.

The audience was noisy, but there were two or three big
burly fellows in uniform who kept order by hitting the
disturbers of the piege^on the head with a cane.

A story popular at the time gives a very fair idea of the
character of the audience at the Garrick in its gaff days.

The proprietor was a man named Richards, who was fairly
well known in professional circles. One year Mr. Gye
announced that he would open his Italian Opera Season a
month earlier than usual.

Soon after the announcement Richards met Gye in the Strand.

" I say," said Richards, " you've done a nice thing for me,
opening your opera show next month. It cuts right into my
season."

" Good heavens ! " exclaimed Gye, " how can my Italian
Opera Season affect your confounded gaff ? Your patrons
aren't likely to come to my theatre."

" No," replied Richards, " but they'll be outside it picking
pockets."

Apropos of the Garrick, some years afterwards Bill Yardley
and his friend and my friend Joe McClean acquired an interest
in the Garrick, refurnished and redecorated it, and made it
quite a spick-and-span little place.

I was there on the first night that it opened under the
direction, I believe, of Miss May Buhner. The play was a
musical one, A Cruise to China, and in it there was a young
gentleman who had deserted his father's office for the stage.
He played a gouty old gentleman and sang a song. The
name of the young actor was Herbert Beerbohm Tree.

There is a story told — I dare say it isn't true— that young
Tree one day sought an interview with the management and
explained that he would like to resign the part as he had a
good chance at the Criterion, where Wyndham had offered
him a nice little part and five pounds a week.

I

MY LIFE 53

Sir Herbert won't mind my telling the story. We are old
friends. Young Tree made his first success by reciting one
of my " Dagonet Ballads " entitled " Told to the Missionary,"
and he altered the word " bitch " into " dog," for which he
was reproached — I think it was in the Referee — for mutilating
the text of an author in a spirit of false delicacy.

From the age of six to the age of twenty-four I had been a
fairly persistent playgoer. My mother took me to the theatre
until I was seventeen, and after that I took myself.

It was when I was in my twenty-fifth year that one of my
ambitions was suddenly fulfilled. I became a dramatic critic
— for a fortnight. My first dramatic criticism was followed
by a murder in which the heroine of the play I had criticized
was very closely concerned.

It was at my mother's house in Hamilton Terrace that I
met the lady who first brought me into journalistic touch
with a murder case.

My mother was a member of a number of societies which
devoted themselves socially and politically to the welfare of
women.

She was a woman of wide sympathies, a humorous speaker,
a trained elocutionist, and very popular on the " platform "
when the various societies held public or private meetings.
She was an enthusiastic advocate of female suffrage.

But nothing delighted her more than to gather her " working
friends," as she called them, around her at our house in
Hamilton Terrace.

Among our frequent guests were Augusta Webster, the
poetess, Karl and Mathilde Blind, Dr. Anna Kingsford, Mrs.
Fenwick-Miller — she was Miss Fenwick-Miller then — Emily
Faithfull, Ella Dietz, Dr. Zerffi, Professor Plumtree, Samuel
Butler, the author of " Erewhon," Frances Power Cobbe, and
occasionally Lydia Becker.

Dr. Anna Kingsford was a lovely woman, with classical
features and a mass of wonderful golden hair. I think she
was the most beautiful " clever " woman I have ever known.

She told me one evening at a dance at my mother's house
that she would like above all things to see a rehearsal of a
pantomime, so I took her to the dress rehearsal of the Grecian
pantomime, and George Conquest kindly gave me a box.

54 MY LIFE

I could see that every one on the stage was struck by the
ethereal beauty of my companion. After the rehearsal was
over, when I had gone behind to speak to Conquest, he told
me that whenever he had looked at the box that evening he
felt as if he were entertaining an angel unawares.

And then I told him that he had been, as my friend, Dr. Anna
Kingsford, was in a former existence Joan of Arc.

The beautiful doctor was fully convinced of this, and she
maintained that she still had visions. She had taken her
M.D. degree, but she had many " unmedical " views. She
was the wife of a clergyman, but she was a mystic. At times
she would speak like an inspired prophetess, and sometimes
she would be as frivolous as a Society beauty.

Anna Kingsford died long before her beauty had faded,
and to her devoted friends and admirers who were spiritualists
she is said to have returned after death, looking as lovely as
ever.

It was at a meeting of a society formed to advocate the
claims of women that my mother met a lady who wrote
under the name of Amelia Lewis. Amelia Lewis was the wife
of Dr. Freund, a physician in Finsbury Square. She had a
son, John Freund, who, while an undergraduate at Oxford,
brought out in London a monthly magazine which was
published at a shilling and called the Dark Blue.

Amelia Lewis and her son, John Freund, became frequent
visitors at our house. They heard of my desire to become a
journalist, and John Freund — after interesting my father in
the Dark Blue and getting him, I believe, to put some money
into the affair — said he would give me a chance of learning
the business of authorship. He offered to take me into the
edi'orial office of the Dark Blue.

I had left the City — I left it four or five times, to go back
to it again, before I finally settled down to journalism and
the drama — and so my father consented, and in a room over
the shop and warehouse of the British and Colonial Publishing
Company, at 8ia Fleet Street, I commenced my adventures
as a Pressman.

So far as I can remember, among the few books that the
company published and displayed in the shop window were
" The Modern Magdalene/' by Amelia Lewis ; " The Theatre

I

MY LIFE 55

in England : Its Shortcomings and Possibilities," by Tom
Taylor ; " The Coming Cromwell," by an unknown author ;
and " Gillott and Goosequill," by Henry S. Leigh.

The Dark Blue, which John Freund edited between Oxford
and London, had a remarkable list of contributors, among
whom were John Ruskin, Algernon Charles Swinburne,
Dante G. Rossetti, Henry Kingsley, W. S. Gilbert, C. S.
Calverley, George Macdonald, Thomas Hughes, M.P., Edmund
Yates, Andrew Lang, J. Ashby-S terry, Sidney Colvin, W.
Vernon Harcourt, M.P., Frederick Pollock, William Black,
Karl Blind, Joaquin Miller, and Moncure D. Conway.

This was in the year 1872, and the first contribution I was
permitted to make to this shilling magazine " established for
the promotion of high-class literature " was an article on the
Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race. I wanted to call it
"An Attack of Tiefuss Fever," but Freund thought that
would look a little too frivolous between an article by Ruskin
and a poem by Swinburne.

It was part of my duty to go over the proofs and compare
them carefully with the written manuscript before returning
them to the author.

I remember that on one occasion I returned the proof of a
poem to Swinburne, and suggested an alteration to one of the
lines.

In the first week of my engagement Amelia Lewis brought
out a new paper which was to be devoted entirely to the
interests of womanhood. The title of the paper was Woman.

" You are a playgoer, and you can do the theatre for
Woman, if you like," said Mrs. Lewis to me one morning as
we sat at lunch in a little back office piled up with unsold
copies of the Dark Blue.

I accepted the offer eagerly, and the next evening, armed
with a card on which was written " Woman, a Weekly Journal,
Dramatic Critic, Mr. Geo. R. Sims," I presented myself at the
box-office of the St. James's Theatre, where a series of French
plays was then being performed under the direction of M. Felix,
and was given a stall — there were plenty to spare.

The play that evening was Christiane, a comedy by Gondinet,
and the heroine was played by a pretty and sympathetic
young actress, Mademoiselle Riel.

56 MY LIFE

I wrote a column article on Mademoiselle Kiel's Chris tiane,
and made it what I hoped would be the first of a series entitled
" Woman on the French Stage in London."

A week or two after her success as Christiane, Made-
moiselle Kiel, being out of the bill, went for a week-end to
Paris. She left her mother and her cook, a Belgian named
Marguerite Dixblancs, and an English housemaid at the
pretty little house in Park Lane which had been placed at her
disposal by an English nobleman.

When Mademoiselle Kiel returned early on Monday morning
the housemaid let her in and said, " Oh, Miss Julie, I'm so
glad you have come back. Madame has not been home since
yesterday, nor has cook/'

The house was searched, and in the pantry Madame Kiel
was found lying dead with a rope round her neck. The
Belgian cook who had committed the crime had fled to Paris
with money and notes which were missing.

She was eventually arrested in France by Inspector Drusco-
vitch, who was to figure later in the famous Kerr and Benson
frauds. She was tried in London and sentenced to death, but
the sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life.

Benson, by the by, who was the prime mover in the frauds
that brought some of the principal men at Scotland Yard to
grief, went to America soon after the Referee had been started,
and there passed himself off as a member of the Referee staff
and an intimate friend of " Dagonet."

I got plenty of experience on the Dark Blue, but no money,
and I wanted some. So I told my father that I would try
the City again if he would give me a month's salary in advance.
He consented readily, thinking that I was cured of my desire
to be an author.

When he told me that, I did not say " Wait and see."

But I thought it.

CHAPTER VI

IT was my membership of the Unity Club that opened to me
the gates of the City of Prague, the city of which " Jeff "
Prowse, the Laureate of Bohemia, sang so lovingly.

There are lines of Prowse's which, though his audience was
limited at the time, have never been forgotten, and the veterans
of the Old Brigade quote them still with joy.

I remember a line in which Prowse described an ancestor
of the present All-Highest Hun who was known as " King
Clicquot," and who was at the same time as publicly prayerful
as " Holy Willie," the Kaiser's grandfather. Prowse described
" King Clicquot " as " problematically pious, but indubitably
drunk."

In " The City of Prague," from which I quote a verse,
Prowse sums up the old Bohemia in which I found myself a
stranger and a pilgrim nearly half a century ago :

/ dwelt in a city enchanted,

And lonely indeed was my lot ;
Two guineas a week, all I wanted,

Was certainly all that I got :
Well, somehow I found it was plenty,
Perhaps you may find it the same,
If — if you are just five-and-twenty,
With industry, hope, and an aim.
Though the latitude's rather uncertain,

And the longitude also is vague,
The persons I pity who know not the city :
The beautiful City of Prague.

Two guineas a week was the sum upon which many a good
fellow managed to know the joy of life, and some of them, to
all outward appearances, got the joy for less.

Fleet Street, before it became the highway of newspaperdom,

57

• '

58 MY LIFE

was a street of taverns, and tavern life formed a considerable
portion of the life of Bohemia when I first landed on its
shores. That Bohemia had shores let Shakespeare bear
witness — " Scene : Bohemia, a desert country near the sea."

Our Bohemia was no desert country, but it lay on the
shores of a sea, the sea of unrest, picturesque unrest, of
movement and colour, of song and laughter, often, alas, of
those who made haste to laugh lest they should weep.

As I write there come to me memories of Mortimer Collins,
the fine old Bohemian poet who, when invited to the Mansion
House to a banquet in honour of the representatives of art
and literature, refused to put on evening dress, and sat down
among the white shirt-fronts in a black velvet jacket and
waistcoat and fancy pattern trousers ; Tom Purnell, " Q " of
the Athenaum \ W. G. Wills, the King of Bohemia ; dear old
E. L. Blanchard, the gentlest Bohemian of them all ; Henry S.
Leigh, the Caroller of Cockayne ; John Augustus O'Shea, the
" Gineral " ; William Brunton, the artist ; the three brilliant
brothers, William, Wallis, and Joe McKay ; Savile Clarke,
Tom Jerrold, Fatty Coleman, and handsome Tom Hood, for
whom everybody was willing to do anything for his father's
sake, but who was too genial and easy-going to do very much
for himself.

My first interview with him when he was the editor of Fun
was at Spiers and Pond's bar in Ludgate Hill Station, the
great meeting-place of the " literati " of the locality. And
their beverage was as often a brandy hot or a gin cold. But
Tom Hood was fairly faithful to green Chartreuse.

Of the picturesque Bohemian W. G. Wills I shall have
something to say when I meet him a little later on in Theatre-
land. I did not know him when I first joined the Unity, but
the men I did know were many of them quite remarkable
characters.

There was an actor, a low comedian, whom I will call
" Billy W.," who was generally to be found asleep on the
club sofa. He had not had an engagement for over twelve
months, and I knew afterwards that sometimes for a whole
week he had not a copper in his pocket.

He had a room near Covent Garden, and the two old ladies,
sisters, who kept the house were very sympathetic. They not

MY LIFE 59

only never pressed him for the rent, but every morning they
took a cup of tea and a slice of bread and butter to his bedside.

One day somebody who had borrowed half a crown from
Billy three years previously met him in the Strand and paid
the debt. Billy rushed off at once and spent the whole half-
crown in what to him was a Gargantuan repast. Then he
strolled out into the street.

Suddenly some one touched him on the shoulder. He
turned round and found himself face to face with John
Oxenford, the amiable critic of the Times, who was always to
be seen on a first night in a private box with Mr. Murphy on
one side of him and Mr. Herbert on the other.

" HaUo, Billy ! " said Oxenford, " I'm going to Carr's.
Come and have some dinner with me."

I met Billy that evening, and he was almost in tears as he
told me the story.

" Fancy ! " he said ; " it's the first time anybody's asked
me to have a dinner for twelve months, and I'd spent the
only half-crown I'd seen for a year in buying one ! "

Poor Billy W. got one or two brief engagements, but he
brought bad luck, and began to be looked upon as a sort of
Jonah. Eventually, I believe, he left the profession and
joined his brother, who was in the undertaking business.

There was plenty of the hunger pain in Fleet Street in my
youth, but the men who suffered its pangs did not talk about
it. Any one would stand you a drink, but nobody would ask
you to eat.

A Bohemian of a different type from Billy W. was a Scots-
man, a brilliant fellow who was at one time the editor of a
well-known Sunday paper, and my chief. He was a fine
scholar and a first-class journalist.

There was nothing very gay or bright about his Bohe-
mianism, but he used to sit among us and drink steadily.

One day in the absence of the dramatic critic of the paper
through illness, the editor took the stall that had been sent for
a West End theatre, and went to criticize the performance
himself.

It was an opera bouffe, and in it a very handsome young
woman played a small part.

The editor admired her very much. She had not many

60 MY LIFE

lines to speak, but he gave her nearly as many lines in his
notice, and soon afterwards made her acquaintance. He had
fallen violently in love with her, but she laughed at him. She
had other views.

As he could not get the girl he became unhappy and drank
to drown his grief. Presently he became impossible, and dis-
appeared from Fleet Street.

Some years afterwards I had a letter from my former
editor. He wrote me from the Strand workhouse to tell me
that though he had come to the last refuge of the destitute
the disaster had been a blessing in disguise, for in the work-
house he had met an old flame. The beautiful actress with
whom he had been in love had come to the workhouse too. As
a matter of fact, the same cause had brought them both to
the paupers' hotel.

While in the workhouse the lady wrote to several of her old
admirers, and one of them sent her a ten-pound note. On the
strength of that both the ex-editor and the ex-stage beauty
discharged themselves, got a special licence and were married.

They drank the balance of the money away in a few days,
and at the end of their brief honeymoon returned penniless
to the workhouse. The husband died there. The widow is
still writing from the workhouse to " old admirers/'

But there is a fairer side to the Bohemia of my youth, and
I gladly turn to it.

Very early in my Fleet Street days I made the acquaintance
of two of the famous journalists of the period, George Augustus
Sala and Archibald Forbes.

Forbes was not seen much in Bohemia. He was the great
war correspondent of the day, and was generally " somewhere
at the front." But years afterwards he became my friend
and close neighbour in Regent's Park.

We were on the best of terms, and very often the old war
correspondent would come in and smoke a pipe with me and
fight his battles over again.

I should not call Forbes a Bohemian. He was always too
much of a soldier to drop into our happy-go-lucky ways, but
Sala was a Bohemian to the tips of his finger-nails. I have
told the story of his early experiences as an artist and of his
first editorship, but I heard him once, at a dinner given to a

MY LIFE 61

famous publisher of Philadelphia, tell the company that he
could look back to the time when, as a youth, he had slept
more than one night in Covent Garden Market with a sack of
potatoes for a pillow. And that was in the days when Covent
Garden was known as " Mud Salad Market/' and lived up to
its reputation.

But he came through, and when I first met him he was one
of the " lions " of the Daily Telegraph, not quite a young
" lion," but with all his teeth sound, and with a roar that was
as loud as any in the great Peterborough Court Menagerie.

Sala was a bon vivant and a gourmet. He had as practical
a knowledge of cookery as the elder Dumas, and a perfect
sense of the poetry of the palate.

He was the most fastidious Bohemian in the matter of food
that I ever knew.

On the last occasion I met him abroad it was at Nice. I
went into a restaurant to lunch, and found Sala sitting at a
table in a corner of the room. He was having an altercation
with the waiter with regard to the " infamous price " he had
been charged for some oysters. In perfect French he told
the waiter to take his compliments to the proprietor and
inform him that he was a brigand.

Directly Sala saw me he rose, came towards me, slipped his
arm in mine and said to the astonished waiter, " This gentle-
man is a friend of mine, and I shall not permit you to rob
him as you have robbed me." Then, heedless of my gentle
expostulations, he led me out of the restaurant.

But Sala, although he objected to extortionate charges
in foreign restaurants, was a viveur in every sense of the
word.

He took his liquor with discretion in the matter of its
quality, and valour in the matter of its quantity. He was a
seasoned worshipper of the vine-wreathed god, but occasionally
towards the small hours of the morning his powers of resistance
to the influence of the insidious nectar would weaken.

I remember a story he told me. On one occasion he had
come back from Cremorne about three in the morning and
had looked in at the Daily Telegraph office " on business."

When he came out again to continue the night's amusement
he hailed a four-wheeled cab and said, " Barnes's," which was

62 MY LIFE

a well-known West End rendezvous for night-birds at that
time. He got into the cab and fell asleep.

He remembered nothing more until he was shaken up by
the cabman, who was standing at the open door and shouting
at him.

" What part of Barnes do you want to go to, guv'nor ? "
said the cabman. " This is the Common."

Sala, alike in the days when he dined and wined generously
and in the days when he frequently did not dine at all, wrote
a marvellous hand. It was of the old " copper-plate " kind,
and his copy was a delight to the printers. From their point
of view it was ideal, and that they were justified in that
view will be seen from the following specimen.

Another friend of mine in the early days — and late nights —
was Herman Merivale. Herman Merivale was a fine dramatist,
and wrote some excellent poetry and one good novel.

I never met a man more energetic in argument or louder in
declamation during private conversation. His vigorous
gestures were sometimes as alarming as his vociferation.

I remember meeting him one night at the old Ship at
Brighton just about midnight, and he insisted upon my going
out for a walk with him, as he wanted air.

We strolled along the front in the moonlight, and presently
the discussion turned upon opera singers.

Merivale had just come back from Italy, and he was
enthusiastic about — I think it was — Tamagno.

Gradually he worked himself up into a frenzy of enthusiasm.
He had a big stick with him which he brandished wildly in
the air while he declaimed against every one who did not
believe that Tamagno was the greatest singer on earth.

MY LIFE 63

Presently we found ourselves down on the beach near the
private " semi-residential " arches.

Fancying, I suppose, that he was not thoroughly impressing
me with the merits of Tamagno, he suddenly gripped me by
the shoulder, pushed me against the wall, and began to rave
at me, emphasizing his arguments about every five seconds
with a terrific bang of his stick upon the stonework.

Eventually I found myself dodging my head to and fro to
escape the practical punctuation of Merivale's sentences.

On one occasion Merivale — so the story goes — went to read
a play to Mrs. Langtry at her private residence. He had
been invited to lunch. It was an elaborate lunch, and the
dessert service was exquisite.

With the appearance of the coffee Merivale began to tell
Mrs. Langtry the synopsis of the play which he wanted her
to produce as there was a part in it which would suit her. He
became excited, and stood up at the table in order to give
freer play to his dramatic gestures.

When he reached the situation in the first act the gesture
was not only dramatic but so sweeping that off went half the
dessert service.

" That/' said Merivale, " is the first act. I will now give
you the big situation in the second."

When Merivale reached the situation of the second act his
gesture was more sweeping than ever. Off went the rest of
the service.

" Now/' said Merivale, utterly heedless of the havoc he
had caused, " I will give you the situation of the third
act.

Off went Mrs. Langtry.

Sydney Grundy was coming to see me one day at Brighton,
and I went to the station. There was no Grundy, but I met
Merivale getting out of the train.

" Where's Grundy ? " I asked.

" Oh," replied Merivale, " I got into the carriage with him
at Victoria. But he got out at Redhill, and didn't come back
again."

Two hours later Grundy arrived.

Then he explained. As soon as the train left Victoria,
Merivale, who had had a quarrel with Wilson Barrett over a

64 MY LIFE

play, had begun to give Grundy his opinion of Barrett's
behaviour.

As usual, he had his thick stick with him, and he began to
brandish it and strike the sides of the carriage with it. Grundy
and he were alone in the compartment, and as Merivale
became more and more violent, so he became less and less
accurate in his aim, and Grundy found himself wondering
whether he had not better secure safety under the seat.

When the train stopped at Redhill he saw his chance and
got out.

Merivale was always my good friend, and apart from his
eccentricities of argument a charming man. But I did not
meet Herman Merivale until after my first play, Crutch and
Toothpick, had been produced, and the story of my dramatic
debut is a story of the old Bohemian Club in Holywell
Street.

CHAPTER VII

ONE night there came into the Unity Club a shortish,
thick-set, good-looking young man with keen grey eyes and
features that suggested a masterful disposition. He had a
black bag with him, and he was brought in to have a drink
by my friend John Thomson, the dramatic critic of the
Weekly Dispatch.

Thomson introduced me to his guest and I learned that his
name was Henry Sampson, that he was writing the sporting
article in the Weekly Dispatch under the pen-name of " Pen-
dragon/' that he was Tom Hood's right-hand on Fun, and
that he had had practical experience of most of the sport that
he wrote about. He was a fine athlete, had been in the old
days a redoubtable sprinter, and was well skilled in what it
was the custom in those days to call " the noble art of self-
defence."

We talked together that evening until past midnight, and
I suppose I made a favourable impression, for soon afterwards
when Tom Hood fell ill and Sampson was conducting the
paper in his absence he invited me to call upon him.

I went into the little back office in Fleet * Street and there
Sampson told me that I might if I liked do a bit of verse and
a few paragraphs and send them in.

I sent in the verse and the pars. They were printed in
Fun, and on the following Thursday by the editor's instruc-
tions I stood in the front office at the cashier's desk and
waited while that useful official fumbled in a drawer and
presently drew out a little white packet on which my name
was written. I unfolded the packet and found in it a sovereign
and three shillings, the " honorarium " for my contribution.

The pay for every literary contribution to the paper was at
the rate of one pound per column, and fractions of a column
were paid for pro rata.

65 E

66 MY LIFE

As your contributions might be scattered all over the
paper they were measured up with a piece of string, which
the cashier applied to your verse or paragraph and then drew
it through his fingers and measured up your next " bit.''

After that I contributed regularly for some weeks to Fun,
and then Sampson told me that I should have to stand down
for a time, as W. S. Gilbert, an old contributor, had suddenly
weighed in with " Rosencrantz and Guildenstern," a burlesque
drama, which might run for two or three weeks, and during
that period there would be no room for me.

But as soon as " Rosencrantz and Guildenstern " had run
its course I went back on to Fun, and worked on it until the
death of Tom Hood. Sampson, at Tom Hood's request, was
given the editorship, and I became regularly attached to the
staff — and to my chief.

Henry Sampson was my editor and kindly comrade to the
end of his life. He was an implacable enemy, but as loyal a
friend as ever man had.

Here are the last lines Tom Hood ever wrote. They were
written to the Brothers Dalziel from his deathbed :

" MY DEAR SIRS, — To the best of my ability, and to the
utmost of my power, I have served you loyally and honestly
while strength remained. If I have failed it has not been
wilfully, and when we have differed in opinion I have only
done what I have believed it right to do, or assert beyond
mere matter of expediency.

" Sampson has long co-operated with me, and now so well
understands the working of the paper that it has been of the
greatest comfort and use to me to have, for the first time in
my life, some one on whom I could entirely rely when I was
disabled.

" A more disinterested and faithful friend man never had,
and I am sure if you transfer the bauble from my hands to
his you will have secured fidelity and ability of no usual
order, loyalty and discretion, zeal and determination. It is
my dying wish that he might be my successor on Fun. Of
course I only express this as simply a wish of yours always,

" TOM HOOD/'

Gilbert, who temporarily put me " out of work," came to

MY LIFE 67

Fun through the rejection by Punch of his famous ballad,
" The Yarn of the Nancy Bell" The editor of Punch thought
it was too cannibalistic ; the editor of Fun did not share his
opinion, and so it appeared in Fun, and for some time after
that Gilbert contributed to the penny instead of the threepenny
periodical.

At the time I went on to Fun I was still in the City. I was
getting much too good a salary in my father's office to resign it
for what I had found by experience was a very uncertain income.

I was having a guinea a week on the Dispatch, and averaging
two pounds a week on Fun, but in spite of my Bohemianism
I had extravagant ideas and heavy debts, and the three pounds
did not suffice to keep me from anxiety.

So at that time I was in the City from ten o'clock in the
morning until one, when I had an hour and a half for lunch.
The luncheon hour I nearly always devoted to paying visits
to my editors.

I got back to the City generally about half-past two. I
remained there until six — there were certain things I was
bound to attend to, as I was in the shipping department and
had to write letters and catch mails — and at six o'clock I left
the City and went home.

I was bound to sacrifice an hour for dinner as I rarely had
any lunch, but after dinner I went up to my room and worked
steadily till half-past ten or eleven. Then I went to the
Unity Club and stayed there till three or four in the morning.

Then I went home to bed, and I had generally had enough
sleep when eight o'clock came.

At any rate, I was never late for business, and I do not
think that twice in my life I have been late at either a business
appointment or a pleasure appointment. My punctuality in
the matter of keeping appointments has caused me to waste
an enormous amount of time, as the other people have so
frequently failed to be there until long after the agreed hour.

And now about Fun itself. A good many years after I
had left it I spent a day at Broadmoor, and after lunching
with the medical officers, who were my friends, I was intro-
duced to several of the patients.

Among the gentlemen I met in the club lounge of the
institution was Mr. Roderick Maclean, He was playing

68 MY LIFE

whist — for counters, of course — with some fellow-patients at
a table. One of them presently had had enough, and I was
invited to sit down and make the fourth.

Maclean caught at my name when I was introduced, and
at once claimed me as a brother journalist.

He was the Roderick Maclean who shot at Queen Victoria
at Windsor in March 1882, and was found to be insane and
sent to Broadmoor.

During the game he said to me, " You were on Fun, weren't
you ? "

I said, " Oh, yes."

" Ah," he replied, " that was my father's paper. My
father had a big looking-glass shop in Fleet Street. It was
called the Commercial Plate Glass Company, and at the back of
that shop was an office which he devoted to the staff of Fun,
of which he was the proprietor. I have often seen George
Augustus Sala and Frank Burnand and Tom Hood there. I
am writing the story of my life. I will send it to you/'

Some time afterwards I received Roderick Maclean's
" story of his life," as written by himself at Broadmoor, and
from this I will venture to make an extract or two as they
bear directly on the story of the paper on which I made my
debut as a hired humorist.

Some two months after the adventurous afternoon I had
spent at Broadmoor Criminal Asylum with a number of
pleasant gentlemen the majority of whom had committed the
offence which, had they been considered responsible for their
action, would have brought them to the gallows, I received
the promised manuscript.

It bore the title of " Yestern ; or The Story of My Life and
Reminiscences, by Roderick Edward Maclean," and the
motto which the author of " Yestern " had placed upon his
title-page was " Veni, vidi, vici."

This motto as an epitome of his career was misleading.
Roderick Maclean certainly came and saw, but he failed to
conquer even the insane vanity which led him to hang about
Windsor until he saw Queen Victoria drive by in an open
carriage and then to discharge a loaded revolver at Her
Majesty because she had declined, through Lady Marlborough,
to accept the dedication of Roderick Maclean's poetry.

MY LIFE 69

" Yestern " was interesting as showing the frame of mind
in which the unfortunate author still remained.

There were pages of description of his father's " country
estate." This was described in glowing detail never equalled
even by the immortal Robins.

There were references to the fair and noble dames who had
cast tender glances at him from their " sumptuous equipages "
as he sauntered in the Park at the hour of fashion. This was
the only possible justification I could find in the autobiography
for the " vici."

Describing life in his father's residence in Chapel Place,
Oxford Street, he said : " Chapel Place was the rendezvous
of many friends, literary, artistic, and independent, many of
whom being society's moths and dinner hunters, others
second-rate foreign noblemen. The scene being a brilliant
one when the chandeliers were lit, and the assembly a happy
company, the majority being congenial people, though there
were some phlegmatic old fogies whose mordacious remarks
threw a shade over the lustre of the prevailing hilarity, a
sipient way inculcating disgust and engendering sarcasm."

In the course of his meanderings the author tells in a fashion
the beginning of Fun, and so I give it verbatim.

" My father was the proprietor of that well-known periodical
Fun, which he purchased from my brother and a printer, who
wanted it more for a hobby than a gigantic speculative
enterprise ; comparatively it was unknown, but by per-
severance and advertising it became a popular periodical. It
was eventually purchased by Tom Hood. It was a novel
venture, productive of an agreeable associationship with
leading literary men. There were Arthur Sketchley, the
author of ' Mrs. Brown,' George A. Sala, the remarkable
author regarding whom it is said that he approached the
zenith of Shakespeare's genius, W. S. Gilbert, the learned
burlesque writer, Mr. F. C. Burnand, a good motto for whom
is ' A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush ' — original
this, Matt Morgan, the original delineator of scenes at
Ramsgate and kindred watering-places, and Mr. J., the
versatile Tailor of the Midlands, who wrote a scathing
satire on the much-maligned Napoleon III."

It is perfectly true that the original office of Fun was on the

7o MY LIFE

premises of the Commercial Plate Glass Company. When it
was there H. J. Byron was the editor, and F. C. Burnand, the
future editor of Punch, Clement Scott, Tom Robertson the
dramatist, and W. S. Gilbert were on the staff.

Sir Frank Burnand told me some time ago that it was to
Maclean's shop in Fleet Street that he used to go to draw the
money for his contributions, and one day while in the shop
he read the manuscript of " Mokeanna " to Maclean.

Maclean refused it. He did not think it was the sort of
stuff the public wanted.

Burnand eventually took " Mokeanna " to the editor of
Punch, who accepted it. It was an enormous success, and
during its progress in the pages of Punch it was illustrated by
Sir John Gilbert, Hablot K. Brown, Charles Keene, Du
Maurier, and Millais.

My first journalistic ambition — it was an ambition of my
schooldays — was to be on Fun. That ambition was gratified.
Later on a greater opportunity came to me. From the
editor of Punch I received tfie following letter :

" MY DEAR SIR, — I think ' Mustard and Cress ' is yours, is
it not ? But be that as it may, I should like you to hit on
something for Punch. I never ask a man to repeat himself,
so I won't suggest ' something like M. and C.' But I am sure
that without looking very far you can find objects well worthy
of the sharpest satire and also of broadly humorous treatment.

" Yours truly,

" F. C. BURNAND."

For some reason, what it was I only dimly remember now,
I let the golden opportunity of being a member of the Punch
staff pass. It is one of the many incidents in my working
life that I look back upon with regret.

Maclean was well known in Fleet Street as the proprietor of
a comic paper, and more than one Bohemian brother in need
of a little cash would " dash off " some verse or a humorous
skit in an adjacent coffee-house, and offer it before the ink
was dry for " a bit of ready " to the proprietor of the looking-
glass shop.

In 1865 Mr. Edward Wylam had become the proprietor.

MY LIFE 71

He became interested in a famous dog-biscuit firm and wanted
to sell Fun. Tom Hood at that time was the editor.

He took the proposal to the Brothers Dalziel, who gave
six thousand pounds for the copyright, and retained Tom
Hood as the editor of the paper, a position he held till his
death in 1874.

After Hood's death I joined the staff under Sampson's
editorship, and remained with him until he started the Referee
in 1877, and then we left Fun together.

The Brothers Dalziel sent me a kindly letter saying how
much they regretted the severance of our pleasant connexion.

The brothers were two of the most amiable of men, well
known and well loved in the literary and artistic world.

They only put their foot down once, and that was when I
wrote some verses heralding the approaching appearance of
the new Sunday paper, the Referee. The Dalziels nipped the
ingenious free advertisement in the bud and in the proof
sheets, and wrote Sampson a letter in which they said, " Sims's
verses would doubtless be an excellent advertisement for your
new venture, but we would remind you that the Referee is the
property of yourself and Mr. Ashton Dilke, while Fun is the
property of yours sincerely, the Brothers Dalziel/'

The only other occasion on which the dear old brothers
remonstrated with Sampson was when the reports of a glove
fight at Sadler's Wells, which had been broken "up by the
police, came out in the papers, and it was stated in one of
them that the referee on this dreadful occasion was Mr. Henry
Sampson, the editor of Fun.

Of that memorable fight — it was between Jim Goode and
Micky Rees, and Goode fought twenty rounds after his left
arm had become useless — I shall deal in my reminiscences of
the prize-ring as I knew it.

It was on this occasion that Jim Goode's father, who was
beaming with pride at the prowess of his progeny, gave me
his card. It had the Royal arms upon it, and described the
owner as " Poodle trimmer to H.R.H. the Prince of Wales."

Boxing in those days was not the aristocratic entertainment
that it is to-day. The spectators were not in full evening
dress. Many of them did not even trouble to complete the
morning dress, and came collarless to the rendezvous.

72 MY LIFE

The Brothers Dalziel were patrons of art, but they did not
think that the noble art was one with which their editor
should be publicly associated.

I do not think that while he retained the editorship of
Fun Sampson ever refereed a glove fight again. He, like
myself, had a genuine affection for the brothers, and was
anxious to do nothing that would hurt their susceptibilities.

But by 1878 the Referee had become so successful that
Sampson bade the little back office of Fun in Fleet Street —
the little office filled with hallowed memories — a polite good
day, and I went with him.

I did not know then that the son of the first proprietor
was whiling away his time at Broadmoor until it should
please the Fates to bring me to his side there at the whist
table, or that it was in the famous criminal lunatic asylum
that I was to learn the origin of the first intentionally comic
paper with which I had had the honour of being associated.

I was on Fun for two or three years, and I was writing a
regular column in the Weekly Dispatch, which Mr. Ashton
Dilke, a younger brother of Sir Charles Dilke, and M.P. for
Newcastle, had purchased. But I was still in the City in the
daytime and still at the Unity Club in the night-time.

All my brother Bohemians in the newspaper world and the
theatrical world knew that I was in the City, and a good
many of them used to come to the office occasionally and
have a chat with me about little schemes that we had in hand
or ideas that we had in our heads.

John Thomson used to come frequently, and Henry Sampson
occasionally. E. J. Odell astonished the office staff one day
by calling to inquire in his characteristically humorous
manner " if his play was ready, as if it was he would take it
with him."

I had done an adaptation of Le Centenaire for him, and
this was produced at a matinee at the Olympic in June
1874, without any author's name appearing in connexion
with it.

This was my first venture in the regular theatre, but it was
not till 1879 that I got my chance.

My first play to go regularly into the evening bills was the
three-act comedy, Crutch and Toothpick.

MY LIFE 73

Edgar Bruce had taken the Royalty, and it opened under
his management with my play on Easter Monday, 1879.

The commission to write the play arose through my being
a member of the Unity Club. Charles Wyndham had bought
the rights of a French play, and he thought it would suit
Bruce for his opening season.

He asked H. 6. F^rnie to do the adaptation. Farnie was
busy, and suggested to Wyndham that he should let me do it.

I had met Wyndham previously, and had been invited to
call upon him at an hotel in Arundel Street, Strand, and there
I had interviewed him while he was packing his portmanteau
in a hurry to catch a train. In those days Wyndham was
always in a hurry, and generally had a train to catch.

He asked me to write two new characters into W. S. Gilbert's
Happy Land, the touring rights of which he had purchased.

How the act of vandalism which I committed when I
mutilated the great humorist's satire escaped Gilbert's atten-
tion I have never understood. At any rate, Wyndham said
my work was good, and presented me as a token of the sincerity
of his criticism with a cheque for three pounds.

That was the most so far that I had ever received for a
play. For Le Centenaire I got nothing.

The next thing I did after Le Centenaire was to rewrite
The Field, of the Cloth of Gold with " new and original " songs
for the Swanboroughs at the Strand Theatre. My new
version, with " Mons " Marius*and Angelina Claude in it, was a
great success, and when it had run for some considerable
time Arthur Swanborough asked me to come across to the
Strand Theatre, and in his private office made a charming
speech, and on behalf of his mother, dear old Mrs. Swan-
borough, whom H. J. Byron had foisted upon the theatrical
world as the Mrs. Malaprop of her day, presented me with a
guinea set of gold studs.

Wyndham gave me the French play to do, and promised
me £5° on handing in the manuscript, and £i a performance
until I had received £150, after which there was to be no
further payment.

The play was produced at the Royalty on Easter Monday,
1879, and was an instantaneous success. Edgar Bruce
played to perfection the hero, a dude of the period, with a

74 MY LIFE

crutch stick in his hand and a toothpick between his teeth,
but the great successes of the evening were made by a clever
young comedian and a charming young comedienne. The
comedian was Mr. W. S. Penley and the comedienne was
Miss Lottie Venne.

It was during the run of Crutch that an accident happened
which took Edgar Bruce out of the bill for a time.

One night he came to the theatre suffering with a bad
nervous headache. My friend Claude Carton was then
playing another part and understudying Bruce. He sympa-
thetically suggested to Bruce that a simple remedy might
help him, sal volatile and red lavender.

Gus Harris, at that time the Royalty stage manager, was
standing by and rushed off to the nearest chemist, and without
waiting to be told that the proper dose was a teaspoonful of
the stuff in a wineglass of water, dashed at Bruce and began
to pour the raw sal volatile down his throat.

Luckily, Bruce only swallowed a comparatively small
quantity, but as it was it took the skin off his mouth and
throat and made him feel terribly bad. He went out of the
bill for more than four months, during which period Claude
Carton played Guy Devereux.

Crutch on the first night was followed by a musical play,
The Zoo, by B. C. Stephenson and Arthur Sullivan.

When the curtain had fallen on the comedy Sullivan came
behind, shook me warmly by the hand, and thanked me for
having put the audience in such a good humour for The Zoo.

The Zoo was not a great success, and soon after a burlesque
called Venus, by Edward Rose and Augustus Harris, was
substituted for it, and this was one of the first pieces in which
the star flapper appeared.

Harris at the time was negotiating for the lease of Drury
Lane.

After the show we used to go to Kettner's and have a
modest supper there in the little side room.

Gus Harris — he was always Gus to us — told me one night
at Kettner's that if he got the Lane he was going to produce
a play which he and Henry Pettitt and Paul Meritt had
constructed between them. It was called The World.

When Gus Harris told me about the play that he had in

MY LIFE 75

his head I told him about the play that I had already con-
structed and partly written.

The play that I told him about was The Lights o' London.

Bruce at the same tune told me that he had a great idea of
getting the Prince of Wales's Theatre.

One night Gus came to Bruce on the stage of the Royalty
and said, " Fm going to leave you, dear boy. I've taken a
theatre."

" Taken a theatre ! " exclaimed Bruce. " Why, you
haven't a pound in your pocket."

" Quite right," replied Gus, with a grin, " but I've got
something in my pocket better than a pound. I've got the
lease of Drury Lane." And he drew the document forth
and flourished it in the face of his astonished manager.

That night I met Gus after the theatre, and we walked
West together. I, of course, congratulated him on having
Drury Lane. " But," I said, " it's an awful responsibility,
my boy. Look at the managers the Lane has ruined. It
may ruin you."

" It can't," said Gus, chuckling. " I've got nothing to lose."

Both Bruce and Harris had brought their plans off, and The
Lights o' London were still glimmering in the horizon. But
they were soon to blaze out, and it came about in this way.

Alfred Hemming, the head of the Hemming and Walton
combination, bought the provincial rights of Crutch. Let me
say at once that Wyndham was kinder to me than his contract,
and allowed me to stand in in the provincial rights.

Hemming had a pantomime engagement to fulfil at the
Grand Theatre, Leeds. He asked me to go down and see
himself and the Walton Family perform in the pantomime.

I went to Leeds, saw the pantomime, and in the theatre I
met Wilson Barrett.

CHAPTER VIII

LONG before Fate led me to Leeds and flung Wilson Barrett
across my pilgrim path I had at various times endeavoured
to make managers acquainted with the fact that I had a
drama to dispose of.

A professional friend, into whose sympathetic ear I poured
my despair, advised me to take the play to Morris Abrahams
at the Pavilion, and told me that he would always give
fifty pounds for a good drama.

I shook my head at the proposal. I was ambitious, and I
wanted the West End.

I told James Fernandez about it, and he said he would get
the Gattis to hear it for the Adelphi if I would write them a
letter to bring the subject under their notice.

I wrote the brothers, whom I had met once or twice casually
at the Adelaide Gallery, and I wrote in my best handwriting —
there were no typewriters then — and in reply I received an
amiable letter from the Adelphi, written on behalf of the
brothers Gatti by Mr. Charles Jecks, who was then the business
manager.

Messrs. Gatti thanked me for my offer, but all their arrange-
ments were made for some time to come.

They were producing a play called The Crimson Cross, by
Clement Scott and E. Manuel.

I read the play to the beautiful Helen Barry, of Babil and
Bijou fame, but she did not think there was a part in it to
suit her.

Then I tried Walter Gooch, who at that time had the
Princess's. I had met Gooch when he was running the
Metropolitan Music Hall, and I got Harry Jackson, a favourite
comedian, famous for his comic jokes, and at that time
Gooch's " dramatic adviser," to talk to him about my play,

MY LIFE 77

and see if he could not induce the manager of the Princess's
to hear it.

Walter Gooch was an amiable and kind-hearted little man,
but with no " sense of the theatre." He left a good deal at
that time to the judgment of Harry Jackson.

Gooch said he woulo! hear the play, and invited me to dine
with him one winter evening at his house in St. Andrew's
Place, Regent's Park.

The dinner I shall always remember because we were waited
on by a small page-boy in brilh'ant uniform. He handed each
dish first to Gooch, who before raising the cover said, " What
have we here ? " When coffee and cigar time came I began
to tell my host about the play, which I thought would suit
the Princess's very well indeed.

But just as I was getting him interested the wretched
page-boy, who had been to the door to take in some letters,
came in with the announcement that it was snowing heavily,
and all the interest in my play that the manager of the
Princess's had hitherto displayed vanished.

"Snow!" he exclaimed. "That's a nice thing! It'll
ruin business at the theatre. I wonder what we've got in
to-night ? I shall have to get down there soon."

I took in the situation at once. I left off talking about
my play, and walked with Gooch as far as the Princess's.

On the way he told me that he would think about the
play. He rather liked the idea — I had told him hardly
anything about it — but he was afraid that all his arrange-
ments were complete, and he was committed to his next
production.

It was a snowy night in January 1881 when Gooch and I
walked to the theatre together. Edwin Booth was then
starring at the Princess's with a round of Shakespearean
characters, but Gooch had arranged to follow Shakespeare
with a play by Mr. Richard Lee, formerly the dramatic
critic of the Morning Advertiser. This was the production to
which he was committed.

Mr. Richard Lee had in 1872 written a play for Mrs. Scott
Siddons called Ordeal by Touch, and he had announced that
having determined to become a dramatist he had resigned his
position as dramatic critic, as he did not consider it right for

y8 MY LIFE

a dramatist to sit in judgment on the playwrights with whom
he was competing for public favour.

Mr. Lee's play at the Princess's was called Branded. It
was produced on April 2, 1881. It was a sensational drama,
and was principally noteworthy for the number of horses
which took part in it and whose unexpected antics convulsed
the audience during what were intended to be the most
thrilling parts of the play.

Branded was a complete fiasco, and a play by Watts Phillips,
Camillas Husband, was quickly put up, but on May 28
the benefit of Mr. Harry Jackson, the stage manager, and
" positively the last night of the season " was announced.
And that was the end of Walter Gooch's reign at the
Princess's.

When the theatre opened again it was in June under the
management of Mr. Wilson Barrett, and on September 2
Wilson Barrett produced The Lights o' London, the play
which Walter Gooch had rejected because he had fixed his
hopes on Branded.

Some years afterwards I wrote with Clement Scott a play
for Mrs. Gooch — the popular Fanny Leslie — and it was
produced at the Strand.

It was in this play that Lewis Waller made his first London
success. I was very glad to see him in the company, for his
beautiful voice had attracted my attention some time
previously when he was playing a small part at Toole's
Theatre, and I had prophesied a great future for him.

Waller, whose wife, Miss Florence West — a sister of the
lady who afterwards became Mrs. Clement Scott — was playing
the heroine, came to me after the dress rehearsal and said,
" I hope I shall be all right. I am very anxious indeed to
get my footing here."

The play was Jack-in-the-Box, which after a provincial tour
was produced, in February 1887, at the Strand Theatre.

The ultimate fate of poor Walter Gooch was for a long time
a mystery. He suffered terribly from an internal complaint.
He lost his energy and in many ways things went wrong with
him. The Princess's, after he had rebuilt it, collapsed so far
as a portion of it was concerned, and that helped to ruin
him. He had borrowed a considerable sum on the lease of

MY LIFE 79

the Princess's Theatre, but the money went and he became
very hard up indeed.

Then his old haunts knew him no more, but a good many
people for various reasons were anxious to know what had
become of him. Inquiries were made, but no trace of him
could be discovered.

Some time after Walter Gooch's disappearance from
London life a man poorly clad and evidently dying was picked
up in the streets of New York. He was found to be uncon-
scious, was taken to a hospital, and there he died.

When his clothes were searched in order to discover some
trace of his identity, nothing was found but a bunch of keys.
He was buried as unknown, and the keys were put away in
a box in the office of an official whose duty it was to look after
the unclaimed property of deceased persons.

The bunch of keys lay in the box for some years. One
day a new clerk was appointed in one of the departments of
the office, and this clerk was an Englishman.

He took charge of the box, and, in going over the contents,
he found the keys. He took them up and looked at them,
and made inquiry as to why the body upon which they had
been found was described as that of a man unknown. He
pointed out that it was quite easy to ascertain to whom the
keys belonged, 'as one of them was a Chubb and numbered.

" If you write to England/' he said, " to Messrs. Chubb,
and give the number of this key, they will be able to search
their books and tell you who this man was."

The letter was written, and the reply received was that the
key had been made for Mr Walter Gooch, the lessee of the
Princess's Theatre in Oxford Street, London, and that it was
the key of a black box which had been supplied at the same
time for his use at the theatre.

The mystery of the fate of Walter Gooch, some time lessee
and manager of the Princess's Theatre, was solved at last.

At least I and many other old friends of the former lessee
of the Princess's thought so, but it appears to be still a
mystery.

Some time after I had first published the story of the keys
a lady wrote me that she had had as a lodger in 1889 tiu l893
a gentleman named Walter Gooch, who used to show her a

8o MY LIFE

silver cigar-case on which was an inscription to the effect
that it had been presented to him by Geo. R. Sims.

This Walter Gooch, she told me, went in '96 to his mother's
house in Maida Vale, and there he died. I have made inquiry
at Somerset House, but have failed to find any certificate of
his death in London, and so I am inclined to believe that the
man who was found dead in New York, with the keys of
Walter Gooch in his possession, was Walter Gooch himself.

CHAPTER IX

BETWEEN the production of Crutch and Toothpick at the
Royalty and the journey to Leeds which was to bring me into
professional relationship with Wilson Barrett, a great many
things had happened.

For one thing I had made the acquaintance of Mr. Louis
Diehl, the composer.

I had written some verses and published them — I forget
where — and Diehl, always on the look-out for words, had
read them and thought he would like to set them to music.

As I am frequently asked for a copy of the verses and
cannot find them in any of my published volumes, I give
them here.

THE LIGHTS OF LONDON TOWN

The way was long and weary,

But gallantly they strode,
A country lad and lassie,

Along the heavy road.
The night was dark and stormy,
But blithe of heart were they,
For shining in the distance
The lights of London lay.

0 gleaming lamps of London that gem the city's crown,
What fortunes lie within you, 0 Lights of London Town !

The years passed on and found them

Within the mighty fold,
The years had brought them trouble,

But brought them little gold,
Oft from their garret window,

On long, still, summer nights,

81 F

82 MY LIFE

They'd seek the far-off country

Beyond the London lights.

0 mocking lamps of London, what weary eyes look down,
And mourn the day they saw you, 0 Lights of London Town !

With faces worn and weary,

That told of sorrow's load,
One day a man and woman

Crept down a country road.
They sought their native village,

Heart-broken from the fray,
Yet shining still behind them,

The lights of London lay.

0 cruel lamps of London, if tears your light could drown,
Your victims' eyes would weep them, 0 Lights of London Town !

It was a tramp, you see, who gave me my title and inspired
the lines.

•When I made Henry Sampson's acquaintance I imbibed a
good deal of his love of sport. I became an enthusiastic
supporter of boxing — as practised by other people — and
during several years I saw every glove-fight that was worth
seeing.

But there was a form of sport which I took up and practised
myself. I was always a good walker, and I am so still, and it
is not so very long ago that a friendly detective officer who
had started out with me before midnight for a tour of certain
criminal areas left me at four o'clock in the morning with a
smiling protest.

" When you came to the station to-night," he said, " and
the chief told me off to go with you, I looked you up and
down and thought I'd got a soft job. I expected that after
about an hour's tramp you would bid me a polite good night,
but we've had four hours of it and I'm dog-tired, while you
are as fresh as a daisy."

At the time that I took to the road as an amateur pedestrian
long-distance walking had come very much into vogue as a
professional pursuit.

The first long-distance walking that I saw was when Sir
John Astley, " The Mate " of affectionate memory, became a

SIR JOHN ASTLEY

MY LIFE 83

patron of the long wobble shows at the Agricultural Hall.
These " wobbles " and «' go as you please " affairs used
generally to start aj: midnight on Sunday, and I used to be
one of the little crowd that assembled in the midnight gloom
to admire Sir John Astley and to hear the representative of
the Sporting Life fire a pistol as the clock struck twelve.

Edward Peyson Weston was very much boomed by the
Press, and the Hall was crowded to see him perform his feats of
endurance, but far more popular shows were the long-distance
walking competitions at the same hall with Harry Vaughan
of Chester, Billy Howes, Ide, " Blower " Brown, and other
well-known and popular " peds " taking part in them.

It was while I was with Sampson on Fun that I started
long-distance walking myself. I used to leave my house in
Lonsdale Square at half-past four in the morning, walk to a
terminus and catch the 5.15, which in those days was the
newspaper train, to some country town twenty or twenty-five
miles out.

Arriving at my destination, I used to set my face towards
London and start for home, endeavouring to pass a fresh
milestone every quarter of an hour. That was a feat I did
not always accomplish.

It was one afternoon when walking from St. Albans to
London that, near Barnet, I fell in with a young fellow and
his wife. They seemed decent folk. The man told me he
was tramping to London in search of work.

I slackened my pace and walked with them.

The darkness fell as we tramped along, and as we came to
Highgate the lights of the City were just visible in the rather
misty darkness.

" Look, Liz," exclaimed the man eagerly to his wife as he
stretched out his hand towards the City " paved with gold."
" Yonder are the lights o' London."

That night when I got home I had the warm bath I always
took after a long tramp, had a light meal, and then I sat
down and wrote the verses.

Louis Diehl read them, liked them, and set them to music,
and Miss Orridge, a fine contralto, sang them at the Ballad
Concerts.

Soon afterwards Louis Diehl came to me and told me that

84 MY LIFE

he had a great idea. He knew a very clever girl who was the
show pianist at a pianoforte shop — perhaps I ought to call it
an emporium — in Baker Street.

She had an idea of forming a company of " Lady Minstrels,"
and she thought she could get the money together. All she
wanted was a musical play which could be performed entirely
by girls. The young lady's name was Lila Clay.

Diehl was quite willing to do the music if I would write the
libretto. I agreed to do so, and I called the little musical
play which was to be performed entirely by the fair sex
A Dress Rehearsal.

The plot of A Dress Rehearsal was simple. A number of
schoolgirls were anxious to get up a pantomime for their
" breaking-up " entertainment.

The head mistress was very strict in her ideas. She had
never been to a theatre in her life, and had no idea what a
pantomime was.

The pantomime itself was supposed to be written by one
of the elder girls, who was fond of the play, and already had
theatrical ambitions of her own, and it was rehearsed by the
elocution mistress, an elderly lady who had in her time,
before she met with an accident which crippled her slightly,
combined comic old women with Shakespearean parts on the
transpontine stage.

I was introduced to Lila Clay at the piano shop, and there
I read her the operetta in rather unusual circumstances. She
had been left in entire charge of the shop at the time, the
" governor " having gone to his lunch, and the boy having
been sent into the City with a letter. Although my new
manageress had to leave me every now and then hurriedly,
because some one came into the shop, and had to be attended
to by her, I managed to maintain my own enthusiasm to the
end of the reading, and Lila — she was " Lila " in the theatrical
world for so many years afterwards that I cannot bring myself
to write about her in any other name — expressed herself as
delighted with the work.

She said she would see her backers at once, and hoped to
be able to put the operetta in rehearsal in a few days.

She got together a company of clever and pretty girls —
some of them became famous afterwards in musical comedy —

MY LIFE 85

and when everything was ready we started rehearsals. Lila
herself was not to act, but to be the musical directress of the
minstrels and preside at {he piano.

The rehearsals, with the amiable proprietor's permission,
took place in the kitchen, which was in the basement.

We had a piano moved down there, and the operetta was
rehearsed there every day " under the personal direction of
the author and composer."

The upper part of the premises was residential, and the
kitchen was used for preparing meals for certain people who
occupied them, so there was a cook.

But the cook was very kind, and frequently in the intervals
of preparing the meals for upstairs held the prompt book,
and on one occasion when one of the young ladies was unable
to attend owing to a slight indisposition, the cook read the
part, and to the best of her ability sang the music allotted to
it, keeping one eye on the extended finger which the composer
used as a baton, and the other on the frying-pan, in which a
steak and onions were cooking.

We heard a good deal at one time about getting the scent
of the hay over the footlights, but it was my first experience of
getting the scent of steak and onions over the scene of an
operatic rehearsal.

Lila enjoyed the rehearsals immensely, and when Louis
Diehl could not come she took his place at the piano.

The proprietor of the piano shop was very kind and con-
siderate, and let Lila stay in the kitchen and look after the
rehearsals, only disturbing her occasionally by shouting down
the stairs when she was wanted to exhibit the qualities of a
piano to a possible purchaser.

The backers — they were two very cheerful and good-looking
young gentlemen, one middle-aged gentleman, and one rather
elderly gentleman — had authorized Lila to take the Langham
Hall for the first appearance of " Lila Clay's Lady Minstrels "
and the production of a " new operetta by George R. Sims
and Louis Diehl," and the eventful night at last arrived. I
look at the old programme and find that it was October 30,
1879.

Half an hour before the curtain was due to rise at the
hall, for which, by the by, a week's rent had been paid in

86 MY LIFE

advance by the backers, Diehl and I drove there and went
" behind."

The first person we met was one of the girls who was
wandering about prettily attired as a lady minstrel in a short
frock and dainty silk stockings, but on her feet were her own
muddy boots, and on her face was a look of despair.

" Fancy ! " she said, " everything's ready, but we have no
boots to put on. The beastly old bootmaker's got them with
him, but he won't let us have them without the money, and
Lila can't find her backers."

I went on to the stage — the curtain, of course, was still
down — and there I saw the lady minstrels sitting in a semicircle,
all daintily arrayed, but bootless.

Then I met Lila with a smile on her face. Lila Clay's smile
was literally the smile that won't come off. I don't think
I ever saw her without it, in spite of all the ups and downs
of her professional career.

" Don't worry about the boots," she said, " it'll be all
right. Some of my backers are sure to be here directly."

But before the backers, who presently arrived at the hall,
came behind to discuss the situation with us, a gentleman
appeared who described himself as " the secretary." It was
the first I had heard of it, but the gentleman explained to
me that the backers on his advice had turned the affair into
a limited liability company. The funds of the company, he
found, were already exhausted, and as a secretary who knew
company law thoroughly he was not prepared to advise the
directors to call up further capital on the spur of the moment.

I drew the curtain aside, peeped through and saw that a
small audience was gradually assembling. The clock was
ticking on towards the hour when the show was due to
commence.

What was to be done ? I was not prepared to find the
money for the company myself, because I knew what that
might lead to, so I advised Liia to go and interview the
directors, who were standing by the pay-box, and keenly
watching the course of business there.

Lila succeeded at last in overriding the scruples of the
secretary and the four directors agreed to subscribe a sovereign
each towards the bootmaker's bill. It was a little more than

MY LIFE 87

that, so the author and composer found the balance. The
bootmaker was paid, and the dainty bottines were quickly
donned by the fair minstrels.

In the meantime* the four directors had squeezed into the
small pay-box and were taking it in turns to recoup themselves
for the money they had advanced.

From the author and composer's point of view A Dress
Rehearsal was a great success. From the company's point of
view it was a failure. After a very short run it was withdrawn,
and the Lila Clay's Minstrel Company went into voluntary
liquidation.

The secretary, a clean-shaven gentleman who always
carried a black bag and wore a tragic expression, called upon
me one evening to announce the fact.

" All right," I said, " it can't be helped, but get the script
and the score from the company and send them to me."

" I am afraid I can't do that," he said. " You see, legally
the script and the score are the property of the company. As
they are the only assets I should not, as secretary, be justified
in parting with them."

As neither Diehl nor myself had had a farthing for our
work we thought the contention of the solemn secretary a
particularly cool one.

However, we eventually got our property back. Lila called
a special meeting of her directors, and acting on our behalf
laughed them out of their " only assets."

There was an originality about Lila Clay's first theatrical
enterprise which ought to have ensured it a better fate.
Thirty-seven years ago the young manageress anticipated a
system of representation that has been adopted within the
last few months by many of the West End theatres.

The programme of the " Lila Clay Lady Minstrels," with
A Dress Rehearsal as the second part, was announced for
performance " Every Monday, Thursday, and Friday at eight,
and Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday at three."

I cannot remember the reason of this somewhat original
arrangement. It was original at the time, but would be
looked upon as nothing out of the ordinary to-day.

A few months before the production of A Dress Rehearsal
I had, at the suggestion of Mr. Ashton Dilke, undertaken to

88 MY LIFE

start and edit a new penny weekly periodical of the lighter order,
something between the Family Herald and the Welcome Guest.

The new paper appeared under the title of One and All,
edited by Geo. R. Sims.

It was in One and All that my first novel, " Rogues and
Vagabonds," appeared, and a good deal of my original scenario
of the, as yet, unplayed Lights o' London went to the making
of the story. And it was as the editor of One and All that I
printed a contribution — one of the earliest, I believe, to the
London Press — by a young Irishman newly arrived in London.
His name was George Bernard Shaw.

But let me return to Lila Clay. Soon after the close of the
run of A Dress Rehearsal she went into the provinces with
Dick South's Opera Company.

At the termination of the first tour I met her one Sunday
morning in Park Street, Camden Town. It was a cold grey
day, but her smile seemed to light up the whole thoroughfare
from the Britannia to the York and Albany.

" Well, Lila," I said, " how is the opera company getting
on?"

" Oh, fine," she said. " We haven't had much money, but
we've had lots of fun."

For years after that Lila was always bobbing up serenely.
She got the Opera Comique and produced The Adamless Eden
there, by Savile Clarke. The Adamless Eden was a musical
piece performed entirely by ladies. The orchestra was
feminine, and conducted by Lila herself, and admirably
conducted, for she was an excellent musician.

And there was no trouble about boots.

Some time after that Lila turned up in the ballroom scene
in La Cigale at the Lyric. There was a music gallery in the
scene, and there Lila conducted a female orchestra.

When I met her again it was at Newmarket. She had
become a sportswoman, and was to be seen regularly at the
principal race meetings. She used to get some excellent tips.
As they were my racing days we met constantly, and Lila's
tips were very useful.

One day she came to me and said : "I've got a pony on
Day Dawn at 20 to i. You ought to have a fiver." I had
two fivers on Day Dawn, and it won.

MY LIFE 89

I used to meet Lila racing for a year or two, and she was
always merry and bright, and appeared to be on the best of
terms with everybody, backers, owners, jockeys, and herself.

Then she dropped out, and one day I heard that she had
gone back to her people and died at home after a lingering
and painful illness.

Poor Lila ! May the earth lie lightly on her ! She was a
feather-brain always and foolish often, but in the words of
the old song " her bright smile haunts me still," and to meet
her and talk with her was always an exhilarating experience.

A Dress Rehearsal, in spite of its fate seven and thirty years
ago at the Langham Hall, is still a property. Messrs. Samuel
French and Co., the theatrical publishers of Southampton
Street, Strand, look after the amateur rights for me, and
every quarter they make up an account of the fees they have
received and send me what Digby Grant in The Two Roses
used to call " a little cheque."

How much I owe, taking one consideration with another,
to the tramp who said to his wife, as we jogged along the
Great North Road together, " Yonder are the lights o*
London ! "

CHAPTER X

GLANCING back over the years when I was a playgoer with
apparently very little chance of becoming a playwright, many
an old familiar form revisits the pale glimpses of the stage
moon in Limelight Land when all the programmes were
" scented by Rimmel."

I remember Benjamin Webster's wonderful performance in
Janet Pride, an old-time Adelphi triumph that one seldom
hears mentioned to-day by old plaj^goers. I must have seen
it in a revival. I was a baby when it was first produced.
And I have never forgotten Webster's Penn Holder in One
Touch of Nature.

I remember his Robert Landry in the Dead Heart. I
remember the fine old actor in his heyday, and I remember
his decline and fall — literally his fall.

It was when The Wandering Jew was produced with James
Fernandez — I wonder how many playgoers remember
" Jimmy " at the old Bower Saloon that we called the Sour
Baloon ? — as Dagobert, and Webster played Rodin.

In one scene he fell on the stage in a sitting posture and
had to be helped gently to his feet by two of the characters
who ought, according to the play, to have refused to stretch
out a hand to him, even if he had been drowning.

I was at the Adelphi on the first night of No Thoroughfare.
Miss W'oolgar as Sally Goldstraw electrified the house with
her pathetic despair in the Foundling Hospital, Webster was
an ideal Joey Ladle, and Fechter was Obenreizer, and Carlotta
Leclerq was Marguerite.

I remember that on the first night when Fechter stole to
the bed of Walter Wilding to give him his quietus a voice in
the gallery shouted, " Wake up ! wake up ! he's going to kill
you ! " but Fechter had so completely gripped the house that
there was only a momentary titter.

90

MY LIFE 91

And the Colleen Bawn ! All London flocked to the Adelphi
to see Dion Ifcucicault's 'masterly adaptation of Gerald
Griffin's novel, " The*Collegians," and all London talked for
many a -month after the first night of Boucicault's Myles Na
Coppaleen and Edmund Falconer's Danny Mann.

And I booked my seat for the Adelphi in those days, a
pit-stall numbered and reserved for half a crown. And there
was a beautiful golden-haired lady in the box-office who did
all the box-office business and had no assistant.

Once again the old boards are trodden by Mme. Celeste.
Who that saw her as Miami in The Green Bushes and Cynthia
in The Flowers of the Forest can ever forget her ?

I remember when Toole and Paul Bedford were the stock
comedians of the old house, and from the far-off shores of the
sixties the echo of " I believe you, my boy ! " sounds in my
ears.

I see again Kate Bateman as Leah. I see Rip van Winkle
Jefferson wake after his long sleep on the Catskill Mountains
and go back into the village and meet his wife and child. And
the wife was played by " Our Mrs. Billington."

And Emmet ! " Schneider, how you vas ? "

I see Robson in The Porter's Knot at the Olympic, and as
Jim Baggs in The Wandering Minstrel, and I see again a big
house thrilled with the intensity of his burlesque tragedy in
Medea. Once again I see him in the burlesque of Mazeppa,
and I hear him singing :

Had it not been for Olinska,

Dat bery lubly gal,
Her father would have sent me

To the foundling hospital.
Where de boys are dressed in woollen clothes

To warm their little limbs,
And smell of yellow soap and sing

Like little cherubims.

If I misquote from memory, forgive me. It is so long ago.

And Widdicombe ! Who remembers his admirable *per-
formance in the screaming farces that were the curtain-raisers
of the sixties ? Poor Pillicoddy and The Two Polts.

92 MY LIFE

I remember the farces at the Adelphi — the screaming farces
splendidly acted by the leading comedians and comediennes
of the house. And half-price at the Strand at nine o'clock, a
shilling in the pit, and the merry burlesques of Brough and
Byron with the excruciating puns that made the house
writhe with joy. The more atrocious the pun the more
delirious the mirth.

The idols of the pit and gallery and, for the matter of that,
of the stalls and boxes too, were Jimmy Rogers and Johnny
Clarke, and Marie Wilton trod the boards daintily and
brought to burlesque and extravaganza the art that was to
charm the playgoing world later in comedy of the highest
order.

I remember the Royalty and Frank Burnand winning his
laurels with laughing London at his feet ; Ixion with Jenny
Willmore as the hero and Ada Cavendish as Venus, and lovely
Lydia Maitland and the bevy of beauties that Mrs. Charles
Selby had gathered together for her campaign of gaiety at
the little theatre in Dean Street.

And then came Black-Eyed Susan, with Dewar as Captain
Crosstree and Patty Oliver as Susan. And Patty Oliver and
Dewar sang " Pretty See-usan, don't say No," and soon all
England was singing it : Flying Scud, with Charlotte Saunders,
the one and only Charlotte Saunders — there never was another
— as the jockey. And Fanny Josephs as Lord Willoughby
righting his duel on the sands of Calais !

I remember the Queen's and The Last Days of Pompeii,
with Henrietta Hodson as the blind girl, and the famous
banqueting scene with the voluptuaries of the period crowned
with roses at the festive board. And the Roman acrobat on
the tight-rope for their amusement — luncheon lectures and
tango teas had not yet been introduced as post-prandial
delights — and the yells of laughter that arose when the
acrobat, who was a heavy fellow and looked like a Grseco-
Roman wrestler, missed his footing and fell into the Pompeian
pie, which went pop like a paper bag. All playgoers who are
still young enough will remember that scene and the wild
shrieks of laughter that rang to the roof.

At the St. James's Theatre lovely Miss Herbert in Lady
Audley's Secret, with Ada Dyas as Phoebe Marks, and Hunted

MY LIFE 93

Down, or The Two Lives of Mary Leigh, with an actor named
Henry Irving making kis mark in it.

And the Leigh Murrays, and the Wigans, the Mirror Theatre
and the Holborn Amphitheatre, and Emily Fowler at the
Olympic, and the Charing Cross Theatre.

I remember the burlesque of The Swan and Edgar, with
Frank Matthews and Charles Young, The Rapid Thaw, which
was a quick frost, with the roller-skating scene in it. And the
first night of War, when they called derisively for the author
at the finish, and Tom Robertson, the author, lay on his
deathbed.

James and Thorne and Montague, with the early glories of
the Vaudeville, comedies that took the town by storm, and
burlesques to follow ! The Two Roses and Irving's Digby
Grant, and George Honey's Our Mr. Jenkins ; Our Boys,
which was to beat all previous records in its length of run.
I was there on the first night. It was a real Byron first
night. The whole house leaning forward eagerly waiting for
the next joke with an anticipatory grin, and hailing it with a
yell when it came.

The Buckstone days at the Haymarket, with the Chippen-
dales and Henry Compton and Amy Sedgwick, were glittering
days, but not all of them were golden ones.

But The Overland Route was a great success, and when
Our American Cousin alighted in the Haymarket all his
English cousins flocked to see him.

Lord Dundreary came and saw and conquered. He has
remained a type to this day, and his whiskers are classical.
But we went Dundreary mad in '61. The shop windows were
filled with Dundreary scarves, and Brother Sam scarves, and
there were Dundreary collars and Dundreary shirts, and
Dundrearyisms were on every lip.

Sothern was a practical joker, and his pranks in private
life were as much the talk of the town as his stage per-
formances.

A hallowed memory is the reign of the Bancrofts at the
Prince of Wales's and later at the Haymarket.

When they took the Haymarket they abolished the pit, and
there was trouble on the first night. The pittites, who had
been compelled to find accommodation in other parts of the

94 MY LIFE

building, made themselves heard for some considerable time
before they gave the actors a chance.

The pits and galleries in those days had a habit of airing
their first-night views with vigour and determination.

There was a time when James Mortimer, who started the
London Figaro, a paper subsidized by the Empress of the
French, could not go into the stalls on the first night without
being roughly greeted by the pit and gallery. He had
offended them in some way which I forget.

Mortimer never missed a first night, and he always had a
play of his own in his overcoat pocket. If the piece looked
like being a failure " Jimmy " would, at the fall of the curtain,
pop round on to the stage, buttonhole the manager and say
to him, " Look here, old chap, I've got just the play you
want."

James Mortimer was quite a kind-hearted little man,
though he occasionally allowed the criticisms of the London
Figaro to be anything but kindly ones. And for some reason
we used to call him " The Corsican."

He wrote a good many plays, mostly adaptations, but I
think the only one that he made any money by was-Gloriana.

To the last he had a habit of pulling out a gold watch on
the slightest provocation and letting you see by the inscription
that it had been presented to him by the Empress of the
French. Peace to his memory !

I remember the first production of the best adaptation of a
French play which has ever been made — Tom Taylor's Ticket
of Leave Man, the play that gave us the situation, " Who will
take it ? " "I, Hawkshaw, the detective," a situation which
has remained the feature of a certain class of British drama
ever since.

I remember Henry Neville's fine performance of Bob
Brierly and his Henry Dunbar, with Kate Terry as his
daughter, her face fearfully and wonderfully tied up for the
toothache as a disguise.

I remember the first night of Lord Newry's Ecarte, and who
that was there will ever forget it ?

CHAPTER XI

WHEN I come in these reminiscences to. the production of my
first melodrama, The Lights o' London, we shall be in the first
year of the 'eighties.

The 'eighties saw a very different London from the London
of the 'seventies.

In the 'sixties and even well on into the 'seventies the
home was a house, and the flat system was mainly confined
to the new and improved working-class dwellings founded by
the estimable Mr. Peabody. And the family meal was taken
at the family table.

The popular restaurant as we understand it to-day had not
arrived, and the separate table in public eating establishments
was as unusual as to-day it is general.

In the popular and in some of the fashionable dining-rooms
and taverns, both in the West End and the City, you sat in
small compartments called " boxes," and wooden partitions
divided one set of lunchers or diners from their neighbours,
and ladies were rarely of the party.

In my early City days, when I had both the time for lunch
and the money, I used to go to the dining-rooms that were
popularly known as " slap bangs." They had taken their
title from the line in the song which at that time was on
everybody's lips, every barrel-organ — there were no piano-
organs in those days — and every concertina, " Slap, bang !
Here we are again ! "

My favourite houses of call for lunch were His Lordship's
Larder in Cheapside, and Lake and Turner's in the same
thoroughfare ; the Post Office Tavern, at the back of the
G.P.O. ; Rudkin's Salutation in Newgate Street ; the
eighteenpenny table d'hotes — there were two, one at one and
one at five — at the Cathedral Tavern opposite St. Paul's ;
and, when it would run to it, Krehl's in Coleman Street, where

95

96 MY LIFE

the menu was in French but some of the dishes had the
flavour of the Fatherland about them.

Later on, when I had come into Fleet Street and the Strand,
Simpson's, with its old English fare, captured me for a time,
and I always sat in one of the old-fashioned boxes and watched
the ancients with delight. By the " ancients " I mean the
old gentlemen who were supposed to have lunched or dined
at Simpson's from their youth upwards.

The old-fashioned " boxes " were a feature of the Albion
Tavern opposite Drury Lane Theatre, and this was a great
supper house in my early days for the lights — and occasionally
for the shadows — of the theatrical profession.

I sat in one of the " boxes " of the Albion one night and
watched Augustus Harris, Henry Pettitt, and Paul Merritt —
they were seated in the same compartment with me — divide
the American fees for The World.

Pettitt had that morning arrived in London from New
York, and he had collected the fees due and brought them
over with him in " ready."

The division of the fees of The World in " ready " in the box
in the Albion took place in the old-fashioned wray. The
pile of notes were dealt out in the " one for me, one for you,
and one for you " system, until the end was reached.

When Felix Spiers and Christopher Pond came from
Australia they revolutionized the buffet business.

They made their first start at Farringdon Street, but both
there and at Ludgate Hill, which presently became the centre
of their activity, the box system prevailed.

I knew both Felix Spiers and Christopher Pond in the early
days of their enterprise, before the Criterion was dreamed of,
and in those days when we lunched in the dining-rooms of
the firm — they were mainly attached to railway stations then
— the great feature was a steak " S. and P."

There were no tea-shops in Fleet Street in those days, but
there were plenty of coffee-shops, and here again the high-
backed wooden boxes were the rule.

Some of these coffee-houses were journalistic haunts. We
used to go to them about six o'clock and have tea and muffins.

There was one coffee-shop that I used to go to evening
after evening for weeks. It had a bound set of Bentley's

MY LIFE 97

Miscellany for the use of customers. To eat hot buttered
muffins and turn the pages of Bentley's Miscellany without
damage to the property was not an easy task, and the volumes
bore ample testimony to their popularity with the patrons.

The tea-shop grew out of four things, the flat system, the
increased facilities of transit which brought the ladies of the
suburbs flocking to London in the afternoon, the vast increase
in the employment of women in City and West End offices,
and the decay of the alcoholic habit among young men.

In my early City days there were no typists and very few
lady clerks, and the catering was almost entirely for men.

There were no typists in my early Strand days, and my
first plays were copied by hand, but there were three or four
theatrical copyists who would prepare a beautifully written
copy of a five-act drama quite as quickly as you can get it
done to-day at any typing agency.

It was ten o'clock one Saturday night when Pettitt and I
completed the script of In the Ranks. An old theatrical
copyist, a fine old fellow with a clean-shaven face and a mass
of wonderful grey hair, called at my house in Gower Street for
it at half -past ten, as he had been instructed to do. At eleven
o'clock on Monday morning the working script of that five-act
drama was delivered to me.

The tea-shop killed the coffee-shop, and gradually the
foreign restaurant began to kill the chop-house and tavern
dining-room, and to diminish the attendance at the eighteen-
penny and two shilling " ordinaries."

Cheap foreign travel organized on a vast scale was gradually
changing the habits and customs of the Londoner. He was
becoming less insular and more cosmopolitan in his tastes, and
he was gradually learning how to enjoy himself without the
display of exuberant animal spirits.

It is difficult for the younger generation of Londoners to
conceive the condition of the West End after nightfall as it
was in the late 'sixties and well on into the 'seventies.

There was a time when two black bullies, one called
Kangaroo and the other named Plantagenet Green, known to
his intimates as Planner Green, were the terrors of the West.

I have seen Kangaroo come into a West End saloon and
pick up the glass of champagne which a young duke had just

G

98 MY LIFE

poured out for a lady who was never likely to be his duchess,
and toss it off, and then go to a table at which a young
Guardsman was similarly entertaining a fair companion and
drink up their wine too.

It was not considered wise to resent the insolence of this
ruffian in a practical manner. Dukes do not want to wear
their coronets above a broken nose, and young Guardsmen
would find two lovely black eyes inconvenient extras.

But the black eye was quite a common result of a night
out in those times. It was so general that in a side street in
the Haymarket an artist had a studio specially arranged for
the painting of black eyes, and it was open from eight o'clock
in the evening till four o'clock in the morning.

The songs of the lion comiques of those days echoed the
habits of the West. "The Champagne Charlies" and the
" Rolling Home in the Morning Boys " were types of the
night life of London.

Of that life as I saw it in the West End of London and the
East End of London I have many abiding memories, and I
had one black eye which I led my mother to believe was the
result of an accidental collision with a lamp-post.

As a matter of fact I got it in a free fight at the Alhambra
one Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race night.

Oh, those Boat Race nights ! I wonder what London
would think of them now ?

Of the roystering night life of London in the 'sixties and
early 'seventies I have a lively remembrance.

My experiences of night life began at rather an early period
of my career because my opportunities were exceptional.

In the 'fifties, when my juvenile experiences commenced,
the general attitude with regard to theatrical entertainment
and the form of amusement which we to-day call a variety
entertainment was not so benevolent as it is to-day.

The matine'e girl and the matinee child were unknown.

The serious early and mid- Victorians would have been
aghast at the idea of vast palaces of entertainment being
daily crowded with afternoon audiences, and except at
Christmas, Easter, and Whitsun many of the theatres had no
matinee performances at all.

There was a very large body of citizens and citizenesses

MY LIFE 99

who were opposed to " theatrical " entertainment in any shape
or form, and the children of my childhood when they were
taken to an entertainment were generally to be found at the
Crystal Palace, the Colosseum, where they saw the Earthquake
of Lisbon and the Panorama of London by Night — I need
hardly say there were no human figures in it — the Polytechnic,
where they went down in the diving-bell and saw Pepper's
ghost ; the Christy, afterwards the Moore and Burgess,
Minstrels, where the burnt-corked company sang pathetic
songs about closing the shutters because Willie was dead, and
meeting Belle Mahone at Heaven's gate. There were always
five or six items in the entertainment that dealt with the
early demise of amiable little boys and gentle maidens or the
approaching dissolution of elderly black gentlemen who heard
the angels calling.

The nearest approach to theatrical entertainment that the
children of the Puritan survival were permitted was the
Royal Gallery of Illustration, where the German Reeds
flourished for many years, and Woodin's Olio of Oddities,
which were sometimes given in a real theatre, and they were
permitted occasionally to visit a circus, which was more or
less a permanent institution in London in the old days.

Waxworks, dissolving views, and panoramas were popular,
and lectures and readings were largely attended, especially
the readings of Charles Dickens and the Mont Blanc enter-
tainment of Albert Smith.

I heard Charles Dickens read from his works twice, and
one of my most treasured possessions is his own drawing of
the reading-desk which afterwards became so familiar to the
great public who flocked to hear him.

My grandfather, the Sandemanian, would have limited my
early experiences of entertainment London to a selection from
this programme, but fortunately I had another grandfather,
and he, like my mother, was passionately fond of the theatre,
and liked to see everything in the entertainment world that
was going on. So when I was quite a boy I was taken to the
Oxford Music Hall in the first week of its opening.

We sat at a little table close to the chairman, and the
chairman sat in a raised chair at a table near the orchestra,
with his back turned to the performers. He was a cheery

ioo MY LIFE

individual with a bright and shining face and a bright and
shining manner.

He wore a large white shirt-front, in which sparkled a
diamond about the size of the glass stopper of a scent-
bottle, and at each new turn he rapped the table vigorously
with his hammer and announced the name of the performer.
To stand the chairman a drink was considered a great
privilege.

I was also taken to almost the first cafe chantant started in
London. There was an amiable Italian gentleman who lived
in Cranbourn Street, Leicester Square, and who came over to
this country when he was twenty, and lived in it till he was
seventy. He once told me that the English people were
deficient in the gift of languages, because he had lived in
London for fifty years, and Londoners were still unable to
speak Italian.

He was a fine old chap and a wonderful character, and had
very intimate relations with the Italian Opera singers. I am
under the impression that he used to finance them when they
found themselves temporarily short of money.

The Italian gentleman had found a portion of the money to
start an enterprise which I believe was called the Imperial
Music Hall, and he persuaded my father to take a number of
shares. The music-hall — it was really a cafe chantant on the
French system — occupied a portion of Savile House.

I do not know how much money my father put into it, but
I know that he had several books of tickets of admission sent
him, and that on the opening night he and the Italian gentle-
man allowed me to accompany them and to sit between them
at a marble table during the performance.

The career of the cafe chantant did not end in a blaze of
triumph, but it ended in a blaze.

The scene of the conflagration remained a gaping ruin for
many years, but ultimately the site came into the possession
of Mr. Nicol, of the Cafe Royal, and on that site arose the
present Empire Theatre, so that upon the Imperial foundation
with which I was associated in my boyhood arose a world-
famed Empire.

The rowdy night life of London in the 'sixties was not
confined to the West End. It was quite the thing for the

MY LIFE 101

" Corinthians " of the 'sixties to make excursions to the East,
and when I first became a student of " life as she is lived "
my studies occasionally took me after nightfall in the direction
of Ratcliffe Highway, and I have a vivid remembrance of
weird and wonderful scenes in the dancing saloons attached
to Paddy's Goose, which was in the notorious Highway, the
Mahogany Bar, which was close by, and in the disreputable
dens — for they were dens and they were disreputable — of
Tiger Bay.

In those days Jack ashore was frequently Jack with his
pocket full of gold, and there were plenty of sharks, male and
female, whose sole worldly occupation it was to assist Jack in
getting rid of his money.

Many a sailor, after a night of revelry in the dancing dram-
shops of the Highway, would be lured, drunken, dazed and
sometimes drugged, into the back courts of Artichoke Hill
and St. John's Hill. There poor Jack was always robbed and
sometimes murdered.

When the " Corinthians " of the 'sixties and the early
"seventies went East to make a night of it at the East End
temples dedicated to the worship of Bacchus and Venus they
were frequently accompanied by a professional bruiser, who
was technically known as their " minder."

It was the duty of the " minder " to shadow them as a
detective to-day shadows a foreign royal visitor taking a stroll
about town.

Some of the " minders " were straight, but one or two of
them were crooks, and I have known more than one assault
upon a patron deliberately planned by a " minder " in order
that at the psychological moment he, the " minder," might
rush in and do doughty service for his chief, a service for
which he would be handsomely rewarded.

Some of these " minders " did so well out of their patrons
that they became prosperous and blossomed into sportsmen
and patrons of the Turf.

One or two of the prosperous " minders " used to be very
much in evidence in the early days of the Criterion when
the American bar was in its glory. But that is a glory
which has long since departed, and so has the glory of the
" minder."

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MY LIFE

I met many of them at the East End nights' entertain-
ments, both at glove-fights and in the Ratcliff Highway
" ball-rooms/'

But it was in Fleet Street that some of the old-time bruisers
came into " My Life."

CHAPTER XII

IT was Thackeray, I think, who sang :

0 pretty page with the dimpled chin,
Wait till you come to forty year.

It was in the 'eighties that I came to forty, and so in these
memories of the past I find myself standing with reluctant
feet where the 'thirties and the 'forties meet.

There is a charm about our early memories that the later
ones seldom possess. So before I step into the 'eighties and
the comparatively modern I would fain linger for a brief space
among my early memories of the London that I love.

In the days of my youth, though Bartholomew Fair had
long since passed away, pleasure fairs were still held in the
outlying districts of the Metropolis.

The once famous fair of Gospel Oak was still held within
walking distance of my boyhood's home. Greenwich Fair
was still a great Cockney festival, and Charlton Fair retained
many of its ancient glories. And there were others.

The pleasure gardens were still popular, and there were
tea gardens with arbours attached to scores of the better
known public-houses.

I can remember when on a Sunday evening you might see
many of the Bohemianly inclined children of Thespis sitting
at the little tables in the tea-garden attached to the York
and Albany in Park Street, Camden Town. And from the
Mother Redcap and the Britannia to the York and Albany
was in those days quite a Sunday morning theatrical
promenade.

Rosherville was still the place to spend a happy day, and
there was a good deal of the side-show element there.

North Woolwich Gardens still attracted its thousands, and
when William Holland, with his famous moustache and his

103

MY LIFE

genius for showmanship, ruled the roost there, it had a fair
spell of popularity.

When I first came into Fleet Street the pleasure steamers
in the summer were laden with trippers for the North Woolwich
Gardens.

Bill Holland — he was the son of a draper in Newington
Causeway — had been associated with almost every form of
entertainment enterprise. He called himself " The People's
Caterer."

He was at various periods of his career the lessee of the
Surrey Theatre, where he made a feature of pantomime with
a Moon as a star — Miss Nellie Moon — manager of the Alhambra,
impresario — his own word on the occasion — of a gigantic circus
which he ran, of all places in the world, at the Covent Garden
Opera House, the entrepreneur of a great circus at the Agri-
cultural Hall, where he wanted to put on a real bull-fight but
naturally was not allowed to, and the manager of the Blackpool
Winter Gardens.

During his reign at North Woolwich Gardens he used to
hold shows of every description. Once he held a moustache
show and took the prize himself, but his baby shows are the
best remembered of any.

Holland was a real showman, and not only understood the
art of publicity but the still more useful art of obtaining
gratuitous advertisement.

He was a great favourite with Pressmen, and every Sunday
during the summer he used to give an informal Press lunch
at the Gardens. The room in which the lunch was held
commanded a view of the landing-stage, and when the steamer
came to the pier Holland would stand up and count the
passengers who were disembarking for the Gardens.

He used to count, " Ten — twenty — thirty — forty — fifty,"
and when he got to the " fifty " he would turn to his guests
and say, " It's all right to-day, boys. We'll have another
bottle."

In London itself in the free and easy 'sixties there was no
grandmotherly Government and very little harassing legisla-
tion to interfere with the pleasures of the people. Though
Bartholomew Fair had been abolished, there was a bit
of it on Britannia Fields, Hoxton, and a good many of

MY LIFE 105

its features were to be found scattered about the streets of
London.

Acrobats, jugglers, and peep-showmen set up their pitches
and performed where they chose. The usual attraction for
the peep-show was the Murder in the Red Barn.

Simple Simon could have tossed the pieman for his wares
at a dozen street corners in those days ; German bands
performed in street and square at all hours of the day and
night, and niggers gave their alfresco concerts in places where
now special police are provided to direct the traffic.

Of one of the nigger parties, the conductor was dressed as
Punch, and many of the heads of these bands were quite
popular characters with Londoners, and their names were
household words.

Those were the days of the freaks. General Tom Thumb
was more famous than any military commander of the same
rank. With Minnie Warren and Commodore Nutt he cap-
tured London and made a triumphant tour of the kingdom.

Milly-Christine, " the double-headed nightingale," drew the
town, and anything possessed of too many or too few limbs
had a distinct commercial value. Donato, the dancing man
with one leg, got a great deal more money for his performance
than many an artist who was unfortunate enough to have
two.

You did not have bands at the banquet in those days, and
people took and enjoyed their meals without music, but in
the streets you had vocal and instrumental music the whole
day long, and every murder had its melody.

The " chaunters " stood along the kerbs — generally after
nightfall — and hawked their doleful ditties. They did a
roaring trade whenever a sensational crime had gripped the
public fancy. Within five minutes of an execution the
" chaunters " were along the streets celebrating the event
and hawking the unfortunate wretch's " last dying confession "
while he was still dangling at the end of the rope.

On May Days Jack-in-the-Green and his rowdy train
careered about the town from early morning until late in the
afternoon. I have seen Jack arrayed in all his green glory
dancing and frolicking along the Strand on the " chimney
sweeps' holiday," celebrated with full honours in Trafalgar

io6 MY LIFE

Square. And there were no lions at the base of Nelson's
Column then.

In the days of my youth there was no compulsory education,
and thousands of people, young and old, were unable to read,
and among the masses it was quite as common to " make
your cross " as to sign your name, but for the benefit of the
young people of the masses who could read the market was
flooded with objectionable literature.

The " penny dreadful " of my youth was far more dreadful
than the periodicals which earned the title in later days.

The windows of newspaper shops of a certain class were
filled with publications as objectionable in every way as the
old vulgar Valentines that for years made the fourteenth of
February a byword and a reproach.

There were some dreadful stories published in penny
numbers for the reading of the young who were permitted to
choose their own literature. Two of the worst that I remember
were " Charley Wag " and " The Woman with the Yellow
Hair."

These publications would to-day have been seized by the
police within half an hour of their appearance.

Stories for boys were of the bluggiest order. I remember
" The Blue Dwarf " and " Varney the Vampire, or The Feast
of Blood " ; and " Spring-Heeled Jack," popularly supposed to
have been an eccentric Marquess of Waterford, was as great
a hero as Dick Turpin. " George Barnwell " and " Moll
Cutpurse " were, of course, classics.

Some of the amusements provided for youth were as
objectionable as the literature. Why the police permitted
them to exist was a mystery to many even in the free and
easy 'sixties.

In the days of my young manhood such ghastly entertain-
ments as " The Judge and Jury " presided over by " Chief
Baron " Nicholson were still tolerated. Here the principal
divorce cases of the day were tried over again, and the chief
attraction was a degraded comedian who appeared as a
female witness.

There was a freedom of innuendo in the music-halls that
would not be tolerated to-day at a cabman's " free and easy."

For the class for whom Cremorne was too " swell " there

MY LIFE 107

was plenty of alfresco dancing, and at the Grecian, once the
well-known Eagle, in the City Road, and at Highbury Barn,
dancing was always one of the features of the evening's
entertainment.

It was at the Grecian Theatre, admirably managed and
run by George Conquest, that Paul Meritt and Henry Pettitt
made their first start as dramatists.

Paul Meritt was of Polish origin, but his mother was a
Yorkshire woman, and his real name was Metzger. In his
expansive moments he used to tell me that he was a descendant
of Sobieski.

When I first knew him he was a clerk at Thomas Tapling's,
the great carpet warehousemen in Gresham Street. Henry
Pettitt was a writing master at the North London Collegiate
School.

Meritt at the Grecian combined the post of local dramatist
with that of giving the pass-out checks at the theatre exit for
the interval in the grounds.

George Conquest always had a strong company ; and many
of them, especially those who played for him in pantomime,
became later on popular West End stars.

The story of how Paul Meritt took his name is characteristic
of the man. He was an enormously stout man with a thin,
high-pitched voice, not at all a bad fellow when you knew him,
but eccentric in his habits.

He could never resist the temptation of the food that he
fancied, and I remember meeting him one day walking along
the Strand with some pease pudding which he had purchased
in a shop, and was eating from the paper in which it had been
served to him. He had seen the pudding, fancied it, and was
unable to resist the impulse.

When he and Pettitt first came together to collaborate
Meritt suggested that they should adopt stage names for the
partnership, and that they should be known as Meritt and
Success. He would be Meritt and Pettitt could call himself
Success.

Pettitt, who had a keener sense of humour than Meritt,
preferred not to tempt Providence. But Paul was Meritt to
the end of his days.

The only occasion on which I remember him using his own

io8 MY LIFE

name was when he took a house on Haverstock Hill which
had a double frontage. One entrance was on the Hill and the
other entrance was the Chalk Farm end of Adelaide Road.

There was a brass plate on the Haverstock Hill door with
" Mr. Paul Meritt " upon it, and there was a brass plate on
the Adelaide Road door with " Mr. Paul Metzger " upon it.
It was a bit of characteristic " swank " on Paul's part and
that was all.

There was no Dangerous Performances Act in those days,
and there were plenty of exhibitions to which the people
flocked attracted by the risk to life and limb which was run
by the performer.

Blondin on the high rope at the Crystal Palace is, of course,
history. The hero of Niagara wrote his name upon the story
of his time.

But there was a female Blondin who was advertised to
cross the river on a high rope from Cremorne, and young
women were taken up into the clouds dangling from balloons
and there cast adrift to descend in parachutes.

At the Aquarium the famous Farini was running Lulu in a
sensational act. Lulu was supposed at the time to be a
pretty little girl, but as a matter of fact Lulu's name was
Farini and Lulu was Farini's son.

Zazel was another star of the old Aquarium days. Zazel
was called " The Human Cannon Ball," and used to be fired
from a cannon to the roof of the Aquarium, where she caught
a trapeze.

The Aquarium was started originally as an educational
establishment — more or less. Wybrow Robertson, the hus-
band of Miss Lytton, the charming actress, was one of the
founders, and Fatty Coleman was largely concerned in the
management of the enterprise.

There was a fellowship of the Royal Aquarium and a
number of well-known men were elected to that honour, and
in the comic papers the new distinction of " F.R.A." was
worked for all it was worth.

The Aquarium soon became a place of entertainment only.

I have a tragic memory of the declining years of the
Aquarium.

I had a beautifully bred little bulldog and I named him

MY LIFE 109

Barney Barnato. Before I gave my dog that name I had
asked the permission of the famous financier to do so. " Yes,
certainly," was the reply, " but I hope he will never do any-
thing to injure the name."

" Make your mind easy," I answered. " My dog will
never interfere with your career and I hope you will never
interfere with his."

The idea of anything he might do interfering with my
dog's career amused Barnato immensely, and he repeated the
joke to several of his friends.

Now this is what happened. My little dog won his first at
every show at which he had been exhibited, and the time
came when he could be entered for the championship class.

When the show day arrived my man took Barney down to
the Aquarium early in the morning in order to have him
benched at nine o'clock.

At nine o'clock I woke up and found the usual cup of tea
and the daily papers at my bedside. I opened the Daily
Telegraph, and the first thing that met my eyes was the big
headlines that announced that Barney Barnato had com-
mitted suicide by leaping from the deck of a liner into the
sea.

I sent a messenger off at once with instructions that Barney
was to be removed from his bench and brought home.

My little dog never had another chance of showing in a
championship class. The famous financier whose name he
bore had injured his career.

One more memory of the Westminster Aquarium comes to
me as I write.

I went to the Aquarium to see a show to which I had been
invited.

The first thing I heard when I entered the building was
that Colonel North had died suddenly at his City office.

Colonel North's name has always been associated in my
mind with the death of the friend who was for so many years
my chief, the editor of Fun and the editor of the Referee.

On the day that Colonel North won the Jubilee, Henry
Sampson, who was most anxious to see the race, was detained
at home by some correspondence which had to be dealt with
at once.

no MY LIFE

It was a bitterly cold day with a biting east wind. Just
when he had hardly a moment to spare to catch the train to
Kempton, Sampson discovered that his overcoat had been
accidentally torn, so instead of putting it on he flung it
angrily on a chair and went off for a day's racing without it.

In the bitter, searching wind of a winter that lingered in
the lap of May, he caught a severe cold and he came home
ill. The cold turned to double pneumonia, and within a
week my old friend and chief had passed away. Colonel
North's Jubilee win with Nunthorpe was the last race he ever
saw.

CHAPTER XIII

IT was in the winter of 1880 that I accepted Alfred Hemming's
invitation to go to Leeds and see him perform with the
Waltons in the Christmas pantomime at the Grand Theatre,
of which Mr. Wilson Barrett was then the lessee and manager.

Mr. Wilton Jones was the author of the " Christmas Annual/1
and before I went to the theatre Hemming brought him to
see me at the Great Northern Hotel, and we had an interesting
chat.

It was the first time I had been in Leeds, and I wanted to
know more about it than I should see in the main thorough-
fares. It was an early habit of mine to wander off the beaten
track wherever I happened to find myself, and I have been
able to see the hidden life of cities, the poverty areas, and
the criminal areas, and the seamy side generally with much
advantage to myself, and now and then, I hope, with advantage
to the community. And in all my wanderings in black
patches and through the danger areas I have never come to
grief in the United Kingdom, and only once on the Continent.
That was when I took Charles Warner to see the seamy side
of Naples between midnight and 4 A.M.

Mr. J. Wilton Jones, who had heard of my curious taste,
had promised to show me round the less known quarters of
Leeds. He was at that time on the Yorkshire Post.

The Yorkshire Post was the only paper in Leeds that dealt
with theatrical matters. The Leeds Mercury was then the
property of Mr. E. Baines, who had the Puritan objection to
the playhouse, and as a result no theatrical advertisements
were accepted by the Mercury, and no notice of any theatrical
performance was ever given so long as it remained under the
Baines' control.

The Grand Theatre, with its fine decorations and sumptuous
appointments, was rather a novelty in Leeds in those days.

in

112

MY LIFE

Tragedians starring in the theatre used to complain that it
took some time for the gods and goddesses to settle down to
the first act, and the performers on the stage were occasionally
interrupted by audible exclamations, such as, " Ay, look at
t' gowd on t' ceilin', lass ! "

Hemming had secured a box for me at the Grand, from
which I could see in comfort the performance of the pantomime,
which was Aladdin.

It was a wonderful company. In addition to the Hemming
and Walton family, it included Joe Eldred, of the cuffs and
collars, one of the best Micawbers the stage had ever seen ;
the famous sisters Dot and Minnie Mario, and, as the principal
boy, the great pantomime and music-hall favourite, Jenny
Hill, generally known and advertised as " The Vital Spark."

Soon after the first scene a gentleman entered my box. He
was a shortish gentleman with classical features and a romantic
appearance. He introduced himself very much after the
style in which Stanley introduced himself to Livingstone in
Darkest Africa.

" Mr. Sims, I presume ? " he exclaimed, and in answer to
my polite bow of acquiescence, added, " I am Wilson Barrett/'

That was my first meeting with the manager with whom
I was to be associated for many busy and prosperous years.

Barrett sat by my side and we watched the progress of the
pantomime together. His principal concern, I remember,
was that some of the ladies of the ballet would wear their own
jewellery, and their own jewellery did not harmonize with
their environment.

Butterflies with ear-rings and dragon-flies with gold lockets
round their necks distressed the artistic eye of the manager,
and Wilson Barrett was always an artist in his productions.

He did not tell me that there was a youth employed in the
theatre who mixed the distemper for the scenic artists and
designed comic masks, and whose name was Phil May. I
learned that afterwards, when Phil May told me himself of
the Leeds days, and how he had, as a boy, been employed at
Archibald Ramsden's piano warehouse to polish the brass
and run errands.

Some time afterwards Phil May came to London, and for a
while took to the stage. As a matter of fact, when my

MY LIFE 113

Romany Rye was running for a month at the Pavilion Theatre,
Whitechapel, the two ruffians, Ginger Bill and the Scragger,
were played by Leonard Merrick, now the popular novelist,
and by Phil May.

Barrett and I had a little chat, and he invited me to sup
with him at his house on the Sunday evening. I went, and
there found several members of the company who had been
invited to meet me, and I was introduced to a lady for whose
artistic ability I had from my early youth had a great
admiration.

The lady was Mrs. Wilson Barrett, who on the stage was
the popular Miss Heath. Miss Heath was a finished actress
and a finished elocutionist, and at one time held the appoint-
ment of reader to Queen Victoria.

Barrett took me into his studio and showed me some
pictures he had painted himself, and duly impressed me with
the fact that, above all things, he loved art.

Up to this time I had only known him as supporting Miss
Heath in Wills's play of Jane Shore, which had been a success
both in town and in the provinces.

After supper the conversation became general, and I only
had about five minutes' private chat with Barrett, but during
that five minutes he told me that he had heard from Hem-
ming that I had a melodrama that I wanted to place. I
told him that I had, and tried to tell him something
about it.

I did not succeed in telling him very much because there
were about* fourteen people sitting round the table at the
time, and the party was a merry one. But when I left
Barrett that night to go back to my hotel he said, " I shan't
forget about your drama, and perhaps later on I may ask
you to let me hear a little more about it."

I stayed in Leeds for two or three days and explored some
of its " mysteries " with my friend Wilton Jones.

But I saw no more of Barrett, and I heard nothing more
from him for many months. When I did he had taken the
Court Theatre, London, and was starring himself and Modjeska
inW. G. Wills's /««n«.

I came back from Leeds without the slightest idea that
Wilson Barrett had been in any way impressed with the

H

n4 MY LIFE

chat we had had after supper at his house about the drama.
But I had not been idle.

Early in the spring of 1881 Miss Kate Lawler, who had
taken the Royalty, sent for me and asked me if I had a farcical
comedy that would suit her.

As a matter of fact I had not, but I was loath to lose the
opportunity of a return to the little theatre where I had done
so well with Crutch and Toothpick, so after a moment's hesita-
tion I said I had a farcical comedy very nearly completed.

The fair manageress told me that she must fix her pro-
gramme up by the following Wednesday — at the latest.

So I went home — it was then Saturday afternoon — worked
day and night on the French play, and by midday on Wednes-
day I had completed the three-act comedy which I called
The Member for Slocum.

I made the hero a member of Parliament and the heroine
a lady of pronounced views on the equality of the sexes,
temporarily separated from her husband and devoting herself
vigorously to a campaign for women's rights.

The part of " Arethusa " — that was the young lady's
name — was one that I felt convinced Kate Lawler would play
admirably.

The Member for Slocum was produced at the Royalty
Theatre on May 8, 1881. Arthur Williams played the M.P.,
Miss Harriet Coveney played his mother-in-law, also a women's
rights lady, who had sent her daughter's husband to Parliament
in order to ensure the passage of the Bill for the emancipation
of women ; and the husband of the heroine was played by
Mr. Frank Cooper.

It was a fine cast, and on the first night the play was an
immense success. It had a long run at the Royalty with the
burlesque of Don Juan as the after-piece, and the provincial
rights were quickly snapped up. Mr. John L. Shine took
the No. i rights, Mr. Haldane Crichton took the No. 2, Miss
Eliza Weathersby took the American rights, and in America
the M.P. was played by Nat Goodwin.

CHAPTER XIV

I MUST have been working at hurricane speed in the year
1 88 1, for two months before the production of The Member
for Slocum at the Royalty I had written a burlesque for
Alfred Hemming and the Walton Family. It was called a
musical extravaganza. The title was The C or sican-Br other-
Bab es-in-the-Wood, and it was produced at the Theatre Royal,
Hull, on March 19, 1881. On April 25 a new farcical comedy,
Mother-in-Law, which I had written for the Hemmings to
play with the burlesque, had been produced at the Prince of
Wales Theatre, Liverpool.

There was one advantage about Liverpool in those days —
at least, I thought it an advantage. There was a comfortable
little hotel near the theatre where up till about five o'clock in
the morning you could always find amusing and interesting
company in the smoking-room.

I used to go to Liverpool by a train which left Euston
about nine, and arrived at Lime Street at three o'clock in
the morning.

Going straight to the hotel and into the smoking-room I
was sure of pleasant company for an hour before turning into
bed. And as a rule the company was theatrical and jour-
nalistic.

I used to be a bit tired after the long journey from town,
and about four I usually felt like turning in. Alfred Hemming
and George Walton — who, if I was rehearsing in Liverpool
with them, would meet me in the smoking-room to have a
chat about business — were generally ready to go at four, but
if, as sometimes happened, Aynsley Cooke was among the late
guests, he would plead with me to keep him company " a bit
longer."

Aynsley Cooke, who was at that time touring with the
Carl Rosa Opera Company, was such an interesting talker

"5

n6 MY LIFE

and so full of reminiscences that he generally managed to
keep me till five.

On one occasion we sat chatting till six, and then as I
thought it was too late — or too early — to go to bed, we went
for a blow on the landing-stage.

Sometimes the landing-stage early morning blow would
inspire a desire for something breezier still, and we would
take the ferry to New Brighton, and explore and sample the
early breakfast resources of Egg and Ham Terrace.

Writing of the once famous promenade which was all
Mersey on one side and all Menu on the other, reminds me
that one day when I was travelling with Dan Leno to Glasgow,
where Mr. Milton Bode was producing In Gay Piccadilly, a
musical comedy of which I was the author, Clarence Corri the
composer, and the great comedian the " hero " — I mentioned
my early experiences of New Brighton and Egg and Ham
Terrace. The Terrace consisted principally of eating-houses
and cheap restaurants of the " bob a nob " order in those
days — hence its name.

" Ah," said Leno, " I have good reason to remember
Egg and Ham Terrace. It was there that I made what was
practically my first public appearance as an entertainer.

" I had gone across from Liverpool one Easter Monday. I
was a very small boy, very hard up, and very hungry, and I
looked at the good things in the windows of the eating-houses
with longing eyes.

" Presently I passed a ' restaurant ' which was packed with
people putting away the shilling dinner vigorously.

" There was a piano inside, and one of the customers was
trying to play it and trying to sing a song. But he couldn't
play or sing for nuts.

" Then an idea came to me. The proprietor was standing
at the door looking up and down the parade with an eye to
likely customers. I went up to him and said, ' Governor, do
you want somebody to sing songs for 'em ? — I can/

' Can you ? ' he said. ' Well, come in, and if you're all
right I'll give you a bob to sing till three o'clock and a hot
dinner when you've finished.' I went in and struck up, and
all the people stared at me, I was such a bit of a boy.

But I sang a comic song and did a bit of a dance on the

MY LIFE 117

end of it, and they banged the tables and nearly shouted the
roof off — I'd fairly hit 'em !

" I expected the proprietor to come and congratulate me,
but he took me on one side and said : ' Very good, my boy —
but you make 'em too noisy. You see, my missis is lying
dead upstairs, and it jars a bit on me/

" Of course I was very sorry and said I'd sing something
quieter. So I started a sentimental ballad.

" It didn't go at all, and all the customers began to get up
and go. Then the proprietor came to me again.

' Look here, my boy/ he said, ' you'd better give 'em one
of the comic ones again. After all, she can't Hear ! "

The last time I was at New Brighton it was quite a fashion-
able resort, and the glory of Egg and Ham Terrace had
apparently departed. But that was many years after I had
produced Mother-in-Law at the pretty and popular little
theatre in Clayton Square. I saw Mother-in-Law satisfactorily
launched and I returned to London.

On May 7, at the Court Theatre, Sloane Square, Wilson
Barrett had produced Juana, by W. G. Wills, with Mme.
Modjeska in the name part.

Juana was not a financial success, so it was quickly shelved,
and Barrett put on Bronson Howard's Banker's Daughter —
the James Albery version called The Old Love and the New —
with himself and Miss Eastlake as the hero and heroine.

Presently Barrett heard that there was a chance of getting
the Princess's.

" I shall get the Princess's," he said to me. " It is as good
as settled. I shall open there with The Old Love and the New,
but I don't think it's quite strong enough for a run in a big
house. What about the play you told me of at Leeds ? Can
I have it to read ? "

" Certainly. I'll send it to you to-night/'

" Good. If I think it will suit the Princess's and we can
come to terms, I'll do it."

At last !

I knew it would suit the Princess's, and I was quite sure
that so far as I was concerned there would be no difficulty
about terms. I polished up The Lights o' London and sent it
to Barrett to read, and hoped for the best.

n8 MY LIFE

My hands were by this time pretty full, for although I had
produced two new plays and a burlesque in three months, I
was hard at work on Flats, " a farcical comedy in four stories,"
for Charles Wyndham.

It was produced at the Criterion in July, and in the cast
were W. J. Hill, Owen Dove, Herbert Standing, George
Giddens, and Mrs. Alfred Mellon.

I had at the same time undertaken to write a knock-about
comedy for the Majiltons, which was due for production early
in September. As a matter of fact I produced this comedy,
which was called The Gay City, at the Theatre Royal,
Nottingham, on September 8, with Charles Majilton, Lionel
Rignold, and Ramsay Danvers in the principal parts.

Then I rushed back to town for the dress rehearsal of
The Lights o London, which was produced on the evening of
September 10.

1881 was my record year, for three weeks after the produc-
tion of The Lights o' London at the Princess's a new three-act
comedy of mine, The Halfway House, was produced by James
and Thome at the Vaudeville.

Not very long afterwards, in addition to a dozen touring
companies, four West End London theatres were playing
pieces of which I was the author.

That was a record for which a few years ago I trembled
when Sir J. M. Barrie was also being played at four London
theatres. But the record has not yet been beaten. The
brilliant author of Peter Pan only made a tie of it.

The Lights o' London did not see the footlights of London
until the autumn of 1881, and I became a farer in Fleet Street
and a sojourner in the Strand in 1870. Before I come to the
first night of The Lights o' London at the Princess's there are
other reminiscences to be recorded.

Now that as I write Germany is once more at war with
France, memories of the terrible war that five and forty years
ago cost Napoleon III his throne, sent the Prince Imperial to
his death in Zululand, and made the Empress Eugenie an
exile, come thick and fast upon me.

In 1870 I took a summer holiday in Sweden. I travelled
in various directions, but Stockholm fascinated me, and there
I spent the better part of a month developing a partiality

MY LIFE 119

for Swedish punch and picking up sufficient Swedish to enable
me, with my knowledge of German, to understand the plays
I saw at the theatre.

On one of the steamers that ply between Stockholm and
Upsala I met the then heir to the Crown of Sweden and
Norway, Prince Oscar.

We were a small party of English. The Prince overheard
us trying to ask a question of one of the officers in Swedish,
but the officer failed to understand, so he came to our
assistance, answering questions himself in excellent English.

We had not the slightest idea who he was, and finding a
Swede who talked such good English we plied him with
tourist questions, all of which he answered smilingly.

It was by accident, just before we disembarked at our
destination, that we learnt that we had been making use of
the Crown Prince.

I was deputed to express to the Prince our regret for an
innocent lack of reverence for royalty, and the Prince
laughingly accepted the apology, and I bowed and backed as
elegantly as I could, having the funnel just behind me, but he
wished me good day and shook hands with me.

Little did I dream that this kindly Prince would, when he
was King of Sweden and Norway, make me a Knight of the
Royal Order of St. Olaf for my services to one of his subjects,
the Norwegian gentleman, Adolf Beck, whose case was one of
the romances, or, rather, I should say, one of the tragedies, of
our method of criminal procedure.

My Swedish trip has remained engraved upon my memory
because of its termination.

I sailed from Gothenburg on board the Louisa Anna Fanny,
bound for Millwall. We had a cargo of telegraph poles, cattle,
and matches, and for some reason we lay and tossed about
for six hours without making any progress.

But we weathered the storm, passed through the French
Fleet, which was pursuing a policy of masterly inactivity
" somewhere in the North Sea," and arrived off Thames-
haven about four o'clock on the afternoon of Sunday,
September 3, and there a pilot came on board to take us up
the river.

He had brought with him a number of Sunday newspapers

120 MY LIFE

for the passengers, and also the latest news. There was a
tremendous rush as the pilot's boat came alongside.

Everybody on board was anxious to hear how things had
been going in the theatre of war, and among our passengers
were a dozen old Garibaldians who were going to join the
French army. And it was from the pilot that September
afternoon in 1870 that I heard that Sedan had fallen.

It was soon after this that I made the acquaintance of
Mr. Andrew Chatto, then the right hand of John Camden
Hotten, the Piccadilly publisher, of whose business exploits
and adventures an interesting volume might be written.

It was Hotten who first introduced the stories and poems
of Bret Harte to the British public, and the Rev. J. M. Bellew
— I " sat under him " at St. Mark's, Hamilton Terrace —
wrote the preface for the first volume.

It was John Camden Hotten who published the first English
edition of the ballads of Colonel John Hay, and he advertised
the appearance of the volume in this highly effective manner :

The dramatic force and vigour of these ballads will startle
English readers. The last lines of the first ballad are simply
terrific, something entirely different from what any English
author ever dreamed of, much less put into print.

The volume which contained this announcement contained
a list of " other important new books," and from this I take
the following :

"Hotten's edition of ' Les Contes Drolatiques,' 'Droll
Stories collected from the Abbeys of Touraine par Balzac/
with four hundred and twenty-five marvellous, extravagant,
and fantastic designs by Dore, 125. 6d. Direct application
must be made to Mr. Hotten for this volume."

This edition was in French. Some time after the announce-
ment appeared John Camden Hotten ceased to be a publisher.

In connexion with his sudden disappearance from his
business there is a story to be told.

Ambrose Bierce had come to London, and at Tom Hood's
invitation had done a good deal of work for Fun. Bierce was
what might be called a weird and powerful humorist. In
San Francisco his humour was occasionally staggering. On

MY LIFE 121

this side of the Atlantic it had to be diluted to the capacity
of the English digestion.

Bierce had brought over with him a lot of cuttings from his
contributions to American newspapers. He showed them to
John Thomson at the Unity Club, and Thomson said, " My
boy, Hotten will jump at them."

The cuttings were pasted in a book, and Bierce called the
collection, " The Fiend's Delight," by Dod Grile. That was
Bierce's nom de plume in 'Frisco.

Hotten, after a little haggle, bought the book for twenty
pounds, and gave Bierce a cheque.

Bierce at that time had not a banking account in London,
but Henry Sampson had. Sampson gave Bierce cash for the
cheque and paid it into his account. It was returned by the
bankers unpaid.

When Bierce heard of this he was in a furious rage. He
rushed up to Hotten's place in Piccadilly and demanded to
see him. He was told that Mr. Hotten was not well and had
not been to business for a day or two.

" That's not true ! " exclaimed Bierce. " He's keeping out
of my way." And off he rushed to Hotten's residence to see
if he were there.

The door was opened by a pale-faced girl.

" Where's Mr. Hotten ? " said Bierce.

" If you'll follow me, sir," said the girl, " I'll take you to
him."

Bierce followed the girl up the stairs. She pushed a door
open and stood aside.

Bierce entered the room and saw what he supposed to be
Hotten lying in bed. Waving the dishonoured cheque in his
right hand, Bierce approached the apparent invalid and
exclaimed, " Look here, Hotten ! what the devil does this
mean ? " Then he started back with a cry of horror.

John Camden Hotten was lying there, but he was dead.

The girl, it seems, was expecting the undertaker to come
and measure the corpse. She had mistaken Bierce for that
functionary, and so without demur had led him up into the
death-chamber.

Ambrose Bierce was my colleague and frequent companion
in the middle 'seventies. Later on he returned to the States

122

MY LIFE

and did some very fine work in short stories which have been
published in volume form under the title of "In the Midst
of Life " and are among the finest short stories in the English
language.

In the matter of short weird story writing many American
critics reckon him only second to Edgar Allan Poe.

For many years I heard of him occasionally from friends
on the other side, but he disappeared in Mexico in the year
1913, and has, alas, never since been heard of.

It was John Camden Hotten to whom John Thomson,
when he was Swinburne's secretary, took Adah Isaacs Menken
and the poems which she published under the title of
" Infelicia."

Many years ago my friend Andrew Chatto gave me the
whole of the original manuscript and the cuttings from which
" Infelicia " was set up, and I have them now.

But my reminiscences of Adah Isaacs Menken, actress,
poetess, and beautiful woman of many adventures, are for
another chapter. It is the story of the " Contes Drolatiques "
that I am about to tell.

When Hotten died Dan Chatto — nobody ever called him
Andrew — found a partner and took over the business, and
thus established what is now the famous firm of Chatto and
Windus.

Hotten had made a considerable reputation by his issues,
more or less authorized, of the American humorists who came
along in the 'sixties, not in single spies, but in battalions. It
was Hotten who gave us " Art emus Ward among the
Mormons " f or a shilling.

He also brought out an annual which he called The Piccadilly
Annual. It included contributions from Dickens, Thackeray,
and other masters which had been lifted, or, shall I say,
transferred, from other sources.

I have somewhere the indignant letters which Dickens's son
and Thackeray's daughter sent to Tom Hood, whose father
had also suffered from the Hotten habit.

Soon after he had acquired the business and all Hotten's
copyrights — some of them were copywrongs, I am afraid —
Chatto, looking over the Dore illustrations to the " Contes
Drolatiques," had an idea.

.

THE SIAMESE TWINS

MY LIFE 123

" This book is a masterpiece," he said to himself. "It is
by Balzac, and the illustrations are by Dore*, but it is in
French. What a fine sale there would be for it if it were in
English ! "

There had been talk for some time of an English version of
the " Contes Drolatiques." Sala had been consulted about
it by Hotten, but Sala said he thought it was impossible to
translate the work — it was written in old French — and pre-
serve the atmosphere of the Moyen Age, which was one of the
charms of the original.

A translation into modern English would be undesirable.
To tell the tales in the English of the nineteenth century
would make them offensive, not only to the student, but to
the ordinary reader.

But Chatto still had his idea. He knew that I was familiar
with the old French authors, and one day he came to me
with a proposition. If I would translate the " Contes Drola-
tiques " for him he would pay me seventy-five pounds for my
work.

I wanted the seventy-five pounds, and I appreciated the
chance of doing something which would be considered in
literary circles a tour de force.

I accepted the commission on condition that my name
should not appear on the title page. There was no false
modesty about my desire to avoid publicity.

I desired the translation to remain anonymous for family
reasons. An English version of the " Contes Drolatiques "
was not the sort of book that a boy would present to his
mother and exclaim proudly, " Alone I did it ! "

Chatto agreed, gave me at my own request twenty-five
pounds down on the signing of the contract and an under-
taking to pay me the other fifty on the delivery of the manu-
script.

I wanted the fifty, so I set to work steadily to complete the
translation. But I had to read myself into the atmosphere,
so for some weeks I read steadily the old English authors
whose phraseology would be in harmony with the period and
environment of the stories of the Abbeys of Touraine.

I did a good deal of the work on my desk in the City, and
I put in a lot of extra time at home in the evening. I did not

124 MY LIFE

get to the Unity Club till 12.30. That was the time when
the members began to drop in and the company became
sociable and sunny.

It was a long job and a very difficult job, but three months
after I had signed the contract the whole of the manuscript
was in Chatto's hands, and in due course he published it.

It was a beautiful and artistic volume with 425 illustra-
tions by Dore", complete and unabridged, price 125. 6d. The
binding was a beautiful red, and there was plenty of gold on
it. It looked just the sort of book to adorn the drawing-room
table.

Chatto published and advertised the book in the ordinary
way, and he subscribed it to the trade in the ordinary way.

Many of the London and provincial booksellers, attracted
by the name of Dore", ordered a considerable number.

Now the " Droll Stories " are droll, but they are not stories
for maidens and boys. Of that some of the family booksellers
who ordered copies were evidently not aware. But a few of
them soon found out.

Some of them returned the copies with a note to the effect
that at the time they had given the order they were unaware
of the nature of the work. But some of the booksellers,
remaining in ignorance, exhibited the volume in a way to
attract the attention of their customers. And there was
trouble.

There was a firm in the Midlands who did a large business
with schools. One day a schoolmaster entered their shop,
and attracted by the cover and the illustrations ordered a
dozen of the books, which he wanted for prizes for the boys.
It is needless to say that he had not gone beyond the cover in
making his selection.

Fortunately, just before prize day arrived the schoolmaster's
wife accidentally picked up one of the volumes, opened it and
glanced at the contents. She had not glanced far before she
uttered an exclamation of horror and rushed into her husband's
study.

" John ! " she exclaimed, " what on earth have you brought
a book like this into the school for ? Are you mad ? "

The schoolmaster took the book from his wife's hands,
looked into it, and instantly dispatched an indignant letter

MY LIFE 125

to the bookseller, bidding him send a messenger at once to
remove the books from the premises.

The bookseller wrote a letter to Chatto, and the hand of
the writer evidently trembled with indignation, for there was
a blot upon every page of it.

Then there was further trouble, and the second trouble was
caused by that eminent author and critic, John Ruskin.

Chatto had placed below his advertisement of the book a
quotation from Ruskin.

The extract had reference to the art of Dore. By the
omission of a line and the substitution of asterisks, it appeared
as though Ruskin was referring specially to the " Contes
Drolatiques."

Ruskin saw the announcement and wrote an indignant
letter to Chatto. He also sent a letter to one of the literary
newspapers in which he charged Chatto, the publisher, with
" mutilating criticism for the purpose of advertisement/'

Then the secretary of a certain society wrote to Chatto and
said that they had had complaints with regard to the book.
They would rather, if possible, avoid prosecution in the case
of a work by a famous French author, but they strongly
advised Chatto to withdraw the book from circulation.

Chatto thought very highly of the book himself, but he had
to acknowledge that he had made a mistake in issuing it as
an ordinary book for general circulation, and so he reluctantly
came to the conclusion that the best thing he could do would
be to follow the advice of the amiable secretary.

Chatto removed the book from his list and sold the whole
thing, I believe, to an American firm.

Last year the gentleman at the British Museum who is
responsible for the compiling of the reading-room catalogue
wrote to me and said that it was generally understood that
I was responsible for the English version of the " Contes
Drolatiques." Had I any objection to my name being
placed against the work in the British Museum Catalogue ?
I said that I had none, and in the new catalogue it is there.

But this is the first time I have told the true story of my
first book.

CHAPTER XV

Bur let me return to the Lights o' London. Barrett read the
play, suggested a structural alteration in the last act which
was undoubtedly of advantage to the play, accepted it and
began to discuss terms.

Up to that time I had only received for my theatrical work
a fixed payment or a nightly fee. I had been compelled at
last to leave the City. I could not possibly put in eight
hours a day in the City, write a play a month, and con-
tribute regularly to three weekly papers.

The fees I had so far received had not been sufficient to
clear off the trifling sum of a thousand pounds for which I
had in some way managed to become indebted to certain
gentlemen who only charged sixty per cent, interest for the
accommodation.

When Wilson Barrett said he would accept The Lights o'
London I saw my chance. It might be the means of enabling
me to pay up and live happily ever afterwards.

So I said, " Well, suppose you give me five hundred pounds
down and "

Barrett did not let me finish.

" I don't want to pay anything down," said Barrett, " or
make a hard and fast arrangement. If the play should fail
the arrangement you* suggest would be unfair to me. If it
should succeed it would be unfair to you. I will suggest an
agreement to you that will be fair to us both/1

He called in an attendant and said to him, " Ask Mr.
Herman to come to me/' and presently there entered upon
the scene a middle-aged foreign-looking gentleman with
rather pronounced features, and one eye. This was Mr.
Henry Herman, Wilson Barrett's business manager, a quaint
character and a remarkable personality.

" Daddy " Herman — that was the friendly name we gave

126

MY LIFE 127

him at the Princess's — was an Alsatian. He was educated
at a military college, but went to America, where he fought
in the Confederate ranks. It was during the Civil War that
he lost an eye and supplied the deficiency with a glass one.

Daddy Herman, after many romantic adventures, found
himself with his share of the fees of Mr. Henry Arthur Jones's
immensely successful Silver King rolling in, a comparatively
wealthy man.

He furnished a house at Hampstead in gorgeous style, and
he began to collect valuable books and grangerize them. He
carried out this part of his programme with such excellent
judgment that his library when sold at Sotheby's realized
sixteen thousand pounds.

But it had to be sold, and I fancy before his death poor
Herman had had to sell or assign the rights he held in The
Silver King and in other plays. He spent too lavishly, and
the summer days did not last.

Although Herman was an excellent linguist, his Alsatian
accent always hovered about his English, and he hardly ever
spoke a sentence without ending it with the words " See,
see ? "

It was Herman who was responsible for the libretto of
The Fay o' Fire, a romantic opera with Edward Jones as the
composer. It was produced at the Opera Comique in
November 1885, and in it Miss Marie Tempest made what
was practically her London debut.

After he left the Princess's Herman collaborated with
another old soldier, my friend and for many years my confrere
on the Referee, David Christie Murray. With Murray he
wrote several novels, the better known of which are, perhaps,
" One Traveller Returns " and " The Bishop's Bible."

One year Herman and Christie Murray, in order to work
at ease, took a villa somewhere between Nice and Monte
Carlo. It was situated in a lonely spot on the hills, and after
walking home to it late one night from Monte Carlo Herman
and Christie Murray decided that it was " not convenient."
So, although they had paid two months' rent in advance,
they wandered down the mountain side and took rooms in
the town.

Herman explained the situation to me when I met him one

128 MY LIFE

night at a cafe chantant in Nice, and long before he had said
" See, see ? " half a dozen times I did see.

Neither of the two old soldiers relished the idea of that
lonely walk to their mountain home in the dead of night.
Their nervousness was quite justified, for the lonely roads
between Nice and Monte Carlo were frequently the scenes of
robberies with violence, and in one or two cases the victims
had been murdered.

But Monte Carlo is a long way from Oxford Street. Let me
return to the Princess's.

Herman, while Barrett was talking with me, had been
preparing an agreement for our joint approval. Barrett read
it, said he thought that would do, and handed it to me to
consider. This was the principal portion of the agreement :

" Princess's Theatre, Oxford Street, W.

June 2oth, 1881.

" It is agreed between us that you cede to me and I take
from you the sole right of producing your new play, now
entitled (provisionally) The Lights o' London, in all English-
speaking countries on the following terms : I agree to produce
the said play at the Princess's Theatre and elsewhere, and
will pay you the following fees as consideration of this agree-
ment :

" In London. If the sums taken as receipts do not exceed
£600 per week of six performances, £2 2s. per performance.
" If over £600 up to £700, 5 per cent, of the gross receipts.
" If over £700 up to £800, 7J per cent, of the gross

receipts.

" If over £800, 10 per cent, of the gross receipts.
" In the Provinces. Five per cent, of all sums up to £50
per night, and 10 per cent, of sums after £50 per night have
been taken by the theatre.

" This agreement to remain in force for three years after
the first production of the play."

It was a much better agreement than I should have thought
of suggesting, but I did not give that fact away to my
audience.

" Oh, all right," I said to Barrett, " if it suits you^let it be

MY LIFE 129

that way." That it was that way I have every reason to be
thankful.

A few weeks later the melodrama whch had been submitted
to half a dozen London managers and politely rejected by
them was put into rehearsal at the Princess's, and on Sep-
tember 10, 1881, it was produced.

It was produced with a wonderful cast. Barrett played
the hero, Miss Eastlake the heroine, George Barrett played
Jarvis, the showman, and dear old Mrs. Stephens, who was
always referred to as " the only Quakeress on the stage " — she
wore something very like a Quaker bonnet to the last — was
the showman's wife.

All the little characters, and there were many, were
admirably played. In two of them, Philosopher Jack and
Percy de Vere, " Esquire," Mr. Charles Coote and Mr. Neville
Doone made striking successes. And the villain was played
by a young actor from the provinces named E. S. Willard.

When the curtain fell that night there was no doubt about
the success of The Lights o' London, and I went home with a
light heart.

I was living in the Camden Road. It was a fine night, and
I walked from the Princess's. At the top of Park Street I
came upon a huge crowd and the familiar sounds of fire engines
at work. The Park Theatre was in flames, and before the
morning it had been burnt to the ground.

It is one of those odd coincidences of " three " that my
first three melodramas should each of them have been
associated with a fire.

On the first night of The Lights o' London I saw the Park
Theatre burnt down. When The Romany Rye, my second
drama, was playing at the Theatre Royal, Exeter, the scenery
caught fire and about a hundred and twenty-seven people
perished in the catastrophe. My third melodrama was In
the Ranks. The theatre in which it was produced in New
York was very shortly afterwards burnt down.

The Lights o' London has been played somewhere on the
face of the earth ever since that September evening in 1881.
This year the play celebrated the thirty-fifth anniversary of
its birth.

During the present year I have been receiving fees for its

I

i3o MY LIFE

performance in Danish in Copenhagen, and it is to be played
in Stockholm and in Christiania.

After the Princess's production I received charming letters
of congratulation from Dion Boucicault, F. C. Burnand, and
H. J. Byron, who, because of their then prolific output for
the stage, were known as " The Three Busy Bees."

Byron wrote, " I rejoice that the ranks of the men who
work honestly for the stage have received such an addition,
and I am delighted also for the sake of Barrett, the straightest
and best of all good fellows."

And the straightest and best of good fellows Wilson Barrett
was to the end, though he had at times a terribly uphill task.

The Princess's had for many years been unfortunate.

It was built by a Mr. Hamlet, a wealthy jeweller of Prince's
Street, Piccadilly, in 1828. Before it was two years old it
was burnt down, and the loss of fifty thousand pounds broke
the jeweller.

The next tenant, Mr. Reinagel, lost a lot of money. A
manager named Maddox fought manfully at the Princess's,
but he had to confess himself beaten.

Charles Kean made many brilliant successes. At the end
of the season of 1858 he publicly announced that he had lost
four thousand pounds over that season alone. In 1859 ne
gave it up.

It brought no luck to a young actor named Henry Irving
in 1859. He made his London debut there in a piece called
Ivy Hall, which was a failure, and he went back disheartened
to the provinces for another seven years.

Fechter made a great reputation at the Princess's but no
profit. In 1865 it had a run of luck with Boucicault 's Streets
of London and Arrah na Pogue, but Tom Robertson, the most
successful author of his day, met misfortune there in 1867.
The theatre closed suddenly in 1868, and George Vining, the
manager, returned the few advance bookings.

Then Webster became the manager and made no money.
Chatterton succeeded him and lost his money.

Walter Gooch ran it for a time with fair success, rebuilt it,
and the adjacent houses fell into the excavation, and the
claims ultimately ruined Gooch. %

Then came Wilson Barrett and The Lights o' London.

MY LIFE i3I

Barrett made a fortune during the first years of his tenancy
of the Princess's with The Lights o' London, The Romany Rye,
The Silver King, and Claudian, but he entrusted the bulk of
it to a friend to invest for him, and lost it all.

When he was still at the Princess's he had to call a meeting
of his principal creditors. He promised to pay everybody in
full, and eventually he did. But for years he had a heavy
burden of debt on his shoulders.

The turning in the long road of ill-luck came at last. He
wrote and produced The Sign of the Cross. And fortune
smiled again. He not only paid off the whole of his debts,
but he left a comfortable sum.

He died after an operation for a painful internal complaint,
but he was cheery to the last. He had booked a tour, but the
week before it should have started his case had become so
serious that he was told that only an operation would save
his life.

" You will have to be opened to-morrow/' said the surgeon.

" Ah," replied the sick man, " and I was to have opened
myself on Monday."

But when the Lights was produced there was no cloud in
the sky. The theatre was packed night after night to its
capacity.

I have said that Barrett might have bought all my rights
for a thousand pounds, and if he had made a cash offer
probably for less. My first week's royalties were a hundred
and fifty pounds, and within a fortnight a thousand pounds
had been paid down on account of American rights, and in
the States the play ran for many years, and the receipts were
then a record.

In England two travelling companies toured the provinces
with it, and the No. i company would stay in a town for a
month or six weeks playing to record business.

In the provinces an admirable young actor named Leonard
Boyne played Barrett's part. Leonard Boyne is an admirable
young actor still, but he was even younger then than he is
now.

The Lights o' London, before Wilson Barrett accepted it,
had been offered to four London managers and two provincial
ones.

132 MY LIFE

Walter Gooch, when he finally rejected it, said he had a
play which he felt convinced was a better one. It was a
play called Branded, and it ran twelve nights.

The Gattis, with whom I was soon afterwards happily and
prosperously associated at the Adelphi, refused it because
they pinned their faith to a play called The Crimson Cross.
This was produced about the same time as the Lights, and in
it were a galaxy of stars with Adelaide Neilson as the bright
particular one.

But The Crimson Cross was a failure, and after a short run
was never heard of again.

Adelaide Neilson was a beautiful woman and a fascinating
actress. Her career was one long romance.

Adelaide Neilson's real name was Elizabeth Ann Brown.
She was the illegitimate daughter of a handsome Spaniard
and an Englishwoman, and was born in a little village some
few miles out of Bradford.

Her mother subsequently married a Mr. Bland, and
Elizabeth Brown became known as Lizzie Bland, and as
Lizzie Bland she was a nurse-girl, and at one time a " filler "
at a woollen factory.

When she was about sixteen she seems to have discovered
the true story of her birth, and not wishing to be an encum-
brance, or for some other reason, she ran away from home
and spent her first night lying on a bench in the park.

She presently, it is said, became a barmaid in the neigh-
bourhood of the Haymarket, but the story of Adelaide Neilson
as told by those who knew her intimately is as follows :

She is said to have been found in the park by an officer in
the Carabineers who took compassion on her and accommo-
dated her with a bed in his chambers.

Clement Scott, who knew as much about her as any one,
said that she was educated by a generous and kindly disposed
gentleman, well known to fame, who gave her her first start
in life.

In 1864 she married Mr. Philip Henry Lee, the son of a
Northamptonshire parson, and down at the quiet vicarage
of Stoke Bruern, Adelaide Neilson passed the happiest days
of her life, idolized by the villagers and taking a part at the
Sunday school.

MY LIFE 133

The marriage did not, however, turn out happily, for in
the year 1876 Miss Neilson obtained a divorce from her
husband in the Supreme Court of New York, the husband
and wife being both naturalized American citizens.

In 1865 she played Juliet at the Royalty Theatre, and no
one took very much notice of it. Her popularity commenced
when she played Nelly Armroyd at the Adelphi in Lost in
London, and gradually she came to her own.

She died very suddenly in great agony in a fashionable
cafe* in the Bois de Boulogne, and in spite of every effort on
the part of the Paris correspondent of an English newspaper,
her body was taken to the Morgue.

By her will — she died a comparatively rich woman, possess-
ing something like thirty thousand pounds — she left a con-
siderable sum of money to a dramatic critic, Mr. Joseph
Knight.

Clement Scott, to whom she had not left anything, said
something on the subject, and the Referee commented on the
nature of his remarks. What Henry Sampson wrote was
considered by Clement Scott to be libellous. Scott brought
an action, and the case, which lasted for several days, attracted
a considerable amount of attention.

The jury awarded Scott fifteen hundred pounds, which was
considerably more than the amount Adelaide Neilson had left
Joe Knight.

Acting in the interests of my editor, and being friendly
myself with Scott and Sir George Lewis, his solicitor, I was
able to bring about a friendly understanding between the
parties, which materially reduced the amount for which my
chief had to draw a cheque.

But I have wandered far from the Lights. The Press
notices of my first melodrama were not only kindly, but
flattering.

There were two exceptions, and one gentleman said that
the play would probably have a short run, but while it
remained in the bill it would serve a useful purpose in attract-
ing a certain number of undesirable men and women from the
streets.

My friend Edmund Yates cut that notice out and sent it
to me with a characteristic letter :

134 MY LIFE

" MY DEAR SIMS," he wrote. " This notice is written

by . I have always found it useful to know my enemies.

I give you this man's name that you may know one of yours."

I don't think I troubled much about that notice. I have
even forgotten the name of my enemy, so I cannot say if he
came to a bad end.

But one thing that was said by a critic about the Lights
still remains in my memory. Mr. William Archer, in analysing
my first melodramatic contribution to the stage, said I was
" Zola diluted at Aldgate Pump."

I don't know whether it was meant as a compliment, but
I took it as one, and I am still grateful to the famous critic
for it.

CHAPTER XVI

WITH The Lights o* London in the full tide of success in
London, in the provinces, and in America, I had more time
to devote to certain social questions in which I was deeply
interested.

I was still " a bit of a Radical," as the phrase went, and I
accepted invitations to lecture on Sunday evenings at certain
Radical clubs and for certain Radical societies.

I wonder, by the by, whether my old friend John Burns
remembers the night at Claremont Hall when an aged and
eccentric Anarchist, who used to wear a red tie and a slouch
hat and sell regicidal pamphlets on Sunday afternoons in
Trafalgar Square and shout " Death to kings ! " at Sunday
evening democratic debates, leapt on the platform at the
close of a lecture and proceeded to demand the blood, not
only of the entire Royal Family, but of all the members of
the British aristocracy ? I remember the kindly way in
which " The People's John " appealed to the old gentleman
to be merciful.

The Sunday concert and the Sunday theatrical performance
had not then captured the fancy of working-class clubland.

I had joined a committee in Southwark, of which Mr. Arthur
Cohen, K.C., was the president, and my friend Lord Southwark,
then Mr. Richard Causton, the vice-president. And "our
Mrs. Burgwin " was also a member. It was a society that
devoted itself to the improvement of working-class conditions
in the Borough.

My connexion with Southwark arose through a Sunday
evening lecture at a Radical club. My subject was " The
Poetry of Poverty," illustrated by recitations from my own
" Dagonet Ballads."

After the lecture a young man who had been an attentive
listener came to me and said, " My name is Arthur B. Moss.

135

136 MY LIFE

I am a School Board officer for the poorest area in the Borough.
If you would like to see some of the prose of poverty I shall
be glad to take you round."

I accepted the offer gladly and spent a day or two in the
old Mint, and then, like Oliver Twist, I asked for more.

But I have never cared to keep acquired knowledge to
myself, and so I looked about for what the dear old penny-a-
liners of my youth used to call " a medium of publicity."
Fortunately, at that time Mr. Gilbert Dalziel, who had
started a new illustrated paper, the Pictorial World, sent for
me and asked me if I had an idea for a series of articles which
would illustrate well.

It was in that way that " How the Poor Live " came to be
written and illustrated by Fred Barnard, the artist chosen by
Mr. Dalziel.

It was not a pleasant journey that we made together, for
the conditions prevailing at that time in the poverty areas of
London were terrible beyond description.

We went into dens of dirt, disease, and despair, and explored
the terrible tenement houses from cellar to garret.

We smoked like furnaces the whole time, but we did not
smoke cigars or silver-mounted briars. In order to avoid all
suspicion of swank and to make the inhabitants feel more at
home in our company, we smoked short clay pipes and coloured
them a beautiful black in the course of our pilgrimage of pain
through Poverty Land.

These illustrated articles made something of a sensation.
The clergy preached sermons upon them, as they did many
years later when on Citizen Sunday the subject chosen for
pulpit discourse in a hundred churches was my " Cry of the
Children."

The way in which men and women were herded together in
the vilest and most insanitary conditions in the capital of the
British Empire touched the public conscience, and for a time
" slumming " became fashionable.

Eventually I was invited to be a witness before the Royal

Commission on the Housing of the Poor, of which the Prince

of Wales was the president, and Sir Charles Dilke, I think,

the chairman.

Lord Salisbury, who was a member of the Commission,

MY LIFE 137

invited me to enlighten the commissioners as to the meaning
of the phrase " 'appy dosser," and Mr. Samuel Morley tried
to make me say that drink was the cause of poverty, and
pounded away at me like an Old Bailey cross-examiner until
Lord Salisbury came to my rescue and contended that I had
fully answered the question when I said that drink was one
of the causes of poverty, but that poverty was one of the
causes of drink.

For a whole month I explored the poverty areas and the
criminal areas of South London, and the criminal areas
fascinated me.

I saw pickpockets, thieves, and burglars in their more or
less domestic circumstances. I rapidly acquired a knowledge
of thieves' slang and I made the personal acquaintance of
several desperate characters. I went into their homes with
" authority." Only in one instance did I and my companion
meet with a really rough reception. A man named Balch
threatened to " knife " us if we didn't get downstairs " quick."

We wanted to inquire after Master Balch, who had not been
to school for days. A few days later we again knocked at
Mr. Balch's door. We hoped that only his wife would be at
home.

A rough-looking woman came to the door. We told her
politely that we wanted to see Mr. Balch, her husband —
which, of course, we didn't.

" Oh, you want 'im, do yer ? " said the lady, recognizing
the School Board officer. " Then yer can't 'ave 'im ! "

" Why ? "

" Why ? 'Cos God's got 'im ! "

She flung the door wide, and there on a bed lay the husband,
dead.

The little boy who had failed to come to school grew up
badly. Some years later he and two companions robbed and
murdered in broad daylight a Dr. Kirwan, who was roaming
about the Borough the worse for liquor.

I made the acquaintance of the captain of a local gang of
young ruffians known as " The Forty Thieves."

One afternoon I was talking to a woman who lived in a
room that looked on to a backyard in which a few nights
previously a man had killed his wife.

138 MY LIFE

The wife had, it seems, shouted " Murder ! Help ! Mur-
der ! " when she was attacked ; but not one of the inmates
of the house had gone to her assistance.

" Why on earth," I said to the woman, " didn't you do
something when you heard that poor creature shouting for
help ? "

" Lor* love yer, sir ! " was the reply, " if we was to get out
o' bed every time we 'card murder shouted in this 'ouse we'd
be 'oppin in and out all night."

My experiences and adventures in the Borough started me
upon what has been good-humouredly called " a life of
crime," for from that moment the criminal became to me a
fascinating study.

It was my pursuit of this study that earned me whatever
reputation as a criminologist I may have, and brought me
later on not only into close connexion, but frequently into
close personal touch with the authors of some of the most
sensational crimes of the day.

And it was my early experience of the criminal areas of the
south of London that first brought me into friendly relation-
ship with the authorities, and later on with the police, and
this friendly relationship enabled me to acquire at first hand
and from personal observation knowledge which has been
invaluable to me as a journalist and of considerable service
to me as a dramatist.

When I put a doss-house on the stage it was a real doss-
house, and the characters I put in the doss-house were men
and women I had met in a doss-house.

To get the doss-house in The Trumpet Call — the doss-house
in which, it will be remembered, Mrs. Patrick Campbell met
with a startling misadventure on the first night — I took the
scenic artist and the producer into one of the worst in South
London, and I introduced them to the company sitting
round the coke fire as friends of mine who were forming an
Anti-Landlord League.

But I had come into touch with a murder mystery long
before I was a journalist and a dramatist.

Some time in the 'sixties my father had taken a house at
Margate for us for the autumn holidays.

On the jetty, where I used to disport myself daily, I con-

MY LIFE 139

stantly met two elaborately dressed and elaborately made-up
middle-aged ladies who were arrayed in the most youthful
manner.

They used to walk up and down the jetty simpering on
either side of a tall, well-built, good-looking man, who always
in the morning wore a yachting jacket and cap and white
ducks.

The ladies were known as " The Canterbury Belles/' They
came from Canterbury, and the big, good-looking man was
Mr. Frederick Hodges, the Lambeth distiller, who had a mania
for fires and fire-engines.

He was as fond of fire-engines and travelling on them as
the then Duke of Sutherland, who made Stafford House so
famous.

It was at Stafford House that Chopin played to Queen
Victoria, and it was when Queen Victoria bade the Duchess
good-bye on this occasion that Her Majesty remarked, " Now
I go from your palace to my house."

The Canterbury Belles were the Misses Hacker. Years
after I had seen them so frequently at Margate one of them
died, and the other came to London and took up her abode
in apartments in a house in Euston Square, and the servant
of the house was one Hannah Dobbs.

After living for some time at this house Miss Hacker
disappeared, and all trace of her was lost.

A year or two after her disappearance her body was
accidentally discovered in the coal-cellar.

As the result of police investigation the servant, Hannah
Dobbs, was arrested and charged, but was acquitted.

Another murder in which I was greatly interested was that
committed by Percy Mapleton Lefroy.

Lefroy, with the name of Percy Mapleton on his card,
called upon me some time before he committed his crime. It
will be remembered that he murdered a gentleman named
Gold, who was travelling in the same carriage with him in a
Brighton train.

Lefroy, a dramatist of sorts, came to see me about a play.
I was out of town at the time, and the next thing I heard of
Lefroy was that he had been to the Era office and seen my
friend Mr. George Spencer Edwards.

140

MY LIFE

Lefroy wrote the pantomime for the Croydon Theatre, and
I have the book of it in my Criminal Museum.

When he was lying in the condemned cell he wrote the
most passionate love-letters to a charming actress whom he
had only seen on the stage.

According to one of his many confessions it was while he
was on his way to Brighton to try and sell a play to the
manager of the Brighton Theatre that Lefroy found himself
in a railway carriage alone with Mr. Gold, and murdered and
robbed him. He said that he had previously provided
himself with a revolver in order to commit suicide if he
failed to sell the play.

Lefroy is the only murderer I can recall who came to see
me before committing his crime. I have had among my
visitors three men who came to see me after they had been
found guilty of murder and had served the commuted sentence.

Two are alive and living respectably ; the third came to
see me directly he was released.

I made an appointment to see him again, and I promised
to try and get permission for him to emigrate, that he might
reinstate himself in his profession. He did not keep the
appointment. Shortly after our interview he was found dead
in his bed, having taken poison.

Because for many years I spent a portion of my summer
and autumn holidays at Malvern and I knew Dr. Gully, I was
intensely interested in the Bravo case.

And so, for the matter of that, was everybody else. I shall
not soon forget the wild rush there used to be for the Evening
Standard, with its verbatim report of the proceedings on the
days that Florence Bravo was undergoing the terrible inquisi-
tion into her " past."

Who gave her husband the poison which caused his death
is still a frequently discussed question among criminologists.
Sir George Lewis told me that he knew.

In the famous Penge case, where the Stauntons and Alice
Rhodes were charged with the murder of Louis Staunton's
wife, I defended Alice Rhodes vigorously in the Press. Mr.
Justice Hawkins sentenced all four to death at midnight at
the Old Bailey. It was one of the most terrible scenes ever
witnessed in that grim Hall of Tragedies.

MY LIFE 141

Charles Reade took the case up and sat on the steps of the
Home Office until he had procured Alice Rhodes's release.

Within a very short time of being sentenced to be hanged
by the neck, Alice Rhodes was behind the bar of a dining-hall
run by E. T. Smith, who in his day had been a police constable,
the lessee of Drury Lane Theatre, the founder of the Alhambra,
the proprietor of a restaurant on premises which were Crock-
ford's and are now the Devonshire Club, lessee of His Majesty's
Opera House, the lessee of the Lyceum, proprietor of Cremorne
Gardens and Highbury Barn, the proprietor of the Sunday
Times, and lessee of Astley's Amphitheatre.

One of the Stauntons died in prison. The sentence had
been commuted to penal servitude for life. The other two
are spending the evening of their days in peaceful surroundings.

As a journalist I followed the Jack the Ripper crimes at
close quarters. I had a personal interest in the matter, for
my portrait, which appeared outside the cover of a sixpenny
edition of my " Social Kaleidoscope/' was taken to Scotland
Yard by a coffee-stall keeper as the likeness of the assassin.

On the night of the double murder, or rather in the small
hours of the morning, a man had drunk a cup of coffee at the
stall. The stall-keeper noticed that he had blood on his
shirt-cuffs. The coffee merchant said, looking at him keenly,
" Jack the Ripper's about perhaps to-night."

" Yes/' replied the man, " he is pretty lively just now, isn't
he ? You may hear of two murders in the morning." Then
he walked away.

At dawn the bodies of two women murdered by the Ripper
were found.

Passing a newsvendor's shop that afternoon the coffee-stall
keeper saw my likeness outside the book.

" That's the man ! " he said, and bought the book. He
took it first to Dr. Forbes Winslow, who was writing letters
to the papers on the Ripper crimes at the time.

Forbes Winslow, who knew me, told him it was absurd, but
the man went off with the book to the Yard, and Forbes
Winslow wrote to me and told me of the interview and the
coffee-stall keeper's " mistake."

But it was quite a pardonable mistake. The redoubtable
Ripper was not unlike me as I was at that time.

142 MY LIFE

He was undoubtedly a doctor who had been in a lunatic
asylum and had developed homicidal mania of a special kind.

Each of his murders was more maniacal than its prede-
cessors, and the last was the worst of all.

After committing that he drowned himself. His body was
found in the Thames after it had been in the river for nearly
a month.

Had he been found alive there would have been no mystery
about Jack the Ripper. The man would have been arrested
and tried. But you can't try a corpse for a crime, however
strong the suspicion may be.

And the authorities could not say, " This dead man was
Jack the Ripper." The dead cannot defend themselves.

But there were circumstances which left very little doubt
in the official mind as to the Ripper's identity.

I met Henry Wainwright twice. It was some time before
he murdered Harriet Lane in the brush warehouse in White-
chapel. He was a temperance lecturer and reciter, and was
frequently engaged at mechanics' institutes to give an
evening's entertainment.

I met him once at a lecture and once at a music-hall, and
from friends of his after his arrest I learnt that they always
looked upon him as a " good fellow."

Wainwright committed his crime cleverly, buried the body
of his victim under the floor of a room in his warehouse, and
there it would probably have remained undiscovered had he
not had to give up the premises owing to financial difficulties
in which he had become involved.

When he knew that he had to quit the premises he took
the body up and made a parcel of various parts of it. He
made the fatal mistake of taking the parcel out into the street
with him and leaving it in charge of a young man while he
went to fetch a cab.

The man's suspicions were aroused, he opened the corner
of the parcel, and what he saw caused him to drop it with a
cry of horror.

Wainwright came back with the cab, put the parcel into it,
and drove off. Then the man, recovering his self-possession,
rushed wildly after the cab, shouting, " Murder ! Stop him !
Stop himj "

MY LIFE 143

Wainwright was hanged, but there were people who doubted
whether he was the actual murderer. It was thought it
might have been his brother who killed the girl at Wainwright 's
instigation. This brother, Thomas Wainwright, was sentenced
to seven years' penal servitude as an accessory after the fact.

Wainwright did not seem to me at all the man to murder
a young and attractive woman. It was his desire to keep
well in the eyes of the world that caused him to get rid either
directly or by the hand of another of the woman who was
threatening to expose the double life which this " good
fellow " was leading.

It is always well to have friends at court, and I have always
had good friends at the Central Criminal Court. I have
known most of the famous Old Bailey barristers for the past
forty years.

I remember the days when the photograph of my old friends
Montagu Williams and Douglas Straight, standing side by
side, was as prominent in the shop windows as the Gaiety
favourites used to be.

I don't suppose that many people now remember that
Montagu Williams, when he was an actor, played the counsel
for the defence in the trial scene of Effie Deans at Astley's in
1863.

In the days of the Serjeants-at-Law, Serjeant Ballantine
was as popular a personality as any romantic actor of the
period. The names of Serjeant Parry, Serjeant Sleigh, and
Serjeant Cox were household words, and Serjeant Cox was
the founder of a number of periodicals which were highly
prosperous in his day and are still valuable properties.

Ballantine I knew personally. I met him first at Bonn
when he was on his way to Wiesbaden. He came to see his
son Walter, who was a fellow-student of mine. Later on I
used to see him at Evans's Supper Rooms and in theatreland.

Ballantine made his first big success in the prosecution of
Muller for the murder of Mr. Briggs on the North London
Railway. Muller was magnificently defended by Serjeant
Parry, but the facts " kicked the beam " and Muller died
on it.

Ballantine received the record fee of £10,000 for defending
the Gaekwar pf Baroda. He made a vast sum of money at

144 MY LIFE

the Bar, but he got rid of it with both hands, and died a poor
man.

Sir Henry Hawkins was offered the brief to defend the
Gaekwar of Baroda, but declined it and suggested Ballantine.
When the latter returned from India, Hawkins said to him
in the hearing of others, " Well, I hope you have paid all
your debts."

" No, I haven't/' said Ballantine. " I stopped in Egypt
for a bit and had bad luck at the races at Cairo and at the
tables at Alexandria."

Hawkins almost flew at him. " Well, if I had been in
your shoes and good luck had pulled me straight, I should
never have frittered away the spoils donkey-racing in Egypt ! "

I have listened again and again to the deadly cross-examina-
tion of Mr. Henry Hawkins, and I have seen Mr. Justice
Hawkins and his canine companion in court together many a
time and oft.

I sat not at the feet but at the back of Sir Charles Mathews,
now the Director of Public Prosecutions — the Swami called
him " the Apostle Mathews " — from the time he made his
debut in the old-fashioned court with the window through
which the prisoner in the dock would sometimes gaze so
wistfully at the blue sky and the old tree where the birds
sang gaily their song of liberty and the joy of life, and I
witnessed his final triumph as counsel for the Crown in the
new court that might have been lifted bodily out of a modern
French drama.

I watched Sir Frank Lockwood make his sketches in court,
sketches that are so " strictly prohibited " to-day.

I listened while Dr. Kenealy, in defending the Tichborne
Claimant in the criminal case, shook the dewdrops from his
mane, and while Sir John Coleridge favoured the Claimant's
witnesses in the civil case with the ever-to-be-famous " Would
you be surprised to hear ? "

I saw the last of the " Claimant." He died in lodgings in
Marylebone, and one Sunday morning I sat alone by his side
in the Marylebone Mortuary and took a final look at the
familiar features before the coffin lid was screwed down. On
that lid he was described as " Sir Roger Charles Doughty
Tichborne/'

MR. SERJEANT BALLANTINE

MY LIFE 145

The methods of modern counsel are very different from the
brow-beating tactics of Dickens's days. Mr. C. F. Gill could
cross-examine an obviously hostile witness with stately
courtesy though deadly effect, and he and Mr. Grain had,
as have Mr. Bodkin and Mr. Muir to-day, the " gentle " art of
breaking down the defence of the man who did not want to
be hanged.

How admirable a counsel for the defence Mr. Marshall Hall
has proved himself from the now distant days to the year
that saw " Justice as usual " administered to the Bluebeard
of the Bath is part of the history of the Old Bailey.

I heard Banner Oakley, of the Co-operative Credit Bank,
sentenced to five years' penal servitude. He managed to
secure quite a considerable sum by offering ten per cent, for
all money deposited at his bank. When he was arrested he
had a hymn-book in his black bag.

I heard a good deal of the evidence in the case of Mme.
Rachel — her name was Leverson — who promised her female
dupes to make them beautiful for ever. It was evidence that
set the whole world laughing, but Mme. Rachel did not even
smile when she got five years.

I heard Jabez Balfour sentenced, and I have the gold
watch with an inscription to the effect that it was presented
to him on his twenty-first birthday. It stopped for the first
time since it had been in his possession at the moment the
jury brought in a verdict of guilty.

By a curious coincidence I had just looked at that gold
watch to refresh my memory as I was writing these lines
when the evening newspapers were left at my house, and I
opened the Evening News to read of the sudden death of
Jabez Balfour in a railway carriage.

I heard Dr. Whitmarsh sentenced to death for the murder
of Alice Bayley by an illegal operation, and Dr. Whitmarsh
told me many years afterwards, when he had served the
time to which his sentence had been commuted, that he lay
in the condemned cell at night and imagined he could hear
the workmen making ready the gallows on which he was to
be hanged.

I followed the evidence against Mrs. Pearcey, " Mary Eleanor
Wheeler," accused of having at her house in Kentish Town

K

146

MY LIFE

murdered Mrs. Hogg and Mrs. Hogg's baby, and I have
somewhere a copy of the Spanish paper in which, at the
condemned woman's request, this advertisement was inserted :
" M. E. C. P. Last wish of M. E. W. Have not betrayed."

James Canham Read, who murdered Florence Dennis at
Southend because he was leading a treble life, was tried at
Chelmsford, and I was not present, but I knew a great deal
about Canham Read and his career.

He was a particularly cool customer, and almost to the last
retained his complete self-possession.

Every day during his trial he ordered ham sandwiches to
be sent to him, and he particularly impressed upon the officer
entrusted with the order that the ham should be cut from the
knuckle end.

I have been present at most of the famous trials in the
" new " Old Bailey, but these are as fresh in the general
memory as they are in mine.

CHAPTER XVII

IN the year that I was born two great singers made their first
appearance in London. One was Jenny Lind and the other
was Marietta Alboni.

Jenny Lind married the famous pianist and composer
Otto Goldschmidt, and retired from the operatic stage in 1851,
so that I do not suppose I ever heard her sing. But there
were two pictures that hung in my bedroom when I was a
little boy, and I have never forgotten them.

One was a picture of Jenny Lind as " The Daughter of the
Regiment," and the other was a picture of Alboni in La
Cenerentola.

Because I looked at these pictures the last thing every
night, and because they were the first things that greeted my
waking eyes they roused my childish curiosity.

Because my people were great theatre-goers and loved the
opera I used for years after Jenny Lind had retired to hear
stories of her marvellous gifts, and of the wild sensation her
first appearance in London had created.

It was in the year 1847, *ne vear *nat I was born, that
Jenny Lind made her first appearance in London at Her
Majesty's, and took the town by storm.

Forty years later, in October 1887, my mother was staying
at Malvern, and I was on a visit to her. On Sunday morning
I strolled away among the hills in the direction of the British
Camp, and the result of that Sunday morning walk was that
I was the first person in the world, outside her own family
and her immediate attendants, to know that the soul of the
sweetest singer of our time had passed away.

And I gave my experience in the Referee.

Last Sunday I spent at Malvern, and as the morning
was a beautiful one I set out for the hills and got as far

148 MY LIFE

as the British Camp, the great hill on which the Britons
under Caractacus made their last stand against the
Romans. As I stood on the height and looked out far
over miles and miles of forest and plain the sight was
glorious ; but though far away in the distance like a streak
of silver in the sunlight I could see the Bristol Channel and
also the spires of churches in Worcestershire, Gloucester-
shire, and Herefordshire, yet I had eyes for one place
only, and that was a place which lay right at the foot
of the hill on which I stood.

It nestled among lofty trees all glowing with autumn
tints. It was a lonely, lovely, romantic spot — just the
place where one would think some one who had seen all
the gay glories of the world would come to to spend the
evening of life in rest and peace. And it was indeed
the home of one who had tasted all the joys the world
had to give.

I was looking down upon the romantic home of Jenny
Lind. But my thoughts were sad, for within that sweet
nest the " Nightingale " lay mute and motionless and nigh
her end. All around was still and beautiful, the lovely
peace of a Sabbath morning was upon hill and dale.

My thoughts wandered far away to the great cities and
splendid theatres and opera-houses. I saw the diva with
the great world at her feet ; I heard the roar of voices
and the thunder of applause, and then I let the vision
pass away and turned and looked at the little nest far
from the haunts of men — so peaceful that no sound of
voice or footstep broke the silence of the hills and dales
— so lonely that the eye wandered far and near and could
see no sign of life.

And it was there that the world-famous songstress, the
glorious Jenny Lind, was passing slowly to the golden
songland which lies beyond human ken.

And even as I watched the blinds were slowly drawn to
shut out the light of day.

Jenny Lind was dead.

A few days later I received a charming letter from Jenny
Lind's son :

MY LIFE 149

" November g, 1877.

" DEAR SIR, — Although I am personally unknown to you,
I cannot refrain from writing to thank you for the very kind
way in which you have written about my dear mother,
Madame Jenny Lind Goldschmidt. On that lovely Sunday
morning which you described, we who loved her were
assembled in that little house under the Malvern Hills and
heard from the doctors summoned for consultation that her
end was near — how near we now all know.

" Yours faithfully,

" WALTER C. GOLDSCHMIDT."

On the morning that I set out for the last home of Jenny
Lind I had said good-bye at the Belle Vue Hotel to the
members of a concert party who had sung in Malvern the
previous evening. Among them was Michael Maybrick, who
in professional life was Stephen Adams, and who was the
brother of the Mr. Maybrick whose death brought the fair
neck of his widow perilously near to the fatal noose — and
another of the party was Madame Antoinette Sterling, whom
I met then for the first time, and who afterwards sent me
many charming letters, and on one occasion sang for me — or
rather for the Referee Children's Fund — at a concert given at
the National Sporting Club. I shall not soon forget the
amusement with which the famous contralto listened to the
songs of the music-hall stars. I suppose it was the only
occasion on which Madame Antoinette Sterling appeared on a
programme with the Brothers Griffiths.

In Malvern the house in which Jenny Lind died was known
as " Johnson's Folly."

Johnson was the nephew of a Lord Mayor of London.
When he took possession of Wind's Point he had £15,000 a
year. He spent every farthing, and died poor.

His mania was inventing extraordinary things. To improve
the view from his house he attempted to remove one of the
Malvern Hills. The house was a most eccentric arrangement,
whirligigs, queer doors, and chimneys of his own design. He
would tread on a board and that caused the windows to open
or shut and the shutters to open or close, as the case might be.

Among his inventions was a patent costume. You put

150 MY LIFE

your hands through a hole in your bedding and your arms
through sleeves attached to the bedding, pulled a string, and
you were fully dressed.

There was another Swedish nightingale who charmed our
ears in the days of long ago. She was the daughter of a
poor forester, and was born in his hut in the woods of
Wexio.

The little girl had taught herself to play the fiddle, and one
day she and her young brother went barefooted to the village
fair and played and sang some of the national songs. The
result of the concert was three-halfpence.

They were so elated with their success that they tramped
on from the village fair to a near town where a much larger
fair was being held, and there the little Swedish girl sang her
songs and accompanied herself on the fiddle.

A gentleman standing in the crowd exclaimed, " What a
lovely voice this child has 1 " And this gentleman — he was
a judge, and a good judge, too — gave the little girl sixpence,
and the rest of the bystanders contributed twopence.

And then the children trotted back home with the, to them,
fabulous sum of ninepence halfpenny in their possession.

It was the foundation of the little girl's fortune. The
gentleman found out where she lived, went to the hut, and
persuaded the little girl's parents to let him take charge of
her musical education.

When I saw her she was a beautiful woman, slim and tall,
with lovely fair hair and marvellous grey-blue eyes. She was
the ideal Marguerite and the ideal Ophelia.

Forty years have passed since London first fell under the
spell of her enchantment. I have but to close my eyes to see
her as the flaxen-haired Marguerite now.

The little girl who left her father's hut to play and sing at
the fair, and who made ninepence halfpenny by her first
professional performance, was Christine Nilsson.

I have said that thanks to the Italian gentleman who lived
near Leicester Square I met some of the most famous operatic
artists of the 'sixties and 'seventies. And thanks to the
Italian gentleman we had a box for the opera on many
occasions during the season.

I met Mario first in Paris. My father had taken a flat for

MY LIFE 151

the family for two months in the Rue Neuve St. Augustin. It
was in 1867 and I was twenty then.

Our Italian friend had accompanied us. He put up at the
Hotel de Bade, and there one day he invited me to lunch and
took me afterwards to call on Mario.

I have always remembered the circumstances because we
were kept waiting in the salon for some considerable time
before the great singer appeared. Mario was in the habit of
keeping everybody waiting. He was never known to be
punctual to an appointment, and he even arrived late when
he had been invited to Windsor Castle.

But my Italian friend was indignant at the delay. When
twenty minutes had passed and we were still waiting he
exclaimed : " Ah, it is too much ! The damn fellow keep me
waiting while he put on his orders. Why does the fool do
that when I have see him in his bath ? "

Mario, though the son of a distinguished father, was at
one time in such poor circumstances that he lodged where
seven people slept in a room. And he was one of the
seven.

Mario and the mother of his children, Mme. Grisi, sometimes
earned as much as eighteen thousand pounds in a single year,
but at the end he was again so poor that Mr. Arthur Chappell
got up a grand concert for his benefit.

Mario was a terrific smoker, and even when he was singing
at the opera his servant stood at the wings to take the glowing
cigar from his master's mouth when the artist had to go on
the stage.

It was while we were staying in Paris that year, by the by,
that our Italian friend got us seats for the first night of a
new opera bouffe by a brilliant musician, who called himself
Offenbach, but whose name was Levy. It was a triumph for
all concerned, and especially for Mademoiselle Hortense
Schneider, who played La Grande Duchesse.

But I must not begin to tell Paris stories. These are
reminiscences of London.

My fifty years' reminiscences of Paris, where I was at one
time as faithful a theatre-goer as I was in London, must wait
until I have time to write them. They go back to the days
when Dejazet was still a popular idol, when Sarah Bernhardt

152 MY LIFE

was a slim ingenue, when Judic was a joy, and Therese was
achieving her early triumphs.

I knew the Italian opera and its stars in those days pretty
well, but I knew the English opera artists better.

I was a constant attendant at the English opera when it
was run under the Pyne and Harrison management. We had
English composers then who could produce serious opera and
light opera of the higher class, composers who believed in
" tune," and wrote for the people's pleasure as well as for the
critics' praise.

And there was a great English singer whom I knew better
than any of the foreign stars. His name was John Reeves,
and it was John Reeves for a good many years until he
developed into Sims Reeves, and the evolution of the Sims is
interesting.

As plain John Reeves he studied music, then he became a
medical student. He very soon grew tired of it and turned
to the stage.

He made his first appearance in London at the Grecian
Theatre, and his name in the programme was " Mr. Johnson."
Then he got a singing part in Macready's productions at
Drury Lane, and he became John Reeves. About this time
a lady vocalist suggested to him that he should put the name
of Sims in front of his Reeves, as it would make it more
euphonious.

When he next appeared at Drury Lane Jullien was the
manager and Hector Berlioz was the chef d'orchestre. As
Mr. Sims Reeves the young tenor made a huge success, and
never looked back until age robbed him of his voice, and then
evil times came.

A great benefit was got up for him by Mr. Arthur Chappell,
and he was granted a Civil List pension.

I met Sims Reeves three or four times at various hotels
when he was on tour in the provinces, and in this way came
to know him personally.

Whenever he travelled his devoted first wife was most
solicitous for his health. She wanted if possible to avoid the
" severe cold " which interfered so frequently with the tenor's
concert engagements. Everything that the tenor used in the
way of linen, including table-cloths, serviettes, and towels, was

MY LIFE 153

specially carried and specially aired under the personal
supervision of Mrs. Sims Reeves.

The devoted wife died in 1895, and Sims Reeves some time
afterwards married a fine-looking young woman who was his
pupil.

It was rather a shock to the worshippers of the famous
tenor to find Mrs. Sims Reeves playing later on in a provincial
pantomime, and exciting some comment by the nature of her
costume.

I wonder how many opera-goers remember the night when
Sims Reeves, playing Robin Hood, vaulted lightly over the
garden wall and struck the fair Maid Marian — quite by
accident — a violent blow on the nose which caused it to bleed
freely.

It was the first time Maid Marian had shed her blood for
Robin Hood, but the love duet was duly sung, though Maid
Marian had to keep her handkerchief well in hand during its
progress.

The last time I heard Sims Reeves it was at a Sunday
afternoon concert at the Queen's Hall. Alas, he was a name
in the programme and nothing more.

I have told the story of the evolution of the Sims as the
famous tenor's middle name. It was an evolution by which
I was later on personally affected.

After I had come into the limelight I frequently had the
Reeves added to my Sims, and this used to happen long after
the famous singer had passed into the Great Silence.

I was invited to the complimentary luncheon given to
Mr. de Sousa, the celebrated American conductor, when he
first appeared in London. On the card placed on the luncheon
table to indicate the seat allotted to me I was astonished to
find the name of a dead man. My seat at the de Sousa
luncheon at the Trocadero was allotted to " Mr. Sims
Reeves."

CHAPTER XVIII

HENRY BROUGHAM FARNIE, who when I first knew him was
the editor of a musical paper owned by Messrs. Cramer, was
responsible at one time for nearly all the opera bouffe and
comic opera imported into this country from Paris.

All the Offenbach operas crossed the Channel in opera bouffe
days, but his masterpiece, Les Contes d'Hoffmann, only came
to us in English quite lately.

I saw it on its production in Paris in 1880, and I urged
Farnie again and again to do an English version, but he always
told me that it would not suit the English taste. How
mistaken he was my friend Mr. Robert Courtneidge has
triumphantly proved at the Shaftesbury.

Farnie's version of Genevtive de Brabant, produced in
1871, took all theatrical London up Pentonville Hill to the
Philharmonic, once a music-hall run by Sam Adams, and
afterwards by Charles Head, a bookmaker, and Emily
Soldene as Drogan, Marius as Charles Martel, and Bury
and Marshall as the two gendarmes became the talk of the
town.

Farnie, in order to be near the new home of opera bouffe,
where he contemplated further productions, took rooms in
the City Road.

But he was busier at the West End than he was at Islington,
and half the theatres of London succumbed in turn to the
charm of light opera.

Violet Cameron ! What happy memories old playgoers
have of her in La Mascotte, Boccaccio, Rip van Winkle, Falka,
The Sultan of Mocha, and Morocco Bound.

Florence St. John was always one of light opera's most
charming exponents. In 1868 she was singing with a diorama.
In 1875 she was singing at the Oxford Music Hall as Florence
Leslie. Then she was with the Blanche Cole and Rose Hersee

154

MY LIFE 155

Opera Companies, and in 1878 she came to the Globe Theatre
as Germaine in Les Cloches de Corneville.

What old playgoer does not remember charming " Jack "
St. John in Madame Favart, in Les Manteaux Noirs, as
Boulotte in Barbe-Bleu, in Nell Gwynne, and as Bettina in
La Mascotte.

Both Florence St. John and Violet Cameron came later to
the Gaiety to play in Faust Up-to-date, by Henry Pettitt and
myself. But that is a later reminiscence.

The Mansell Brothers — their name was Maitland and they
came from Athlone — made a huge success at the Lyceum with
Herve's Chilperic and Little Faust in 1870, and Jenny Lee,
who was afterwards to win undying fame as " Jo/' was in
Le Petit Faust a cheeky little crossing-sweeper.

There was a beautiful lady named Cornelie d'Anka in the
Mansell Company, and one night Dick Mansell performed a
daring feat.

Some unwelcome admirer presented a pistol at the head of
the fair lady. Forward sprang the gallant Dick and wrested
the deadly weapon from the ruffian's grasp.

It was whispered some time afterwards that the deadly
weapon that the aggressor held aloft was really a black
pocket-book.

There was a time when Arthur Roberts, the gay commander
of H.M.S. Spooferies, was the comedian par excellence in
musical comedy. I remember him at the old Middlesex
Music Hall in the early 'seventies, and I have a happy recollec-
tion of his Dr. Syntax in Mother Goose at the Lane.

At the Avenue I remember sitting one night in a box with
Henry Labouchere and Mrs. Labouchere and Walter Ballan-
tine, who was then M.P. for Coventry. We had dined at
the House of Commons, and Ballantine had taken us after-
wards to see Roberts. I fancy the piece was La Vie.

Labby was one of the few people who could not or would
not see the popular comedian's humour.

When Blue-Eyed Susan, by Pettitt and myself, was put on
in '92 at the Prince of Wales's, Arthur Roberts was the
Captain Crosstree, and I remember the mixed feelings with
which I regarded his attempt in the middle of a sentimental
scene to light his pipe from a beacon on the back-cloth.

156 MY LIFE

They were joyous days at the Strand in '73, when Farnie
gave us Nemesis, and Marius was in his glory vowing vengeance
on his enemy with a toy cannon which he pulled across the
stage with a piece of string.

The Alhambra early in the 'seventies ran big spectacular
musical shows, of which the best remembered are perhaps
The Black Crook and Le Roi Carotte, and Kate Santley was the
bright particular star.

And there was a Miss Rose Bell, and the Santleyites and
the Bellites made war upon each other in the gallery o' nights.

And there were the John Baum days, with the ladies' glove
stalls at the back of the promenade. But that is another
story.

At the Alhambra they gave us La Belle Helene and La Jolie
Parfumeuse. At the Opera Comique we had La Fille de
Madame Angot and Orphee aux Enfers, and W. S. Gilbert and
Frederic Clay gave us Princess Toto at the Strand, and Kate
Santley played the Princess, and it was that which brought me
some years afterwards to the Royalty with my first comic
opera, The Merry Duchess.

It was when Gilbert and Sullivan came to the Opera
Comique that the English librettist and the English composer
began to come to their own once more.

Frederic Clay, the composer, who had won golden laurels
with his songs, " She wandered down the Mountain Side,"
" Sands o' Dee," and "I'll sing thee Songs of Araby," and
had carried off the musical honours in Princess Toto, wanted
to write another comic opera.

In 1882 Miss Kate Santley, who was at the Royalty, sent
for me and asked me if I would work with Clay.

The result of the collaboration was The Merry Duchess,
which was produced at the Royalty on April 3, 1883. Clay's
music was delightfully tuneful, and the Duchess ran her
merry career for many months.

Kate Santley and Henry Ashley kept us laughing all the
time, and Kitty Munroe was as charming as she was a merry
Duchess, and was wonderful in her wooing of her favourite
jockey, played by Mr. F. Gregory. There was a young
actor in the cast named Fred Kerr, who played a small
part.

MY LIFE 157

When I first went to the Royalty in '79 Augustus Harris
was the acting manager, and he became the lessee of Drury
Lane.

When I went to the Royalty with The Merry Duchess, the
acting manager was Cecil Raleigh, and some years afterwards
he was helping to write the dramas at old Drury. I waited
for thirty years, but I got to the Lane at last, though it was
with pantomime and not with drama.

When I next met Cecil Raleigh it was at the Pelican Club
one Sunday night. It was the night of the fight between
Jim Smith and Peter Jackson.

Raleigh was then the secretary of the club, which was being
run on full-dress lines by my old friend Ernest Wells.

I left the club about four o'clock in the morning, and
Raleigh left with me, and we walked up Regent Street
together.

From that 4 A.M. " walk and talk " in Regent Street ensued
a collaboration which lasted for a good many years, and
resulted in The Grey Mare, with a lovely lying part for Charles
Hawtrey, The Guardsman, at the Court, with Arthur Cecil,
Weedon Grossmith, Ellaline Terris, Caroline Hill, and Isabel
Ellison, who afterwards became Mrs. Raleigh, in the cast ;
Fanny, at the Strand, Little Christopher Columbus, at the
Lyric, with May Yohe in the name part and Ivan Caryll's
music a triumph of tunefulness, and Uncle John at the
Vaudeville.

In one of our plays there was a charming young actress.
Some years afterwards she was found lying dazed and
apparently destitute among the tramps who bivouacked in
Regent's Park and were known as the " Park gipsies."

But let me return to my first musical composer, Frederic
Clay. That also, alas, is a story that becomes a tragedy at
the finish, and it is a story in which the Alhambra Theatre is
in a way concerned.

My earliest recollection of the Alhambra is the black eye
I got there during one of the rowdy rushes that used to be a
feature of the 'Varsity Boat Race night.

The famous Frederick Strange was at that time the presiding
genius of the establishment. Strange had been a waiter in
the chop room at Simpson's. He took up a refreshment

158 MY LIFE

contract at the Crystal Palace, made a lot of money, and took
the Alhambra from the first proprietor, Mr. William Wild,
who had introduced Leotard to the British public.

Strange came on the scene in 1866, and made ballet the
great feature of the Alhambra entertainment.

I met Strange frequently when he was apparently one of
the most successful amusement caterers in London, and I
have often stopped to gaze at the splendid pair of high-
steppers he used to drive in his phaeton, and at the delightful
danseuse who was generally to be seen seated in the phaeton
by the side of her admiring manager.

The last time I met the once dashing impresario he was the
steward on board a penny steamer on the Thames.

The Alhambra in time became a limited company with
directors of credit and renown who sat nightly in a directors'
box.

The late Maharajah Duleep Singh was often the guest of
the directors at that time. He was the devoted admirer of a
pretty young lady in the ballet.

I met once or twice in the later years a nice old lady who
was the mamma of the danseuse, and who always referred to
the object of the Maharajah's admiration as "my daughter,
the princess."

The princess one day presented her mamma with a lovely
sealskin coat which was rather out of fashion.

Mamma accepted it and wore it home, but it was a long
way to Camberwell from the West End, and mamma, when
she got to the south side, found herself hungry.

Somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Walworth Road
she passed a fried fish shop, felt tempted, entered, and sat
down. The cooking of the fish and chips had heated the
atmosphere to an extent which made the wearing of a sealskin
coat undesirable, so the princess's mamma took it off and laid
it down beside her.

When she had finished her fish she strolled out into the
street, but, not being accustomed to luxuries, she forgot to
pick up the hundred-guinea gift which her daughter had that
afternoon bestowed upon her. When she realized what had
happened she went back to the fried fish shop, but the
princessly gift had disappeared.

MY LIFE 159

When I heard the story from the lips of the lady herself
my memory wandered back to the days when the late
Maharajah was such a faithful habitue of the Alhambra.

Everybody knows what the can-can is to-day, but it was
first introduced into England by Mile. Finette, who made a
tremendous sensation with it at the Alhambra in '66.

Later on we had a young lady who did another sort of
can-can and was popularly known as " Wiry Sal."

One of the earliest sketches, a form of entertainment which
is now part of almost every music-hall programme, was given
at the Alhambra in '66, and was called " Where's the Police ? "
and the characters were played by Messrs. d'Auban, Warde,
Fred Evans, and Miss Warde and Mrs. Evans.

The piece was produced at the Alhambra by John
Hollingshead, and a summons was immediately issued.

The magistrate decided against the management. A fine
of £20 a night, full penalty, was inflicted, and the piece was
ordered to be withdrawn.

Although a Parliamentary Committee soon afterwards
recommended that music-halls should be allowed to play
short dramatic pieces, over half a century elapsed before the
performance of such plays in halls of variety was legalized.

My personal connexion with the Alhambra began much
later on. After The Merry Duchess Frederic Clay and his
collaborator became very close friends.

We were in Paris in December '82, sitting outside the
Cafe de la Paix at the green hour, when we opened the Daily
Telegraph and read that the Alhambra had been burnt down.

Soon afterwards we had a commission to write a spectacular
fairy opera for the new Alhambra, and on December 3, '83,
The Golden Ring was produced, with Marion Hood as the
leading lady and J. G. Taylor as the principal comedian.

The fates were not altogether propitious. The stage hands
let down the wrong cloth in the middle of the great transfor-
mation scene of the Fisheries Exhibition to the open sea.

On the second night Clay and I went into the theatre, and
Clay was very much annoyed when he was told that a band
that he particularly required to be on the stage would be
cut out.

Georges Jacobi, the old conductor, had left, and Jules

160 MY LIFE

Riviere, who had been the chef d'orchestre in the old days, had
returned, but for some reason a good deal of extra work had
fallen on Clay.

After the show we walked into the Strand and met D'Oyly
Carte, and stopped for a few minutes chatting with him.
Then we turned into Bow Street.

Opposite the police-station Clay suddenly reeled and fell
heavily against me.

I managed to hold him up and called for help. An inspector
and two constables came over from the station, and between
us we carried poor Freddy across the road and laid him on
the floor in the inspector's room.

Then I sent a special messenger to the house of his brother
Cecil. Cecil Clay came quickly, put his brother in a cab, and
took him home.

That night poor Freddy Clay had a second stroke. For a
long time he was unable to move. Then he got a little better
and wrote me one or two pathetic little letters in pencil with
his left hand. He was now a hopeless invalid, and knew that
his life's work was done.

The last letter I had from him was brief and sad. It was
on the anniversary of his seizure, and this was all he wrote :
" Fatal day. Poor Freddy."

Soon afterwards he was found dead in his bath. I had lost
my dearest friend, and the world had lost an artist who would
have given it many charming and tuneful songs.

We laid him to rest in Brompton Cemetery, and the chief
mourners were his brothers, Arthur Sullivan, Squire Bancroft,
and myself.

CHAPTER XIX

ONE of my earliest visits to the Adelaide Gallery after it
became a cafe under the direction of the Gattis and the
Monicos was when I was still at Hanwell College. Three of
us went out of bounds one afternoon and walked from
Hanwell Londonwards.

My early recollections of Gatti's are of chess and draughts
at the little marble tables all day long, and a big billiard
saloon with any number of tables down below.

In those days the Brothers Gatti, Agostino and Stefano,
used to sit at a big serving counter in the corner near the
entrance in Agar Street, and of an evening Tommy Foster, of
the Weekly Times, was frequently to be seen sitting with
them.

Tommy Foster, a little man with a benevolent smile, was
faithful to the Gatti management to the very end.

He died suddenly in the dress circle of the Adelphi on a
first night.

Quite early in the days of the Adelaide Gallery as a cafe*
the Gattis and the Monicos dissolved partnership. The
Monicos opened the establishment at Piccadilly Circus which
bears their name, and the Gattis became interested in various
theatrical enterprises.

They ran promenade concerts at Covent Garden, and they
produced pantomimes there.

They became the proprietors of the Adelphi and produced
dramas of the good wholesome Adelphi type, and Henry
Pettitt wrote Taken from Life for them with the great
Clerkenwell Prison explosion scene in it. That was in
December 1881, and Charles Warner was their leading man.

Until the end of 1882 I was under contract to the Princess's,
and had followed The Lights o' London with The Romany Rye,
a play of which a critic who meant to be complimentary said

161 L

162 MY LIFE

that we "had brought the scent of the gipsies over the
footlights."

I hope we didn't. But the gipsies were real gipsies, and to
the best of my recollection were found for us " somewhere in
England " by my friend Mr. Henry Arthur Jones, who was
then working on The Silver King with which Wilson Barrett
had arranged to follow The Romany Rye.

When it was announced that Henry Arthur Jones was
coming to the Princess's, the Gattis came to me and offered
to provide me with a new home at the Adelphi. They had
an unfulfilled contract with Pettitt, and suggested that they
should ask Pettitt to waive it and that he and I should colla-
borate in a play for production in the autumn of 1883.

I agreed, and commenced a theatrical partnership, which
was continued for many years with excellent commercial
results, both to ourselves and to the Adelphi.

Henry Pettitt had the " gift of the theatre " in a remarkable
degree. He was a master of the art of construction, and
financially as successful as any author of his time. When he
died he left nearly £50,000, and I remember the astonishment
of a learned judge who had to be consulted with regard to
the administration of the dead author's theatrical properties.

Henry Pettitt was the son of a civil engineer, but he drifted
about until he found his mtiier in melodrama.

He had been agent in advance to a circus company, and
business manager of an opera company that toured " the
smalls."

He played the " fiery Tybalt " in an equestrian performance
of Romeo and Juliet, and died so far down the stage that, as
the curtain descended, the corpse had to rise hurriedly and
die again " higher up."

Once on Christmas Day in one of the small towns the
opera company was lodged at an inn. But business was
bad, the ghost had not walked, and the landlord of the inn,
knowing how matters stood, was not inclined to supply the
Christmas dinner for a hungry company of Thespians on
credit.

Pettitt envisaged the situation and was struck by an idea.
He strolled off to the lodgings in the town where the manager
and his wife had settled themselves comfortably.

MY LIFE 163

He got to the house about two o'clock. The manager had
gone out to get an appetizer. The wife had cooked a fine
goose for the early Christmas dinner, and was placing it on
the table ready for the return of her lord. She went into the
kitchen to dish up the vegetables. Pettitt saw his chance.
He scribbled on a piece of paper : " The Company request

the pleasure of Mr. and Mrs. to dinner at the Inn.

Roast goose at 2.45 sharp. Please bring your own vege-
tables."

Then he picked up the dish and bolted out of the house
and ran as fast as his long legs could carry him to the inn.

He put the goose on the table before the astonished company
and said : " There you are, boys and girls. We'll keep it
hot till the boss and the missis come. I've invited them to
join us."

And the boss and his better half did come, and they brought
the vegetables, and the boss paid for the beer, and it was a
merry party at the old inn that Christmas afternoon.

There was a lot of quiet humour about Henry Pettitt.

He once wrote me a little letter, and this is all that the
letter contained : " DEAR SIMS, — Does collaboration with
you include cleaning your boots ? "

I am afraid I was inclined to be trying in those days. But
I suffered with dyspepsia and insomnia, and that is a combina-
tion which does not make for patient gentleness.

In the Ranks was produced at the Adelphi on the evening
of October 6, 1883, with Charles Warner as the hero, Isabel
Bateman as the heroine, Mary Rorke as Barbara Herrick,
and William Herbert, as Captain Holcroft, had the love
interest, and Mrs. Leigh, E. W. Garden, and Clara Jecks
played the low comedy scenes in the fine old Adelphi fashion.
John Beauchamp made a great character of the hop-picker,
and dear old John Ryder was Colonel Winter.

Ryder, one of the soundest actors of his time, lived in the
suburbs, and liked to get home early.

In In the Ranks he was supposed to be murdered in the
first act. But he came to life again in the fifth act. With
all the vigour of which he was capable Jack Ryder implored
me to let him be really killed.

" You see," he said, "if I'm really murdered I can get

164

MY LIFE

home at nine ; if I'm only dangerously wounded I have to
sit in my dressing-room for two hours to recover and come
on for a short scene, and then I don't get home till midnight.
For goodness' sake, my dear boy, polish me off in the first
act."

On the first night of In the Ranks the foliage in the big
" Outside the Church " scene caught fire, and the flames
looked like spreading.

Warner was playing in a front scene, and we managed to
let him know that he was to keep on making love to his
bride till we had torn down the burning border.

And he did. It was one of the few occasions on which the
authors of a play have been grateful to the leading man for
gagging.

Mr. Bruce Smith, though it was not his scene, did heroic
work in cutting the flaming foliage away. We were within
an inch of disaster that night.

That delightful actor J. D. Beveridge will remember it, for we
stood side by side and watched the progress of a fire behind
the scenes of which not a soul in front of the curtain had,
thank goodness, the slightest suspicion.

On the last night of In the Ranks at the Adelphi — it had
run over a year — the curtain absolutely refused to come
down.

Was it an omen ?

It looked like it, for the drama, The Last Chance, which
succeeded it in 1885, and which I wrote, was not a success.

The production of The^Last Chance was associated with
many unfortunate incidents.

Richard Barker, who had been remarkably successful with
the Gilbert and Sullivan operas and with the Sims and Clay
Merry Duchess, was at my request engaged by the Brothers
Gatti to produce it.

About a week before production and just when the
important final rehearsals with scenes and props were due,
Barker had a bad breakdown.

At the dress rehearsal I discovered to my horror that the
scenic artist had painted peacocks' feathers over the chimney-
piece in a room in a Derbyshire inn.

I had never known peacocks' feathers bring anything but

MY LIFE 165

bad luck on the stage, and I was very unhappy. James
Fernandez and Charles Glenny, who were in the play, tried
to cheer me up, but I went home that night feeling anything
but sanguine.

On the first night Charles]Warner, the hero, when he was
supposed to be starving in a garret, lifted his hands to heaven
and exclaimed : " Our last farthing gone ; starvation stares
us in the face ! "

Unfortunately Warner was wearing a diamond ring which
sparkled gaily in the limelight.

So when he said that he was starving a voice from the
gallery shouted, " Why don't you pawn your diamond ring ? "

And that settled the situation — and in a sense settled the
play.

You couldn't get an Adelphi audience to sympathize with
a hero who wailed about his starving wife and wore a fifty-
pound diamond ring.

The Last Chance did not last long, but a few months later a
nautical play by Pettitt and myself was put up.

It was called The Harbour Lights. William Terriss — we
called him " Breezy Bill," and he was an ideal naval lieutenant
— played the hero, and Miss Jessie Milward the heroine, and
The Harbour Lights beamed brightly for 540 consecutive
performances, which was a record.

After The Harbour Lights I went back to Wilson Barrett,
who had taken the Olympic, and we revived The Lights o'
London there with Miss Winifred Emery as Bess — what a
charming, sympathetic Bess she was ! — and there we produced
The Golden Ladder.

Pettitt in the meantime had collaborated with my friend
and former partner, Sydney Grundy, and The Bells of
Haslemere rang and The Union Jack waved at the Adelphi.

Pettitt and I came together for three or four more Adelphi
dramas. In one of them, The Silver Falls, which was produced
in 1888, Olga Nethersole was the heroine.

Then Pettitt went out and Robert Buchanan came into
partnership with me, and our first play ,The English Rose,
was produced on August 2, 1890. Then came The Trumpet
Call, which was produced on August 1, 1891, and was a great
success, with Leonard Boyne and Elizabeth Robins as the

166 MY LIFE

hero and heroine, Lionel Rignold as a travelling showman,
with Mrs. Patrick Campbell as Astrea, his clairvoyant.

But before I come to the Buchanan days — and nights —
and the story of one of the most remarkable personalities of
his time, let me say a word or two about my lifelong friend
and brilliant workfellow, Sydney Grundy.

Sydney Grundy was a barrister, the son of a Manchester
alderman. He gave up his practice, left Manchester, and
came to London to improve his position as a playwright.

We met first at the back of the dress circle at the Royalty
on the first night of Crutch and Toothpick.

Grundy was introduced to me by some one, we chatted
and became friends, and exchanged views about our stage
prospects.

I had an idea for a Society comedy — or rather a semi-
Society comedy. So had Grundy. We put the two ideas
together and wrote a play which was eventually produced at
the Globe in September 1883. It was called The Glass of
Fashion, in which Alice Lingard and Carlotta Leclerq, with a
small Yorkshire terrier named Horace, scored instant successes.
Prince Borowski was played by Beerbohm Tree, and Peg
O'Reilly by Lottie Venne. John L. Shine was a self-made
millionaire, a brewer, and there was a Society journalist who
collected piquant Society " pars " for the Society journal,
The Glass of Fashion, which the brewer had been induced to
start in order to further his ambition for a seat in Parlia-
ment.

Grundy had put some of his best work into what was
intended to be a scathing satire on Society journalism, which
was not then in very good odour.

Grundy was always a man with a grievance. One of his
grievances was against the Licenser of Plays.

Grundy and Joseph Mackay had done an adaptation of
La Petite Marquise, which they called The Novel Reader. For
years the Licenser refused to permit its production, and
Grundy writhed under the ban.

When he was writing The Glass of Fashion he had a
grievance against certain Society papers.

We had mapped out the play, and its provisional title was
Beauty.

MY LIFE 167

Grundy used to come to Aldersgate Street to see me. Here
is a letter from him :

" DEAR SIMS, — I will call at Aldersgate Street at 1.30 on
Thursday, and shall rely upon getting Act I. Try and arrange
to give me the Sunday and Monday nights following. I am
determined Beauty shall be finished before the New Year.

" Yours sincerely,

" SYDNEY GRUNDY/'

Long before we found a manager to accept The Glass of
Fashion Edmund Yates had become my friend and my
editor.

Just about the time that the Glass was produced Edmund
Yates was having trouble with Lord Lonsdale over an article
in the World, and a libel case was pending which eventually
ended in Yates going to Holloway.

There were certain passages in the play which I knew Yates
would take to himself and feel deeply.

Grundy refused to remove them, and I could not insist,
and so by a friendly arrangement my name was removed
from the programmes and I resigned all my rights.

But I kept the friendship of Edmund Yates and of Sydney
Grundy to the end.

The World had its beginning at a dinner-party at the
house of the Rev. J. M. Bellew. Yates was a guest, and
there he met Grenville Murray, of whom he had heard a good
deal from Dickens. Grenville Murray was in the Foreign
Office, and had written some admirable articles under the
title of " The Roving Englishman " for Household Words.

Murray was the editor of the Queen's Messenger, a bitterly
satirical journal. In June 1869 there appeared in the
Queen's Messenger an article entitled " Bob Coachington Lord
Jarvey," which was considered by Lord Carrington to refer to
his late father.

Lord Carrington waited outside the Conservative Club, of
which Murray was a member, and assaulted him as he came
out. After the assault case had been disposed of, Lord
Carrington brought a charge of perjury against Murray, and
Murray left England and never returned.

168 MY LIFE

But before this Murray and Yates had agreed to start a
new weekly paper, " The ' World/ a Journal for Men and
Women." Yates went over to Paris, saw Murray, and they
put up a capital of two hundred and fifty pounds each.

The first number of the World was published on July 8,
1874.

Among early contributors were Mr. Henry Labouchere,
who wrote the City articles ; the Earl of Winchilsea, who did
the racing ; Mrs. Lynn Linton, who had made a sensation
with her " Girl of the Period " ; Archibald Forbes ; Comyns
Carr ; Herman Merivale ; Mortimer Collins ; T. H. S. Escott ;
and Henry W. Lucy, until recently the veteran " Toby " ;
and Button Cook.

Edmund Yates once told me that the whole sum he had
spent in advertising the World from the start till that day
did not exceed seventy pounds.

On the morning the first number of Tit-Bits appeared on
the bookstalls I met Yates on the platform at King's Cross,
and he was in rather an excited state. The appearance of
Tit-Bits had upset him. He was under the impression that
it was going to live principally upon tit bits lifted from the
World.

" They're going to take my best paragraphs and yours, the
brigands ! " he said to me. But of course he was mistaken.

Grundy's motto was Fiat justitia, ruat ccelum, which has
been humorously translated as " Let justice be done though
the ceiling fall." He was always bringing down bits of
ceiling, and sometimes rather large pieces of it fell on his own
head.

Yates was a fine fighter, and so was Sydney Grundy. He
was fighting for his ideals to the day of his death.

CHAPTER XX

WHEN James Corbet — " Gentleman Jim " — came to London
he called to see me one day. He wanted a play written
round himself, and the principal scene was to be a glove-
fight in which he was to give the theatre public a specimen of
his prowess in the ring.

I did not fancy that a glove-fight would be a popular
feature with a West End audience, and I gently declined the
amiable offer.

I was mistaken. A glove-fight as a feature in a drama of
human interest has proved a strong attraction in more than
one stage production.

I was very much mistaken with regard to another matter
which arose out of a business offer in connexion with a play.

When Mr. Cody, who afterwards became Colonel Cody, the
well-known aviator, came to this country, he brought a play
with him. It was called The Great Klondyke. Cody wanted
me to rewrite The Great Klondyke for the English market and
take charge of its business interests, as he intended to devote
himself to preparing a flying machine.

I did not want to rewrite an American play, and I brought
a pleasant interview to a close by telling Cody that I thought
he had much better stick to the stage and leave the air alone,
and I said that with The Great Klondyke he could always give
a flying matinee.

At that time, if I remember rightly, Cody was only experi-
menting with a kite for military purposes. But the interview
I had with him left no doubt in my mind that he seriously
contemplated devoting himself to the invention of a machine
which would be capable of flying through the air in any
direction its pilot desired.

When Cody left me I looked upon him as a dreamer of
dreams that could never possibly come true. How utterly

170 MY LIFE

mistaken I was Colonel Cody proved by his splendid services
to the art of aviation ; though, alas, he paid the penalty of
his devotion and daring just at the moment when his splendid
dream had been triumphantly realized.

James Corbet came to me, he told me, for two reasons.
The first was that he understood that I had a habit of striking
lucky with my plays, and the second reason was that he
knew I was conversant with the business of the ring and
" knew the ropes/' at any rate from the safe side of them.

My memories of the ring go back to the great day when
Sayers fought Heenan, and the man who beat the Benicia
Boy was the idol of England.

I was a small boy at the Preparatory School for Young
Gentlemen at Eastbourne at the time, but another boy — a
good little boy — told me all about it.

He had asked permission to go upstairs to his bedroom
half an hour earlier than usual in order that he might devote
himself to pious meditation.

That night, as we lay in our little beds in the dormitory,
the good little boy told me all about the great fight. He had
in some way got hold of a copy of Bell's Life with a full report
in it, and it was in order to read Bell's Life in the privacy of
the unoccupied dormitory that he had sought the opportunity
of an extra half-hour for pious meditation.

As a lad I saw a great deal of Tom Sayers. He lived
somewhere off the Camden Road and had a great friend in
Camden Town whom he used constantly to visit. This friend
was the proprietor of a boot and shoe shop.

I have waited outside that boot shop in Camden Town
many a time in order to see the champion come out and have
a straight stare at him.

I knew Jem Mace in his prime and had many a pleasant
chat with him over the old days of the ring when its glory
and his had both departed.

I saw a good deal of Tom King after he had beaten Heenan
and had been affectionately kissed in his corner by Jem
Mace. It is odd that the Continental kissing custom should
be quite common among boxers in their business hours, seeing
that the pugilist is, or was for many years, an eminently
British production.

MY LIFE 171

Among other things Tom King took up when he left the
ring was the growing of roses, and I thought that such a
splendid idea that one day I asked the blooming bruiser — by
which I mean the bruiser who had gone in for blooms — if he
had ever read " The Rose and the Ring," If I remember
rightly the answer was in the negative.

Owen Swift, Nat Langham, Alec Keene, and Mike Madden
— I worshipped them all in turn, sometimes in the flesh and
sometimes in the spirit.

It was more in the spirit as regards Nat Langham and Alec
Keene, both of whom kept sporting public-houses. When
Nat Langham came to London he called his house the
Cambrian, and it was stated that he had done so in order to
let people know that he came from Cambridge.

Those were the days when an ex-champion of the prize-ring
could tour with a circus show as a star turn, exhibit his belt,
and give a sparring exhibition with a partner specially engaged
for the business.

After the decline and fall of the prize-ring and the dis-
appearance of the " merry mill " of which in the good old
days Lord Palmerston would be an interested spectator —
the prize-ring that was so enthralling that Thurtell, who
murdered William Weare, asked when the rope was round his
neck if the sheriff would be so good as to tell him the winner
of the big fight that had been brought off the previous day —
the champions found it profitable to book a tour and star
round the provinces, taking various halls by the way, in
which with a sparring partner they would give an evening's
entertainment.

The largest crowd I ever remember seeing outside a railway
station I saw waiting at Leeds when J. L. Sullivan arrived to
give a sparring exhibition with Jack Ashton.

That was before the great glove-fight between Sullivan and
Charley Mitchell had been brought off " somewhere in France "
in March 1888.

It was while returning from the fight that took place
" somewhere in France/' in December 1887, between Jake
Kilrain and Jim Smith, that Mr. Archie MacNeill, of the
Sportsman, met his death in Boulogne in circumstances
which pointed unmistakably to murder, and the mystery of

172 MY LIFE

poor Archie MacNeilTs death has never been satisfactorily
solved.

It was after I had seen Sullivan stripped that I realized to
the full the meaning of the phrase, " the pink of perfection."

Henry Sampson, my first editor, was an authority on the
noble art. He wrote an excellent book on " Modern Boxing,"
and was frequently, before his editorial position interfered,
asked to referee a glove-fight.

He had seen plenty of mills with what were poetically
known as the " raw 'uns," and he had taken up boxing not
only with enthusiasm but with expert knowledge.

The Amateur Boxing Association was formed at his instiga-
tion, and the founders of the A.B.A. met on January 21, 1880,
in the Referee office, and it was in the Referee office that the
preliminary rules were drawn up.

There were present on this occasion Henry Sampson,
J. H. Douglas, L.A.C. ; T. Anderson, West London B.C. ;
R. Wakefield, Highbury B.C. ; G. J. Garland, St. James's
A.C. ; B. J. Angle, Thames R.C. ; R. Frost-Smith, Clapton
.B.C. ; J. G. Chambers, Amateur Athletic Club ; E. T.
Campbell, Clapton B.C. ; and Richard Butler, the present
editor of the Referee, as honorary secretary.

I saw most of the big glove-fights that were brought off in
the home district, and most of the good-class competitions
too.

At Sadler's Wells on October 26, 1877, when Jim Goode
fought round after round with a broken arm with Micky Rees,
I suddenly turned my head and found that we were surrounded
by a large body of police.

The principals and the seconds were later on charged at
the police court. A considerable number of the company on
the stage, as soon as the presence of the police was discovered,
made hurried exits in wrong directions. I was more fortunate,
knowing the ropes. I dropped gently over into the orchestra
and went the way of the band.

I remember a competition at a well-known sporting house
in the Old Nichol, the Five Ink Horns, kept by Ted Napper,
in which one of the competitors was killed in the ring. He
was laid out on the bagatelle board with the gloves left on —
it was Saturday night — to await the inquest on Monday.

MY LIFE 173

I saw the memorable fight between the two bantams,
Punch Dowsett and Tommy Hawkins, at the Cambridge Heath
Skating Rink on December n, 1877, and I remember the joy
with which every time the latter got a blow in the crowd
yelled, " Go it, Mr. Justice Hawkins ! "

Some months later, in August '78, Hawkins fought Joe
Fowler, this time for the featherweight championship. The
fight was begun at St. Helena Gardens, Rotherhithe.

The men fought on a wooden stage, probably the old band-
stand converted. There were several private fights in the
crowd. An old scrapper who was drunk climbed up on to
the ring. Ted Napper, one of the seconds, took hold of him,
turned him upside down, and dropped him on to his head on
the muddy ground below.

After fighting two hours darkness came on, and the affair
was adjourned.

Mr. E. J. Francis, our publisher, who, after his Athenaum
experiences, doubtless found the Referee entertainments an
exciting change, during the proceedings lost his gold watch
and chain, or, as the gentleman who took it would probably
say, his " red super and slang."

On the following Monday there was a meeting at the Five
Ink Horns to make further arrangements. Two Referee men
were there, our present editor and the late Mr. Joe Jenn, who
was on the staff.

Mr. Jenn had been a pedestrian by profession and a piano-
forte tuner by trade. His real business — and pleasure — was
pugilism : and it was the glory of his life that he had some
share in training Tom Sayers.

A place in which the mill could be finished was eventually
found. And what a place it was ! It was the top floor of
an empty warehouse in Stepney. A ring of about fourteen
feet square had been pitched, and around it straw was littered.
The price of admission, which had been comparatively high
at the beginning, was gradually lowered, and eventually
because they were making such a noise outside and attracting
the attention of the police, some of the " mob " were admitted
for nothing.

Let me tell you the story of that fight as an illustration of
what we had to endure in the old days before glove-fighting

174 MY LIFE

was recognized as a manly British sport, and when the rough
element was " the predominant partner/' or soon became so
during the progress of the programme.

The Fowler-Hawkins fight was brought off on a blazing
August afternoon. The heat was terrible, and the proverbial
herrings in a barrel had by comparison comfortable accom-
modation.

Every time the heaving mass rolled and surged around the
ring there was an ominous swaying of the floor.

Some of the local sporting gentry, unable to obtain admission
in the legitimate way, climbed on to the roof and began to
remove the tiles in order to get a peep at the proceedings.

They did not remove sufficient of the roof to give us any
air, but we got a liberal shower of dirt and lime, which added
considerably to the thirst the heat had already engendered.

The remembrance of that afternoon will linger with me
while memory lasts. I had what was supposed to be a good
seat on the floor near the ropes, but as I had to support the
weight of about twenty other sportsmen on my back there
were times when I could have done with a less uninterrupted
view of the proceedings.

That fight took place on a hot August afternoon in 1878.
That I am alive to write about it on a snowy March morning
in 1916 I am thankful.

I remember a glove-fight that took place in a certain chapel
in Bloomsbury, and the referee officiated in the pulpit.

Bill Richardson's was a great sporting house in the East
End. This house, " The Blue Anchor," was not only an
East End, but a West End resort. It was not a Corinthian
house of call, but the Corinthians were generally called to it.
When any big sporting events were to be brought off the
East End generally gave the West the " office."

It was at Sadler's Wells where Charles Franks frequently
provided excellent competitions, that Knifton, the Woolwich
Infant, or the Eighty-one Ton Gun, as he was variously called,
made his debut, and many a good man fought in the ring
fitted on the stage in the sporting days of sunny old Sads.

Charley Mitchell and Chesterfield Goode were the pets of
swelldom. Ned Donelly was the aristocratic instructor who
had succeeded the Game Chicken of the Dickens days, and

MY LIFE 175

Ned was generally to be seen somewhere near the old Criterion
bar at the noonday hour.

I saw the fight between Tom Allen and Charley Davis, and
the fight at Sadler's Wells on October 29, 1877, between Tom
Allen and Gilbert Tomkin, when some blood of Tomkin's on
Tom Allen's gloves caused one of the young lions of the
Daily Telegraph to roar fiercely about the brutality of the
noble art.

And now there is hardly a daily newspaper in London that
does not give a full and often enthusiastic report of encounters
in which the tapping of the claret is on quite a generous scale.

That the old-fashioned English sport had at one time
become debased there is no doubt, but it was because there
was no proper home for it, and it had to be brought off amid
more or less ruffianly surroundings, and was often conducted
on the " win, tie, or wrangle " principle.

But the sport never really declined or showed the white
feather, and eventually it triumphed by showing the white
shirt.

The Pelican Club, under the admirable management of
Mr. Ernest Wells, saved the situation, and at the Pelican
upper Bohemia sat side by side with sporting Belgravia in
immaculate evening dress on Sunday nights — or rather
Monday mornings, for the fights began after midnight — to see
the champions contend for sums that the old knuckle fighters
would never in their wildest dreams have imagined could be
earned at the game.

Then came the National Sporting Club, where Evans and
supper were once synonymous, and boxing had come to its
own again.

Until a year or two ago I used to attend these fistic causeries
de lundi regularly and in excellent company. My friend of
many long years, Sir Melville Macnaghten, late Chief of the
C.I.D. at Scotland Yard, had the charming idea of giving
little Corinthian dinners on Monday nights at his house,
32 Warwick Square.

The little party generally consisted of Sir Melville, Colonel
Vivian Majendie, Mr. B. J. Angle, Mr. Tom Anderson, Mr.
Charles Moore, an old Indian friend of Sir Melville, and
myself.

176 MY LIFE

After dinner we drove to the National Sporting, and many
a fine contest was a fitting finish to the Corinthian night's
entertainment.

That pleasant little party of sportsmen meets on Monday
nights, alas, no more. Eheu ! fugacts . . .

Apropos of Majendie, my friend Captain Leonard Bell, late
of the Royal Artillery, recently called to my mind that in
1896 Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Henry Smith, K.C.B., formerly
Chief Commissioner of the City of London Police, wrote an
article on " The Streets of London " in Blackwood's Magazine.
In a portion dealing with the dynamite outrages he mentioned
the bravery of a " young Artillery officer " who would be
telephoned for and would drive straight where he was wanted,
and smilingly remove the clockwork from an infernal machine.

Vivian Majendie died without the Victoria Cross, but
many a time and oft he performed deeds in his official capacity
as Inspector of Explosives to the Home Office that if performed
upon the battlefield could not have failed to have won him
the proud distinction.

The mention of the Heenan and Sayers fight revives my
memories of Adah Isaacs Menken, for Heenan was one of her
many husbands.

It was in 1864 that I saw her at Astley's Theatre, where
she was playing Mazeppa, bound to the fiery untamed steed.

But I had previously formed one of the little crowd that
used to wait on Menken nights to see the " famous and
fearless " American actress drive by in her rather showy
brougham. You could always tell when she was coming by
the jingle of the bells which adorned the horses.

Adah Isaacs Menken was not of Jewish descent. She was
christened Adelaide, and her father's name was McCord. He
was a merchant in good circumstances in New Orleans. But
he came to grief, and when he died he left a widow, a daughter,
Adelaide, aged eight, and two little girls still younger, and
nothing else.

The two little girls could dance — their father, who was
passionately fond of dancing, had had them taught by a
French professor of the art — and they got engagements in the
ballet at the New Orleans Opera House. Adelaide McCord
became a leading danseuse at the Tacon Theatre, Havana.

MY LIFE 177

After a time she returned to New Orleans and taught
French and Latin in a girls' school, and it was about this
time that she published her first book of poems. In Texas
she started a paper, and she was also carried off by Indians.

In 1856, at Galveston, Texas, she married her first husband,
a young musician, Alexander Isaac Menken, whose name she
ever afterwards used.

At Cincinnati, where she acted with Edwin Booth, she began
to contribute articles and poems to the newspapers.

An article she wrote in the Israelite — she had adopted her
husband's faith and changed her name from Adelaide to
Adah to please him — was copied into the English newspapers,
and Baron Rothschild sent the young authoress his personal
congratulations.

What happened to Menken, the musician, I do not know,
but in 1859 Adah became Mrs. J. C. Heenan.

It was in '61 that she made her first appearance in America
as Mazeppa, and it was at the Green Street Theatre, Albany.

Then she married " Orpheus C. Kerr " without waiting to
divorce the famous prize-fighter. But she got rid of Heenan
legally a year later.

It was in 1864 that she came to England, and was quickly
snapped up for Astley's.

This is how Mazeppa was described on the playbill at
Astley's, under a block which represented a lady in fleshings
bound to a fiery, untamed steed :

Miss Adah Isaacs Menken, who has earned well-deserved
laurels in California, the Colonies, and the United States.
Great curiosity is at its height respecting the part being per-
formed by a Lady ; but the English Public will judge and
appreciate the character in this Classic Drama represented by
a Heroine (in a Classic Dress) who has performed it hundreds
of nights.

Menken had played Mazeppa hundreds of nights in America.
She came to grief at first. She was strapped to a horse which
started from the footlights up an eighteen-inch run into a
painted mountain.

The fiery, untamed steed, unused to its rider, plunged off

M

178 MY LIFE

the platform on to the stage, and Menken was picked up with
blood streaming from a wound in her shoulder. But she
insisted upon being bound to the horse again, and this time
the feat was safely accomplished.

Menken played Mazeppa in London for a long time, and
also appeared at Astley's in a drama, The Child of the Sun,
written for her by John Brougham.

She went to Paris and became the friend of Alexandre
Dumas. I have a photograph of the two taken together in
quite a friendly and familiar attitude. In London Charles
Dickens and Algernon Swinburne were her devoted literary
admirers.

She dedicated her first book of poems, " Infelicia," to
Charles Dickens, and he accepted the dedication and sent her
a kindly little letter :

" Gad's Hill Place,

" Higham, by Rochester, Kent.
" Monday, zist October, 1867.

"DEAR MISS^MENKEN, — I shall have great pleasure in
accepting your dedication, and I thank you for your portrait
as a highly remarkable specimen of photography.

" I also thank you for the verses enclosed in your note.
Many such enclosures come to me, but few so pathetically
written, and fewer still so modestly sent.

" Faithfully yours,

" CHARLES DICKENS."

The poems of Adah Isaacs Menken have again and again
been attributed — at least some of them — to Swinburne.
This is how the mistake arose.

My journalistic godfather, John Thomson, was Swinburne's
secretary. John Thomson was in love with Menken — madly
in love with her.

Menken one day, just as Ambrose Bierce had done, showed
Thomson a book in which she had pasted the poems she had
written in various American newspapers, and one or two
poems still in manuscript.

" Why don't you make a book of them ? " said Thomson.
"I'll get it published. John Camden Hotten will jump at
them."

ALEXANDRE DUMAS
AND ADAH ISAACS MENKEN

MY LIFE 179

Hotten took the poems, and John Thomson went over the
proofs — and every line of " Infelicia " is the work^of Adah
Menken herself.

My friend Andrew Chatto was Hotten's right hand at the
time. It was he who received the copy from Menken at
Hotten's place in Piccadilly.

Years afterwards Chatto gave me 'the whole of the cuttings
and the whole of the manuscript in Menken's handwriting
from which the book was set up. And I have them still.

Here are two verses from one of her poems :

/ can but own my life is vain,

A desert void of peace.
I missed the goal I sought to gain,
I missed the measure of the strain
That lulls Fame's fever in the brain.

And bids Earth's tumult cease.

Myself ! Alas for theme so poor,

A theme but rich in Fear ;
I stand a wreck on Error's shore,
A spectre not within the door,
A houseless shadow evermore,

An exile lingering here.

In 1866 Menken went back to America, divorced Mr. Newell
— " Orpheus C. Kerr " — and married Mr. James Barclay.

In '68 she went to Paris to rehearse The Pirates of the
Savannah, was taken ill and died, and she was buried in Pere
Lachaise. On her tombstone are the words : " Thou knowest."
She was born a Christian and died a Jewess, and her body,
after lying in Pere Lachaise for some years, was removed to
the Jewish portion of the cemetery in Montparnasse.

Among the archives of the firm of Chatto and Windus is a
letter — a pathetic little letter — that John Thomson left for
Adah Menken at Hotten's place in Piccadilly.

She had promised to meet Thomson there, but she never
came. She had gone to Paris to die.

This is the true story of Adelaide McCord, who died aged
thirty-three, and who in her brief span of life had been actress,

i8o

MY LIFE

equestrienne, poetess, journalist, and sculptor, the friend of
Theophile Gautier and Alexandre Dumas, Charles Reade,
Dickens, and Swinburne, the wife of Menken the musician,
Heenan the prize-fighter, Orpheus C. Kerr the humorist, and
Mr. James Barclay, whose profession I do not know.

And perhaps the only man who broke his heart at losing
her was John Thomson, secretary to Algernon Charles Swin-
burne, sometime dramatic critic of the Weekly Dispatch, and
the first man who gave me a chance in Fleet Street.

That he loved her, he told her ; that her death broke his
heart, he told me.

CHAPTER XXI

THE " Dagonet Ballads " have at various times brought me
into the limelight, and occasionally made me feel somewhat
uncomfortable in its glare.

" Christmas Day in the Workhouse " was for a time
vigorously denounced as a mischievous attempt to set the
paupers against their betters, but when a well-known social
reformer died recently I read in several daily papers that he
always declared that it was reading " Christmas Day in the
Workhouse " which started him on his ceaseless campaign
for old age pensions, a campaign which he lived to see crowned
with victory.

I have a bill in which " George R. Sims, the Author of
' Billy's Rose/ " is announced to appear " positively " in
support of Mrs. Georgina Weldon in her great battle for
justice.

I knew Mrs. Georgina Weldon after the days of the Gounod
trouble, when she had become a familiar figure in the Law
Courts, and I have frequently seen her rise at inconvenient
moments to address the learned judge.

But I never espoused the litigious lady's cause, and when
I saw myself announced on staring wall-posters I at once sent
a message to the manager of the hall requesting that the
posters should be withdrawn. They were not withdrawn, but
another notice was posted over them, and it was to this effect :
"Mr. George R. Sims, the Author of 'Billy's Rose,' will
positively not appear with Mrs. Georgina Weldon to-night."

It was through the " Dagonet Ballads " that I first came
in touch with Robert Buchanan, the poet, who in later years
was my companion and friend and my collaborator in four or
five Adelphi dramas.

In the Contemporary Review he reviewed a number of
volumes which had recently been published, and he made a

181

i8z MY LIFE

very charming reference to my modest effort, for which I was
very grateful.

In some of his earlier reviews Buchanan had not pleased
the poets upon whom he sat in judgment.

I have somewhere safely put away — so safely that I cannot
find it—" The Fleshly School of Poetry," by Thomas Maitland.
" Thomas Maitland " was Robert Buchanan, and Robert
Buchanan afterwards expressed his deep regret for the pain
which his criticism had caused Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

I have also somewhere safely concealed Swinburne's reply
to " Thomas Maitland/' It was entitled " Under the Micro-
scope " and was a savage denunciation of " Thomas Maitland,"
upon whose head torrents of invective were poured forth by
the mighty master of words. This titanic battle of the bards
took place in 1870.

When Buchanan reviewed my modest ballads they had
been published in book form.

The " Dagonet Ballads " have had, during their forty years'
run, three publishers, and in two instances the whole stock
was burnt out. But I am glad to say that they have been
published for many years by Messrs. Routledge, of Broadway,
Ludgate Hill, without misadventure.

The " Dagonet Ballads " were printed from time to time in
the Referee. They were never put forward by me as poetry,
but were intended for reciters who wanted something dramatic.
I generally wrote them on the Friday night, posted them
about 3 A.M., and went to the office on Saturday afternoon to
correct the proof.

\ One of the best known, " Billy's Rose," was written after
returning from a glove-fight brought off in a shed in the
East End, and " Billy's Rose " appeared in the same number
of the Referee that contained a wonderful word-picture of the
fearful fight by the editor.

'" Billy's Rose" was always cropping up in the most
unexpected places.

Just before the Derby of 1890 I went down with Mr. Sidney
Jousiffe to stay with his brother, Mr. Charles Jousiffe, at Seven
Barrows.

Charles Jousiffe, the famous trainer of Bendigo, had invited
me to see the Derby trial of Surefoot, who was then first

MY LIFE 183

favourite for the event. The trial took place between six
and seven in the morning, and so far as I can remember the
only persons present were myself, the trainer, Sidney Jousiffe,
and the Rev. C. R. Light, who was then vicar of Lambourne.
The vicar, who was a fine sportsman, was very much interested
in the stable-lads, among whom he was doing excellent work.

After the trial of Surefoot — who, it will be remembered,
started at 95 to 40 on, and was beaten by Sainfoin — we went
back to Seven Barrows to breakfast, and Charley Jousiffe
asked Mr. Light and myself if we would like to spend half an
hour in the evening among the lads.

I went, and it was with mixed feelings that I heard the
vicar say, " That lad is a fine reciter. You ought to hear him
do your ' Billy's Rose/ '

The stable lad, a smart young fellow, took the hint, stepped
forward, and gave vent to the whole of the poem for my
special benefit.

Of course I shook him warmly by the hand and congratulated
him, and I was right in doing so, for I observed as I turned,
away that he had brought tears to the eyes of several of the
lads.

Alas, the defeat of Surefoot brought tears to the eyes of
many of us who had long since passed our boyhood !

The " Dagonet Ballads " were recited at matinees, and one
or two of them were particularly popular at the professional
benefits which were common in those days but have now
practically disappeared.

The benefit was sometimes part of the contract, so much a
week and a benefit. The benefit was not always so profitable
as the public imagined.

Wilson Barrett once showed me a telegram he had had
from his brother George.

" DEAR WILL," — Barrett's real name was William, not
Wilson — " I have had a benefit. Please send me a fiver to
get out of the town."

George Barrett was a fine low comedian, with a happy
combination of pathos and humour and natural characteriza-
tion. His Jarvis, the showman in The Lights o' London, and
his Jaikes in The Silver King are among the happiest memories
of old playgoers.

184 MY LIFE

But he found himself very much out of his element when
his brother deserted the modern for the classical drama.
Wilson Barrett, on the contrary, revelled in classic costume
and poetic diction, but when he tried Hamlet he rather fell
back into the old melodramatic style and failed to please the
critics.

He used to come to my house a good deal at that time, an^
one day just before the production of Hamlet he asked my
housekeeper, who was generally known as " Mrs. Bulleyboy,"
if she would like a seat for the first night, and the offer was
gratefully accepted.

Shortly after the production of Hamlet Barrett called, and
the door was opened by Mrs. Bulleyboy.

" Well," said the popular tragedian to her, " how did you
like Hamlet ? "

" Well, sir," was the frank reply, "I'm not much of a judge
of that sort of thing. But you did your little bit all right."

But to return to the " Dagonet Ballads." In a Drury Lane
drama by my friend and collaborator, Henry Pettitt, one of
the characters was always endeavouring to recite " The
Lifeboat," and being sternly suppressed by everybody within
hearing distance.

" I will now recite ' The Lifeboat/ " was his gag wheeze,
and the usual reply was, " Oh, ' The Lifeboat ' be hanged ! "

The gentleman who wished " The Lifeboat " that fate had
his wish gratified. " The Lifeboat " was hanged, or, rather,
hung. A well-known painter selected it as the subject of his
Academy picture, and it was hung — on the line.

After several ballads had appeared in the Referee, Edmund
Yates asked me if I would write some for the World. He
suggested that they should not deal with low life, but with
society or rather semi-society subjects.

For the first " Dagonet Ballads " in the Referee I received
one guinea. For each of the " Ballads of Babylon " — that
was the title I gave them in the World — I received five pounds.
For the last " Dagonet Ballad " I ever wrote, and I wrote at
the request of the editor of the New York Spirit of the Times,
I received forty pounds.

But that was one of the pleasures of being a " poet." There
were pains and penalties.

MY LIFE 185

A " Dagonet Ballad " once caused considerable consterna-
tion in a fashionable assembly at Washington. It was one
of the ballads I had written for Edmund Yates.

One February night in 1886 Mrs. Brown-Potter, an aristo-
cratic amateur, who was just starting her career on the stage,
gave a recitation of " Ostler Joe." But let me quote from
the New York Times :

Mrs. James Brown-Potter and her play have been the
great topics of the week, and Washington has not always
endorsed the verdict of New York. This amateur has been
the first real social sensation of the winter. Her proceedings
at the amateur entertainment in Mrs. Whitney's house
have been the nine days' wonder and gossip.

Her reading of Swinburne's " Hostler Joe " raised
universal condemnation about the town and distressed and
deeply embarrassed every man and woman in the chosen
audience that had to listen to those indecent verses. As
an attempted defence it is said that Mrs. Potter first read
the poem to three prominent society men, and they thought
it very " chic " and quite the thing. Again, it is claimed
that only the title was named to the most prominent of the
trio, and he, mistaking it for one of John Hay's dialect
poems, thought that it would make a variety in the usual
placid routine of amateur readings, and said, " Read it."

The embarrassed audience and the silence that reigned
at the conclusion of the recitation were a sufficient intima-
tion of the storm of censure that has since followed. As an
instance of the depravity of the times it may be told that
since that unfortunate night the libraries and book-stores
have been besieged by people anxious to read the verses
again, and the few known to own private copies of Swin-
burne's are overrun with borrowers.

This sensational incident gave great activity to the sales
of the tickets for the matinee of The Russian Honeymoon,
and the audience was a most remarkable one. The under-
current of gossip between the acts was " Hostler Joe," and
the insinuations of Metropolitan visitors that Washington
was absurdly prudish as well as provincial to be shocked by
that modern poem were vehemently repelled.

i86 MY LIFE

Swinburne had been accused of writing the poems of
Adah Isaacs Menken, but I never imagined that any of my
verses would be fathered upon the great poet.

Some of the other papers announced that it was not
Swinburne but Simms, and then there was a rush for the
poems of William Gilmore Simms.

But presently the New York World published the poem
and informed its readers that it was by the author of The
Lights o' London.

Several enterprising publishers issued " Ostler Joe," and
some of them reprinted the whole of the " Dagonet Ballads "
in book form, but omitted to send me a banker's draft.

Then the American Press thought it was about time to
rehabilitate me, and the following statement was made in a
New York journal :

" The poem, a sort of homely Will Carle ton ballad, and
about as harmless as ' Over the Hills to the Poor-House/ has
been published and republished and read by perhaps four-
fifths of the entire adult population of the United States."

The Chicago Daily Tribune said : " Mrs. James Brown-
Potter has done a wonderful thing for Mr. George R. Sims.
His poem, ' Ostler Joe ' — and it is a pretty good poem — is
being printed all over the country."

I don't know where the " wonderful thing " came in, for
I have never to this day had a red cent out of the American
book.

Mrs. Brown-Potter, who subsequently appeared in London
and America at various dates, and as a rule with Kyrle Bellew
as her leading man, is perhaps best remembered here by her
Charlotte Corday, which was produced at the Adelphi in 1898.

But these things happened many years after " Ostler Joe "
had been such a big reclame for her.

Kyrle Bellew was an enormous favourite in America, where
his picturesque appearance and romantic manner won the
hearts of playgoers, more especially of the fair sex, and he
was familiarly known as " Curly Bellew," a name suggested
by the artistic arrangement of his locks, one of which, hung
delicately over his forehead, had a poetic touch of grey in it.

The New York World, when, as will be seen a little later on,
I had undertaken to write a play for Mrs. Brown-Potter on

MY LIFE 187

" Ostler Joe " lines, wondered where Kyrle Bellew would
come in.

" Mrs. Potter will, of course, play the part of the misguided
wife, a role which Mr. Sims may be relied upon to suit to her
undoubted capabilities. It is difficult, however, to see where
Kyrle Bellew will come in. Mrs. Potter will not act without
him, and yet to expect him to act the part of the 'ostler,
wearing tight leather breeches and close-cropped hair, would
be simply preposterous."

" Curly " Bellew with close-cropped hair ! A thrill of
horror would have stirred the bosoms of thousands of fair
playgoers on both sides of the Atlantic.

Cora Urquhart Potter was the daughter-in-law of a bishop,
and a very popular bishop. He is said to be responsible for
the definition of the different way in which an American and
an Englishman would greet a dignitary of the Church.

" An Englishman with whom I had become well acquainted,"
he said, " would always address me deferentially. An
American who had met me once would, meeting me for a
second time, slap me on the back and say, ' Hallo, Bish ! '

Mr. Brown-Potter, the bishop's son, was never very much
in evidence over here, and the marriage was dissolved in 1903.

One of the American papers published some statistics in
connexion with the " Ostler Joe " boom which are interesting.
According to the American authority there were 667 leading
articles written on " Ostler Joe," 4320 paragraphs, and 1285
newspapers reprinted the piece in full.

It was recited in 290 theatres, and 82 clergymen referred
to it in their sermons. Last, but not least, says the American
journal, one publisher confesses to having netted 2000 dollars
in a fortnight. And Dagonet netted nothing.

A New York playwright wrote a play on it. I had written
a play on it, and I have waited years for it to be produced.
It was cast and in rehearsal, and the scenery painted and
everything ready for its production when the war broke out,
and my play, which I called Jenny o* Mine, came back to me,
and still lies snugly in its long resting-place. Mr. F. Belasco
set " Ostler Joe " to music for Tony Hart. In one of the
Mikado companies " Katisha " recited it in a Japanese
setting.

i88 MY LIFE

At Koster and Dial's Mr. James Gough recited it as a star
turn. Miss Lillian Lewis, a Chicago actress, billed herself as
" America's own dramatic queen," and announced that
Geo. R. Sims's poem, " Ostler Joe," was written expressly for
her.

Another Chicago lady, Miss Anna Morgan, declared that
she was the only real and original reader of the poem, and
that all other ladies who had recited it, Mrs. Brown-Potter
included, were base imitators.

The discussion became at last so acrimonious as to which
was the original reciter that the New York Dramatic Mirror
suggested that a matinee should be given, and that the only
item should be the competitive reading of " Ostler Joe " by
all the claimants.

Of course there was the inevitable parody, " Hustler Jim "
(with apologies to G. R. Sims, Bret Harte and Co.). At
Baltimore the announcement that Miss Blanche Chapman
would recite " Ostler Joe " at Ford's Grand Opera House
packed the theatre to overflowing.

Some of the American newspapers who did not know set
about to find out who I was, and one special correspondent in
London favoured them with the following complimentary
description :

" I don't suppose Mr. George R. Sims will be particularly
satisfied when he learns of the tempest in a teapot his verses
have created. He is rather a disagreeable man personally
with a wonderful opinion of himself and an abominable
temper. He has been singularly successful during the past
five or six years, and I presume he has put aside enough money
to make him independent for life."

Why the ballad should have made such a sensation in
Washington I could never understand. Here in London Mrs.
Kendal had recited it at a fashionable charity matinee at a
West End theatre, and in Washington, as a matter of fact,
Mrs. Brown-Potter had read it to Secretary Endicott and
Mrs. Endicott and Senator Whitney, and they had asked her
to recite it.

In the meantime the " Ostler Joe " sensation had crossed
the Atlantic, and the ballad had caught on with London
audiences.

MY LIFE 189

Lionel Brough was going to America. At a benefit given
to him as a gracious send-off at Drury Lane a rhymed address
was spoken by Mrs. Keeley, and Mrs. Kendal recited " Ostler
Joe " at the National Theatre.

" Ostler Joe," thanks to Mrs. Kendal, also introduced his
homely figure at the St. James's Hall. On July 5, 1886,
Mr. Cusins gave a concert, and all the musical world still in
town flocked to listen to the singing of Albani, Scalchi, Lloyd,
and Santley, but, as was duly recorded in the notices of the
concert, they also went to hear Mrs. Kendal recite " Ostler
Joe," and on turning to the notice in the Lady I find that
Mrs. Kendal's recitation of " Ostler Joe " was a marvellous
performance, " at the conclusion of which there was not a
dry eye in the room."

I never imagined that it would be my fate to make a St.
James's Hall audience cry at an Albani, Scalchi, Lloyd, and
Santley concert. I felt that I ought to apologize. I didn't
then, but I do so now.

Before the sensation in America had subsided, Mrs. Brown-
Potter came .^o England. She had determined to be a real
actress, and Kyrle Bellew was to be her leading man.

Kyrle Bellew was an old acquaintance of mine when his
father, the Rev. J. M. Bellew, was the vicar of St. Mark's,
Hamilton Terrace.

The Rev. J. M. Bellew, whose real name was Higgins, was
a finished elocutionist and gave public readings. He was very
much interested in the drama, and it was sometimes
assumed that when the evening service at St. Mark's was
sharp and short it was because our pastor was in a hurry to
get to a rehearsal at the Lyceum.

Kyrle Bellew brought Mrs. Potter to see me. She thought
that if I would write a play for her, and she could announce
it as by the author of " Ostler Joe," it would be a pretty safe
card in the States.

Mrs. Brown-Potter had her two golden-haired little girls
with her here in England, and had also brought her father,
Colonel Urquhart, with her. She gave me a contract and
two hundred-pound notes on account of fees, and I set to
work, and in due course handed my new manageress a four-act
play, which I called A Wife's Ordeal. It was a free adaptation

IQO MY LIFE

of a French play, but more or less English in characterization
and sentiment.

Mrs. Brown-Potter and Kyrle Bellew went back to America
with the play, but before they produced it in New York they
gave it a trial show at a one-night stand somewhere in the
Wild West, and I presume that the Wild West did not care
about it.

At any rate, it never came to New York, and I put it away
for some years, little dreaming that it would ever be the play
that would help to bring about a real life tragedy.
\ It was taken out to Australia by Arthur Dacre and Amy
Roselle, and when I received my fees from Arthur Dacre he
had murdered his wife and committed suicide.

The Wife's Ordeal was the title of the stage play. It was
the title of the tragedy of Amy Roselle's life.

She was a charming artress, and came of a theatrical
family. Her brother, Percy Roselle, was a dwarf, and played
children's parts in the Drury Lane pantomimes as " Master
Percy Roselle " after he had come to man's estate.

Arthur Dacre — his real name was Arthur James — was a
doctor. He took to the stage and became a fair actor. He
had a wife, from whom he was separated. He fell in love
with Amy Roselle and she fell in love with him.

And the wife waited for them sometimes at the stage door
and made scenes.

But eventually Arthur Dacre married Amy Roselle, and for
a time there was sunshine.

But presently came the trouble of the joint engagement.
The Dacres were a devoted couple, and the idea of separation
by professional engagements was abhorrent to them.

Managers wanted Amy Roselle, but they didn't want
Arthur Dacre.

But the Dacres stood out for "a joint engagement/'
especially when the offer to the wife came from a touring
manager.

Their obstinacy in the matter brought about a disastrous
state of affairs. They both remained out of an engagement
so long that the wolf was at the door.

Mr. E. W. Royce went to Australia with, I think, one of
the Gaiety companies. He knew the Dacres, sympathized

MY LIFE 191

with them, and promised to see if he could get them an
Australian engagement.

The Dacres waited patiently and bravely for the cable that
was to bring them the good news.

k Dacre and Amy Roselle had read The Wife's Ordeal, and
they fancied the parts would suit them. Might they have it
for their repertoire in Australia ?

, I told Dacre that it had not succeeded with Mrs. Brown-
Potter and Kyrle Bellew, but he said that he was sure it had
never had a fair chance.

\ One day Dacre came to me radiant. The cable had come.
Their fares had been sent. They would produce The Wife's
Ordeal at the Bijou Theatre, Melbourne.
b. The next news of The Wife's Ordeal I had received from
Dacre in a letter dated " Bijou Theatre, Melbourne, July loth,
1895."

" MY DEAR SIMS, — We produced The Wife's Ordeal on
Saturday night with every possible sign of success, though if
ever two poor devils had everything against them we had.
The weather was hotter than anything I have ever known,
and it continued so for eight days and nights without a
break. ^

"As if the sun was not fierce enough, there were miles of
bush on fire, and you could smell the burning and feel the
wind as hot as if you were standing in front of a furnace.

" But we had an undoubted success. Everybody likes us,
and everybody assures us that, taking the weather into
consideration, we have done wonderfully well."

Then came another letter dated " Melbourne, 5th March."

" MY DEAR SIMS, — I wish I could send you a better account
of the receipts. I send you the notices, as I know you would
like to see them. What the heaven-born geniuses could see
in common between the Doll's House and your play Heaven
only knows.

" Whatever the fate of the play, I shall always be grateful
to you and The Wife's Ordeal for one thing, and that is that
it has served to obtain for Mrs. Dacre an excellent introduction

192 MY LIFE

here. But the work is terrible for her. It is as much as she
can do to get her dinner and lie down for an hour before the
rehearsal and night performance. I took her for a few hours'
sail on Sunday, and that is literally the first bit of relaxation
we have had since we have been here.

" I enclose official statement of nightly receipts and a draft
for your fees. " Always yours,

" ARTHUR DACRE."

The Dacres, after playing for some time in Melbourne,
visited Adelaide, and in the autumn they were in Sydney, and
Dacre sent me a banker's draft for further performances of
The Wife's Ordeal and told me he was entering into a contract
with Mr. George Leech to play in The Land of the Moa.

When I opened Dacre's last letter the good fellow who sent
it had murdered his wife and put an end to his own existence.

The Land of the Moa was taken off and The Silence of Dean
Maitland was put into rehearsal for immediate production.
The part of Dean Maitland was allotted to Dacre. It was the
longest he had ever studied, and he appeared to think that it
had been given him with the object of harassing him.

He told friends who spoke with him and tried to soothe
him that Melbourne had crushed his spirits. He was in a
state of high nervous tension, and he and his wife were seen
later on weeping together. This was on Saturday afternoon.

On the Sunday, worn out with trouble and despairing of
the future — they had met with reverses everywhere in
Australia, and had made nothing to clear off the liabilities
they had left behind them in England — they brought their
life's tragedy to a close.

Arthur Dacre, there is every reason to believe at her own
request, shot his loyal and devoted wife, and then shot
himself.

I heard afterwards that the stress of the situation was
increased by the knowledge that Amy Roselle would shortly
have to undergo a serious surgical operation.

In the room occupied by the Dacres was found a small
casket containing some English soil and moss. It had been
taken from the grave of the infant child they had left behind
them in the old country. Amy Roselle had taken that

MY LIFE 193

casket across the seas with her, and she expressed a wish to
a friend that should she die in Australia the casket with its
contents should be buried with her.

The last act of The Wife's Ordeal had been played. Amy
Roselle was at rest.

CHAPTER XXII

WHETHER George Edwardes came to me or I went to him I
cannot say with certainty, but we met in the middle 'eighties.

I had had for some time at the back of my head an idea of
doing a more or less operatic burlesque of Faust.

I had talked it over with Pettitt, and one evening George
Edwardes, who had then blossomed into management — I
think he was running Little Jack Sheppard at the time — told
me that he thought that the days of the old-fashioned burlesque
with puns and parodies of popular songs were numbered, and
he believed there was a great chance for something light and
bright with original music and plenty of pretty girls who
could sing and dance.

I saw an opening, and I sprang the idea of Faust upon
him. A few days afterwards he commissioned Pettitt and
myself to write the play, and it was agreed that Meyer Lutz,
who at the time was the chef d'orchestre at the Gaiety, should
compose the music.

John Hollingshead had entered into partnership with
George Edwardes when Little Jack Sheppard was produced.
Before the end of the run he had retired and left the young
Irishman who was to become " the father of musical comedy "
in sole possession.

The authors of Little Jack Sheppard were my kinsman
William Yardley and H. Pottinger Stephens, who was
familiarly known in Fleet Street as " Pot/'

" Pot " did some excellent comic-opera work with Teddy
Solomon as his composer. Teddy was a clever musician and
a delightful little fellow, but very Bohemian in his financial
arrangements.

He was a great favourite with all his brother composers,
who thought highly of his music.

I remember that on one occasion, when he was busy upon

194

MY LIFE 195

an opera, he was very much annoyed by certain creditors who
persistently interfered with his moments of inspiration by
serving him with writs.

Sir Arthur Sullivan, Frederic Clay, and one or two friends—
I think I was one of them — clubbed together and gave him a
couple of hundred pounds in order that he might get rid of
the worriers. The money was handed over to Teddy in crisp
bank-notes one Saturday morning.

On the Sunday evening Clay and Sullivan dined together
at the Cafe Royal. Suddenly they heard a familiar laugh,
looked across the room, and saw a young friend of theirs at
an adjacent table. Teddy was giving a jolly little dinner-
party to half a dozen of his friends, who were both of the
brave and the fair sex. And the champagne corks were
jumping merrily.

The operatic burlesque of Faust, which was produced at t::e
Gaiety in October 1888, revived at the Globe in 1889, and
again at the Gaiety in 1890, is remarkable at least for one
fact. It brought the phrase " up-to-date " into general use
wherever the English language is spoken.

So little was the phrase known at the time that Augustus
Moore, passing the Gaiety when the bills had just been put
out announcing the forthcoming production, and seeing me
talking to George Edwardes in the entrance hall, came in to
point out to me that the phrase must be wrong. " Surely,"
he said, " if you mean anything at all you mean that Faust is
brought down to date."

But the phrase, unfamiliar as it was in theatrical, literary,
and newspaper circles, was very well known in the commercial
world. It was in the City that I first saw it used. " SIR, — I
beg to enclose a copy of your account up to date."

It was from the City that I got the idea of describing the
Gaiety story of Faust as written " Up-to-date," and the
phrase caught on. But when it was first used at the Gaiety
for the Sims-Pettitt-Lutz version of Faust it had never been
used in any newspaper or book or public speech or private
conversation.

Faust Up-to-date had a wonderful cast. Florence St. John
was Marguerite ; Violet Cameron was Faust ; Lonnen,
Mephistopheles ; George Stone, Valentine ; Maria Jones,

196 MY LIFE

Martha ; and Fanny Robina was Siebel ; and the Vivandiere
was played by a very young actress named Mabel Love.

Bob Martin, as usual, supplied a couple of songs, but nearly
the whole of the music was original and was by Meyer Lutz.

The pas de quatre which he wrote for Faust not only took
the town but became world-famous. The original dancers of
the pas de quatre were Florence Levy, Lillian Price, Eva
Greville, and Maud Wilmot.

There had been some discussion with regard to a romantic
incident in the life of a young lady who was appearing in
Faust — she was supposed to have attempted to commit
suicide — and this led to certain letters in the papers, one of
them being written by Mrs. Millicent Garrett Fawcett.

Mrs. Fawcett was invited to come and see Faust Up-to-date
herself.

She came, she saw, and she sent George Edwardes her
report. Here are some passages from it :

" July 26th. Last night I carried out my promise to
Mr. G. Edwardes and went to the Gaiety Theatre to see
Faust Up-to-date. It was a depressing performance with
hardly any real fun or humour in it ; leaving an impression
(as Mr. Ruskin said of the pantomime of The Forty Thieves)
of ' an ugly and disturbing dream/ '

Here is Mrs. Fawcett 's description of the famous pas de
quatre :

" The dresses of the dancers were pretty, but the dances
were quite the reverse. In one most ungraceful figure, the
four dancing girls stand close together behind one another
and then make what I can only attempt to describe as a sort
of Catherine wheel of legs. It really was rather like fireworks
without the fire, legs shooting out in every direction like the
spokes of a. wheel."

It is a long report, and this is the gentle conclusion : " With
all my fondness for the theatre, I would never go near a theatre
again if they all provided entertainments of the type of
Faust Up-to-date."

I met Meyer Lutz for the first time at Scarborough. It
was his custom to leave the Gaiety at the end of the summer
season in order to conduct the Scarborough Band which
played on the front. The members of the band wore black

MY LIFE 197

coats and black waistcoats, black ties and black top hats, and
their " uniform " gave them the appearance of musical
undertakers.

At the end of the season Meyer Lutz and the members of his
mournfully garbed band put their black toppers in the lockers
under the seats in the bandstand and left them there till they
donned them again the following year, the black suits and
the black hats being, I believe, the property of the town.

I cannot vouch for the truth of the story, but I was assured
by a Scarborough Pressman that the hats of some of the black
band were at least ten years old.

Dear old Meyer Lutz was a character and in many ways a
remarkable man. He was a fine musician and during the
whole time that he was the musical conductor at the Gaiety
he was also organist and director of music at St. George's
Cathedral, Southwark. In his very young days Meyer Lutz
was an infant prodigy — a boy pianist.

Very few people who knew him well as the musical conductor
of the Gaiety burlesques were aware of his very close connexion,
or rather association, with the tragic end of the Mad King of
Bavaria, who drowned himself and his attendant physician in
the Starnberg Lake.

Ludwig of Bavaria built himself a palace that was a world
wonder, dressed himself as Lohengrin and sailed about the
lake at midnight on the back of a mechanical swan ; Ludwig
of Bavaria, who had Wagner's operas magnificently produced
with himself as the sole spectator, after spending millions on
his enchanted palace, wanted to spend more millions in order
to " complete " it.

The Minister President of Bavaria at that time was Baron
von Lutz. Baron von Lutz informed the King that his country
was not in a condition to comply with the royal demand.

Thereupon the King wrote to Baron von Lutz and informed
him that unless the money was forthcoming within seven days
the head of Baron von Lutz would be summarily deprived of
the body to which it belonged.

Baron von Lutz brought the letter before the Bavarian
Cabinet, with the result that a commission was appointed and
the King was declared to be insane and incapable of managing
his own affairs.

198 MY LIFE

The King was later on conveyed to a small castle on the
lake, and Dr. Gudden was appointed to be his medical
attendant.

The mad King only spent one night in his royal prison. On
the evening of the second day, Whit Monday, 1886, he went
for a walk with the doctor and several attendants.

The King talked so rationally that the doctor was put off
his guard, and at his royal patient's request sent the atten-
dants back to the castle.

The King and the doctor walked on. They walked until
they reached the edge of the lake. No one knows what
happened there, but some time afterwards when the non-
return of the King and the doctor to the palace had caused
alarm a search was made, and the bodies of both were found
in the lake.

Some years ago I stood one autumn evening by the little
lamp that throws a red glow over the spot at which the
tragedy occurred. The red lamp was placed there as a
memorial of the tragedy by the mad King's uncle, who was
appointed regent.

My companion was a well-informed official who probably
knew the circumstances as well as anybody, and he told me
that the theory of the experts who had examined the bodies
and examined the lake and the shore was that by the edge
of the water the King had suddenly gripped the physician by
the throat, intending to strangle him and throw his body into
the lake, but the doctor fought for his life, and in the struggle
the King, still gripping the doctor's throat — the marks of the
fingers were still visible when the body was found — dragged
him into the water, forced him under, held him there till he
was drowned, and then walked on and on and on into the
deep waters until they closed over his head, and the Mad
King was at peace at last.

The Baron von Lutz, who by his refusal to advise the
Government to grant the King the million he demanded, was
the indirect cause of the tragedy of the Starnberg Lake, was
the elder brother of Meyer Lutz, who for nearly a quarter of
a century was the master of music at the Gaiety and the
composer of Faust Up-to-date.

It was with Faust Up-to-date, followed by Carmen

MY LIFE 199

Up-to-Data, that I was connected with the Gaiety as a
playwright.

As a playgoer I have a hundred happy memories of the
Temple of the Sacred Lamp. I saw the first performance
that was ever given in the old Gaiety Theatre, and I was
invited to appear on the stage in the last performance in the
Temple that was then doomed to demolition.

This last performance took place on the night of July 4,
1903. The special feature was called The Linkman, or Gaiety
Memories, and many of the old favourites appeared in
characters from the old successes.

Gertie Millar was Morgiana in The Forty Thieves, Ethel
Sydney was Marguerite in Faust Up-to-date, George Grossmith
was Noirtier in Monte Cristo, Junior, and Don Caesar de Bazan
in Ruy Bias ; Edmund Payne was Hassarac in The Forty
Thieves and the Lieutenant in Don Juan, and Lionel Mackinder,
who, though past the age, nobly gave his life for his country
somewhere in France, was Ali Baba and Don Jose in Carmen
Up-to-Data.

But between that memorable night in 1903 and the far-off
opening night in '68 what visions of joy, what memories of
domestic drama and radiant romance !

I remember that at the Gaiety John Hollingshead, in a
spirit of mischievous humour, once gave us The Castle Spectre.

It was at the Gaiety that the company of the Comedie
Fran$aise made its first appearance in England.

On Sarah Bernhardt nights the guinea stalls were often sold
in the " open market " by subscribers for five guineas. That
was in 1879.

In 1880 Sarah came again by herself at a salary of five
hundred and sixty pounds a week.

Henry Irving was playing in Formosa at Drury Lane when
he was released by Chatterton to play the part of Chevenix in
Uncle Dick's Darling.

Adelaide Neilson was the heroine in this well-remembered
Byron play, and there was a curious double contretemps.
She was struck on the head by a piece of scenery, and could
not appear on the following night.

That charming actress, Miss Marie Litton, was Miss Neilson' s
understudy. Hollingshead only heard at twelve o'clock in

2OO

MY LIFE

the day that Miss Neilson would not be able to appear that
evening.

He sent up at once to Miss Litton, who was Mrs. Wybrow
Robertson, only to discover that she had that morning
presented her husband with a small addition to the family.

So " Practical John " had to come forward and make an
apology to the audience, and the part of Mary Belton was
read by Miss Tremaine.

When Hollingshead got up a benefit at the Gaiety for John
Parry, Charles Mathews, who was to have played, was taken
suddenly unwell, and those two evergreen comedians, Mr.
Alfred Bishop and Mr. Charles Collette, divided the characters
between them with great satisfaction to the audience.

The sensation caused by the Dancing Quakers, Mr. Ryley
and Miss Barnum, is probably forgotten, and so is the success
made by Miss Rose Fox in the skipping-rope dance.

Hollingshead found Rose Fox at a penny gaff in the East
End and brought her straight away to the Gaiety.

It was at the Gaiety that Ibsen was first played upon the
English stage. The play was Quicksands and the adapter
Mr. William Archer. And the next production was The
Forty Thieves.

I have a lively remembrance of Arthur Cecil — he shared a
flat near the Haymarket Theatre with Freddy Clay, and I
used to go there for wonderful breakfasts in the Dublin
prawn season — playing Tony Lumpkin at the Gaiety.

I had to see Billy Florence and Mrs. Florence more than
once in The Almighty Dollar at the Gaiety, because I was
writing a play for them to take back to America.

Billy Florence informed me that his greatest ambition was
to settle in this country and get a consulship somewhere.
Bret Harte was at that time a consul at Glasgow, and I think
that put the idea into Florence's head.

It was Billy Florence who strolled round Covent Garden
when peaches were not in season here, went in and bought
and ate six. When he was told they were a guinea each it
was too late for him to resist the temptation of the rare and
refreshing fruit.

But the American invasion of the Gaiety that is, perhaps,
best remembered to-day was that of Mr. Henry E. Dixey, an

MY LIFE 201

American variety actor who brought an entirely American
company with him to play in Adonis.

Dixey was the original Boss Knivett in America in my
Romany Rye in 1882.

Another cherished Gaiety memory is that of the amateur
pantomime played on the afternoon of February 13, 1875.

In the Harlequinade Mr. William Wye, otherwise William
Yardley, was the Clown, Mr. T. Knox Holmes was the Panta-
loon, W. S. Gilbert was Harlequin, and Mademoiselle Rosa was
the Columbine.

Talking of Mademoiselle Rosa reminds me that she was one
of the Alhambra company when they went for a merry sea
trip. They chartered a steamer and the whole company left
London for a Sunday trip to Boulogne, got caught in a terrible
storm in " the middle of the ocean," and gave themselves up
for lost.

M. Georges Jacobi, the musical director, was on board, and
he gave me a vivid description of the scene.

Almost every member of the company was on board,
including the ballet ladies. All had departed arrayed in their
finest frippery for the fascinating of fair France, but when the
great seas washed the decks and swamped the saloons the
result was shocking.

The ship never got to Boulogne, but she managed to bring
the Alhambra company back in safety to the shores of per-
fidious Albion, and they landed, as one of the company put
it, looking like a wrung-out lot of drowned tramps.

But the trade-mark of the Gaiety, if one may use such a
word in connexion with a Temple of Art, was in the old days
burlesque, and our fairest memories are perhaps of Kate
Vaughan and Connie Gilchrist — " The Golden Girl " of
Whistlerian art — and Letty Lind and Sylvia Grey, Cissie
Loftus, Topsy Sinden, and Phyllis Broughton.

Our joyous memories are of Nellie Farren and Marion Hood
and Ada Blanche and Florence St. John, and there are happy
memories of Emily Duncan and Hetty Hamer and Alma
Stanley. Miss Gertie Millar has a Gaiety all by herself.

The Gaiety comedians began very early with Toole and
dear old Lai Brough and finished with Teddy Payne and
George Grossmith, jun., at the end of a list which included

202

MY LIFE

Edward Terry and Fred Leslie and Seymour Hicks, Willie
Edouin and E. W. Royce, J. J. Dallas, David James, Charles
Danby, and — I wonder how many playgoers remember it ?—
Mr. Cyril Maude was once in Gaiety burlesque and played in
Frankenstein.

And Mr. John D'Auban, whom I meet every Christmas at
Drury Lane, lithe and lissom as ever, was one of the accom-
plished pair of dancers and pantomimists who scored an
instantaneous success as D'Auban and Warde on the night
that the lights of the Gaiety first beamed upon the Strand.

And that was in the 'sixties.

CHAPTER XXIII

I HAVE said that it was through the " Dagonet Ballads " that
I first came in touch with Robert Buchanan, but our collabo-
ration at the Adelphi commenced many years after.

Buchanan had made a big success with A Man's Shadow, a
version of Roger la Honte, which he did for Beerbohm Tree at
the Haymarket, and the Brothers Gatti suggested that he
should be my next collaborator at the Adelphi.

Our first melodrama, The English Rose, was a great success,
with Leonard Boyne, Evelyn Millard, Lionel Rignold, and
Katey James in the cast, and J. D. Beveridge, whose delightful
impersonation of the Knight of Ballyveeny is a dear remem-
brance of old playgoers.

Leonard Boyne, always a splendid horseman on and off the
stage, rode one of his many successful mounts to victory in
the big scene.

Buchanan was not quite happy about himself as a melo-
dramatist. I am not sure that it was not a remark of Robert
Browning that first made him unhappy at the Adelphi.

At the Academy dinner Lecky, in responding to the toast
of literature, made an enthusiastic reference to Buchanan's
beautiful poem The City of Dream. Browning, when he heard
Buchanan's name mentioned, turned to his neighbour and in
an audible voice exclaimed, " Buchanan ! Buchanan ! Is he
talking about the man who writes plays with Sims at the
Adelphi ? "

The usual d — d good-natured friends told Buchanan, and it
was soon afterwards that he began to urge me to let him adopt
a pseudonym in our collaboration. I did not like the idea, and
I told him so. Soon after I received the following letter :

" DEAR SIMS, — Thanks for your letter. Now that you
realize exactly what I mean, and feel that it implies no forget-

203

204

MY LIFE

fulness of our friendship, I'm sure you'll help me. I should
feel so free for stage purposes if I worked under a pseudonym,
and it wouldn't matter at all whether or not the public knew
it to be such (as they would) — it would keep the two kinds of
work completely distinct. And after all it is your name, not
mine, which attracts to the Adelphi, for you are a popular
writer, and I a d — d unpopular one.

" I should work with ten times the heart if my dramatic
work were kept altogether apart from my poetical, so far as
my name is concerned. Unfortunately, I can't afford to be a
poet only — I wish I could, for poetry alone gives me real
happiness, not for any reward it yields in pence or praise, but
solely because it was m*y first love and is my last.

" Nor have I any scorn for the stage. On the contrary, I
honour and delight in it, and as for you, I've always held
you to be one of the choicest spirits of the time, far higher in
thought and power than many of us poets. Dramatic work
falls justly and finely into your broad sympathy with life for
life's sake. I, on the other hand, am a dreamer, a whiner
after the Unknown and Unknowable. I was ' built that way.'

" You've given me many, many happy days. I love you
personally, and would do anything in the world to bring you
happiness and honour. So you mustn't, mustn't misconceive
me \ Set me down as a fool if you like, but never doubt the
friendship which makes me subscribe myself, yours always,

" ROBERT BUCHANAN."

The letter shows plainly enough the condition of mind with
which Buchanan approached Adelphi melodrama.

But he wanted money. He had been foolish enough to
take the Lyric Theatre in order to run a poetic play, The
Bride of Love, in which his charming and talented sister-in-
law, Miss Harriett Jay, had scored a distinct success at a
matinee.

The poet, who was never a very far-seeing man in business
matters, thought that a matinee production was good enough
for a regular run, which, of course, it was not, and his mistake
saddled him with a heavy burden of debt.

Directly one of our Adelphi dramas had been produced, a
first night success scored, and the box-office had begun to

MY LIFE 205

talk promisingly, Buchanan was anxious to realize — in other
words, to sell for cash.

I endeavoured to dissuade him, pointing out that a successful
melodrama might be a property for twenty or thirty years,
but he said he could not afford to wait for twenty or thirty
years for his money, and if I could arrange to buy his share
for two thousand five hundred down that sum would be most
useful to him and relieve his mind of considerable anxiety.

I submitted the proposition to the Messrs. Gatti, and we
bought the Bard out between us at his own earnest request.

The same thing happened with The Trumpet Call. The
moment it had proved a success Buchanan wanted to sell. It
would not have been wise for the Gattis or myself to allow a
share of the property to pass into the hands of a stranger, so
again we bought the poet's share for the ready money of
which he seemed to be perpetually in desperate need.

We wrote together The White Rose, in which Mrs. Patrick
Campbell made such an artistic success as Elizabeth Cromwell,
one of the gentlest and sweetest performances she has ever
given to the English stage.

This was followed by The Lights of Home, with Mrs.
Campbell as the heroine and Kyrle Bellew as the hero, and
then came The Black Domino.

While The Black Domino was running Arthur Pinero — he
was not " Sir " then — came to the Adelphi and saw in Mrs.
Patrick Campbell the ideal Paula for The Second Mrs.
Tanqueray, a play that George Alexander was about to put in
rehearsal at the St. James's.

The happenings which led up to the engagement of Mrs.
Patrick Campbell for the part of Paula make quite a little
romance of the stage. Here are the facts of the romance.

The story of the early adventures of Sir Arthur Pinero's
world-famous play is interesting.

After he had written it he sent it to John Hare. What the
eminent actor and manager said about it was not encouraging.
It met with no more favourable reception when Beerbohm
Tree read it. Then Pinero took it to George Alexander.

The illustrious three must forgive me the omission of the
" Sir." It was an honour they all deserved, but had not
then received.

2O6

MY LIFE

Alexander was then playing R. C. Carton's Liberty Hall to
splendid business, and he shook his head.

By this time Pinero was getting rather tired of taking the
lady round the houses, so he said to George Alexander, " Put
it up at a matinee and I won't ask for any fees. I want it
done."

Alexander agreed, and little paragraphs began to appear
in the Press about a new Pinero play which was to be put up
at a matinee.

Mr. Carton very naturally objected that this was not fair
to Liberty Hall It gave the idea that the " Hall " would
soon be "at liberty."

The manager of the St. James's saw the difficulty and had
an idea. " Look here," he said to Pinero, " if you don't
mind waiting till late in the season I'll put the play up for a
run."

And that is how the wonderful play came to its own at last.

But before Tanqueray was produced there was considerable
difficulty in " finding the lady."

The author's original idea was Miss Winifred Emery. Miss
Emery was Mrs. Cyril Maude. When the time came to put
the play in rehearsal Mrs. Maude was not well enough to
appear.

Olga Nethersole was suggested, but she was playing, and
her manager refused to release her. With Julia Neilson there
was the same difficulty.

Then Pinero remembered having seen Mrs. Patrick Campbell
in the provinces when she was acting with the Ben Greet
Company, and he knew that she had made a success at the
Adelphi, and was then playing there in The Black Domino, so
the distinguished dramatist came to the Adelphi, saw the
play, saw Mrs. Campbell, and asked the Gattis if they would
release her, and the Gattis very politely but very firmly
declined.

In the meantime Miss Elizabeth Robins had scored a great
success in Hedda Gabler, and the part of Paula was soon
afterwards offered to her and accepted by her.

But Mrs. Patrick Campbell was very anxious to go to the
St. James's, a theatre she thought would suit her better than
the Adelphi.

MY LIFE 207

She came to me and asked me if I would use my influence
with the Gattis and get them to alter their decision, and the
Gattis, because we had been good friends privately and in
business for so many years, said that if I personally wished it
they could not refuse.

But Elizabeth Robins was already engaged, and was invited
with the company to the St. James's on a certain afternoon
to hear Pinero read his play.

About two hours before the play was to be read Miss
Robins heard that her friend Stella Campbell was free to play
the part, and then she did a very noble and a very generous
thing. She voluntarily resigned the part in which she believed
that she had one of the finest chances of her career, and she
resigned it in order to give an opportunity to her friend.
*****

Robert Buchanan, poet, man of letters and dramatist, was
one of the most interesting personalities of his generation.

At one moment he would, in a fit of poetic exaltation,
imagine himself conversing with the Almighty on Hampstead
Heath, and the next moment he would be rushing to the
telephone to ask if such and such a horse had won the big
race.

I have listened spellbound in the afternoon to some beautiful
poem he had just written, and have met him at midnight
disguised as a monk at a Covent Garden ball.

He was a born gambler, and when he began to make m&ney
in the theatre he took to the Turf, but he always took to it
most violently and most recklessly when he was in financial
difficulties.

He had, with the insanity of genius, taken the Opera
Comique in order to run a play written by himself and Henry
Murray, The Society Butterfly, in which Mrs. Langtry was
appearing.

When it became a question of closing down or getting the
money to carry on, Buchanan, with his friend Henry Murray,
went off to Lingfield races with a pocketful of bank-notes in
order to back a certain horse which had been privately tipped
to him as a good thing and certain to start at a long price.
The name of the horse was Theseus.

Theseus ran in the fourth race. Some little time before

208 MY LIFE

the start Buchanan gave Murray a hundred pounds in bank-
notes. He was to go to the ring and back Theseus.

But they remained chatting for a time as they had not
seen the horses go by for their preliminary canter. They did
not know that instead of parading as usual before the stands
and carriages the horses had passed through to the starting-
post. Murray and Buchanan were still talking when they
heard a roar of " They're off i "

Murray ran with all his speed towards the ring, hoping that
he might be able to get the money on, but he had to fight his
way through a crowd and through the police, and he just
reached the ring with the notes grasped in his hand as the
first horse dashed past the winning-post.

And the first horse was Theseus. It had started at 20 to i.

When Murray went back to Buchanan with the uninvested
bank-notes still crumpled in his hand, the Bard received the
news with a smile, and said, " Better luck next time. You
look bowled over, old man. You'll find some whisky in the
hamper."

And the money that Theseus would have won them would
have saved The Society Butterfly from failure and Buchanan
from bankruptcy.

Out of doors I rarely saw Robert Buchanan without a white
waistcoat and never without an umbrella. He wielded his
umbrella as his Scotch ancestors wielded their battle-axes.

It was the oddest thing in the world to see him directing a
rehearsal with that umbrella. He leaned upon it as a support,
he waved it around, generally unfolded, to indicate positions
on the stage, he swayed it gently to and fro during the senti-
mental scenes, and he banged it on the prompter's table to
emphasize the declamatory passages.

He was quite a good stage-manager in his own dreamy and
poetical plays, but at the Adelphi, where we painted real life
in vivid colours, his ideas did not always harmonize with those
of the " producer."

In The English Rose we had real soldiers from Chelsea
Barracks. The men were under the command of a real
sergeant.

" Now," said Buchanan to the sergeant, " what you've got
to say to your men is : ' Enter that church/ "

MY LIFE 209

" Can't do it that way/' said the sergeant, and he proceeded
to give the military command, which the men obeyed and
entered the church.

Buchanan had them back. " Speak the line," he said.
" Say to your men, ' Enter that church.' '

" It wouldn't be military, sir," said the sergeant.

Then the Bard flourished his umbrella and said, " All right,
then."

But he was not convinced, for that night when we adjourned
as usual to Rule's, in Maiden Lane, for a few minutes' rest
and refreshment, he started the argument again, and main-
tained with many bangs of the umbrella that he was
right.

But in his home he was the gentlest and most amiable of
men, though some of us, and we were generally a fairly large
party at his hospitable supper-board, loved to draw him out
by contradicting him.

Those evenings at Merkland in Maresfield Gardens, South
Hampstead — he named his house after the Scotch home of
the loved companion of his youth, David Gray — lasted till far
into the night, and it was often between three and four in
the morning before our host bade us adieu.

The Merkland Sunday afternoons were always interesting
because interesting people came from near and far to them.

Rochefort was a frequent visitor. I knew Rochefort as a
near neighbour — he lived at No. 4 Clarence Terrace — and I
used to see his two horses led every morning to the front
door to be fed by him and his niece with lumps of sugar.

The horses used to step half-way into the hall, and on one
occasion one of them, when the sugar supply gave out early
and Rochefort went for some more, followed him into the
dining-room.

Rochefort asked me one day to take him to see something
that was peculiarly English in the way of amusement, and I
took him to the Moore and Burgess Minstrels. I fancy Ivan
Caryll and M. Johnson, the London correspondent of the
Figaro, were with us. The performance left Rochefort in a
condition of amused amazement. " It's wonderful ! " he said
to me. " A company of undertakers singing songs about the
dead, and then the undertakers at each end begin to rattle

o

zio MY LIFE

cross-bones ! I expected every minute to see the undertaker
in the middle bang a skull."

fc- Rochefort never learned English. He told me that it would
spoil his style. And he never put the articles he sent to his
paper in the post. They were always handed to the conductor
of the Paris Mail at Charing Cross and in this way they travelled
by hand until they were met at the Gare du Nord by a special
messenger from the newspaper office. At least that was
what Rochefort told me.

Fierce fighter as he was in his work, there was no more
modest or less self-assertive man among his friends and guests
than was Robert Buchanan.

He was at his best when the day's work was clone and the
night was well on its way and he sat with a cigarette between
his lips and John Jameson by his side and smiled and laughed
and listened.

He had many beliefs — one of them was in the Salvation
Army as a fighting force for the uplifting of the masses — and
he had one abiding superstition.

K He imparted his superstition to me during a trip we had
made to Southend. We were writing a play together.
Buchanan was a bit run down, and suggested that we should
take a week-end off together.

He had lived once near Southend, and his wife lay in the
little churchyard there.

One moonlight night as we sat looking across the water he
told me of a work upon which he had been engaged for many
years It was finished, but he feared to have it printed.

" 1 believe," he said, " that when that poem is published
it will be my last. I shall never do anything great again."

The poem was eventually published. It was the last great
work he ever gave to the world.

One afternoon he said to his sister-in-law, Miss Jay, " I
should like to have a good spin down Regent Street."

They were the last words Robert Buchanan ever uttered.
A few moments afterwards he was stricken down, and from
that day to the day of his death, eight months later, he was
as helpless as a little child.

He was buried at Southend with his wife and his mother.
After the funeral service we adjourned to a small building in

MY LIFE 211

the churchyard, and there the poet's old friend, Mr. T. P.
O'Connor, delivered a brief and touching address, and carried
us back to the old days of poverty and struggle when two
young Scotsmen, poets both and enthusiasts both — Robert
Buchanan and David Gray — starved in a garret in Stamford
Street.

Some time ago I went into the little churchyard at Southend
and stood by my old friend's grave. Over it is a marble
pedestal, and on the pedestal a bust of the poet. Across the
bust a spider had spun its web. There were cobwebs in the
marble eyes.

It was through a web that the dead genius had looked
upon the world, but through that web he had seen glorious
visions. How glorious they were his generation did not
know.

But in the years to come the laurels denied him in life will
be laid upon his tomb.

CHAPTER XXIV

THERE are theatres to-day in which it is considered artistic
to conceal the band.

Sometimes the orchestra is roofed over with artificial
foliage, and you gaze down from the upper parts of the house
upon an arrangement which looks like an artfully prepared
pitfall for the scouts of an invading army.

This innovation deprives an audience of a long familiar
sight — the back of the musical conductor.

Many of our best known musical conductors have been
composers, and the majority of our conductors have been
originally members of an orchestra.

The first musical conductor with whom I was theatrically
associated in business was an am able little German — I
conclude he was a German because his name was Max Schroter.
He was at the Royalty, and when I wrote, under the name of
Delacour Daubigny, a one-act musical play for the Vaudeville,
Max Schroter was my composer.

Michael Connolly, who wrote and arranged the music for
The Lights o' London, was a fine chef d'orchestre and a charming
man. His music talked. It always had the sentiment of the scene.

Another excellent chef d'orchestre for melodramatic music
was Henry Sprake, who was for many years at the Adelphi.
He had been a military bandsman, and his incidental music
for In the Ranks was a decided asset.

Everybody knows Jimmy Glover, the eminent Master of
Music at Drury Lane, who, in every sense of the word, fills
the conductor's chair at the National Theatre.

But when Jimmy Glover and I first came together I was
slim, and he was slimmer. He was a tall, thin young fellow,
with longish hair, a wasp-like waist, a slight stoop, and a
pleasant manner, with now and then a boisterous dash of
Irish exuberance.

212

MY LIFE 213

He composed most of the music for Jack in the Box, a musical
play written by Clement Scott and myself for Fanny Leslie
and played at the Strand. We became friends at the merry
little Strand in the early 'eighties, and we have been friends
as author and composer and as brother journalists ever
since.

Jules Riviere, who came back to the Alhambra for The
Golden Ring, had won renown with the promenade concerts
and had made fame with Babil and Bijou. It was a costly
affair, produced at Covent Garden in August 1872, written by
Dion Boucicault and Planche, and financed by a noble patron
of the stage.

Riviere's chorus of " Spring, Spring, Gentle Spring ! "
sung by boys, was the sensation of the celebrated " Fantastic
musical drama/' and has lived. Herve and Frederic Clay
wrote some of the music for the eleven thousand pound
production, and Helen Barry and Henriette d'Or graced the
cast, and so did Mrs. Howard Paul and Mrs. Billington, and
Lai Brough was the principal comedian.

Babil was played by Joseph Maas, who was making his
first appearance and getting a salary of twelve pounds a week.
It was not very long afterwards that he raised his terms to
fifty pounds a night.

Miss Annie Sinclair, a dainty light soprano, was Bijou. She
was also making her first appearance, and her salary, like
that of Maas, was twelve pounds a week.

Shortly after the run of Babil and Bijou Annie Sinclair
undertook a part which was quite an unconventional one for
a young and pretty actress who had just made a highly
successful debut. She resigned the Stage for the Church and
entered a convent.

I remember Jules Riviere in semi-military array conducting
an orchestra at Eastbourne which I always understood was
" supported " by Baron Grant, who afterwards gave Leicester
Square to the public.

The story of Leicester Square is a story by itself, and so is
the story of Baron Grant, whose magnificent " Staircase of
Fortune " is now the grand staircase at Madame Tussaud's.

The Square, which had become a boarded-up rubbish
ground, received its final insult on the morning of October 17,

214

MY LIFE

1866, when the disgracefully damaged equestrian statue of
George II was turned into a Guy Fawkes effigy.

The battered-featured monarch's head was adorned with a
fool's cap, and the white steed was daubed all over with
black spots.

Certain members of the Alhambra staff have always been
suspected of playing a practical joke which set all London
laughing. The joke settled the statue and proved the salva-
tion of the Square.

Baron Albert Grant, then at the height of his financial
boom, bought the square, removed the statue of the shattered
sovereign, substituted that of Shakespeare, and threw the
space open to the public.

The famous financier was under a cloud some time after-
wards, and it was apropos of his questionable commercial
morality that a well-known epigram was perpetrated :

Kings can give titles, but they Honour can't ;
Rank without Honour is a barren grant,

or words to that effect. I do not know that I have given the
last line quite accurately, but that was the sense of it.

Hamilton Clarke was for some time living's conductor at
the Lyceum. He had a genius for orchestration, but he was
" peculiar." He arranged a selection from The Merry Duchess
for the promenade concerts at Covent Garden, and omitted
the Tigers' Chorus, the musical success of the opera. When
Clay remonstrated with him, Hamilton Clarke told him that
he had omitted it because, as a musician, he did not think it
worthy of Clay's talent.

When Clarke was at the Lyceum, Irving wanted a few bars
to bring him down stage. Clarke wrote the music and
played it. Irving reached the desired spot, but the music
was still going on.

"I've finished," said Irving.

" But my music hasn't," replied Clarke. " You must time
yourself to it."

Poor Hamilton Clarke was always a bit " touched." Later
on the trouble developed seriously, and the conductor's chair
knew him no more.

Jules Riviere came back to the Alhambra to be the musical

BARON GRANT

MY LIFE 215

conductor at the time The Golden Ring, by Frederic Clay and
myself, was produced.

After poor Clay's seizure I was frequently at the Alhambra
looking after The Golden Ring, and I saw a good deal of
Riviere, who had all the charm of the Bohemian Frenchman
with a touch at times of the old-fashioned grand manner.

Riviere in his room at the Alhambra told me many interest-
ing stories of his musical ventures and adventures. He was
the musical conductor at the Adelphi during the run of
The Colleen Bawn, and also when Leah was produced there
and Kate Bateman made one of the most pronounced theatrical
successes of the time.

He was at Cremorne when John Baum was the manager,
and that was where I first made his acquaintance.

Writing of Baum, I remember that behind one of the big
glass-fitted stalls of the Alhambra that were run by him there
was a tall, good-looking young lady who presided over the
sale of gloves and scent. She became a famous and charming
actress later on, and was the guest of Alfred Tennyson, the
Poet Laureate, when he was writing a play for her — a play
which had a memorable first night and a short run.

It was while Riviere was at Cremorne that the Gardens
lost their dancing licence, so Riviere increased his band,
engaged a number of first-class musicians, and produced a
ballet in the theatre. But the dancing on the stage didn't
draw like the dancing in the Gardens, and at the end of the
season Riviere left.

But while he was there in 1872 the members of his orchestra
were victims of an extraordinary adventure.

A French millionaire amateur had written a cantata,
Le Feu du del, and he wanted to produce it in London.
Riviere agreed to look after the performance, to supply the
orchestra, and to conduct it.

It was produced at a matinee at St. James's Hall, Madame
Lemmens-Sherrington, Mr. George Perrin, and Signor Foli
taking the solo parts.

Riviere brought his band from Cremorne, the instruments
being conveyed in a covered van. After the performance the
instruments were put in the van again to be taken back to
Cremorne.

216 MY LIFE

When he got into the King's Road, Chelsea, the driver
suddenly discovered that the van was on fire. He had only
just time to cut the traces and save his horses when the van
burst into flames. All the instruments of Riviere's Cremorne
orchestra were destroyed.

" How the fire originated/' said Riviere, when he was
telling me the story, " we were never able to discover. It
was as though The Fire of Heaven in which the instruments
had taken part had played its part in the van with realistic
effects."

Harking back to Babil and Bijou — old playgoers are always
harking back to it — Riviere had a curious experience.

After " Spring, Gentle Spring " had been published by
Hawkes and Co., a firm of which Riviere was a member, a
woman applied one day at a police court for a summons
against the publishers. She informed the magistrate that she
was the composer of the song ; that while she was travelling
between Germany and London the manuscript had been
stolen from her.

The magistrate told the lady she had better consult a
solicitor, and she went away. The report of the application
appeared in all the daily papers, and Riviere at once published
an indignant denial of the theft. The clerk of the court had,
it seems, omitted to take the applicant's address, and so
Riviere could do nothing to bring her to book. But he
offered a reward for information which would lead to her
identification, and eventually she was discovered in a poor
lodging, and almost destitute.

She was undoubtedly insane, and shortly afterwards was
placed in a lunatic asylum.

Riviere's ambition when he came to England was to be
the Jullien of his day. He had an artistic and successful
career, and he gave great promenade concerts like Jullien,
but he escaped the tragedy of the closing scenes of Jullien's
life.

Jullien left a big reputation behind him in the entertainment
world when he quitted London in 1858. But he had already
begun to show sjnnptoms of insanity.

Just before he went away Jullien came to Riviere and said :
" My friend, I am at work upon a composition which when

MY LIFE 217

published will bear the two greatest names in history." He
then showed Riviere a paper upon which he had written :

" The Lord's Prayer.

Words by

Jesus Christ,

Music by

Jullien."

Soon afterwards the mad musician went to Paris. He
hired an open fly and drove about the boulevards. Every
now and then he ordered the driver to pull up. Then he
stood up in the carriage, informed the crowd that he was the
great Jullien, took a piccolo from his pocket, and played it.

Shortly afterwards he cut his throat in a side street turning
out of the Chaussee d'Antin.

The tragedy made a great sensation in London. Jullien's
promenade concerts, masked balls, and musical enterprises
had been established features of gay, pleasure-loving London
in the 'fifties, when the motto of the many was :

The best of all ways
To lengthen your days
Is to steal a few hours from night, my boys.

And the West End was gayest and noisiest after midnight,
the " gents " in peg-top trousers and wonderful whiskers
revelled in the streets, bonneted policemen, rang bells and
wrenched off knockers on their way home from Cremorne,
Highbury Barn, Jullien's masked balls, or the night houses of
the Haymarket at " five o'clock in the morning."

After Jullien's tragic end Chatterton gave Madame Jullien,
the widow, a place in the Drury Lane box-office, a box-office
that had one of its most famous personalities in " Jimmy "
Stride, whose glossy high hat was the delight of a generation.

CHAPTER XXV

Two other clever musicians of French extraction gave us at
a later period the benefit of their great talents.

Alfred and Frank Cellier were the sons of a French school-
master at Hackney Church of England school kept by the
Rev. I. C. Jackson, M.A. Frank Cellier spent the best years
of his life in the conductor's chair at the Savoy, and will
always be associated with the D'Oyly Carte regime and the
long series of Gilbert and Sullivan triumphs.

Frank Cellier knew perhaps better than any one except
Frederic Clay, who was Sullivan's most intimate friend and
constant companion, where the shoe pinched in the collabora-
tion, and why at one time the collaborators fell seriously
apart.

One day, soon after Gilbert and Sullivan returned from
America, Sir Arthur unbosomed his soul to Clay.

He had the idea that Gilbert delighted to make a butt of
him. He had borne it patiently in London but in America
the personal chaff of the Savoy humorist had — especially
when it was indulged in at social functions where they were
the honoured guests — seriously upset the kindly hearted and
gentle-mannered musician.

Sullivan told Clay that he did not think he should be able
to stand it much longer.

Eventually, to the great grief and surprise of all play-
going London, the breach which had been rapidly widening
between the famous Savoyards divided them altogether, and
Sullivan sought a new librettist and Gilbert a new composer.

Neither of them ever quite replaced the other, and after a
time they came together again, but not quite in the old way
or with the old success.

Alfred Cellier, like Arthur Sullivan, was a choir-boy^at one
of the Chapels Royal. When Sullivan conducted the pro-

218

MY LIFE 219

menade concerts for the Gattis at Covent Garden Alfred
Cellier was his assistant. He had a genial, gentle personality,
and might have given the music-loving world far more than
he did had he not suffered from a lack of what to-day we call
" push and go."

His first big success was The Sultan of Mocha, played at
the St. James's in 1876. One number especially, " O dear
me, I am so sleepy ! " caught the town.

It was shortly after that that I met him at the club, and he
told me that he wanted a libretto. Would I let him have a
copy of " Les Contes Drolatiques." He thought there might
be a plot for a comic opera in it.

I heard nothing more for some months, and then he returned
the book.

It was ten years after The Sultan of Mocha that he made a
success which was a record one. With B. C. Stephenson he
gave us Dorothy at the Gaiety in 1886, and it ran for 968
consecutive performances, has been revived again and again,
and is still on the active service list.

But a good deal of the music had been composed by Cellier
ten years previously for another opera called Nell Gwynne,
with a libretto by H. B. Farnie, which was not a great
success.

It was in Dorothy that Arthur Williams was taken seriously
to task by B. C. Stephenson, the librettist, who pointed out
to the popular comedian that his gags were not suitable to a
" period " opera.

Williams promised to mend his ways, and soon afterwards
Stephenson went out of town, and Arthur Williams promptly
popped in some new gags.

One evening in a scene with Harriet Coveney he exclaimed,
" Do you take me for a blooming sewing-machine ? " At
that moment he looked up and caught the indignant eye of
B. C. Stephenson in a private box. Instantly, with his
remarkable fertility of resource, he rushed the offending gag
back into " period " by adding the word " forsooth."

Herman Finck, the Master of Music at the Palace, the
composer who plunged the world In the Shadows, was second
violin at the Gaiety during the run of Faust Up-to-date.

For several years I was associated with Mr. Charles Fletcher

220 MY LIFE

in writing the annual ballet for the Winter Gardens, Black-
pool.

The Blackpool ballets, as invented, arranged, and produced
by Mr. John Tiller, are magnificent productions. They are
ballet, musical comedy, and spectacle rolled into one har-
monious whole.

The music for the Blackpool ballets with which I was
associated was written by Herman Finck, and we generally
spent the last week of sunny July together at the Wonderland
by the Waves.

I have always looked upon myself as the Cockney Columbus
who discovered Blackpool — that is to say, who discovered it
for the people of the south. The northern counties had poured
their wealth of men and material into it for many long years
past.

I discovered it quite by accident. I got into the wrong
train at Preston and found myself at Blackpool. I strolled
about, and I found the Winter Gardens, went in, and the first
person I met was William Holland of the prize moustaches.

He was the manager of the Gardens at the time, and he
took me about Blackpool, and, as the result of my trip, I
wrote an article on the wonders of the Northern Hygeia.

My good friends of the south coast towns accused me of
drawing the long bow, but one of the leading south coast
journals sent a special representative to Blackpool to see if it
was really true. The journalist who went was accompanied
by a couple of town councillors, and the mission returned
with a report that I had really understated the marvels of
Blackpool.

I had stated that during the autumn season five thousand
artists were employed in Blackpool in entertaining visitors.
The special mission discovered that the number of artists was
not five thousand, but eight thousand.

Herman Finck is one of the eight thousand, but he only
appears once during the season, and then the audience only
sees his back. He conducts the last dress rehearsal of the
new ballet.

After a week's hard work in Blackpool it was our custom
to spend an hour on the mountain railway on the South
Shore, which had become a second Coney Island, visit all the

MY LIFE 221

shows, have a real Bank Holiday, and catch the night train
home.

Jacobi and the Alhambra were at one time synonymous.
He had to conduct and to write so many ballets a year.

He was always a friend of mine, and we worked together
on an opera which never saw the footlights. But it took me
frequently to his room at the Alhambra, and there he intro-
duced me to two celebrated Frenchmen. One was General
Boulanger and the other was M. Goron, the chief of the Paris
Detective Force.

Goron was over here in connexion with the Gouffe murder
by Gabrielle Bompard and Eyraud. The trunk in which the
body of the murdered process-server had been packed bore
the name of a maker in the Euston Road.

I showed M. Goron a little bit of London while he was
here, and when I crossed the Channel later he returned the
compliment. He showed me a little bit of Paris.

Boulanger I had seen in Paris before Jacobi introduced me
to him at the Alhambra. I saw him first one New Year's
morning when his brougham was in the courtyard of the
H6tel du Louvre waiting to take him to pay the usual official
calls.

I noticed that there was a double set of reins, one for the
coachman and the other a safety set attached to the coach-
man's seat, and I made up my mind that the brave General
was a very nervous man. He lived then at the Hotel du
Louvre, and I had the suite of rooms next to him.

Boulanger was the pioneer of the war of revenge, the leader
of the anti-German movement in France. The people who
shouted " A bas les Prussiens ! " shouted " Vive Boulanger ! "
But during the time that he was being hailed as the coming
deliverer of Alsace-Lorraine from the Prussian yoke he was in
constant contact with a Prussian.

It was a Prussian who brought him his coffee to his bedroom
in the Hotel du Louvre in the morning. It was a Prussian
who waited on him at dinner, and who introduced all his
visitors to him.

Heinrich, my waiter, who also waited on the General, was
a native of Magdeburg, though he passed for a Swiss, and
many a time did he make me laugh by his amusing remarks

222

MY LIFE

on the situation " next door,'' next door being the General's
apartment.

The last time I saw Boulanger was one evening in Portland
Place. It was his birthday, and a small crowd of Frenchmen
from Soho had gathered around the door.

Boulanger came out on the doorstep, made a little speech,
and begged them to go away and not make a noise, as it
might annoy the neighbours.

Soon afterwards he left London and went abroad, and the
next news I had of le brav' GMral was that he had committed
suicide in a Brussels cemetery at the grave of Madame
Bonnemains, a lady to whom he was devotedly attached.

Boulanger was War Minister in 1886, and before then and
after then he was the tool of the Bonapartists and the
Orleanists, who used him in order to damage the Republic.

But he was never the man for the job, and he only succeeded
in damaging himself, badiy at first, and finally beyond repair.

John Fitzgerald — " Fitz " of the sunny 'seventies, who
followed Frank Musgrave in wielding the baton in the merriest
days of the merry little Strand — was, I fancy, my first com-
poser. I wrote a song entitled " Old England and our Queen,"
and got a guinea for it.

Fitzgerald lived in Burton Crescent, and I always remember
the address because there was a great murder mystery close by.

In December 1878, an old lady named Samuel, who lived
at a house in Burton Crescent and kept no servant, took a
lodger, although she was of independent means.

The lodger was a musician in an orchestra. He was away
most of the daytime and did not return until after midnight,
when a supper was generally laid for him in his sitting-room.

On December n the musician returned from the theatre
shortly after midnight, let himself in, went to his room, and
was astonished to find no supper laid.

He rang the bell and received no answer. Concluding that
Mrs. Samuel must have gone out he went downstairs to see if
he could get anything in the kitchen, and there to his horror
he discovered the body of Mrs. Samuel lying in a pool of
blood.

He called the police at once, a doctor came and viewed the
body, and it was found that the old lady had been battered

MY LIFE 223

to death with the fragment of a hat-rail on which several of
the pegs still remained. The pocket of her dress had been
cut off and a pair of boots was missing, but apparently no
other property.

There was a maid who worked about the house in the daytime,
going home in the evening. This maid had left at four o'clock in
the afternoon and had then left her mistress alive and well.

Three workmen had been employed in the house doing
some repairs, and they had also left during the afternoon and
Mrs. Samuel had let them out. The probability is that Mrs.
Samuel was murdered early in the evening, but by whom is a
mystery to this day.

I wrote an opera with Walter Slaughter — at least I nearly
finished it and he nearly finished the music, but he was very
ill at the time, and though he put a brave face on it he was
often in great pain when he wrote some of his most tuneful
melodies.

Walter Slaughter, who made several great financial and
artistic successes, among them A French Maid at the Vaude-
ville and Gentleman Joe, written for Arthur Roberts, and
Orlando Dando, written for Dan Leno, all with Captain Basil
Hood, was in his early days the pianist at the South London
Music Hall.

Connie Gilchrist was at the South London in Poole's time,
and it was there that John Hollingshead first heard Mr. E. J.
Dallas and brought him to the Gaiety to become one of its
most famous comedians.

Walter Slaughter, when we were working together, generally
came to see me on Sunday afternoons, when he was well
enough. He always brought a new number and occasionally
a wine bottle filled with a wonderful scent which he told me
he distilled himself.

He was a great sufferer at the finish and had a variety of
ailments, but he was good-humoured and smiling almost to
the end.

My collaboration with Ivan Caryll was a happy one. There
was always a joy in life about Caryll that was contagious. He
assumed the name of Ivan, but I never heard any one call him
anything but Felix, which is his real first name, and Tilkin
is his real surname.

324 MY LIFE

May Yohe used to call him Felix when we were rehearsing
Little Christopher Columbus at the Lyric, and he had a pleasant
way of preventing her saying anything rude to him. Miss
Yohe was charming in Little Christopher, and a great personal
success, but she could be rude if she didn't get just what she
wanted.

Sir Henry Wood and Mr. Landon Ronald are to-day world-
famous as conductors. But when Henry Wood was the chef
d'orchestre at the Trafalgar Theatre and May Yohe was the
leading lady — the opera was Mademoiselle Nitouche — the
leading lady told the chef d'orchestre one day at rehearsal that
he couldn't conduct for nuts !

I wrote Dandy Dick Whittington for May Yohe when she
had left Horace Sedger, and Messrs. Greet and Engelbach had
taken the Avenue Theatre, now the Playhouse, for her. And
the chef d'orchestre for Dandy Dick Whittington was Mr. Landon
Ronald.

What Miss Yohe told Landon Ronald he couldn't conduct
for I never heard. But I fancy he had a trying time, and
bore it with the amiability which is one of his many charming
characteristics.

It was at the Winter Gardens at Blackpool that I first met
Clarence C. Corri. He followed another favourite composer,
Mr. John Crook, the composer of The Lady Slavey, Mr. George
Dance's great success, in the conductorship of the orchestra
at the Theatre Royal, Manchester.

Corri and I wrote The Dandy Fifth for Hardie and
Von Leer. It is still alive, and the song, " A Little

British Army goes a Long Way " is still in the band

" selection."

I find it hard to resist the temptation of printing the
following letter which the managers who were giving The
Dandy Fifth its first production at the Prince of Wales's
Theatre, Birmingham, received, dated from the Lord Cham-
berlain's Office, in April 1898 :

" DEAR SIR, — My best congratulations to every one con-
cerned. It is really quite refreshing to read a comic libretto
which is amusing, consistent, and witty, without an objec-
tionable word from start to finish. My friend G. R. Sims has

MY LIFE 225

discovered how to please the greatest number and offend
none. " Yours truly,

" G. A. REDFORD."

As I have had this letter in my possession for nearly twenty
years and this is the first time I have published it, I hope
I may be forgiven.

With Sir Arthur Sullivan I only worked once, and then it
was for about half an hour.

After poor Freddy Clay's seizure on the second night of the
new Alhambra spectacular comic opera, The Golden Ring, it
was decided that certain alterations were advisable in the score.

Riviere did not care to interfere with Clay's work, and I
suggested that I should take it to Sir Arthur Sullivan, who
knew all about it, as Clay had been away with him at Carlsbad
for the cure, and had been at work on the opera during the
time.

I took the score to Sullivan, and had a short and rather sad
little conference, for Sullivan was as deeply distressed at the
tragedy as I was.

Sir Arthur gladly undertook to do the necessary work there
and then, and told me that if Riviere would come and see him
the next day everything would be ready.

I saw a great deal of Arthur Sullivan in the winter season
at Monte Carlo, and on several occasions I lunched with him
at a charming little villa which he had taken at Roquebrune,
an environ of the Paradise.

One moonlight night he had driven over from Roquebrune,
and when I met him in the rooms he told me that he had seen
four gendarmes struggling with two armed bandits who had
just tried to hold up the carriage of an Italian count, who
was in the habit of driving to the Casino every night with his
pockets filled with bank-notes. I congratulated the eminent
composer upon the fact that the bandits had been captured
before his carriage came along.

Shortly before midnight I met Sir Arthur on the terrace.

" Well," he said, " the other bandits might as well have
had my money. The bandits here have had seven hundred
of the best out of me this evening. I've lost every note I
brought with me."

P

226

MY LIFE

" Never mind, there are plenty more notes where they
came from," I replied.

Sir Arthur must have enjoyed the joke and repeated it, for
it came to me in my Press cuttings many times afterwards,
and in a little book called " Anecdotes of Monte Carlo " the
story is told with one or two additions of which I was not
guilty.

Sullivan told me one day when I was at the villa that he
had had a curious experience. He was doing a good deal of
work in the daytime and was rather annoyed by some youths
who in their luncheon hour used to have a little Monte Carlo
of their own just outside his garden.

Sullivan said to the man who was working in the garden,
" Look here, if you can't get rid of these lads, I shall have to
complain to the mayor."

Then the gardener raised his hat proudly and said in the
patois, " Sir, I am the Mayor of Roquebrune."

With Auguste Van Biene I had pleasant and profitable
business relations for many years. He toured Carmen Up-to-
Data and other musical pieces in which I was concerned, and
I was writing a piece for him to take the place of the famous
Broken Melody when he died.

Van Biene came a boy from his home in Holland to the
city paved with gold, but before long he found that for him
it was not even paved with silver.

He had failed to get a living, and he had come to a bare
garret with his 'cello for his only companion.

One day he heard a girl singing in the street, and he saw
the people fling her coppers. He was at the time penniless
and desperately hungry.

He went to his garret, took his 'cello, put his pride in his
pocket, and played in the street, and made seven shillings.

That day he dined.

A day or two afterwards he was playing in a side street off
Regent Street and a gentleman passing by stopped and
listened.

Presently the gentleman said, " What are you playing in
the street for ? "

" Because I am hungry," replied the young musician.

The gentleman took out a card and gave it to the performer.

MY LIFE 227

" Come and see me at this address to-morrow," he said,
and walked away.

The young musician looked at the card. The name upon
it was " Michael Costa/'

The next day Van Biene got his first good engagement in
London. There were many ups and downs after that, but
he had started on the road to fame and fortune.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE year 1889 was to see me involved in two exciting affairs,
in both of which I had to defend myself against a false
statement.

I have at various periods of my life had a double. One
of my earliest doubles was Mr. John Heslop, at one time
manager of the Opera Comique, where he produced my
Mother-in-Law, and also manager of the Gaiety Theatre,
Glasgow. On two occasions Mr. Heslop took first-night calls
for me when I was unable to be present, and only the company
knew that the " understudy " was bowing for the author.

Another double of mine was Mr. Charles Bertram, the
conjurer, who was frequently stopped in the streets and
addressed by my name.

But in 1889 I had a double, not in form and feature, but
in name, and the double was the cause of the trouble.

At the beginning of June 1889 I returned from a brief
holiday in Switzerland to find that in my absence I had been
assaulted by the Duke of Cambridge, and that the assault
of the Duke upon " Mr. George Sims, journalist, and a member
of the staff of a Sunday paper," had been the subject of a
question in the House of Commons.

The assault, it seemed, had taken place when the Duke
was at a review of the Fire Brigade at Whitehall, at which
the Prince and Princess of Wales were present.

There had been a rush of the crowd, and in that rush
Mr. George Sims, the journalist, had been pushed against
the Duke of Cambridge, and the fiery Duke had seized the
journalist by the throat and shaken him " like a. rat."

As I happened at the time of the assault to have been on
the summit of Pilatus I could not understand how the Duke,
even if his arm had been longer than that of coincidence, had
reached so far as from Whitehall to the summit of the mountain

228

MY LIFE 229

where is the tarn in which Pontius Pilate is supposed to have
drowned himself.

When I found certain provincial newspapers giving a short
account of my life and work in connexion with the Commander-
in-Chief 's attack upon me, I was compelled to write a disclaimer
to the daily papers.

Shortly afterwards I found that the following paragraph
had gone round the American Press :

G. R. Sims has surpassed all the actors who rescue
drowning children, and all the actresses who lose invaluable
diamonds, by working up a tremendous theatrical advertise-
ment. He has had the Duke of Cambridge arrested for
assaulting him. There was a crowd at a fire ; Sims, who
is ill and weak, was pushed up against the Royal Duke,
who is old but stalwart, and the Duke seized Sims by the
throat. Our sympathies are with Sims. But then, perhaps
the Duke recognized Sims as Dagonet of the Referee, who
is always gibing at him and his umbrella, and clutched
this opportunity to get even. It is an immense advertise-
ment for Sims, and ought to pack the Adelphi Theatre as
long as Sims can put pen to paper, or his name to a melo-
drama.

It was some time before I was able to convince the sympa-
thetic American Press that the assault had not been committed
upon me, but upon Mr. George E. Simms, a young journalist
on the staff of the Sunday Sun.

In the meantime the affair had assumed sensational propor-
tions. Mr. Simms had applied for a summons at a police-
court, and the magistrate had refused to listen to his application.

Then Mr. Abinger, on behalf of Mr. Simms, went before
the Lord Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Hawkins for an order
calling upon Mr. Bridge, a Metropolitan police magistrate,
to show cause why he should not hear and determine Mr.
Simms's application, and after a long and legal argument
the Lord Chief Justice decided that Mr. Bridge had not
exercised the discretion which he was bound to exercise
judicially, and therefore the rule must be granted, and
Mr. Justice Hawkins concurred.

230 MY LIFE

Then the American Press, still believing that I was the
Sims, favoured me with columns of sympathy. One leading
journal headlined its article, " Royalty Under Arrest ; Queen
Victoria's cousin, the Commander-in-Chief of the British
Empire, must answer in a police-court for an assault upon
George R. Sims, the well-known journalist and dramatic
author."

Canadian and Australian journals rallied to my banner.
The Ottawa Evening Journal gave me a two-column leader, in
the course of which it said :

" George R. Sims has claims to respect and public gratitude
beside which those of the Duke of Cambridge dwindle pitifully.
His sympathies, his industry, and his ability have always
been at the service of the poor and oppressed. As Dagonet,
of the Referee, he has kept a warm heart and a ready pen
for the welfare of his fellow-beings. Apart from this, his
plays have given delight to hundreds of thousands the world
over."

And all this beautiful sympathy was unfortunately wasted.
I was not the Sims.

A year or two afterwards I was introduced to the Duke at
one of the Earl's Court exhibitions, and he evidently remem-
bered the affair, for he smilingly said, " I think you are the
George Sims I did not assault ? "

Apropos of this exhibition, here is a true story. The Duke
was the President of the Honorary Advisory Committee.
One blazing day in July he decided to attend a committee,
so he telegraphed to the manager, " Shall be with you at two
o'clock. Warm all offices."

The Duke arrived and took the chair. Behind him a large
fire was blazing away.

The Duke fidgeted in his chair for a minute or two, then
he suddenly exclaimed, " What the devil do you want with
fires on a day like this ? "

Then the manager produced the telegram. The Duke read
it and burst into a roar of laughter.

" It's the fools at the telegraph office," he said. " What
my secretary wrote in my presence was, ' Warn all
officers/ "

On November 30, 1889, there was produced at the Princess's

MY LIFE 231

Theatre a drama written by Brandon Thomas, who was
some years afterwards to give us Charley's immortal
Aunt.

The drama at the Princess's was called The Gold Craze.
One of the characters in the play was described as " The
Baron de Fleurville." He was a foreign adventurer of a
particularly shady kind.

The fact that a Baron de Fleurville was to be a character
in the new play at the Princess's reached the ears of M. le
Marquis de Leuville, a poet and painter whose fame was
not on a par with his physical proportions, but who was
always as eager for publicity as the guests at the boarding-
house of Mrs. Todgers were always eager for gravy.

De Leuville was a well-known London character in the
'eighties. His appearance was something between a fat
French poet of the Quartier Latin and the overblown middle-
aged tenor of romantic opera in the 'sixties.

He had chambers in the Albany and an office in Baker
Street, where there was a brass plate on the downstairs
front door which bore his name and that of his " literary
secretary " ; and he was in constant attendance on a wealthy
golden-haired widow who had passed la quarantaine.

Rumour had it that de Leuville's real name was Tom Oliver,
that he was born in Bath, and that he had been valet to a
nobleman in France ; but rumour has always been busy with
noblemen who lead romantic lives and write " the poetry of
the passions."

As a matter of fact, his name was Redivivus Oliver, and
his mother was a clever water-colour artist who married
again, and his stepfather was a well-to-do solicitor in a country
town. The story of his being a valet is probably untrue.

When he was a young man and travelling in Italy he sent
word to his stepfather that he was captured by brigands in
Italy, and that a certain sum must be sent for his ransom.
The money was forthcoming, but it went into Oliver's pockets.
The brigands were a myth.

Later on he is said to have married a rich wife. They
lived together in Paris, and the wife bought a small estate,
and from that estate Redivivus Oliver assumed the name of
the Marquis de Leuville, but when he burst upon London as

232

MY LIFE

poet, painter, and litterateur rumour at once became busy with
his past.

The Marquis de Leuville doubtless shrugged his shoulders
at rumour as an earlier nobleman-poet, Lord Byron, did.

So he painted and wrote passionate verse and published
it in volumes illustrated by himself, and sent the volumes
broadcast to the Press and to his friends, and in each of
the volumes there was generally a poem addressed to a
lady who bore the same Christian name as the golden-haired
widow of wealth. The Marquis was also occasionally in
the habit of making a more or less public appearance as a
reciter.

Some little time before the production of The Gold Craze
he sent me a volume of his verses entitled " Entre Nous/'
with a preface in which he dwelt upon his French ancestry
and the difficulty a member of the old French noblesse found
in expressing his thoughts in the English tongue.

"The Albany, W.

" MY DEAR SIR, — Will you allow me to add one more voice
of admiration about your charmingly dramatic poems ? I
am going to try to do justice to those which are adapted to
my particular style of recitation, which perhaps you may
have indistinctly heard of. I have only ' The Dagonet
Ballads ' and ' The Ballads of Babylon,' having unfortunately
mislaid the other one I had containing ' Sir Hugh's (?) Leap,'
which is more the sort of thing that suits me, for I'm not quite
up to the pointsmen and miners, and do them badly.

" So might I ask you to be so very good as to tell your
different publishers of ' Dagonet ' and ' Babylon.' My private
secretary will send you some of my words, poor indeed in
comparison with yours, but they might give you an idea of
the sort of thing I recite, and you might have something
adapted to me during the forthcoming season.

" Yours faithfully,

" LEUVILLE."

Now for The Gold Craze. The Marquis had, it seems,
received information that not only was the character of the
de Fleurville intended to be a caricature of himself, but that

MY LIFE 233

the actor, Mr. J. H. Barnes, who was going to play the part,
intended to make up like him.

The Marquis determined to make a public protest against
the outrage on a poet and a painter who was one of the old
nobility of France.

So he consulted with his friend Captain Hamber, who was
at that time the editor of a well-known London daily. What
Captain Hamber advised I cannot say, but the Marquis
attended the theatre on the night of production and was
accompanied by three or four men specifically engaged and
paid by the Marquis to create a disturbance and if possible
wreck the play.

The Marquis procured three men named Hill, Cronin, and
Hadden, and instructed them to go to the Princess's, pay
for admission, and when Mr. J. H. Barnes in the character
of de Fleurville appeared on the stage to hoot and hiss and
make as much disturbance as they could.

Each of these men had with him a certain number of
assistants who were to be placed in different parts of the
house to join in the clamour.

The result was that something like a riot took place, and
the management was compelled to eject the disturbers.
Having ascertained the facts, the management charged the
Marquis with instigating, inciting, and procuring George
Hadden, J. Cronin, Edward Hill, and others to create a riot
at the Royal Princess's Theatre on the night of Saturday,
November 30. And the Marquis de Leuville duly appeared
in Marlborough Street Police Court to answer the charge.

Mr. Geoghegan and Mr. Hutton appeared for the manage-
ment, and Mr. Gill defended the noble poet and painter and
reciter, whose artistic dignity had, so he contended, been
insulted by " handsome Jack " Barnes.

I had so far only been interested in the case from the
point of view of the public. But suddenly there came a bolt
from the blue, and I found that my reputation as a man of
honour and as a dramatist was seriously involved in the
prosecution which had arisen out of the first-night riot in the
house in which I had won my melodramatic spurs with
The Lights o' London. This is what happened.

The appearance of the fat, broad-shouldered, double-

234 MY LIFE

chinned, Byron-collared, oiled, scented, and bejewelled Marquis
de Leuville in the police-court charged with inciting his
myrmidons to create a riot at the Princess's Theatre was quite
a sensational little event.

For the Marquis had a Press of his own — that is to say, he
was in the habit of inviting one or two journalists of sorts
who were connected with periodicals of sorts to social functions
and garden-parties at the well-known old-world residence of
the wealthy widow, and also to " literary and artistic "
functions at a flat in Victoria Street, of which he was ostensibly
the owner.

And in these ways he managed to obtain a certain amount
of publicity for the literary and artistic enterprises of which
he was from time to time presumed to be guilty.

I say " presumed," because it has been fairly well established
— look at the composition of his letter to me ! — that the
Marquis could not put two sentences together in decent
English.

The secret of his literary and poetic output was very simple.
He kept a poet, and the poet appeared on the brass plate of
his poetry offices in Baker Street as the " literary secretary."

The case of the Marquis and the Management was adjourned
and adjourned again and again, and it was all on a wild
March morning in 1890, when the Marquis was having another
matinee at Marlborough Street, that I suddenly found myself
involved in it.

The Marquis allowed one of his witnesses, Captain Hamber,
to go into the witness-box and say that the man Hill, a
compositor, had been selected as one of the rioters because
Hill had been introduced to the Marquis " as a very clever
fellow who wrote all George R. Sims's plays for him."

This statement, made by a witness on oath — a witness who
was an honoured member of the Fourth Estate, and who in
his time edited three London daily papers — the Standard,
the short-lived Hour, and the Morning Advertiser — was a
bolt from the blue.

It caused a flutter in the reporters' box, and among the
the audience, which was largely composed of members of
the dramatic profession, the effect was startling.

Managers looked at one another with a note of interrogation

MY LIFE 235

in their eyebrows. They had seen Mr. Hill in the witness-box.
They had heard that he was a compositor, and he confessed
he had accepted a small honorarium to attend a first-night
performance and create a disturbance.

And this man Hill was the author of all the plays to which
George R. Sims had put his name ! Verily the ghost was
walking that day. It had walked into the witness-box and
revealed itself on oath.

The statement made in the witness-box by Captain Hamber
duly appeared in all the reports of the case published in the
evening papers and the daily papers the next morning.

The newspapers, I am pleased to say, declined to take the
claim of Mr. Hill seriously. Some of them, commenting on
the statement of Captain Hamber, quoted interesting instances
of men who had falsely pretended to be ghosts, and instanced
the case of a clergyman named Lignum, who said that he,
and not George Eliot, was the author of " Adam Bede," and
actually produced the manuscript of " Adam Bede " in proof
of his claim — a proceeding which compelled George Eliot's
publishers to produce the manuscript from which " Adam
Bede " had been actually printed.

But there was no need for me to produce the manuscript
of The Lights o London or The Romany Rye. Captain Hamber,
after the report of his evidence had appeared in the Press,
wrote the following letter to the editor of the Daily Telegraph :

" THE SIMS PLAYS

" SIR, — Kindly permit me to say to Mr. Sims, as an old
playgoer who has cried at his pathos and laughed at his
humour, that it did not enter my head for a moment to take
the statement I referred to seriously — I simply mentioned it
as a reductio ad absurdum of some of the evidence tendered
by the prosecution against the Marquis de Leuville.
" I am, Sir,

" Your obedient servant,

" THOMAS HAMBER.
" 10 Serjeant's Inn, E.G."

How the case against the Marquis terminated I have
forgotten, but I have an idea that a settlement took place.

236

MY LIFE

Mr. J. H. Barnes in the course of his evidence, though denying
that he made up like the Marquis, admitted that he had seen
a likeness of the Marquis some time before the production
of the play, and had shown the portrait to Mr. Fox, the
theatrical wig-maker.

It is quite common for actors to take a " make-up " from
some one they see in the flesh or from a photograph, and this
may be done without the slightest intention of " impersonat-
ing " the individual whose appearance has suggested the
make-up.

There was no doubt about the make-up of the three actors,
Messrs. W. H. Fisher, W. J. Hill, and Edward Righton, in
Gilbert and Gilbert a Beckett's Happy Land— the play that
was produced at the Court Theatre on March 3, 1873, and
prohibited by the Lord Chamberlain on March 7. They were
photographs — cabinet size — of three of Her Majesty's Ministers,
Messrs. William Gladstone, Robert Lowe, and A. S. Ayrton.
The run of the play with " alterations and omissions," was,
however, speedily resumed, and when it was taken into the
provinces by Charles Wyndham I had the youthful imperti-
nence to write John Bright and another Minister into it.

The Marquis de Leuville was a pretender himself, and his
" works " were said to have been written for him by paid
" ghosts," and I have no doubt he quite believed that the
man Hill was one of mine.

The Marquis died some years after the affair, and the
wealthy widow who had supplied him with the means of posing
as a patrician and poet did not long survive him.

What became of Mr. Hill, who wrote all my plays for me,
I never heard. It is only fair to say that I never inquired.

CHAPTER XXVII

THERE were plenty of genuine aristocrats in the old Bohemia,
and they did not always confine their Bohemianism to the
stage door or the ring side.

There was a Duke, a very charming and amiable Duke,
who in the old days was quite as much at home in journalistic
Bohemia as he was in theatrical Bohemia.

They were merry little supper-parties at Rule's, in Maiden
Lane, in those days, and when the gay knights-errant of the
Press and the lightly tripping idols of the Johnnies from
theatreland sat around the sumptuous supper-board the
Duke would shed the light of his paternal smile upon the
scene.

The last time I saw the Duke taking his ease in Bohemia
he was playing " Shove Ha'penny " with David James. I
backed David — and lost.

A sporting Marquess, whose pet name among his Bohemian
friends was " Ducks," was a popular figure at certain Bohemian
clubs and resorts, and while he had many friends, fair and
otherwise, in variety circles, he was on excellent terms with
some of the gayer spirits of Fleet Street.

I have a joyous memory of him in connexion with a bright
particular star of the variety firmament who, in her way, was
as great a character as " Ducks."

One evening the Marquess had driven the diva as far as her
residence in the neighbourhood of Bedford Square in a
hansom. The Marquess tendered the driver his fare, and the
driver demanded more.

The cabman got down to carry on the dispute at closer
quarters, and when he insulted the Marquess, the diva, without
a moment's hesitation, set about him in the good old-fashioned
style.

The cabman, his breath taken away, literally and figura-

237

238 MY LIFE

tively, by the sudden onslaught, scrambled on to the box and
drove off at full speed.

A personal reminiscence of the Marquess carries me back to
a famous Ascot week. I was staying in Windsor, and had
some rooms in the same hotel as " Ducks."

One evening I was standing in the hall about dinner-time
when I heard a shout. I looked up and I saw the Marquess
leaning over the balustrade. In his hands he held a large
dish. On the dish was a leg of mutton.

In another moment the dish descended with a crash into
the hall, almost at the feet of a waiter who had a few minutes
before taken it up.

The voice of the Marquess exclaimed, " If you call this
mutton cooked, I don't ! "

While the waiter was gathering up the pieces of the dish
and mopping up the gravy from the floor, he looked up at
me and said with a beautiful old English smile, " He doesn't
mean any harm, sir."

The Marquess was one of the last survivals of a type of
noble sportsmen that was commoner in the 'fifties and 'sixties,
when the spirits of an Englishman, animal and otherwise, were
more in evidence than they are now.

The fascination of a noble name in connexion with literature
once cost me considerably more than an umbrella. But this
was a perfectly legitimate transaction, and it led to my first
acquaintance with the distinguished lawyer who is now the
Prime Minister of England.

A good many years ago Mr. Archibald Grove, who was the
prospective Liberal candidate for North-West Ham, came to
me with a brilliant idea.

He was going to start a penny periodical on the lines of
Tit-Bits. He had a splendid title, he told me, and it was
Short Cuts.

He had secured Lord Randolph Churchill and other well-
known political aristocrats as contributors. He was prepared
to put up a certain amount of money. Would I go in
to the extent of a few hundreds and write for the new
paper ?

There was no doubt of the genuineness of the enterprise,
and with the political, social, and literary backing that it

MY LIFE 239

would have there seemed to be a very fair chance for the new
paper, and I had no hesitation in drawing a cheque.

The paper came out, and Lord Randolph Churchill wrote
an article, and so did several other aristocratic and political
celebrities, but Short Cuts was not one of the short cuts to
success.

But while it was still alive the prospective member for
North- West Ham invited me to dine at his house with a few
friends. I found when I arrived that they were political
friends, and among them were several lights of the Liberal
Party.

Three of them — I did not know it at the time — were
barristers, and one of the barristers was Mr. H. H. Asquith,
Q.C.

By the time of coffee and cigars the conversation had
become political, and the prospects of the Liberal Party —
they were not in office then — were discussed.

Greatly daring, but in perfect innocence, I joined in the
conversation.

" One thing I do hope," I said, " and that is that when the
Liberals come into power again they won't have too many
confounded lawyers in the Cabinet."

For a moment there was silence, then Mr. Asquith smiled
and said quietly, " That's pleasant for me ! "

You see I had quite forgotten that Mr. Asquith was a
lawyer. I only knew him as the gentleman who then lived
next door to Robert Buchanan in Maresfield Gardens, Fitz-
john's Avenue, and whose little boy was always knocking a
ball over into the bard's garden.

Whenever Buchanan went into the garden to dream poetry,
over would come a ball, and young Master Asquith would
climb on to the wall and say, " Please will you give me my
ball ? "

Then the amiable poet would forget his dreams and go
foraging about to find and return the ball.

One day Buchanan was writing at the big desk which stood
against a window looking on to the garden. Suddenly there
was a smash of broken glass, and through the window came
a ball that struck the inkstand and sent the contents flowing
over the poet's manuscript.

240 MY LIFE

Before the poet had recovered from the shock the voice of
the young gentleman next door floated bardwards on the
breeze, " Please, sir, will you give me my ball ? "
* # # * *

The Gold Craze had disappeared from the bills of the
Princess's long before the Marquis de Leuville had disappeared
from the bills of Marlborough Street.

The Baron de Fleurville was giving evidence before the
magistrate as late as March 1890, but in December 1899 the
Princess's had produced Master and Man, a drama by Henry
Pettitt and myself.

The play was originally written for Mr. Robert Pateman.
The part of Humpy Logan, a hunchback of revengeful and
malignant turn of mind, was admirably suited to the powerful
and intense method of one of the soundest and grippiest
actors of the good old school.

The tragedy of his horror when the workmen he had
betrayed were about to thrust him into a fiery furnace at the
works had thrilled the provinces for many months when the
brief run of The Gold Craze left the Princess's at liberty, and
we brought Master and Man there and had a highly successful
season with it.

And what a cast for melodrama it was. In addition to
Robert Pateman we had Henry Neville to play the hero,
Bella Pateman the heroine, J. H. Barnes as a burly forgeman,
and Bassett Roe, and Fanny Brough, E. W. Gardiner, Sydney
Howard, and Mrs. Huntley.

I remember Clement Scott in the Daily Telegraph said of
Robert Pateman's Humpy Logan that no such sudden and
impulsive force had been seen on the stage since the days of
George Belmore. It was a Danny Mann accentuated.

Richard Mansfield, of America, formerly of London and
originally of Heligoland — he was born there — saw the oppor-
tunities of this part, and secured the play for production in
New York, but that is a story I shall come to presently.

Robert Pateman, always one of the strongest character
actors on the English stage, can carry his memory back to the
old days of the circuits and the stock companies, and even —
so he was telling me quite recently — to the days when an
attendant would step on the stage in the middle of a perform-

MY LIFE 241

ance when candles were the only lighting arrangements,
and snuff the wicks. That, of course, was in the small
provincial theatres.

They were the days when the bill was frequently changed
nightly, and an actor would have a part in a stock play given
to him when he left the theatre at midnight, would have to
study it during the day and play it in the evening.

Robert Pateman, after touring the provinces for some
years, went to America, and in 1869 made his first appearance
there. He played with Edwin Booth and Dion Boucicault in
the stock company at Booth's Theatre for four years.

In '74 he scored a huge success in San Francisco as Harvey
Duff in The Shaughraun, and now, in 1916, he is still playing
the strong and vigorous parts for which he has been famous
for fifty years.

Richard Mansfield produced Master and Man in New York
at Palmer's Theatre, and thereby hangs a tale — a Winter's
tale.

The famous critic, William Winter, completed, I believe,
last spring his eightieth year, and he has been presented with
an address signed by all the principal dramatists of America
and England. He is a fine and scholarly critic, who deserves
all the honour that can be showered upon him in his green old
age. But he was the severest Winter imaginable as far as
Master and Man was concerned, in 1890.

Richard Mansfield made an enormous success in the
character of Humpy Logan, but America was at that time up
in arms against English importations. The patriots who
believed in America for the Americans didn't like to see
English authors making a Tom Tiddler's ground of the Land
of Liberty from Mexico to Maine, and the feelings of the
critics, many of whom were dramatists themselves, were
undoubtedly embittered by the paragraphs which used to be
put about by every American manager who leased the acting
rights of an English play.

It was not pleasant for American dramatists to read that
two thousand pounds had been paid as advance royalties on
one English play and three thousand pounds on account of
fees for another. There were already signs of a storm when
I got two thousand pounds advance payment on account of

Q

242

MY LIFE

the American rights of The Romany Rye, and Messrs. Brooks
and Rickson revealed the facts to interviewers.

Even Gilbert and Sullivan did not escape the denunciation
of American protectionists when The Gondoliers crossed the
Atlantic in this same year, 1890.

Paragraphs as to the thousands of dollars that had been
paid on account of the American rights were put about, and
so when The Gondoliers did not catch on right away in New
York several critics described the play as The Gone Dollars.
And as The Gone Dollars The Gondoliers was popularly known.

But to return to the amiable and accomplished critic,
Mr. William Winter. Here is an elegant extract from his
review of Master and Man :

It is claptrap, devised to impress a goggle-eyed crowd of
English bumpkins. It has been produced here in the plain,
unvarnished, shopkeeping spirit of the corner grocery —
that deplorable spirit which continually blasts the whole-
some growth of the theatre in this country, which sordidly
and speciously insists that the great object of the drama
is always the financial prosperity of managers and never
the advancement of the dramatic art and the consequent
improvement of society. As if there were not pork enough
or pickles enough for shopkeepers to speculate in ! All
over the United States at this moment, outside of the few
capitals, the theatrical business is nearly prostrate —
blighted by the incessant bloodsucking of parasitical
speculation in the drama.

I do not say that the Winter of New York's discontent at
what it was customary to call the English invasion of English
authors was not justified, but American dramatists and
American managers have certainly had their revenge, and
an ample revenge, so far as the " shopkeeping speculation "
is concerned.

And they have had it on this side of the great ocean with
which Mr. Oscar Wilde was so greatly disappointed.

CHAPTER XXVIII

I CAME to the Princess's again in 1896 with The Star of India,
written in collaboration with my friend Arthur Shirley, an
expert and busy playwright, several of whose dramas have
been money makers for over a quarter of a century.

Before the production of The Star of India certain para-
graphs appeared in the newspapers concerning it, and one
enterprising young gentleman who did the theatrical notices
for a popular daily announced that the play was founded upon
the tragedy of the mutiny of Manipur, a tragedy in which
Mr. Frank St. Clair Grimwood, the British political agent,
had met his death, and in which Mrs. Grimwood, his devoted
wife, who had succeeded in escaping when the natives besieged
the Residency, had played an heroic part.

Shortly after this statement had appeared the Licenser of
Plays informed me that a letter had been addressed to him
at the Lord Chamberlain's office imploring him to refuse to
allow The Star of India to be produced.

The letter was written by Mrs. Grimwood Grimwood, the
mother of the gallant young Englishman who had died at his
post of duty in circumstances which had become a matter of
history.

" SIR, — I have just heard that a new play by Mr. George R.
Sims and Mr. Arthur Shirley is to be brought out next Saturday
at the Princess's Theatre, and that it is founded on my
daughter-in-law's ' Adventures in Manipur and the shocking
murder of my son, and contains an attack on the Residency.
I hear the play has not yet been licensed.

" Could you possibly withhold the license, as it is an outrage
to all decency that money should be made on the stage out
of what has been such an awful tragedy in my family only five
years ago ? " Yours faithfully,

" J. GRIMWOOD GRIMWOOD."
243

244

MY LIFE

Had the intention of the authors been such as the mother
of the gallant young Englishman had been led to believe by
the enterprising young theatrical paragraphist of the popular
daily she would have been perfectly justified in her indignant
protest.

Fortunately the play was already in the hands of the
licenser at the time Mrs. Grimwood's letter was received, and
he was able in his reply to assure her that although the play
dealt with the attack on the Residency and certain incidents
mentioned by Mrs. St. Clair Grimwood, the young widow, in
her book, " My Three Years in Manipur," there was no
reference of any kind to the Grimwoods, and the story was
treated in such a way as to prevent the audience fitting the
date or the real persons who figured in the tragedy.

I hastened on receipt of the letter to assure Mrs. Grimwood
and her friends that both Mr. Shirley and myself had taken
the greatest care that nothing in the play should jar upon the
feelings of the Grimwood family, and we offered to submit a
copy of the play to any one the family might appoint to act in
their interest.

However, shortly afterwards the matter was brought to an
amiable and very satisfactory conclusion. The trouble —
such as it was — had arisen entirely from the desire of an
enterprising young journalist to be first hi giving away the
plot of a forthcoming play. In the course of his enterprise
he had given away more plot than the play contained.

The Star of India was produced at the Princess's on Saturday
April 26, 1896.

The cast included Miss Sydney Fairbrother, Miss Hettie
Chattell, Miss Kate Tyndall, Miss Agnes Hewitt, Mr. Frank
Wyatt, Mr. Clifton Alderson, Mr. Robert Pateman, and
Mr. Sydney Howard.

The producer at the Princess's at that time was Mr. John
Douglas, and John Douglas was a prolific inventor of stage
effects. He gave the stage the famous " tank " scene in
The Dark Secret, and the tank has been introduced into
hundreds of dramas since.

George Rignold, when he made his last revival of The
Lights o' London in Australia, used the tank in the Regent's
Canal scene, and Harold Armitage plunged into real water

J. L. TOOLE

MY LIFE 245

to rescue Seth Preene from a damp end to his villainous
career.

I was at the Princess's again in the autumn of 1897 with
Arthur Shirley as my collaborator.

M. Pierre Decourcelle had produced a highly successful
melodrama, Les Deux Gosses, at the Paris Ambigu, and he
wrote me saying he thought it would suit London.

Pierre Decourcelle and I were first acquainted in my early
Paris days, and we had had many pleasant times together.
Decourcelle when a boy was sent to school at Brighton, and
he is one of the few French authors who speak and write very
good English.

The late Leon Gandillot, who wrote Ferdinand Le Noceur,
was another French dramatist who spoke English, but
not nearly so fluently as Decourcelle. One day Gandillot
came to see me at Regent's Park and my two little toy poms
ran into the study while we were talking and began to bark
at him.

" Ah ! " exclaimed Gandillot, " the splendid hounds ! "

Another French dramatist — he was an actor, too — who
spoke a little English sometimes was Louis Decori, brother of
the famous avocat, Maitre Decori.

Shirley and I adapted a drama of Decori's for Mr. and Mrs.
Charles Sugden, La Fille du Garde de Chasse. I saw it in
Paris, and Decori was very anxious that I should put it on
the English market. While I was in Paris arranging with
Decori I told him I wanted to see a murder trial, and I should
like to go behind the scenes at the Morgue and see the cold-
storage system and the bodies that had been preserved for
years by the process.

Decori got me a letter of introduction from his brother to
the Grefner of the Morgue, and said the murder trial would
be simple, as he himself was known at the Palais de Justice
and we should only have to walk in and sit down.

There was a murder trial in two days' time, so I arranged
to put in a morning at that and spend the afternoon at the
Morgue.

The murder trial was interesting. Everybody smoked
cigarettes in court till the judge entered, then we threw our
cigarettes down and stamped on them.

246

MY LIFE

It sounded as if we were applauding the judge.

A young girl was charged with murdering her baby and
leaving it in her trunk at her last place, where the body was
quite accidentally found.

The judge commenced the proceedings by informing the
girl exactly how she committed the crime, and told her it was
idiotic of her to plead not guilty. He also narrated the details
of her past life in case they might have slipped her memory,
and he laid the black paint on so thickly that at last the girl,
who had been sitting between the two soldiers who in France
are on either side of the accused, jumped up and exclaimed,
" Oh, Mr. the Judge, you are rubbing it in ! I'm not so bad
as all that ! " or words to that effect.

I heard as much of the trial as I wanted to, and then Louis
Decori and I went to the Morgue.

Outside he left me. Nothing would induce him to come in
and see the tragedies that were kept in cold storage in a large
room known as the Columbarium.

Decori had written a drama of Apache life in which any
number of victims were put into a condition for " the ice-box,'*
but he assured me that if he saw a body in the Morgue it would
make him seriously ill. So I had four hours behind the scenes
at the Morgue without the companionship of my French
confrere.

Among other experiences I had the iced remains of
" L'homme coupe* en morceaux " handed to me.

" The man cut in four " was a Paris sensation and a Paris
mystery. It was for a long time supposed that it was a
gruesome Government joke intended to distract the attention
of Parisians at a time of grave political crisis.

But to return to Les Deux Gosses. When we had seen the
play at the Ambigu we agreed to adapt it to the English stage.
Arthur Shirley told me that Messrs. Hardie, Von Leer, and
Gordyn, who had made a success in the provinces with On the
Frontier, were anxious to get a drama to produce in London.
I thought Les Deux Gosses might be the very thing, and Shirley
and I turned it into The Two Little Vagabonds. Making it
" quite English you know " was comparatively easy, as the
French play was undoubtedly suggested by Dickens's " Oliver
Twist."

MY LIFE 247

Two Little Vagabonds was produced at the Princess's by
Messrs. Hardie, Von Leer, and Gordyn, on September 23, 1896,
by arrangement with Mr. Albert Gilmer, who was then the
manager of my old home in Oxford Street.

The cast included Miss Geraldine Oliffe, Mena Le Bert,
Miss Eva Williams, Marie Foley, Walter Howard, Ernest
Leicester, Listen Lyle, Edward Coleman, Chris Walker, and
Edmund Gurney.

Lewis Carroll, the author of " Alice in Wonderland/' wrote
me a characteristic and enthusiastic letter about the play.
But he did more than that. He wrote to " the two boys/'

Dick was delightfully played by Miss Kate Tyndall, but
Dick was in real life the wife of Mr. Albert Gilmer.

Miss Sydney Fairbrother, whose pathetic portrayal of Wally
touched all hearts, had the misfortune early in the run to
lose her husband, and when, owing to a change in the cast,
we had to call a rehearsal, it was in widow's weeds that she
rehearsed the part of the consumptive boy.

It was shortly after that rehearsal that Miss Fairbrother
and Miss Tyndall each received from the author of " Alice
in Wonderland " a children's book with a very pretty in-
scription in it, and at the same time a delightful letter.

The author of " Alice in Wonderland " addressed each of
the two ladies, the widow and the wife, as " My dear child,"
under the impression that they were two clever children
playing the parts.

If I remember rightly, both the ladies acknowledged the
gift and the letter, but were careful not to undeceive the
kindly author and destroy his delightful illusion.

CHAPTER XXIX

EARLY in the 'eighties I wrote a series of special articles —
" Horrible London " — for the Daily News, and from that
time onward to the day of his lamented death Sir John
Robinson, the editor, was my very good friend.

John Richard Robinson was of the old school when Fleet
Street was more a republic of letters than it is now, and the
motto upon the banner of its Bohemian Brotherhood was
" Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity."

Robinson had been one of Douglas Jerrold's young men
before he edited the Evening Express and then came on to
the Daily News.

In the middle 'eighties I had undertaken another series for
the Daily News, and I was to send in an article now and then
at my convenience.

Before the series for which I had contracted was quite
finished I went for a winter holiday to Algiers.

I had left — as I thought — a sufficient number of articles
behind me to keep the series going in the Daily News until I
returned to England.

I had agreed to conclude the series with an article on a
subject then being very much discussed, viz. the abolition
of the fees charged to parents by the School Board — and
that article I had not written.

One evening after our return from a distant excursion that
had taken four days, Count Armfelt, my travelling companion,
went to an Arab caf£ in Algiers. In the Arab cafe — goodness
knows how it got there ! — he saw a torn sheet of the Daily
News, and, glancing at it, he saw my name, and found
that on the sheet was the last of the articles I had left
behind me.

He brought the torn sheet back to the hotel at which we
were staying and said : " Look, they have used all your

248

MY LIFE 249

articles. What about the last one you promised them, on
the Free Education question ? "

I had not had time to grasp the situation before a waiter
came into the room and brought me a telegram.

It was from Mr. Henry Lucy — he wasn't Sir Henry then —
who was acting as editor of the Daily News in the temporary
absence of Sir John Robinson, who was on a holiday :

" Must have article at once, as Parliament is meeting early
next week/'

The telegram had been sent to my London address and
repeated from there.

It was nearly midnight when I got that wire. I had to
finish my three columns for the Referee before I went to bed,
because they would have to be in the post early the following
morning in order to be delivered in time for the next issue.

By the time I had finished the three columns of " Mustard
and Cress " for the Referee it was 3 A.M., and I felt too sleepy
and tired to do myself anything like justice in an important
Daily News article.

But rather than break faith with an editor I determined
to sacrifice the rest of my African holiday. We boarded the
mail-boat the next morning, and on board the boat, which
encountered the Mediterranean at its very worst, I wrote
" Fee or Free " for the Daily News. Ten minutes after we
had landed at Marseilles I had registered it to the editor.
One word about Sir Henry Lucy.

Tom Hood died in 1874. Soon after his death an article
upon Tom Hood written|by^Mr.]^Lucy appeared in the
Gentleman's Magazine.

Henry Sampson, Hood's successor on Fun, didn't like
something in the article, and in the pages of Fun made an
angry reply to Lucy. And I, with the ardour of a young
journalist just beginning to " taste blood," followed up the
article with a little thing of my own.

But not long afterwards I was introduced to Lucy by
Edmund Yates. " Toby, M.P.," was then writing the brilliant
Parliamentary articles in the World " Under the Clock." I
had not been in the society of " Toby, M.P.," five minutes
before my feelings underwent a complete change, and — though
we rarely meet now — the first man I ever attacked in print

250 MY LIFE

has been my good friend for over forty years, and is my good
friend still.

Count Armfelt, who for many years was my companion in
my travels about Europe, came to me in a curious way.

One winter night in the year 1884 I came home from a first-
night production to find among the letters which had arrived
by the last post one which aroused my interest :

" DEAR SIR, — I have read a good deal of your work, and
I think it is quite possible you might be able to find me some
more pleasant employment than that in which I am at present
engaged. I am a Finn by birth, I have been a tutor and an
officer in the Egyptian army. I speak and write fluently
French, German, Italian, and Arabic — Russian, Finnish, and
Swedish and Spanish fairly well. I have travelled all over
Europe, a good deal of Asia and Africa. I was with General
Gordon in the first Khartoum expedition, and I am personally
known to Emin Bey, Slatin Pasha, and Mr. Henry Stanley.

" At present I am slaughtering bullocks at Deptford. Can
you help me to something more suited to my tastes and such
talents as I may possess ?

" Yours obediently,

" ALBERT EDWARD ARMFELT."

I wrote to the address given in the letter that night. The
next day Count Armfelt came to see me. He slaughtered no
more bullocks. He remained with me until within a short
time of his death a few years ago. And he was the " Albert
Edward " who was for so long a familiar figure in my Referee
columns and in the travel notes of " Dagonet Abroad."

To Sir John Robinson, who made me a Daily News man
at the time that such brilliant writers as Henry Lucy, Archibald
Forbes, Justin McCarthy, Moy Thomas, William Black, and
Andrew Lang were on the staff, I owe my first meeting with
Bret Harte, a meeting which was to ripen into an acquaintance
and later on into a friendship which is one of the cherished
memories of my life.

How I met Bret Harte is a story that I cannot omit from
my reminiscences of the days of long ago.

Across the Atlantic the ballads for recitation I had written

MY LIFE 251

and published had apparently made a better literary impres-
sion than they had here. At any rate, the popular American
poets of the period sought me out just to shake hands when
they came this side.

I knew Joaquin Miller, the wild-locked, red-shirted, high-
booted, pistol-belted " Poet of the Sierras/' but that is long
before " The Dagonet Ballads/' and is another story.

Colonel John Hay, whose " Pike County Ballads " had first
started me on the road to dramatic verse, introduced himself.

One afternoon I was at Paddington Station. I had taken
my seat on the train for Malvern when a gentleman came up
to the carriage window smiling. " George R. Sims, I believe ? "
he said.

I raised my hat in admission of the soft impeachment.

" Glad to meet you. I am Colonel John Hay."

The colonel put out his hand and we shook. He had just
begun to say something very nice to me about my ballads when
the train started, and I never saw the creator of " Jim Bludso "
again.

Will Carleton, of "Over the Hills to the Poor-House,"
" Gone with a Handsomer Man/' and a hundred homely
ballads that are as popular here as they are in the land that
gave them birth, came to see me twice during his brief trip
to London, and said things that made me blush.

Fortunately he didn't put them in a letter, or I might have
been tempted to print it.

But one American poet said things that I feel I must repeat,
because the poet who said them was Bret Harte.

Some years ago, in consequence of the enormous success
of " Living London," a fortnightly-part publication which I
had edited for them, the House of Cassell started a new penny
weekly which was called Men and Women, and it was started
under my editorship. It was an interesting little paper, and
I had some of the best writers of the day on the Staff, but it
shared the fate to which all " men and women " are doomed.
After a brief span of existence it died.

But while it was alive I contributed to its columns a series
entitled " Amongst My Autographs," and in one article I told
the story of a dinner-party given by Sir John Robinson at
the Reform Club — a dinner-party at which I met some old

252 MY LIFE

friends — William Black, Andrew Lang — Stevenson's " dear
Andrew with the brindled hair " — Henry W. Lucy, and a
new friend, Bret Harte.

The dinner, I learnt afterwards, was given in order that
I might meet the author of " The Luck of Roaring Camp.'1

In the article in Men and Women I referred to my first
meeting and told the story of the friendship that followed it.

A week after the article had appeared the following letter,
addressed to the editor, reached me :

" Reform Club, July 25, 1903.

" SIR, — I must complain of an omission from Mr. Sims's
last chapter of his ' Autographs/ It was, I am compelled to
say, within his knowledge that Bret Harte in expressing to
me his desire to meet ' Dagonet/ went on to say : ' I tell you,
Robinson, that when I first came here I wanted to know
" Dagonet " more than Tennyson or Browning or Gladstone,
or anybody/ Now this part of my narrative is suppressed
in the ' Autographs ' article. To the remark that when they
did meet Bret Harte was not disappointed, I will only add
that the insertion of this letter will be regarded by me as
superseding the apology which is certainly my due.

" Faithfully yours,

" J. R. ROBINSON."

The nature of the letter, I think, amply justified my reticence
while telling in a journal of which I was the editor the story
of my first acquaintance with Bret Harte.

Bret Harte was of Dutch ancestry. His father, a school-
master, died when he was a boy, and the family were left
without means, and the boy was put into a store. When he
was seventeen he left for California, and took his mother
with him.

He tramped to the mines of Sonora, and there became a
schoolmaster. But journalism soon found him, and he became
editor of the Eureka Gazette. Then he went to San Francisco,
worked at case, and became editor of the Golden Era. It
was when he was editing the Overland Monthly that he wrote
in it " The Luck of Roaring Camp," and soon afterwards two
hemispheres rang with his fame.

MY LIFE 253

When I met Bret Harte for the first time I told him that
he was absolutely the reverse of what I had always pictured
him.

You would never have imagined that he had seen the
rough side of life on the goldfields. There was nothing about
him to suggest the Roaring Camp, and the Rev. J. M. Bellew,
who was the first to introduce his poetry to the public through
John Camden Hotten, said of him : "He looks as if he dated
his letters from St. James's Square rather than San Francisco."

I saw a good deal of Bret Harte when he came to London,
and when he learnt that I generally spent my Sundays at
my mother's house in Hamilton Terrace he would sometimes
call for me in the afternoon — he lived in Hamilton Terrace
at that time himself — and we used to stroll together to
Hampstead.

He died in 1902, and I saw him some little time previous
to his death.

He came into Verrey's in Regent Street with a friend, and
I was there. It was a meeting that made me very sad, for
I knew that in all probability it was a parting. Bret Harte
was suffering from a painful and incurable malady. It had
attacked his throat, and it was with difficulty that he spoke.

I knew that afternoon that the end could not be far off.
Bret Harte knew it too, and there was something in the last
grasp of the hand that he gave me that said " Farewell ! "

CHAPTER XXX

IN a year when there is no Derby at Epsom my memory
travels back over half a century to the Derbys of my youthful —
my very youthful — days, when the great Epsom " carnival "
was an event looked forward to eagerly and wagered upon
heavily by the racing division and moderately by men old
and young, for whom a day of racing was a day's outing, and
the Derby Day a glorified beanfeast with all the fun of the
fair thrown in.

For days before the Derby the windows of the West End
hosiers and outfitters were filled with ties and scarves in the
racing colours of popular owners.

I have somewhere stowed away relics of my early racing
days in ties that were in the colours of Count de Lagrange, Sir
Joseph Hawley, and Mr. Merry, the yellow and black that
often carried my silver hopes, the Marquess of Hastings — I
had a cigar-case in his colours — and Mr. Cartwright. The
only British admiral I troubled about in those days was
Admiral Rous, and the only general who appealed to my
youthful imagination was General Peel.

I was quite a little boy when I went to my first race meeting,
and I saw Polly Peachum win at Worcester in July 1857.
I never forgot my first win, the horse my father drew in a
sweep on the course.

It was my first win because my father gave me sixpence
out of the sweep money, which I spent in gingerbread at one
of the booths for which Pitchcroft was famous.

The parrot that whistles taxis all day long from my front
window in Regent's Park in this present year, 1916, is named
Polly Peachum, not after the heroine of The Beggar's Opera,
but after my first win on a racecourse in 1857.

The first Derby horse in which I was interested was Carac-
tacus, which won in 1862 at 40 to i. That was the race in

254

MY LIFE 255

which the starter, Mr. McGeorge, was severely reprimanded
for starting the horses in advance of the starting-post.

But I didn't know anything about that. I was still a
schoolboy.

Why we boys were interested in Caractacus was on account
of the wild stories which were in circulation as to its owner-
ship. One of the weird stories put about was that it had
been purchased by a hairdresser out of a hansom cab and
trained on Clapham Common.

A story similar in some points was told many years after-
wards about a horse belonging to my old friend Mr. Quarter-
maine East. One of the street stories was that it had been
trained by his gardener in his spare time.

Quartermaine East was, when I knew him, the proprietor
of the Queen's Hotel in Aldersgate Street. In the course of
his career he was Sheriff of London, and he afterwards had
a large hotel in Portsmouth where I used to have many
happy chats with him over old days and old times, and listen
to his wonderful stories of himself and " my friend Lord
Rosebery."

Quartermaine East was one of the supporters of the Tich-
borne Claimant, and he and Mr. Guilford Onslow believed in
" Sir Roger " almost — if not quite — to the last.

Quartermaine East was very proud of his friendship with
Lord Rosebery, and had many interesting stories to tell of his
noble friend. One of them, because of its political value, is
worth repeating.

Lord Rosebery, it will be remembered, was Prime Minister
in 1894, and in that year he won the Derby with Ladas.
Soon after the victory there was a dinner at the Durdans,
and Quartermaine East was one of the guests.

After dinner there was a discussion as to the effect the
Prime Minister winning the Derby would have upon the
Nonconformist Conscience.

Sir Charles Russell and other important persons present
made various suggestions, and then Quartermaine East weighed
in with his, which was that Lord Rosebery should erect a
statue to Oliver Cromwell at Westminster.

This was done to the great annoyance of the Irish Party,
who were furious, and Quartermaine East held that the

256

MY LIFE

carrying out of his suggestion largely contributed to the
downfall of the Rosebery administration.

But to return to the Derby. The first horse I was really
interested in from a racing point of view was Gladiateur, who
won in 1865. That was the French year, and all sorts
of stories were current about the " practices " of the
Count.

At one time it was seriously contended that Gladiateur
was a four-year-old when he ran for the Blue Riband of the
English Turf.

Before Gladiateur ran in the Leger a popular owner demanded
an examination of the horse's mouth, but his request was not
acceded to by the stewards.

When Count de Lagrange died some years afterwards all
the old scandals were revived. The Count undoubtedly ran
horses as a business, and the running of his horses more than
once led to displays of public disapproval, notably in 1864,
Blair Athol's year, when Fille de 1'Air, who had been beaten
hopelessly in the Guineas, won the Oaks.

It was Hermit, in 1867, that started so many of my young
friends on racing careers which ended for most of them more
or less disastrously. Hermit won between two snowstorms,
and just before starting you could have got 100 to i easily.

The little group of young sportsmen to which I belonged in
those days used to meet of an evening in the billiard-room
at the " Lord Elgin," in Elgin Avenue, or in that of the
" Warrington," off Maida Vale. Some of them who were a
little older than I was had backed Hermit at fifties and sixties
some time before the race.

Among the incidents of the Hermit win I remember that
the Duke of Hamilton had laid £180,000 to £6000 against the
horse. He had the good fortune to have the bet called off
before the day.

Over Hermit's race the astute Captain Machell, then starting
on his racing career, won £80,000. Mr. Chaplin, the owner,
is reported to have won £141,000 in bets, and the young
Marquess of Hastings, of tragic memory, lost £103,000.

The Marquess, whose career on the Turf was as short as it
was sensational, died of consumption at the age of twenty-
six, but in his little span of sporting life he managed to make

MY LIFE 257

himself one of the most talked about young Corinthians of
his day.

He started on the Turf directly he left Oxford, and at once
became a mark for " the clever division/' To begin with,
they sold him a horse for £13,500. It was a horse of rank
for a man of rank, but the rank that the horse descended to
was the cab rank.

But presently the Marquess had fifty horses in training.
He won several big races. Over Lecturer, in the Cesarewitch,
he won £80,000, but his gains were never equal to his losses,
and his wild, though frequently generous, extravagances.

The young Marquess, who was the sensation of his day, is
still remembered as one of the tragic figures of gay life in the
'sixties.

I saw WeUs, " the jockey with the whiskers/' ride Blue
Gown to victory for Sir Joseph Hawley in 1868, and defeat
the favourite, the Marquess of Hastings's Lady Elizabeth,
against whom 7 to 4 had been laid.

Lady Elizabeth ran in the Oaks of that year, when George
Fordham, " The Demon," rode Formosa to victory and won
by ten lengths. Lady Elizabeth was not in the first three.

Only the other day I read in a London newspaper that
Wells, the jockey who won the Derby on Blue Gown, had
been admitted to a workhouse somewhere in Wales. The
story was, of course, absurd. Wells died on July 17, 1873.

Old race-goers will remember that Sir Joseph Hawley ran
three horses in this race, and declared to win with Rosicrucian
or Green Sleeve, but the public, a good judge this time, would
not be stalled off Blue Gown, which started at seven to two
and won by half a length.

I went to that Derby by road, and I remember at the " Cock "
at Sutton a poet prophet was giving off his Derby tip to the
crowd. This was the tip :

Yet thousands there be who profess to believe
In an easy-won victory by Sir Joseph's Green Sleeve ;
But all ye gay gallants from London's big town
Must shell out your gold on bonnie Blue Gown.

Blue Gown was sold by Sir Joseph, and died and was buried
at sea while on the way to America.

R

258

MY LIFE

I was present at the Derby of 1869 when Pretender was
returned as the winner by the judge. My money was on
Sir Joseph Hawley's Pero Gomez, and when the horse passed
the post I thought the cash was as good as in my pocket, for
the people all round me shouted the name of Pero Gomez
as the winner.

Pretender's win was a hotly debated question for a long
time afterwards. Pero Gomez won the Leger, and Pretender
was not in the first three, and then the discussion as to the
Derby decision raged for a time more furiously than ever.

I saw Kingcraft win in 1870, when Macgregor started a
red-hot favourite and the price was 9 to 4 on.

There was always an enormous amount of money in those
days for the " yellow and black," and before the race one
of the bookmakers said to the Scotch ironmaster, " If your
horse wins we're broke."

Macgregor did not win. It did not finish in the first three,
and the ring paid out cheerfully over the 20 to I Kingcraft,
which Tom French had ridden to victory for Lord Falmouth,
but there were many weird rumours as to the cause of
Macgregor's defeat, and the stories that were told included
incidents that are favourite devices of the melodramatist
when he writes a racing drama.

No suspicion ever rested upon Mr. Merry, whose luck it
was to own some of the most successful horses on the Turf.

But to this day the old racing division, when the name of
Kingcraft is mentioned, will tell you again the strange stories
of the dark deeds to which the utter failure of Macgregor in
the Derby of '70 was believed to be due.

1871 was the Baron's year. Baron Rothschild won the
Derby that year with Favonius and the Oaks with Hannah.
The Baron finished up his " year " by winning the Leger
and the Cesarewitch.

It was in 1880 that we had another Derby sensation, when
Fred Archer rode the Duke of Westminster's Bend Or to
victory, beating Mr. Charles Brewer's Robert the Devil.

It went round the ring with lightning rapidity that Bend Or
would be objected to on the ground that he was not Bend Or,
in other words, the horse that won the race was not the horse
it was represented to be.

MY LIFE 259

Mr. Brewer did at the Newmarket July meeting lodge a
formal objection, his contention being that Bend Or, the
winner of the Derby, was Tadcaster, and that the two colts
had been mistaken when they were sent as yearlings to the
training stable.

A groom in the Bend Or stables had said so.

The Stewards then made a thorough investigation, and
decided that Bend Or was himself and not, as Lord Dundreary
used to say, " the other fellah."

I don't think I have missed many Derbys since Bend Or,
but I have never followed the fortunes of the favourites with
the eagerness and enthusiasm that were mine in the olden
golden days when the Derby was the racing event of the year
and the great prizes of the modern Turf had not come into
existence to compete with the classic events. Clubs like
Sandown and Kempton Park had not then been established
to change the environment and the conditions of a day's
racing.

I doubt if there are any jockeys now who are such popular
idols as were the jockeys whose names were familiar in our
mouths as household words in the 'sixties, the 'seventies, and
the 'eighties.

It was in 1879 that George Fordham, who for years had
been England's foremost horseman, won his first Derby on
Sir Bevys, the horse starting at the nice price of 20 to i.
There was more cheering that day for the jockey than for the
horse.

With the coming of the Americans and the " seat on the
neck," the star of English jockey dom for a time seemed to be
on the wane.

The New World was going to make the Old World sit up
by showing it the superiority of the monkey crouch.

The jockeys of my early racing days were George Fordham,
by many considered to be the greatest horseman of his day,
Johnny Osborne, a churchwarden in his own parish, Tom
French, the Grimshaws — one of them came to an untimely
end by being thrown out of a trap and breaking his neck —
Wells, Maidment, Challoner, Snowden, Tom Cannon, George
Barrett and Fred Barrett, F. Webb, Custance and Goater,
Kenyon, Fred Archer, and later on Sam and Tom Loates,

260

MY LIFE

Jack Watts, Mornington and Kempton Cannon, and Charley
Wood.

Fred Archer in his day was perhaps the greatest public
favourite who has ever worn a racing jacket. The legend of
his deeds is a glorious memory of the Turf.

I wonder if the ghost of Fred Archer still revisits the pale
glimpses of the moon to ride in phantom trials on Newmarket
Heath ?

CHAPTER XXXI

GOING to the Derby in those days was a prominent feature in
the programme of the joy of life, and the joy began when you
started and you kept up the joy till you got home.

For the young men who went down on their own or with a
friend the hansom had curtains to keep the dust out, and you
wore a dust-coat and a white hat with a long veil attached to
it, and in the band of your hat you stuck wooden dolls.

The veil was necessary, for the dust of the road was
blinding. You went armed with a pea-shooter and peas
and bags of flour, with which you pelted other joy-makers
as you passed them on the road. And usually on the roof of
the hansom you carried a hamper of good things, which
included champagne.

It was a day of animal spirits, of high jinks, of carnival
folly, and frequently of free fights.

The road to the Derby was the joy of descriptive writers,
and because the Lord of Misrule held sway from morn till
dewy eve and considerably later the stay-at-homes made it
part of their programme to line the thoroughfares leading
into town and watch the return from the Derby.

To other meetings in the home district we travelled more
soberly, and if we chose the road our progress was more
businesslike than boisterous.

Some of the suburban race-courses of my youth have long
ceased to exist. They were too near residential property, or
perhaps it would be fairer to say that residential property
gradually came too near to them.

There were steeplechases at Kingsbury and at Hendon, and
as they were within walking distance of my home these
steeplechases reckoned me among their faithful patrons.

The Croydon meeting was popular ; so were Egham and
West Drayton. All are abolished. But the great Cockney

261

262 MY LIFE

fixture was a summer one, and when " Happy Hampton "
disappeared from the list of fixtures the gaiety of 'Any and
'Arriet was temporarily eclipsed.

In the northern suburbs we got compensation for the local
loss in the opening of a new race-course at Alexandra Park in
June 1868.

I was there on the second day, when the betting ring
presented patches of broken red brick and builders' waste, and
I made my first acquaintance with a member of the gang of
clever rascals known as " The Boys."

The " Boy " in question was pointed out to me by a friend
who had driven down with me, and who had already paid
pretty heavily for his racing experience. Poor chap ! The last
time I saw my friend he was driving a hansom cab in
Birmingham.

When the young gentleman at Alexandra Park had been
pointed out to me as " one of the Boys," as it was the first
time I had heard the expression I was anxious for an explana-
tion.

" The Boys," as every one knows to-day, are racecourse
sharpers and tricksters, always on the watch for innocents to
whom they can tell the tale, and they are sometimes clever
enough to bring off coups at the expense of the astute
fraternity that lives by laying the odds.

There was a certain West End bar and lounge in which
" The Boys " and a number of well-known race-course
characters congregated regularly, and after the day's racing
prepared to improve the artificially shining hour by finding
an innocent who would like a little game of cards.

" The Boys " who worked this lay were all of superior
appearance and superior manners, and were able to tell the
tale with a fair prospect of success.

I was pretty well acquainted in those days, through my
connexion with a certain theatre, with a well-known Duke
and his young brother.

The Duke's brother fell in one evening at this bar with one
of the international gang, a card-sharper of superior attain-
ments who divided his time between London and New York,
and generally made a considerable sum on the voyage.

The Duke's brother was taken to a sumptuously furnished

MY LIFE 263

flat in the West End, where he met elegant company and
came away the poorer by three thousand pounds.

He told the Duke what had happened to him, and the
Duke blamed him severely for being such a fool.

" They wouldn't have done me like that," he said, and to
prove that they would not the Duke went to the bar one
evening just to show the clever division that although he was
an hereditary legislator he was more than a match for the
fraudulent fraternity.

He met there one of the most brilliant of " The Boys," who
promptly made his acquaintance, pointed out to him the
members of the flash division who were present, and took the
Duke off to his own flat to meet some American sportsmen
who were over here for a racing campaign.

When the Duke, at an early hour of the morning, left the
party of genuine American sportsmen, he left behind his
lOU's for eleven thousand pounds. And although at the
finish he was convinced that the gang of professional sharpers
had played the game on him he paid the money rather than
have trouble.

That is a personal memoir because I knew the " Boy " who
brought off that coup and followed his career on and off the
Turf for twenty years.

The swell gang of which he was the captain became so
daring in their enterprises, and so frequently made this bar
and lounge the scene of their preliminary operations that the
police had a conference with the eminently respectable
proprietors of the establishment, and it was decided to close
the bar and turn it into a restaurant. And the proprietors
were very glad to do so and get rid of their highly undesirable
clients.

Among the frequenters of that famous bar there were
plenty of " characters." There were men young and old who
had run through their own or other people's fortunes, and it
was through the horses that most of them had gone to the
dogs. •*

They haunted the bar, some for old association's sake, and
others on the look-out for former acquaintances whom they
could tap for a sovereign or two, or more if they could get it.
And these men were always the jauntiest patrons of the

264

MY LIFE

establishment, carrying off with a loud laugh and a swaggering
gait the tragedy that was gnawing at their heart-strings.

The loafers of the lounge were pretty sure of a free drink if
they waited long enough.

One of them whom I had known in his better days told me
that though he managed to keep his wardrobe up sufficiently
to make a decent appearance, he had often to go dinnerless for
days in succession.

" I can get a drink easy enough/' he said, " but if I were
to ask any of the men I know here to stand me a meal they
would never speak to me again. You can ask for a drink
anywhere without losing caste, but if you ask for food you
are a beggar."

This man, who at one time drove his own four-in-hand,
eventually solved the difficulty of paying the rent for which
he was six months in arrears by marrying the landlady.

After that I missed him from the bar. I met him once in
Regent Street, and he told me his wife would not let him out
of an evening alone. She employed him more usefully about
the house.

Another well-known " character " was Major . He was

always hanging about the bar on the look-out for old friends.

His Sovereign had dispensed with the Major's services in
peculiar circumstances.

Some years previously, when he was quartered at Chatham
with his regiment, he had been on the spree with a number of
choice spirits.

In a certain public-house they fell in with a well-known
local baker, who, in the language of bibulous Bohemia, was
" blind to the world."

The baker was put out of the tavern for falling about on
the floor, and immediately fell on the pavement.

The Major and his friends saw the chance of a practical
joke. The Major obtained a wheelbarrow, put the baker into
it, got some red paint, and painted a broad red streak across
his throat, and then wheeled the baker back to his shop.

It was between twelve and one o'clock in the morning, and
the house was closed, so they rang the bell and called up the
wife.

The wife came down and opened the front door, gave one

MY LIFE 265

horrified look at the man whose head was lying over the side
of the barrow with an apparently gashed throat, uttered a
piercing shriek, and fell down in a fit.

The history of that bygone bar would make a striking
chapter in the story of sporting London during the latter
portion of the nineteenth century. It was frequented by
some of the best and some of the worst men about town.

Noble lords and ignoble loafers, owners and bookmakers,
poets and prize-fighters, Army officers, barristers, jockeys and
journalists, authors, actors, artists and musicians, police
officials and men who had done time, were among the daily
and nightly clients of the establishment.

It is gone now, but it has left an abiding memory with those
of us who knew it in the gay days of old.

CHAPTER XXXII

THE element of tragedy has entered many a time and oft into
the lives of the players who in the mimic scene portray the
joys and sorrows, the pains and passions of life, as imagined
by the dramatist.

In the great scene in Youth, the Drury Lane drama by
Augustus Harris and Paul Meritt, there lay upon the battle-
field four actors whose only stage business it was to render
silent service to their country and to be slain as silently as —
so far as the play was concerned — they had lived.

One night after the curtain had fallen on this scene I went
behind to see Harris, who was acting in the play, and I got
on to the stage just as the corpses were getting up. In four
of the corpses I recognized actors who in their day had been
leading men at the West End theatres. One of them had
been the manager of a West End theatre.

In a pantomime at the National Theatre in Harris's time
there was a procession of Shakespearean characters, and the
actor who represented King Lear in that pantomime procession
had once been the star who played King Lear at the Lane.

In an Adelphi play of which I was part author the heroine
was played by an accomplished and charming acresss, a graceful
and fascinating woman.

She was a great success in the part. Everybody liked her.
She played in more than one West End success after that, and
proved herself as charming in comedy as she had been in
melodrama.

Then she drifted out. The only news ever sent by her to
old friends and associates was that she was ill.

One day the death of this once-famous actress was announced
and the date of the funeral given in a daily paper.

The day after that announced for the funeral at the Roman
Catholic Cemetery at East Finchley, a friend of mine, Mr. J. C.

266

MY LIFE 267

Barnett, went with his wife to see where the stage favourite
had been laid. They wandered about, and failed to find any
newly made grave, and were about to come away when
through a gap in the hedge they saw in what appeared to be
a ditch a number of beautiful wreaths and crosses. Lifting
some of the wreaths the visitors discovered some rough boards,
and on lifting the boards saw at the bottom of a deep pit a
coffin.

My friend went at once to see the superintendent of the
cemetery, Mr. Buckerfield, and Mr. Buckerfield told him
that the grave was a common one, costing ios., and probably
within a short time half a dozen coffins would be laid on that
which contained the remains of the dead actress.

Swift action was taken. The name on one of the wreaths
was that of a wealthy lady, the wife of a distinguished surgeon
in Harley Street. The lady was communicated with ; and
she saw Mr. Buckerfield at once. The permission of the
Home Secretary was obtained for the coffin to be removed,
and now the dead actress rests in a grave near that of Michael
Gunn, and above it friends have erected a suitable monument.

This is the story of the grave of the charming woman and
brilliant actress who was at one time my heroine at the
Adelphi — Olga Brandon.

Charles Warner, one of the finest melodramatic actors of
his day and an admirable character comedian, will be best
remembered perhaps by his marvellous performance of
Coupeau in Drink. He once played Othello, and it was a
very fine performance indeed. He was an admirable Tom
Robinson in It's Never Too Late to Mend, and in romantic
drama of the robust kind he was unrivalled.

It was while playing in Michael Strogoff at the Adelphi
in 1 88 1 that he was in a stage fight accidentally wounded in
the hand by James Fernandez, and one of his fingers was
permanently injured.

Charles Warner was the hero of two Adelphi melodramas
in which I was concerned — In the Ranks and The Last Chance.

His end also was a tragedy. He committed suicide by
hanging himself in his room in New York.

At the termination of The Last Chance Warner left the
Adelphi, and the Gattis told me that for The Harbour Lights,

268

MY LIFE

the drama I had written for them with Henry Pettitt, they
had entered into a contract with William Terriss.

Terriss was the ideal actor for a play in which the hero
was a young naval officer.

William Lewin — Terriss was a nom de thtdtre — had been
for a short time in the Royal Navy, but left it to take up
the stage, making his first appearance at the Prince of Wales's
Theatre, Birmingham, in 1869, when he was just twenty
years of age. But in 1871, when I met him first — it was at
the Unity Club — he was performing at Drury Lane in Halliday's
drama of Rebecca, and remaining on at the Lane, he played
Malcolm Graeme in '72 in Halliday's Lady of the Lake.

In June 1885 Terriss wrote me from the Lyceum, where he
was then playing :

" DEAR SIMS, — It may possibly interest you to know that
I have settled for a lengthy engagement with the Gattis,
commencing with your new autumn drama. If at any time
you want to see me about the part, I need hardly say I shall
always be glad to attend your summons.

" Yours sincerely,

" WILL TERRISS."

The Harbour Lights was produced at the Adelphi on
December 23, 1885, and ran without interruption until June 24,
1887, the month of Queen Victoria's Jubilee.

And it was at the Adelphi some years later that the ideal
hero of Adelphi melodrama was foully murdered as he was
entering the theatre.

The circumstances that led up to the murder were, as I
will show, as remarkable as the manner of its accomplishment
was villainously melodramatic.

It was from the Lyceum, where he had been playing with
Irving and Ellen Terry in Olivia, that William Terriss came
to us at the Adelphi to achieve, perhaps, the greatest success
of his career as Lieutenant David Kingsley, R.N. Before he
achieved fame of any kind on the stage he had had a career
which was as romantic as that of any hero he personated, and
he had acted in real life with as many changes of scene as
we used to give the audience in the palmy days of the Adelphi.

MY LIFE 269

William Terriss, before he was five and twenty, had been
seaman, tea-planter, engineer, actor, sheep-farmer, and horse-
breeder, and had twice been shipwrecked. He was a middy
in the Royal Navy and a tea-planter at Chittagong, and after
being shipwrecked on his way home he became an apprentice
at some engineering works at Greenwich.

He remained at the Adelphi after the run of The Harbour
Lights and played the hero in The Bells of Haslemere and
The Union Jack, but soon after that he went to America.

He was in America in 1894, and on New Year's Day he
sent me a breezy, though somewhat prophetic, letter from
New York.

" Hotel Vendome, New York,

" January i, 1894.

" GOOD MORNING, GEORGE, — How time flies ! Old friends
and companions dropping off one by one, leaving us older
and, I trust, better men. But I am sending these few lines
across the broad Atlantic to wish you in '94 all health and
continued prosperity. So a drink to ourselves and absent
friends.

" WILL TERRISS "

That was in 1894. Four days before the coming of Christmas
1897 Will Terriss had himself been laid to rest, amid the
heartfelt grief of the old friends and companions who would
see his handsome face and hear his cheery voice no more.

It was on December 21 that Terriss was buried at Brompton
Cemetery, the funeral procession having passed through streets
crowded with sympathetic spectators, and in those streets
most of the shops were shuttered and the blinds of the private
houses were down.

The death of this popular actor had taken place in circum-
stances which caused not only widespread horror but aroused
the deepest sorrow among all classes of the community.

A few nights previously a man named Richard Archer
Prince, aged thirty-two, and describing himself as an actor,
had been arrested red-handed and charged at Bow Street.

This was the charge : " That he did at about twenty minutes
past seven P.M. on December i6th kill and slay William Terriss
with a knife in Maiden Lane/'

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MY LIFE

Terriss was stabbed by Archer, " a mysterious-looking
individual in a black cloak and slouch hat," just as the actor
was stooping to put the key into the private door leading
to the stage at the back of the Adelphi in Maiden Lane.

Terriss staggered into the passage of the theatre and then
fell, and it was there, with his head supported in the lap
of the leading lady, Miss Jessie Milward, that he died.

And while he lay dead behind the scenes a large audience
had assembled in the theatre waiting for the curtain to rise on
Secret Service, the drama in which the murdered man should
have played the hero.

Prince or Archer — that was the name we knew him by at
the Adelphi, where he had played small parts in the dramas of
Pettitt and myself — was known to many members of the
profession as " Mad Archer." He was a man who suffered
from the mania of persecution. While in a small part in
In the Ranks he complained to me twice that another actor
was trying to " queer " him. A melancholy, saturnine indi-
vidual, he made few friends, and became possessed with the
idea that " everybody was against him." <1%j

Archer not only imagined that everybody was persecuting
him, but he himself had a persistent habit of persecuting — at
least with abusive correspondence — every one who did not
at once listen to his demands for employment, or who refused
to accept a play, Colonel Otto, which he had written, and
which he sent to various managers. He sent Mr. Fred Terry
Colonel Otto, and when Mr. Terry didn't return it at once
Archer bombarded him with abusive post cards.

Archer, among other delusions, believed that Terriss had
not only kept him out of an engagement at the Adelphi, but
had been the means of preventing an appeal to the Royal
General Theatrical Fund for assistance being granted.

Archer had a mania for writing letters, and the method in
his madness was that he generally asked for financial assistance.

When he was arrested his rooms were searched, and the
police found not only letters from ladies of title, but letters
from royal personages and political notorieties acknowledging
" Mr. Prince's poem." The present King and Queen — then
Duke and Duchess of York — had written thanking Prince
for his congratulations on the birth of an heir, the present

MY LIFE 271

Prince of Wales. Princess Henry of Battenberg wrote thanking
him for his touching lines on the death of her husband, and
Mr. Gladstone acknowledged the receipt of a highly compli-
mentary poetical effusion.

But there was another delusion under which the murderer
suffered. He had a sister who was rather well known at the
time. He believed that Terriss and his sister were in league
and were going about together and planning his ruin.

The sister had been to the Adelphi once or twice to see an
actor, but the actor was not William Terriss.

Prince was tried at the Old Bailey in a ghastly brown fog
that filled the grim hall of tragedies on January 10, 1898.
Mr. Charles Mathews and Mr. Horace Avory prosecuted, and
Mr. Sands was for the defence. On the ascertained facts
concerning Prince's career and on the medical evidence the
jury could only find that the murderer of William Terriss was
insane and not responsible for his action.

If Richard Archer Prince had been recognized as insane,
as he should have been years earlier, William Terriss might
still be with us.

There is a grim coincidence in the last letter poor Will
Terriss, the " Breezy Bill " of a hundred happy theatrical
and Bohemian memories, wrote to me.

In the late autumn of 1897 some paragraphs appeared in
the theatrical papers concerning a play which I had just
completed for a well-known management. Terriss wrote to
me to know if I could deal with him for the American rights.

I replied jokingly that I had disposed of the world rights.

Here is Terriss's characteristic letter :

" Adelphi Theatre.

" DEAR GEORGE, — Sorry you have sold all rights for this
world. What price the next world ? " WILL."

Alas, how little did poor Will Terriss imagine that he would
have passed to that next world before the play for which he
wanted " the next world rights " had been produced ?

In one of the many memorial articles that appeared at the
time of the tragedy the writer attributed to Sir Henry Irving
the mot, I have found a rara avis in Terriss/'

I have always been under the impression that this was a

272 MY LIFE

mistake. It was apropos of Terriss's early appearance at
the Prince of Wales's Theatre under the Bancroft management
that the mot was first made, and it appeared in the pages
of Fun.

The Gipsy Earl, the play that I was writing at the time
I received the telephone message to tell me that Terriss had
been murdered, was produced some months later at the
Adelphi.

It was my last play at the old home of melodrama, and in
connexion with its production I have one or two reminiscences
which may be of interest to old playgoers.

CHAPTER XXXIII

The Gipsy Earl was produced at the Adelphi on the night of
August 31, 1898, with a remarkably fine cast, and Fred Terry
and Julia Neilson as the hero and heroine. With artists like
Edmund Maurice, William Devereux, George Hippesley, John
Glendinning, and Miss Keith Wakeman to sustain the serious
interest, with Harry Nicholls as 'Lijah Blossom, a village
policeman, and Athol Forde and Mrs. Henry Leigh in strong
comedy parts, and with Sydney Fairbrother as the runaway
boy who fancies himself as " Dashing Dick, the hero of the
turnpike road," and Maggie Bowman as his timorous little
sweetheart, the melodrama did not fail to appeal to Adelphi
audiences.

I have said that there were incidents connected with the
production which are interesting reminiscences.

When we were about to complete the cast I sat one morning
in the manager's room at the Adelphi to interview the ladies
and gentlemen who were willing to undertake small parts for
which the salary would be a few pounds a week.

And suddenly there came smiling into the room the stage
idol of my boyhood and the idol of the youth of many thousands
of playgoers in England, on the Continent, and in America.

As Lydia Thompson came towards me and held out her
hand I could not suppress an exclamation of surprise.

" My dear lady,'* I exclaimed, " what on earth do you
want here ? You aren't surely anxious to play Adelphi
heroines ? "

Lydia Thompson laughed. " If I were it would be no use,"
she said, " because the heroine is fixed up. I know that.
Julia Neilson is your star this season."

" Yes — that is our good fortune. Have you come to
congratulate me on it ? "

" No — I've come on business — serious business. I hear

273 s

274

MY LIFE

there are several small parts not yet filled. Be a nice kind
man and give me one of them/'

I don't think I said anything for quite a minute and a half.
I was trying to realize the situation. Lydia Thompson, the
bright delightful comedienne, the charming dancer, who had
in her day captured all Europe and all America ; Lydia
Thompson — whose talent when I was first taken, a boy, to
the theatre made her the talk of playgoing London — had
come to me forty years afterwards to ask me to give her a
small part in an Adelphi melodrama.

It was in the very early 'sixties — I am not sure that it
was not in the late 'fifties — that I had given my boy's heart
to a dainty little lady who played so archly and danced so
delightfully in Magic Toys, and the charming little lady of
my youthful adoration was Lydia Thompson.

Lydia Thompson made her first appearance as a principal
dancer in 1852. Soon afterwards she made a great success as
Little Silverhair in Harlequin and the Three Bears at the
Haymarket. In 1856 she was dancing her way through the
theatres of Germany. She visited the principal capitals of
Europe. In one town — I think it was Budapest — the students
took the horses from her carriage and drew her in triumph from
the theatre to her hotel, and on the balcony she made a speech.

She went to America, and was hailed as the greatest and
most charming burlesque actress of the day. Torchlight
processions took place in her honour, and shoeblacks presented
her with a silver wreath.

As she sat opposite me that August morning in 1898 my
memory wandered back to H. J. Byron's Der Freischutz,
produced at the Prince of Wales's in 1866. And Lydia Thomp-
son played the principal part because Marie Wilton was
bidding good-bye to burlesque.

Lydia Thompson's troupe of Blondes ! I remember the
sensation they made in America and here, and did not Pauline
Markham — beautiful Pauline Markham— tell us afterwards
how, because he had written an insulting article about the
Blondes, the fair Lydia had horsewhipped the editor of the
Chicago Times ?

And then she came back and gave us Bluebeard, with
Rachel Sanger and Lai Brough and Willie Edouin.

MY LIFE 275

She married John Christian Tilbury, a nephew of Mr.
Tilbury, of the firm of coachbuilders, Tilbury, Son, and Cooke,
in the Marylebone Road.

The Tilburys were the inventors of the Tilbury and the
Tilbury tugs, and Mr. Tilbury, sen., was the first person to
introduce rubber tyres. They were exhibited in the 1851
Exhibition, but Sir Richard Mayne, the head of the police,
would not sanction the use of them as he said they would
be a danger to the public.

John Christian Tilbury, Lydia Thompson's husband, was
killed at Brentwood while riding a horse, All Fours, in the
Union Hunt Steeplechase.

The horse fell at a fence. Tilbury was carried on a gate
to the farmhouse and Lydia Thompson was sent for, and she
arrived in time to see him die.

Afterwards she married Mr. Alexander Henderson, the
well-known theatrical manager, and in '78 she was playing
at the Folly Theatre, of which her husband was the proprietor.

And here in 1898 was the world-famous artist asking me'
for a small part in an Adelphi drama.

Alas, there was nothing to suit the fair and evergreen
Lydia, and I had to tell her so and bid her a smiling
adieu.

But a year later she was playing a very fine part indeed.
She was the honoured recipient of a magnificent and ever-
to-be-remembered complimentary benefit at the Lyceum.

What a house it was ! What a programme ! The benefit
was on Tuesday afternoon. On the Monday night there was
a throng of women already waiting at the pit doors and the
gallery doors.

There was a reception on the stage, which was crowded
with well-known actors and actresses, and Sir Henry Irving
stepped to the footlights to recall the time when he and
Lionel Brough, then unknown to London audiences, had
supported Lydia Thompson in rollicking burlesque, and Lydia
Thompson delivered a reply written for her by W. S. Gilbert
telling of the wonderful changes which had taken place in
things theatrical " since that dim age when little Silverhair
tripped on the stage/' and the address ended with " God
bless you, God bless me, God bless us all ! " and the house

276 MY LIFE

rose and cheered itself hoarse and white handkerchiefs waved
frantically.

Lydia Thompson sent me an autographed programme of
that benefit with a charming little letter, and jokingly reminded
me that I had promised not to forget her when I was casting
my next play.

It was while I was still sitting in the manager's room
at the Adelphi under the influence of the happy memories
of Lydia Thompson that another famous player of the days
of my youth had entered.

The lady who stood smiling before me was Miss Marriott.
It was a curious and I might say a dramatic coincidence
that I should, on this sunny August morning in 1898, meet
both Lydia Thompson and Miss Marriott for the first time in
circumstances which enabled us to converse.

It was a dramatic coincidence because both the ladies had
delighted me in my earliest days as a playgoer and both were
stage favourites when I was a schoolboy.

And both had made their first appearance in London in the
early 'fifties. Lydia Thompson had made her debut in 1852
at Her Majesty's, and Miss Marriott had appeared for the
first time in London in 1854 at Drury Lane, playing Bianca in
the tragedy of Fazio.

My first memory of Miss Marriott is a cloudy one. She
played The Angel of Midnight at the Princess's in '62, but
I remember the play better than the players.

But they were not the old days of Drury Lane or the
Princess's that came back to me as Miss Marriott entered the
little room at the Adelphi where I sat waiting to interview
the ladies and gentlemen who were anxious to fill the small
parts in The Gipsy Earl.

The old days that came back to me were the old days of
Sadler's Wells.

And my memory in one swift flight was back again, not in
the old Phelps's days when I was taken as a child to the Wells,
but in the later days when I had come to man's estate.

It was the lady who anticipated the divine Sarah and
played Hamlet at Sadler's Wells in 1864, not only to the
satisfaction but the delight of the audience — I was one of
them — who in August 1898 came to me because she had

MY LIFE 277

heard that some of the small parts in my new Adelphi drama
were not yet filled !

Fortunately there was a small part that I was able to offer
to the lady who, five and thirty years previously, shone as a
star where Phelps had for many years shed his dazzling rays
upon the land, not of promise, but of performance.

When the engagement had been settled and Miss Marriott
had bidden me good-bye and taken the part home with her,
the memories of Sadler's Wells which her coming had aroused
still remained with me.

I remembered that that fine old actor, Henry Marston, had
been one of Phelps's principal players at the Wells. He had
played with the elder Kean, with Kemble, and with Macready.
When Phelps " rescued Sadler's Wells from clowns and
mountebanks " Henry Marston was his right hand. And I
remember being present at the benefit given at the Lyceum
to Henry Marston when his notable career had been brought
to a close by ill-health. He made his first appearance in
1824, and it was in 1879 tnat many of the best-known actors
on the English stage appeared at the Lyceum in Much Ado
About Nothing to do him the honour he had so nobly striven
to deserve.

And as my memory wandered back to the theatre of which
Miss Marriott had at one time been the bright particular star
and done her best to carry on the Phelps tradition, a tragedy
leapt to my mind.

I remembered that in 1863 Charles Fechter, then in his
glory at the Lyceum, announced that Mr. Phelps and Mr.
Walter Montgomery had been engaged " and would shortly
appear." Fechter had engaged Phelps, but preferred to pay
him to walk about.

But Fechter in time got tired of paying for nothing, and
asked Phelps to play the ghost to his Hamlet. Then there
was trouble, and eventually, on the advice of Charles Dickens,
who was friendly to both actors, the Phelps engagement was
cancelled and Fechter was Hamlet all by himself.

Few remember much of Fechter's Hamlet to-day, but all
old playgoers remember him in Ruy Bias and Bel Demonio
and The Duke's Motto. The Duke's motto became a catch
phrase, and I remember that Charles White, the well-known

278

MY LIFE

bookmaker, had as his sign on the racecourse " The Duke's
Motto — ' I Am Here/ " which was a very excellent motto for
a ready-money bookmaker.

But the tragedy that leapt to my mind as I sat and chatted
with the lady who had played Hamlet, and was willing to
play a part of a few lines at the Adelphi, was that of Walter
Montgomery, the popular tragedian — he also had played
Hamlet — who was engaged by Fechter at the same time as
Phelps.

The fate of Walter Montgomery is probably one of the
forgotten tragedies of the stage, and yet when it happened it
thrilled all playgoing London.

In the midoUe 'sixties a very pretty and charming French
actress came to the Princess's Theatre to play Juliet. Stella
Colas was a young and beautiful Juliet, and that was all, but
being French and fascinating, her daring Shakespearean
adventure caused any amount of talk and discussion.

Stella Colas came back to London the following year and
appeared as Juliet again, and one of the leading critics of the
day declared with more pith than politeness that she was
" obtrusively self-conscious, showy, jerky, artificial as a
puppet," and that as Juliet she was " still abominable."

The Entente in those days had not extended to French
performances of Shakespeare on the Bard's own territory.

Walter Montgomery was the English Romeo to the French
Juliet, and it was the tragedy of Walter Montgomery that
the Marriott memories of Sadler's Wells brought back to me.

Montgomery, whose real name was Richard Tomlinson, was
born in America, came over here young, and got a berth at
Welch, Margetson and Co.'s in the City, but, like one of our
now famous actor-managers, he deserted the shirt and collar
trade for the sock and buskin. He drifted from drapery into
the drama and became in time a recognized Shakespearean
actor, and his renown as a leading man justified the famous
Fechter in coupling him with Phelps in his announcement of
important engagements.

In July 1871, the year of the Paris Commune, Hollingshead
brought over a French company from Brussels with a light,
bright repertoire. It only remained a few weeks, and then,
on the last day of July, Walter Montgomery, greatly daring,

CHARLES FECHTER

MY LIFE 279

considering the theatre and the time of year, took the Gaiety
for a legitimate season, and, alas, Shakespeare on this
occasion spelt not only ruin but suicide.

Poor Montgomery lost heavily at the Gaiety in his short
season, and at the end of July Julia Matthews was back at
the theatre with The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein.

On August 30 Walter Montgomery was married at St.
George's, Hanover Square, to Miss L. Bigelow, a young
actress who had made a success on the stage and had played
Pauline in The Lady of Lyons.

On September 2 he committed suicide in a house between
Bond Street and Albemarle Street, where he had rooms on
the first floor.

Montgomery and his bride had driven from Waterloo to
the house in a hansom. Montgomery stepped out of the cab,
ran up to his bedroom and shot himself, and when his wife,
who had followed him, got upstairs it was to find her husband
lying dead by his own hand.

Charles Albert Fechter — I remember that a good many
people pronounced his name " Feshter " — had a German
father and an English mother. He was one of the most
popular romantic actors of the 'sixties, and gave a foreign
touch to the romantic drama which was not without its
appeal.

His grace and variety of gesture were something new to
the English stage, and his methods played havoc with many
old conventions. He not only looked the hero of romance,
but behaved as such, and if the matinee girl had been invented
in those days Fechter would have been her idol.

I remember him best as Fabien and Louis dei Franchi in
The Corsican Brothers. I have a melancholy remembrance of
his Edgar in The Master of Ravenswood, but he is indelibly
impressed on my memory as Obenreizer in Charles Dickens's
and Wilkie Collins's No Thoroughfare.

And these playland pictures from the long ago all came
back vividly to my mental vision as I sat chatting one August
morning in 1898 with Miss Marriott, who, like Fechter,
played Hamlet to me while I sat in the pit in the days of my
youth.

Miss Marriott duly appeared in The Gipsy Earl.

280

MY LIFE

an old gipsy woman admirably, and delivered a dramatic
speech — a curse — with all the distinction and force of the
fine old school of the 'sixties, when the children of Thespis
spoke to be heard and did not think it beneath their dignity
to " act/'

At the end of the run of The Gipsy Earl my connexion with
the old Adelphi Theatre closed. It had lasted with intervals
for nearly seventeen years.

CHAPTER XXXIV

IT was W. S. Gilbert who was responsible for the phrase
" Adelphi guests/'

A well-known actor told me the other day that his daughter
while playing for a kinema firm heard the producer ring up
the training school attached to the establishment and say to
the manager, " Send me down a dozen assorted guests at
once."

In the 'sixties and well on into the 'seventies the " Adelphi
guests," whether they were dukes or earls or the newly rich,
were played by the ordinary supers, and they attended balls
and receptions in the oddest specimens of evening dress
imaginable.

It was not until Ludwig Barnay and the Saxe-Meiningen
Company came to Drury Lane in 1881 that any serious
attention was paid by stage managers to the conduct and
demeanour of a crowd. The crowd groaned simultaneously
and shouted simultaneously, and betrayed not the slightest
interest in the proceedings except when the cue came to
groan or shout or cheer.

Augustus Harris went over to see the Duke of Saxe-
Meiningen to arrange for the engagement of the company,
with Herr Barnay at its head.

As he always liked a travelling companion he took Henry
Pettitt with him. They made a straight journey without
stops, and early in the morning after a night in the train
Harris woke up and gazed sleepily out of the window. He
saw a broad, swiftly flowing river. He roused Pettitt.

" That's a fine river," he said. " You were a schoolmaster
once. What is it ? "

Pettitt gazed out of the window with sleepy eyes and said,
" I used to teach writing, not geography," and went off to
sleep again. And so did Harris.

281

282 MY LIFE

They had had their first view of the Rhine without knowing
it.

The crowd in the Saxe-Meiningen productions at Drury
Lane was a revelation to the British stage manager, and soon
after that the crowd began to receive as much attention at
rehearsal as the principals.

The " Adelphi guests " had disappeared when I came to
the theatre, that is to say, so far as the ordinary super-guests
were concerned.

The stage was getting into society, and society was getting
on to the stage, and there were quite a large number of well-
bred and well-educated young men and women, eager to
adopt the dramatic profession, who were willing to gain
experience by " walking on."

In the crowd in In the Ranks were players of small parts —
Richard Archer Prince, the murderer of Terriss, was one of
them — the daughter of a famous London writer, the wife of
a London doctor, the sister of a distinguished naval officer,
and a young lady who had the right to describe herself as the
daughter of a hundred earls.

Charles Harris — Gus Harris's brother — was a stage manager
of considerable reputation and in general demand as a pro-
ducer of spectacular pieces, and he was engaged by the Gattis
to produce In the Ranks.

Now Charlie Harris — he was known variously as Charliar
Harris, " The Stage Damager," etc., but nobody ever called
him Charles — was one of the old school of stage directors who
were given to the use of strong language when anything went
wrong at rehearsal or the small people were not up to the
mark, and on occasions he could swear as terribly as, according
to Uncle Toby, our Armies did in Flanders.

I remember Charlie Harris on one occasion, while rehearsing
a burlesque, requesting the ladies of the chorus not to crowd
together in the scene " like a vital fluidy lot of sardines."

When he came to the Adelphi to produce In the Ranks the
new quality of the " Adelphi guests " paralysed his powers of
expression.

He came to me one day after a long and trying rehearsal
with the crowd, and in a voice broken with emotion he
said:

MY LIFE 283

" For Heaven's sake, ask the Gattis to get rid of those
bally aristocrats and give me something I can swear at or the
scene won't be worth a d ."

Charlie Harris, apart from his flow of language, which in
his day was not looked upon as abnormal, was a very good
stage manager indeed.

I remember meeting him just before the production of a
big show which he was stage managing, and in his picturesque
way he said to me, " I think I've done it this time ! My big
scene will take their bally eyeballs out."

Looking back upon my forty years' connexion with the
stage I can see no change that has been greater than that in
the language and demeanour of the stage manager and
producer to the small part people and the crowd.

In the old days there were managers who were notorious
for their insulting remarks at rehearsal.

There was a manageress who could be very sarcastic at
times, not only with young beginners, but with the more
important members of the company.

One day she was directing a rehearsal while her husband
sat by her and looked on.

A young actor who was rather sensitive had recently
joined the company, and this was his first rehearsal. After
the manageress had made one or two sarcastic comments
upon his reading of the part he stepped towards her, bowed
politely, and said in a voice that the whole company could
hear, " Madam, if you insult me again I shall pull your
husband's nose ! "

To-day rehearsals are conducted with scrupulous courtesy
to all concerned.

A bishop and his wife might, for instance, attend the whole
of the rehearsals of a Drury Lane pantomime, and they
would not hear from Mr. Arthur Collins or from any of his
assistants a word addressed to the company that they — the
bishop and his wife — might not, when they got home, repeat
to their children — if they had any.

Under the old regime at the Lane things were not always
so pleasant. When Charlie Harris was assisting his brother,
the bluff though generally genial Augustus, they would even
occasionally exchange language with each other.

284

MY LIFE

But my memories of the Lane go back long before the Harris
regime.

The first memory of the National Theatre that I have that
is not a cloudy one is of Phelps as " Manfred." That was in
1863. I can see the lonely figure on the great stage now, and
I can hear the tumultuous welcome of the packed house to
the great tragedian whom Chatterton had invited to return
to Drury Lane, his " rightful home."

I am bound to confess that the management did not share
the enthusiasm of the audience over Manfred, for not long
after the experiment Mr. F. B. Chatterton made a managerial
utterance which became classical. He said that " Shakespeare
spelt ruin and Byron bankruptcy," and Chatterton let E. T.
Smith have Phelps for Astley's.

I have a lively recollection of one remarkable winter night
in 1867. It was January 22. We had a box for the panto-
mime, and we got to Drury Lane at last in a four-wheel cab
drawn by three horses, two abreast and one in front, and a
man walking by the side of the animals to help them up
when they fell down. January 22, 1867, was long remembered
in theatrical circles as the night when pedestrians skated or
slid along the streets because no other means of progression
was possible.

The Drury Lane pantomime was famous in the 'sixties as
it is now. But there was considerably more opposition, as
half the theatres in London had Christmas pantomimes.
Those were the days of the famous clown, and the harlequinade
was still a great feature of Christmas shows.

They were the days of Harry Boleno and Harry Payne,
and the Great Little Rowella and the Lauris and the Lupinos.
In the 'sixties I saw a treble harlequinade with three famous
clowns in it.

The harlequinade was a very important part of the panto-
mime programme in the 'sixties and the 'seventies. The
question to managers was not in those days " Who is to be
your principal comedian ? " or " Who is to be your principal
boy ? " but " Who is to be your clown ? "

When Puss in Boots was produced at Drury Lane in 1869
the programme commenced with a performance by " Her
Majesty's Servants " of a farce entitled My Wife's Out, and

MY LIFE 285

the harlequinade consisted of four scenes and a final grand
transformation scene.

There were two clowns, two pantaloons, two harlequins,
and two columbines. The pantomime troupe danced a
pas de quatre, harlequin and columbine danced a polonaise,
a bolero, and a hornpipe, and there was a full ballet, The
Girls of the Period, in the second scene.

Among the specialities in the fourth scene we had Professor
Peterson's troupe of performing dogs, Le Petit Rarey and the
Smallest Horse in the World, and the Albanian Violinists.

Another scene was the deck of a warship. It was manned
by three hundred children, and the Infant Drummer, Master
Vokins, performed on board.

As a specimen of the sort of scene they gave us in the
harlequinade in those days, here is the synopsis of what
happened on the deck of that man-of-war :

" Morning — Preparations for a voyage — Inspection by the
Duke of Edinburgh — Rifle drill, cutlass exercise, and the
march past — Leave-taking — ' The Girl I Left Behind Me ' —
Weigh anchor — ' I'm Afloat, I'm Afloat ' — The boatswain's
song, and hornpipe by sixty able-bodied young British tars —
The enemy in sight — The action, and success of the flag that's
braved a thousand years the battle and the breeze."

When that scene opened it was close upon midnight, and
there was the Fairy Home of Industry, the grand transforma-
tion scene of the harlequinade, yet to come.

I can remember that harlequinade, and I know that I
stayed to the very end, and so did the rest of the audience.

In the old-fashioned harlequinades we had in addition to
the famous clowns pantomimists like Paul Herring and Fred
Evans, and the Lauri troupe and the Leclerq troupe, of which
the head was Charles Leclerq, the father of two of the most
refined and charming actresses of their day, Carlotta and
Rose Leclerq.

And Fawdon Vokes was Harlequin and Jessie Yokes was
Columbine, and Rosina Vokes was Harlequina. This was
before the days when the Vokes family came to fame and
fortune, and Fred Vokes was an excellent entertainment in
himself, and Victoria and Rosina Vokes were not only brilliant
comediennes but actresses of the front rank.

286 MY LIFE

Old playgoers remember The Belles of the Kitchen and
Fun in a Fog. And they remember Victoria Yokes as Amy
Robsart at Drury Lane, and they have many a happy
memory of Rosina Vokes, the most delightful and dainty of
comediennes, who became the wife of Mr. Cecil Clay, and
whose death in America when she was at the height of her
fame filled the hearts of playgoers on both sides of the Atlantic
with sorrow.

The Vokes family were the " Vokes Children " when they
began their stage career, and they played with Flexmore and
Phelps and Charles Matthews and Creswick and Barry
Sullivan before they became famous in Drury Lane pantomime.

I remember Dion Boucicault's Formosa at Drury Lane in
'69, with Katherine Rodgers as the soiled heroine, Henry
Irving as Compton Kerr, the gentlemanly villain, and bright
and dainty Maggie Brennan as the Earl of Eden. Formosa
was the wonderful play which saw one of the 'Varsity crews
sit astride a form to practise for the boat race. And the hero,
the stroke of one of the crews, was kidnapped and locked up,
and escaped just in time to leap into his boat and win the
race.

Andrew Halliday, after making a huge success with The
Great City, supplied the Lane with historical drama for many
years. The Lady of the Lake, Kenilworth, and Amy Robsart
drew the town.

In 1873 dear old E. L. Blanchard, the Drury Lane ever-
green, had a second innings. He gave us The Children in the
Wood at Christmas and in September a " pantomimical
eccentricity " which he called Nobody in London — not a particu-
larly promising title for a theatre with the holding capacity
of the Lane.

In the late 'seventies the Drury Lane management was in
difficulties.

Mr. F. B. Chatterton had done his best to deserve a better
fate.

But it was all in vain, and on the evening of Saturday,
December 7, 1878, Chatterton closed his dramatic season.

On the Monday Herr Bandmann took the theatre for a
brief spell in order to allow us to see his Hamlet.

On Boxing Day E. L. Blanchard succeeded Shakespeare

MY LIFE 287

and gave us Cinderella, which has always been considered
one of the most " drawing " subjects for pantomime.

The famous Yokes family were in it, Julia Warden and
Miss Hudspeth were the spiteful sisters, Victoria Vokes was
Cinderella, and Jessie Vokes was the Prince.

But right in the middle of the run of Cinderella Drury Lane
closed its doors. There was no treasury.

I have told the story of the events that led up to the
disaster, because the Christmas catastrophe is unique in the
history of the National Theatre.

It was on February 4, 1879, tna* ^ne theatre closed suddenly
while the pantomime was in full swing.

And that was the end of the management of Mr. F. B.
Chatterton, for whom Shakespeare had spelt ruin, Byron
bankruptcy, and Pantomime had put up the shutters.

And then there arose a very active and enterprising young
man who had been stage manager with Edgar Bruce while
I was winning my spurs at the little theatre in Soho.

This young man sprang into the imminent deadly breach,
and Augustus Harris became known to the world and through
the World as Druriolanus.

It is a legend in Theatreland that Augustus Harris took
Drury Lane with a capital of £500 at his disposal.

At any rate, he told me himself that he was not afraid of
losing his money at the Lane, because he hadn't any to lose.

Augustus Harris, senior, was one of the most famous stage
managers in Europe. His son reminded John Ryder of this
when the old actor somewhat testily protested against the
idea of young Gus Harris as the manager of Drury Lane.

" Oh," replied Ryder, " so you think you're a stage manager
because your father was one ? Well, my father was a pilot,
but I should be sorry for the ship that I had to bring up
the Thames."

Young Augustus was sent to school in Paris, and when he
left school he had a berth in the house of Erlanger and Co.
as a foreign correspondent, but when his father died he
abandoned the desk for the drama.

He was assistant stage manager for a time with Mapleson
of the Italian Opera.

He produced a pantomime at the Crystal Palace for Charles

288 MY LIFE

Wyndham, and when I first met him he was playing Harry
Greenlanes in Pink Dominoes at the Criterion.

His career at Drury Lane is theatrical history. He had
his ups and downs, but he had big ideas, high spirits, and
fertility of resource, and he managed to be the Napoleon of
Theatreland without having the worry of Waterloo or the
ennui of Elba.

I have told the story of Gus Harris when he was at the
Royalty, and how he used to tell me his dreams of Drury Lane,
and give off bits of the drama which Pettitt and he and
Meritt were going to do if he got the lease of the big theatre.

And Paul Meritt gave me his ideas too. In quite sober
seriousness he took me into the lobby of the theatre one day,
where the statues of Kean and Kemble and Garrick and
Shakespeare are, and he said, " If I go to the Lane I shall be
a national author, and one day my bust may be here with
my predecessors."

Augustus Harris did get his bust put up at Drury Lane
after his death.

But it was outside.

Paul Meritt had his share of success at the Lane, but he
fell out of the Pettitt-Harris collaboration.

After he left the Lane he nourished a grievance against
Harris, and he used to write him four- and six-paged letters
about twice a week.

Whenever I went to see Meritt, who lived in Pembroke
Square, Kensington, he always insisted upon reading these
letters, of which he took press copies, to me.

I don't think Gus Harris replied to the bombardment
after the first three or four. At any rate, one day when I
called to see Paul I found him triumphant.

" I read my last letter to Harris to you, didn't I ? " he said.
" Well, that's a fortnight ago, and he hasn't replied. My
boy, I've knocked him speechless ! "

Gus Harris at first played parts in the dramas, and, among
others, he played Icilius, and was ever afterwards chaffed as
" The Penny Icilius." It was not vanity that made him act
for a time. It was his desire to qualify for the Drury Lane
Fund.

Augustus Harris was a hearty, genial man with a bluff and

MY LIFE 289

boisterous manner, but on occasions he could wrap himself
in a cloak of dignity.

Once in the long ago, when Arthur Pinero was just beginning
to come to the front, there was a theatrical dinner at the
Star and Garter, Richmond, with a large professional
attendance and speeches afterwards.

Pinero made a little speech, and something he said quite
innocently was taken by Harris to reflect on the policy at
Drury Lane. When the company filed out after the banquet
Gus Harris planted himself in the doorway and waited until
Pinero came along. Then he eyed him up and down in the
good old melodramatic manner and exclaimed :

" Mushroom ! "

Some years afterwards Arthur Pinero had made his mark,
and a very big mark, as a dramatic author, and he found
himself at the Green Room Club late one night when Augustus
Harris was there.

Several of the members remembered that since the dinner
the manager and author had not spoken to each other.

One of them — I think it was Henry Hamilton — went to
Gus and said, " Come and speak to Pinero. What's the good
of nursing an old grievance ? "

Harris had his cloak on — a sort of military cloak which he
generally wore over evening dress. Presently, after evident
hesitation, he strode towards Pinero, flung the folds of his
cloak over his shoulder, looked the now successful author
up and down, and exclaimed :

" Shakespeare ! "

I think Druriolanus imagined that he had both offended
and atoned monosyllabically, because when he and Pettitt
were discussing the title for a new play Harris said, " What
I like best are monosyllabic titles like Humanity."

During the latter half of the Harris regime Mr. Arthur
Collins was the great man's right hand, and much of the
excellent stage-management of the later productions was his,
for Harris had a good many irons in the fire, and was beginning
to suffer from the ailments to which he eventually succumbed
in the prime of life.

Arthur Collins served an artistic apprenticeship in the
scene-painting room with Henry Emden, and he had been

T

290 MY LIFE

an actor, playing parts of all sorts in provincial companies
and others, and he brought to the Lane gifts which were not
only practical but artistic.

When Augustus Harris died it was generally recognized that
Arthur Collins was his legitimate successor.

But Cecil Raleigh told me that he should like the position,
and he set seriously to work to try and get it.

Arthur Collins sat still and said nothing, but he formed a
company principally among his financial friends, Drury Lane
became Limited, and Arthur Collins was appointed the
Managing Director.

And Arthur Collins has made a Drury Lane record, for he
has been manager of the National Theatre longer than any
of his predecessors in the proud position.

CHAPTER XXXV

As I near the end of the nineteenth century in my glances
back over fifty years of Footlight Land I remember that I
have been a playgoer for close upon sixty years and a writer of
plays for forty of them.

And both as playgoer and playwright I am, as I look back,
impressed by the great changes I have seen not only in the
form and character of public entertainment, but in the taste
of the public in the matter of theatrical fare.

The luxury of woe that the playgoer of the 'sixties loved to
indulge in ceased to be in demand long before the century
closed. Women ceased to flock to the theatres to have a
good cry. It was not convenient to the fair to leave the
playhouse with tears running down their cheeks and go
straight to a fashionable restaurant for supper after the
theatre.

West-End playgoers were the first to control their emotions
and check the briny tears that at one time had been permitted
to flow freely.

Even in the gallery there were protests against too much
sobbing in sympathy with the heroine.

£J[ was in the gallery at the Adelphi one night during the
run of The White Rose, the drama in which Mrs. Patrick
Campbell made Elizabeth Cromwell so pathetically appealing.
During one of the pathetic passages a girl in the gallery began
to sob audibly.

" Don't be a fool, Lil," said the young man who was sitting
next to her. " What's the good of crying about a woman
who's been dead for hundreds of years ! "

But in the 'sixties we were not ashamed to take our pleasures
sadly, and we revelled in scenes of deep emotion.

In those days the house bill of the minor and the trans-
pontine theatres was a long, flimsy sheet with plenty of big

291

292

MY LIFE

black lettering on it. However gingerly you handled those
bills some of the black came off on you, and so it happened
that when you wiped away a sympathetic tear with your finger
you frequently left a black streak down your cheek.

I once saw the audience turn out of the old " Vic " — Queen
Victoria's Own Theayter, as Arthur Sketchley's Mrs. Brown
called it — after the performance of an old-fashioned drama
of the weepy-weepy order, and the faces of the crowd were
a study in black and white.

And even at the West End theatres, where the programme
was daintily printed and scented by Rimmel, the taste for
domestic scenes with the humour and pathos deftly mingled
was common to all classes of playgoers.

The domestic note was the dominant note in some of the
best and most successful plays of the period. The English-
man's heart was in the Englishman's home, and so was the
Englishwoman's.

Home life had not become flat life, and the majority of
Londoners did not lunch and dine at restaurants. The meal
of the day was the middle-day meal with the middle classes,
and tea was a family function round a home table. Even
when the late dinner came into fashion the hour was nearer
to 6.30 than 8.30, and so the theatre hour was 7 in the
West and 6.30 in the East, and at most houses there was
half-price at nine o'clock for the late-comers.

The programme lasted till midnight and often later, for
in those days there was no Act of Parliament to limit our
hours of refreshment.

In the West End houses there was always a farce, generally
a screaming farce, for the early-comers, and then probably
a domestic drama of two or three acts, and after that a
burlesque or an extravaganza, and frequently the long
entertainment wound up with another screaming farce.

I remember that my father and mother went to the Festival
Performance at Her Majesty's Theatre in January 1858,
when our Princess Royal was married to Prince Frederick
William of Prussia.

My parents brought back the Festival programme, and I
found it some years ago in going over my mother's papers.
On that occasion the performance commenced at half-past

MY LIFE 293

seven with Shakespeare's tragedy of Macbeth. Phelps was
Macbeth, and Helen Faucit was Lady Macbeth. The three
witches were played by Sam Emery — the father of Mrs. Cyril
Maude — and Messrs. Ray and Lewis Ball. The second officer
was played by Mr. Lickfold, who was the father of Charles
Warner.

At the end of the play the National Anthem was sung, and
the conductor of the music was Julius Benedict, and after the
National Anthem had been sung with the assistance of six
principal vocalists and Benedict's Vocal Association of three
hundred voices, there was a farce !

The farce was Twice Killed, by John Oxenford, and in that
Mr. and Mrs. Keeley, Mrs. Leigh Murray, and Pattie Oliver
appeared.

Fancy a screaming farce after a Festival Performance of
Macbeth and the National Anthem !

But the farces in those days were classics, and leading
comedians and comediennes appeared in them and made
reputations in them.

Dramatists like Maddison Morton became famous for their
farces, and it was quite the usual thing for a programme, even
when it was Shakespearean, to commence with a farce and
to end with a farce.

The first farce was never called a curtain-raiser in those
days. It was an item of the entertainment, and a very
important item, and the last farce was frequently a good
forty minutes of fun.

Some of the best-known actors and actresses of the day
played in the farces, and many of them were associated in
the minds of playgoers with the characters they sustained
in the favourite farces of the time. Who could imagine a
star actor or actress to-day famous in a farce ?

The 'sixties and the 'seventies were the golden years of the
screaming farce. There was a screaming farce before and
after the historical, romantic, emotional, or domestic drama.

And although you had a screaming farce before a domestic
drama or a domestic comedy, the drama or the comedy was
frequently followed by a burlesque.

Sometimes you had a comic drama preceded by a two-act
comedietta and followed by a two-act farcical comedy.

294

MY LIFE

When John S. Clark was at the Haymarket in the 'seventies
I remember that the programme commenced with Among
the Breakers, a two-act comedy by John Brougham, was
followed by Red Tape, a two-act comic drama by Henry J.
Byron, and concluded with Fox and Goose, a two-act farcical
comedy by William Brough.

Even at Drury Lane, when Mr. and Mrs. Dion Boucicault —
Miss Agnes Robertson — were playing Conn and Moya in the
famous Irish drama, The Shaughraun, a drama in three acts
and fifteen elaborate scenes, with Will Terriss as Captain
Molyneux and Shiel Barry as Harvey Duff, and Sylvia Hodson
and Rose Leclerq, J. B. Howard, David Fisher, and Henry
Sinclair in the cast, in 1875, the performance commenced
with a screaming farce, The White Hat, and after The Shaugh-
raun we had another farce, A Nabob for an Hour, to finish
up with.

The domestic dramas of that period are many of them now
classics of the stage, notably those written by Mr. H. T.
Craven, an admirable actor of the Robson school as well as
an expert playwright with a remarkable gift for deftly mingling
the pathetic and the humorous. But he was a past-master
in the art of provoking the laughter that is akin to tears.

He wrote Milky White for Robson. Robson died, and the
author produced the play at the merry little Strand, and
himself acted the part he had intended for Robson. I saw
Milky White at the Strand when it was first produced in '64,
and I have never forgotten Craven's performance.

His Chimney Corner was produced in '61, and his Miriam's
Crime in '63, but they are still quoted as memorable examples
of the domestic drama that the playgoer of the 'sixties loved.

And Meg's Diversion ! I saw it at the Royalty in '66 with
Craven as Jasper and sweet Pattie Oliver as the heroine. It
was a two-act comedy played in front of Burnand's famous
burlesque of Black-Eyed Susan.

Pattie Oliver, who played Susan, had sung " Pretty See-usan,
don't say No ! " one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five
times while the run was on. Yet to-day we who remember
see her quite as distinctly in Meg's Diversion as we do in the
burlesque, and I have only to close my eyes to see the pathetic
realization on the stage of the picture Broken Vows even now.

T. F. ROBSON AND H. WIGAN

MY LIFE 295

The Craven plays were full of humour, but there was always
the human note in them and the home note, and the characters,
though often quaint and eccentric, were always real sketches
of human nature and not burlesque.

The pathos and humour of English home life were unfailing
in their appeal to the playgoer in the 'sixties.

H. J. Byron found relief from burlesque in comic drama of
the domestic order.

I remember the Saturday night in January 1875 when
James and Thorn produced Byron's Our Boys at the Vaudeville,
and how we sat waiting and expecting the familiar Byron
jokes.

But the great appeal of Our Boys to the popular audience
was the domestic appeal, and its run of four years and a
quarter at the Vaudeville was due to the domestic note in the
plot and the homeliness of the characters.

David James, the immortal " Butterman " with his pound
of inferior " Dosset " and his ultipomatum, and Tom Thome,
the Talbot Champneys, were out of the bill again and again,
but Our Boys ran on to undiminished receipts.

David James told me that when during the run he and
Thorne went for a holiday in Spain they arranged to have the
nightly receipts telegraphed to them.

The nightly returns remained so high and so steady that
David James said to his partner one night when they opened
a telegram in Seville, " Tom, I ought to reduce your salary,
and you ought to reduce mine. We evidently aren't the draw
we thought we were."

" What do you mean ? " exclaimed Tom Thome.

" Well," said David, throwing the telegram across to him,
" Our Boys is playing to as much money without us as it was
with us."

And it was.

The Vaudeville was a famous burlesque house, and the
actors who appeared in comedy, even in classical comedy, used
to play the principal parts in burlesque in the later part of
the entertainment.

I remember when The School for Scandal was played with
William Farren as Sir Peter, Amy Fawsitt as Lady Teazle,
Herman Vezin as Sir Oliver, Henry Neville Charles, and John

296 MY LIFE

Clayton Joseph, Tom Thorne appeared after it with David
James and the famous Vaudeville company in Romulus and
Remus, or The Two Rum'uns, by Robert Reece, with Nellie
Power, who was then the bright particular star of Vaudeville
burlesque.

Nellie Power was one of the stage idols of my youth.

She started her professional career at the old Regent Hall
in Westminster, and her salary then was five and twenty
shillings a week. But the song that I remember her best in
in her music-hall days was " La-di-da ! "

He wore a penny flower in his coat,

La-di-da I
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 !

The Pickwick was the cheapest cigar kept in the glass-
covered boxes divided into compartments which were on
every tobacconist's counter in those days. The cigars were
in divisions labelled from sixpence down to a penny, and the
Pickwick was " the penny smoke."

All the young men of the day admired Nellie Power, and
one or two of them wanted to marry her.

It is noteworthy how many Nellies have been among the
adored ones, to instance only four — Nelly Moore, Nelly
Bromley, Nelly Farren, and Nellie Power.

It was of Nelly Moore, a charming young actress who
played Ada Ingot to Sothern's David Garrick, and who died
in her sweet and gentle youth, that Harry Leigh wrote :

I've her photograph from Lacy's ; that delicious little face is

Smiling on me as I'm sitting (in a draught from yonder door) .
And often in the nightfalls, when a precious little light falls
From the wretched tallow candles on my gloomy second floor
(For I have not got the gaslight in my gloomy second floor),
Comes an echo, " Nelly Moore ! "

It is interesting, perhaps, at the present time to remember

MY LIFE 297

that Charles Wyndham, who afterwards made a great success
as David Garrick, played it once in German in Berlin. It
was very, very long ago. I wonder whether Sir Charles re-
members it.

Robert Reece and H. J. Byron supplied most of the bur-
lesques for the Vaudeville.

Robert Reece, who was my constant companion in the
'eighties and up to the time of his death, was a most amiable
man. He was a scholar, a poet, a musician, and, like Byron,
an inveterate punster.

He was the most skilful librettist of his day, and was
Farnie's right hand. He collaborated with Farnie in Les
Cloches de Corneville, and had a hand in nearly all the Farnie
successes, and, in addition, he wrote burlesque for nearly all
the burlesque houses in London when burlesque was as
dominant a feature of theatrical entertainment as musical
comedy is to-day.

But poor Robert Reece was utterly unbusinesslike, and
because he was always hard up he made bad bargains and
sold all his work outright for money down instead of retaining
an interest in it.

He was born in Barbados, and he had property there
which consisted mainly of sugar plantations, but all the
benefit he should have derived from the sugar-cane was
destroyed by another sort of cane, a hurricane.

Whenever I met poor Reece with an extra long face I always
knew there had been a hurricane in Barbados.

These troubles with his property brought him into the
hands of a handsome blue-eyed old gentleman with a white
moustache, a lovely complexion, light blue eyes, and a tenor
voice.

This old gentleman was supposed to be a solicitor, but as
a matter of fact he had never been admitted, and he carried
on his business with a relative who was his partner and who
was a solicitor.

This blue-eyed old gentleman, who was quite a Dickensy
character in many ways, had considerable business connexions
with theatrical managers and dramatists who occasionally
required pecuniary assistance to tide them over periods of
stress. He had in his hands at one time the affairs of

298 MY LIFE

H. J. Byron, Wilson Barrett, Robert Buchanan, and Robert
Reece.

He managed the properties of some, and to others he made
advances. Whenever he had made a particularly good
bargain — for himself — he always, after bidding his client
good day, if the interview had taken place in the client's
home, stood in the doorway of the room and sang " My
Pretty Jane " or " When Other Lips " to him.

He once sang " My Pretty Jane " to me as he was bidding
me good afternoon, and the song nearly cost me a thousand
pounds. I say nearly, because after he had succeeded in
inducing me to become security for that amount for a friend
whose affairs had drifted into his hands, he presented me
with an old George III silver coffee-pot, and I deduct the
coffee-pot from the amount.

I remember meeting the blue-eyed " solicitor " with the
tenor voice at a pillar-box one day. He was posting a letter
to H. J. Byron's father, who was the British Consul at Port
au Prince, and the letter was to tell the old gentleman that
his son " Harry " was dead.

" Poor Byron ! " said the blue-eyed warbler. " I managed
all his affairs for him at the finish, and I was his dearest
friend." In one sense of the word " dearest " I had no
reason to doubt that the statement was justified.

Here is a letter from the late E. C. Engelbach, who was for
so many years in partnership with William Greet, to which
an interesting story -is attached :

" Lyric Theatre,

" May 5, 1914.

" MY DEAR SIMS, — Many thanks indeed for your kindly
notice of my old partner's, William Greet, death last week in
' Mustard and Cress/ It was nice, and like you, to call
attention to what was jointly done with myself for Wilson
Barrett in the days gone by.

" Yours very truly,

"E. C. ENGELBACH/'

When Wilson Barrett had begun to reclimb the ladder of
fortune with The Sign of the Cross and wanted to pay his

MY LIFE 299

creditors in full, the smiling blue-eyed old gentleman with the
tenor voice sent in his account, and the total of the account
amounted to a good many thousand pounds.

William Greet, who had been in his young manhood an
officer of Marines and had left the service because he was
always so terribly sick at sea, was with his partner Mr.
Engelbach running Barrett and The Sign of the Cross at
the Lyric Theatre at the time, and Greet and Engelbach,
sympathizing with Barrett in the worry he was having with
the settlement of his affairs, undertook to see the whole thing
through for him and settle accounts with his numerous
creditors.

So when Barrett received the account of the singing
" solicitor " he handed it over to Greet and Engelbach.
Barrett, in consideration of the advances made to him during
his period of stress, had assigned to the blue-eyed gentleman
all the fees for the plays in which he was concerned either as
part-author or part-proprietor.

So an offer was made, and a very generous offer, of half
the amount claimed.

On this occasion the blue-eyed one did not sing " My
Pretty Jane/' He stormed and raved, and insisted that he
would have the whole of the amount.

Then Messrs. Greet and Engelbach called in the assistance
of a chartered accountant. The result was that instead of
Wilson Barrett being in debt many thousands of pounds to
his old " legal adviser " it was discovered that the boot was
on the other leg, and the singing " solicitor " had a fairly
considerable balance in hand which was due to Wilson
Barrett.

But he was a very charming old gentleman and a very
amusing companion, and with all his eccentricities — expensive
eccentricities so far as his clients were concerned — you could
not help liking him.% And I never look at my silver coffee-pot
that represented nearly a thousand pounds to me without
seeing the face of a handsome blue-eyed old English gentleman
smiling at me, and hearing a sweet tenor voice address me
melodiously as|" My^Pretty, Jane."

CHAPTER XXXVI

As the century hastens to its close in these loose pages
torn from the book of memory many honoured names that
have a right to be upon the roll of remembrance come back
to me.

Gustavus Vaughan Brooke and Avonia Jones ! How well
I remember those two names upon a large poster that told
of a farewell appearance previous to his departure for Australia
of Gustavus Vaughan Brooke, the favourite tragedian.

G. V. Brooke was one of the great Shakespearean actors of
the 'sixties. His Othello was declared by many critics of the
period to rank next to the Othello of Salvini.

G. V. Brooke had made money in England, had been to
Australia, had lost his money there, and now, after another
successful campaign in England, he was about to return to
Melbourne.

He sailed in January '66 on board the London, bound for
Australia, and soon afterwards we heard a story that thrilled
all England. The London had gone down in the Bay of
Biscay. Some of the passengers had been rescued, but a
great number had gone down with the ship.

Some of the rescued passengers told the story of the last
hours of the life of Gustavus Vaughan Brooke. He was the
bravest man on board that ship. He worked at the pumps
till the very last. He inspired those around him with courage,
even with hope, and the last words he uttered to one who
stood near him were these, " If you are saved, remember me
to my old friends in Melbourne."

Avonia Jones, his wife, did not accompany him upon this
journey. She died a year later of consumption in New York,
aged thirty-one.

I suppose it was the tragedy that imprinted that poster
indelibly upon my memory, but I can see it now. " Gustavus

300

MY LIFE 301

Vaughan Brooke and Avonia Jones. Their last appearance in
London previous to Mr. Brooke's departure for Australia."

His last appearance in London ! Yes. And his last
appearance on earth was in the London.

In the days before picture cards came to add colour to
correspondence the photographs of the dignitaries of the
Church, famous advocates, society belles, and members of the
Royal Family adorned the windows of the stationers' shops.

But between the Rev. Charles Spurgeon and the Bishop of
London would appear the merry face of a star of opera bouffe,
and the Rev. Newman Hall and the Archbishop of Canterbury
would be on the closest terms of intimacy — cardboard inti-
macy— with a dashing little pet of the parterre, the sunniness
of whose smile was in proportion to the scantiness of her
skirts.

There was always a grand display of the celebrities of the
day in the windows of the London Stereoscopic Company,
which in my early days had a branch in Cheapside.

Whenever I had to go from Aldersgate Street to the National
Bank in Old Broad Street, and at one time that was a daily
journey, I always went by way of Cheapside in order to gaze
at the display of beauty in the Stereoscopic Company's
windows.

It was in that window that I saw — alas, it must be close
on fifty years ago ! — for the first time a little machine which
was called " The Zoetrope, or Wheel of Life," and that was
the beginning of the moving pictures which have covered the
cities of the world with picture palaces and made Mr. Charlie
Chaplin the best-known Englishman that the twentieth
century has so far produced, and the Englishman whose
features are most familiar to all the inhabitants of the inhabited
surface of the terrestrial globe, except, of course, in those
places to which as yet the kinema has not penetrated.

There is one particular photograph I remember in the
early 'seventies. It was called " A Basket of Mischief," and
it was the head of pretty Rose Massey peeping out of
basket.

Rose Massey was the Mary Meredith when Lord Dundreary
was drawing all London to the Haymarket to see Our American
Cousin in 1867, but she first came into notice when the elder

MY LIFE

Augustus Harris produced Bluebeard at Covent Garden in
1871, and Rose Massey was a fascinating Fatima.

But it was when H. J. Montague was the bright particular
young star at the Globe and the sole lessee and manager that
Rose Massey became a joy to playgoers.

She was Queen Oriana in James Albery's famous three-act
romantic legend Oriana, with music by Frederic Clay.
Montague was her royal consort, and Carlotta Addison was tne
ever-to-be-remembered little lame fairy.

After the success of The Two Roses Albery was always
making wild excursions into difficult country, and the play-
goer did not always follow him enthusiastically. Oriana was
one of his many wanderings off the broad road. In the course
of his journeys he encountered many dull days and not a few
stormy nights.

But to return to Oriana. In the cast there were two
young ladies who were Queen Oriana's pages, and one of these
pages became the most photographed young actress of the
day. Her name was Maude Branscombe. I do not think
anybody before or since has so generously contributed to the
photographic exhibitions of the London shop windows as
Maude Branscombe did in the days before picture post cards.
Bella Goodall was a burlesque star of the 'seventies, and
her photograph was very much in evidence in the shop
windows.

The stars of the music-halls had not come to their own in
those days, and their photographs were few and far between
in the West End windows.

But the stars of Italian and English opera shone behind the
plate-glass occasionally between such lights of the law as
Serjeant Ballantine, a very much photographed forensic
favourite, Sir Henry James, Lord Chief Justice Cockburn,
Douglas Straight, and Montagu Williams.

Montagu Williams, by the by, had a close connexion with
the theatre. He had been a touring actor, he married Mrs.
Keeley's daughter, Louisa, and with F. C. Burnand wrote
The Isle of St. Tropez, a poison play, for the St. James's in
1860, but it was not quite so thrilling as The Hidden Hand,
Tom Taylor's poison drama that drew all London to the
Olympic in '64.

MY LIFE 303

Albani, Adelina Patti, Trebelii, and Christine Nilsson were
next door window neighbours of Disraeli and Gladstone,
Barnum, Alfred Tennyson, and Lord Salisbury, and Angelina
Claude peered saucily over her pince-nez at Mr. Plimsoll. In
the 'eighties we had Connie Gilchrist, Mimi St. Cyr, and pretty
Mabel Love. Mrs. John Wood smiled at Dr. Colenso, and
Letty Lind looked archly at Sir Henry Thompson, the famous
surgeon. And Kitty Munroe and Clara Graham beamed on
you, with Huxley, Tyndall, and Darwin as the serious relief.
And there was always dainty Dorothy Deane, whose beauty
before she was an actress was made famous by Sir Frederick
Leighton, P.R.A.

I can remember the time — it was in the 'sixties — when the
features and forms of the belles of burlesque were pictures in
the corner of pocket-handkerchiefs.

I have a handkerchief — it is very worn and thin now —
adorned with the shapely form and fair features of Pauline
Markham, one of the loveliest girls the English stage has ever
known, and I bought that handkerchief in 1868 at a well-
known hosier's in the Poultry.

The handkerchief photograph was in evidence, if I remember
rightly, soon after Pauline Markham had made a success at
the Queen's Theatre in Long Acre in an extravaganza by
W. S. Gilbert, La Vivandtire ; or, True to the Corps.

What a cast it was ! Johnny Toole, Lai Brough, Henrietta
Hodson, Fanny Addison, and pretty Pauline of the picture
pocket-handkerchief.

Charming Henrietta Hodson, as every one knows, became
Mrs. Henry Labouchere, a delightful hostess and the mother
of a marchioness.

Henrietta Hodson's grandfather was the proprietor of the
old Bower Saloon in Stangate, Lower Marsh, Lambeth. He
was an Irish actor and vocalist, a clever musician, and the
composer of " Tell me, Mary, how to woo thee."

It was at the old " Sour Balloon " — that was its pet name
with its patrons — that James Fernandez and the great Robson
made their first appearance, and in the 'sixties I was more
than once a Sour Ballooner.

Pretty Fanny Josephs — and how pretty she was ! — was
what the photographic trade would call a " quick seller " in

304 MY LIFE

the 'seventies. She began seriously at Sadler's Wells in the
'sixties and then went straight to the Strand, where she at
once became one of the most popular belles of burlesque.

When the Holborn opened with Boucicault's famous Flying
Scud she played Lord Woodbie, and that was a part in which
she was long remembered. It was in the Flying Scud that
George Belmore gave his memorable performance of Nat
Gosling.

Two years later Fanny Josephs was the manageress of the
Holborn, and opened with H. T. Craven's Post Boy and a
burlesque by Burnand.

She went to the Globe with Harry Montague, and played in
Byron's Partners for Life, but the happiest memory I have of
her goes back to the evening in September 1873 when School
was revived by the Bancrofts at the Prince of Wales's, and
Fanny Josephs won all our hearts as Bella.

Old playgoers remember how charming she was in The
Pink Dominoes. She played the part during the whole of
the long run.

Fanny Josephs made a delightful photograph, and there
was always a big sale for her, especially in her burlesque
days.

There is another photograph which was a popular exhibit.
It was a photograph of Mrs. Stirling and her daughter Fanny,
and the daughter's face was shown in an oval frame by her
mother's side. I have an idea that the photograph was called
" Masks and Faces," but I am not sure. I only know that
it was one of the popular features in the shop windows in
those far-off days.

I have many happy memories of that fine old actress
Mrs. Stirling, who became in private life Lady Gregory, but
the abiding one is her Nurse in Romeo and Juliet.

And there is another dear old lady — Mrs. Keeley. Mrs,
Keeley had practically quitted the stage when I was a boy,
but I saw her on many occasions when she played for cha-
ritable purposes and benefits, and I knew her in her extreme
old age.

When she was well over ninety she sent me her photograph
signed " Mary Anne Keeley," and with it a charming letter,
and the letter was so light-hearted and merry it might have

J. L. TOOLE AND PAUL BEDFORD

MY LIFE 305

been written by a girl of nineteen instead of a woman of
ninety-one.

To-day we have the actor-manager very much to the front
in theatrical matters, and frequently the features of the
actor-manager are made familiar to all the world by the
art of the photographer. But in the old days a good many
managers, some of them important managers, did not seek
that form of publicity.

E. T. Smith was not a photographic celebrity, nor, coming
to a later day, did the brothers Gatti adorn any other gallery
than the Royal Adelaide, and there were other managers with
whose features the shop-window-gazing crowd were never
made familiar.

Some theatrical managers are born and some are made,
and others are neither born nor made — they just happen.

One of the most interesting amateur managers I knew
personally was the late Mr. W. H. C. Nation. He began to
take theatres and produce plays which were sprinkled all
over with songs by himself in the days of my youth, and he
was taking theatres for the same purpose until quite recently.
In his time he took for periods Sadler's Wells, Astley's, the
old Holborn, the Charing Cross, and Terry's.

The Royalty was his favourite theatre for a time, but his
last venture was at the Scala.

The bill of the play during a Nation season was a curiosity.
The name of the play and the cast occupied a very small
portion of it. The rest of the bill was taken up with large
cross-lines giving the names of the " Songs by W. H. C.
Nation " introduced into the piece, and after each song
mentioned on the programme the name of W. H. C. Nation
was printed in large type.

The Nation productions were not lavish. The scenery was
simple and the dresses would not have been censored by a
committee of economy even in wartime.

It was believed at one time that Mr. Nation was in the
law and that he allotted so much money to his theatrical
ventures and then retired to make more at his legitimate
business. But after his death it was discovered that he was
an independent gentleman of very considerable wealth.
There was never much of an audience, but that did not

u

306 MY LIFE

matter. Mr. Nation's happiness consisted in witnessing his
own plays and listening to his own songs.

I have seen him sitting in a private box, almost the only
person in the front of the house, and when one of his own
songs had been sung he would bang the floor of the box with
his umbrella and shout " Encore ! Encore ! "

Mr. Nation, who was educated at Eton and Oxford, was
an amiable and charming old gentleman, but the desire to
see his name and his songs starred on the playbill of a West
End house was his ruling passion. And in the course of his
long and estimable career he must have paid a pretty
considerable sum for the privilege.

The true romance of Mr. W. H. C. Nation's life was only
discovered some little time after his death. He had acquired
and furnished in his younger days a mansion in the West
End for the reception of his bride. But on the eve of the
wedding day the lady exercised the privilege of her sex and
changed her mind. The house was never occupied by the
disconsolate lover. He only occasionally paid it a brief visit
and left everything untouched. When the house after his
death had to be sold the romantic incident became known to
the Press and the love story of Mr. W. H. C. Nation was the
romantic relief to the stern realities of the Battle of the
Somme.

An amateur manager of a very different kind to Mr. W. H. C.
Nation was the late Mr. H. J. Leslie.

Leslie was an accountant. He was not only a clever
accountant but a skilful musician. He began his theatrical
career when he was called in professionally to straighten
up matters at the Gaiety when John Hollingshead went out
and George Edwardes, having found backers, took upon
himself the sole charge of the Sacred Lamp.

In September 1886 George Edwardes produced Dorothy.
Now Dorothy was not, for some reason, a success at the
Gaiety, and George Edwardes decided to give it up. Mr. Leslie
believed in the piece, acquired the rights, and in December
1886 transferred it to the Prince of Wales's, where the comic
opera caught on at once, became a huge success, and Leslie
made a very large sum of money.

Then he went into other speculations which were not so

MY LIFE 307

successful, and finally he came to grief over the most extrava-
gantly expensive pantomime that has ever been produced
on the English stage.

Cinderella was written by my confreres, Richard Henry,
whose full names were and still are Richard Butler and Henry
Chance Newton.

Minnie Palmer, of My Sweetheart and Yours Merrily, John
R. Rogers, fame, was engaged to play Cinderella.

Minnie Palmer was a pretty little actress and vocalist who
came from America, tremendously boomed beforehand by
her husband, an expert in publicity, and in 1883 she played
Tina in My Sweetheart at the Strand Theatre, and became the
talk of the town.

There was another pretty and clever New York actress
at the time, and the two ladies were supposed to be great
rivals professionally.

When Minnie Palmer's forthcoming appearance in London
was being boomed Harry Jackson, who was an excellent
low comedian famous for his stage Jews, said to me, " Wait
till you see Lotta. I'm getting her over for a London season."

Harry Jackson secured the Opera Comique for Lotta. She
appeared as Musette. The play was a failure, and there was
considerable clamour in the house, which was declared after-
wards to be due to organized opposition.

Early in January 1884 Lotta changed the bill and appeared in
a version of The Old Curiosity Shop, specially prepared for her
by Charles Dickens, junior. In this she played Little Nell
and the Marchioness, and with Frank Wyatt as Dick Swiveller
she made an enormous success.

I have always remembered Lotta's first night at the Opera
Comique from the fact that there were a number of police
present, distributed in various parts of the house, ready
to seize upon the first objector, conscientious or otherwise.

But to return to Cinderella. The cast was a remarkable
one. Charles Coborn and John Le Hay were the Sisters ;
Violet Cameron was engaged for the Prince, but had the
influenza ; Fawdon Yokes was a Kangaroo, Harry Parker
was the Baron, and the villain of the plot was represented
by Shiel Barry.

There was a Shakespearean procession, there was a dazzling

3o8 MY LIFE

balkoom scene, a marvellous transformation scene, and a
grand international ballet of insects.

There were lyrics by Clement Scott and music by Ivan
Caryll, H. J. Leslie, Bob Martin, and Alfred Cellier, and the
production was in the hands of Mr. Charles Harris.

Never had Charlie Harris had such an opportunity of
presenting a production to playgoers more calculated to
perform the operation which he realistically described as
" taking their eyeballs out."

Her Majesty's Theatre was secured for the production — it
had previously been the scene of a Haverley minstrel entertain-
ment and of a Hawtrey season, with the ballet of Excelsior —
and Her Majesty's own Cinderella was presented to the British
public on Boxing Night, 1889. It was the last production
in the old house before it was taken down and rebuilt by
Beerbohm Tree.

Charlie Harris had a habit in conversation of ending his
sentences with " Follow me ? "

A few days before the production of Cinderella I met " the
Stage Damager," as the Sporting Times pleasantly dubbed
him, in the Haymarket. He was taking a little light refresh-
ment at Epitaux's, which was then being run by my old
friend, Mr. G. Pentecost, a director of the Alhambra and a
grandson of Pierce Egan.

" So you're going to take their eyeballs out again, Charlie,
are you ? " I said. And this was the reply, "I'm going to
do more than that. Follow me ? I'm going to take my
brother Gus's eyeballs out too. Follow me ? "

Mr. H. J. Leslie was very largely concerned with the produc-
tion of Cinderella. All that he had left after several disastrous
speculations was embarked in the enterprise.

'89 was the great influenza year, and gave us the phrase
" the prevailing epidemic." Several of the principals were
down early with influenza, but Minnie Palmer threw up her
part and explained to the Press that the reason she did so
was that she had not received her salary.

Within a few days the receivers were in the theatre, and in
a fortnight the curtain fell for the last time, and poor Jack
Leslie, a generous, kind-hearted man of considerable artistic
ability, who had listened like W. H. C. Nation to his own

MY LIFE 309

songs produced at his own expense — he had written the
music for several of the numbers in Cinderella — was a ruined
man.

He went soon afterwards to New York, and there another
great misfortune overtook him. He had a serious illness and
became blind, but recovered his sight and returned to England,
and not very long afterwards he died.

The story of H. J. Leslie, accountant, amateur composer,
theatrical manager, and the most generous of men, is one
of the tragedies of Theatreland.

But the whole story cannot be told. It might do justice
to the memory of the dead, but it would wound the feelings
of the living.

CHAPTER XXXVII

IN my youth and young manhood there was a very considerable
portion of the public who would not enter a theatre. The
old prejudice against it still survived, and was by no means
confined to the Nonconformist Conscience. And so there
was always a plentiful supply of entertainment arranged in
such a way as to ease the scruples of the conscientious objector.

The Howard Pauls, at St. Martin's Hall and elsewhere, and
the German Reeds — Mrs. German Reed was Priscilla Horton,
who had a remarkable and brilliant career on the stage before
she took to the entertainment business — were popular features
of the London amusement world in the 'sixties and 'seventies.
First at the Royal Gallery of Illustration, which was after-
wards the Raleigh Club, then at the Polygraphic Hall, after-
wards Toole's Theatre, and later at St. George's Hall, under
the management of Walter Reed and Corney Grain, they gave
more or less theatrical performances, but they were not given
in a theatre, and so conscientious objectors in need of
amusement flocked to them.

It was this class of entertainment that gave us John Parry
and Corney Grain, with George Grossmith following in his
footsteps. Arthur Cecil, Arthur Law, and Fanny Holland
appeared with the German Reeds in the 'seventies, and sketches
and entertainments were written for them by dramatists like
W. S. Gilbert and Frank Burnand.

It was the building that was everything in those days.
To enter a theatre to see Arthur Cecil in a Gilbert play would
have been wicked. To see Arthur Cecil in a Gilbert sketch
at St. George's Hall was an innocent delight.

The Christy Minstrels — I have vague memories of the
Matthews Brothers, who were, I think, connected with the
C.C.C., or Christy's Coloured Comedians — became eventually
the Moore and Burgess Minstrels, and the Moore and Burgess

310

MY LIFE 311

Minstrels were carried on under the auspices of Mr. George
Washington Moore, professionally known as " Pony " Moore,
who was a member of the company originally established in
London in 1857 by Messrs. Raynor and Pierce.

Moore was an eccentric character, more eccentric off the
stage perhaps than on it. He had a habit of letting the action
suit the word, and once when being entertained at the Mansion
House with other members of the profession he so far remem-
bered himself as the proprietor of a nigger troupe as to give
a waiter a black eye, and for this he was summoned to appear
at a little establishment immediately below the Mansion
House.

Moore imported a good many comic songs from America,
but in the Christy Minstrels days the songs were written and
composed by well-known authors and musicians. Among the
lyrists were Henry S. Leigh, Frank Stainforth, Alfred Crow-
quill, Nelson Lee, jun., Howard Paul, and Fred McCabe,
and Meyer Lutz was the principal composer.

I got one of my first guineas for writing a song for the
minstrels soon after they had dropped the Christy and become
the Moore and Burgess.

The minstrel entertainments drew crowded houses, and
were largely patronized by provincials visiting the metropolis,
for the proud motto of these minstrels was, " We never perform
out of London."

Early in 1870 the Mohawk Minstrels established themselves
at the Agricultural Hall in Merry Islington, and were very
successful. They called themselves " A new era in Minstrelsy."

The Moore and Burgesses were not very friendly to the
Mohawks, and the Mohawks, in one of their announcements,
said that they " utterly ignored the inflated, highfalutin
style of advertising affected by some, and were contented to
mind their own business/'

I have mentioned that some of the songs of the Christy
Minstrels were supplied by Frederick McCabe. He was an
author, an actor, and a composer. He wrote his own enter-
tainments and composed his own music, and was a one-man
show. His Begone, Dull Care, or Physio-Photorama of Dramatic
Illusions, was one of the attractions of London.

McCabe was a clever ventriloquist. I remember his per-

MY LIFE

formance of two characters at once, male and female, in
which he was dressed half on one side as a man and half on
the other side as a woman and spoke alternately in a male
and female voice.

Then we had W. S. Woodin with his Carpet Bag and Sketch
Book, and his Olio of Oddities was able to fill the Egyptian
Hall " every day at eight, except Saturday, and Saturday
at three."

An entertainer who was a good patterer as well as a good
showman was always sure of big houses in the old days.
Albert Smith's Mont Blanc was as popular as anything in
London, and Artemus Ward, the Genial Showman, would
have made a fortune but for the illness which struck him
down almost at the commencement of his London experience.

Mr. J. N. Maskelyne, once with Cooke, and afterwards for
some years in partnership with Mr. David Devant, was then
— as he is to-day — a master entertainer in his special line of
business, and no one will forget the tremendous success of his
exposure of the Davenport Brothers' trick and the mysteries
of so-called Spiritualism.

The home of Maskelyne, Magic, and Mystery was in those
days the Egyptian Hall.

Then we had Dr. Lynn with his That's how it's done.
Dr. Lynn's was quite a fashionable entertainment. He gave
his show twice daily in the Egyptian Large Hall, and he
quoted the testimony of Victor Hugo that " Dr. Lynn's
seances are perfectly astounding and his mysteries of all
nations are inexplicable and demand the attention of Science."

Lynn described himself as " The Wonder- Worker of India,
China, and Japan," and after exposing the great secrets of
the age of Egyptian magicians and the startling wonders of
the modern Spiritualists, he generally wound up with " And
that's how it's done," which in time became quite a Cockney
catch phrase.

Verbeck had a great vogue at one time in conjunction with
a very charming clairvoyante who was called Mademoiselle
Marguerite, but he suddenly disappeared from London and
no one seems to know what became of him.

Verbeck made his first appearance at Prince's Hall, Picca-
dilly, in 1885. He was not a master of English, and his

MY LIFE 313

assistant and interpreter was named Guibal, a Frenchman who
took part in the French war of 1870 as a lieutenant of Chas-
seurs, was taken prisoner but escaped before the investment
of Paris, went to Ireland and was there engaged as a teacher
of languages in Dublin. He then came to London and was
the correspondent of the Paris Gaulois and Le Temps. He
was a member of the Savage Club and the Press Club.

It was about 1886 that he joined Verbeck as an interpreter,
then he travelled the country on his own, and afterwards went
to Mexico with his clairvoyante, and there he was said to have
met his death in dramatic circumstances.

The entertainment of my aimable double, Mr. Charles
Bertram, who had a charming assistant in Mademoiselle
Patrice, is within everybody's memory.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

IF the gentleman who said, " Give me the making of a nation's
ballads and I care not who makes its laws/' had a solid founda-
tion for his remark, then the history of the music-hall is an
important part of the history of England.

But although a ballad originally meant a song with dance
— the words " ballad " and " ballet " have the same deri-
vation— it is probable that the ballads the gentleman referred
to were more in the nature of those written for recitation.

For all that the evolution of the music-hall is a contribu-
tion, and by no means an unimportant contribution, to the
history of the manners and customs of the English people of
the nineteenth century.

When I first began to take an intelligent interest in the ways
of the world around me there were plenty of pleasure gardens
dotted around London which provided a programme of enter-
tainment for the rambling crowd.

Many of the licensed houses in various parts of the metropolis
had tea-gardens attached to them, and for the entertainment
of visitors comic and sentimental singers were engaged. This
phase of London's popular amusement gave us the expression
" a tea-garden performance," which still survives. But I
lived to see many of the tea-garden performers blossom into
West End favourites, and one or two of them into West End
managers.

Then we had the song and supper saloons, of which Evans's
was the most classy representative, and Evans's and Paddy
Green and Charles Sloman and Herr Jonghmans are among
my memories of the past.

There you could see many a man of light and leading
enjoying his ease with conviviality, and listening to a selection
of madrigals, glees, choruses, and songs, with an intimation
on the programme that " Gentlemen are respectfully re-

314

MY LIFE 315

quested to encourage the Vocalists by attention, the Cafe*

part of the Rooms being intended for Conversational Parties."

*****

The Coal Hole and the Cider Cellars are names of imperish-
able memory, because they are landmarks in the story of the
night life of London when night was apparently given up to
drinking and rowdyism, and a rollicking and full-flavoured
conviviality that the present generation would consider
outrageous.

The early music-halls were more or less public-house exten-
sions, and the amount of drink absorbed during the progress
of the entertainment was the most important part of the pro-
gramme from the proprietor's point of view.

In all parts of the house busy waiters bustled about among
the audience, and " Any orders, gents ? " was their constant
cry.

There were bars wherever it was possible to place one, and
these bars were the regular rendezvous of " sports " young
and old, betting men and members of the flash fraternity.

Space in some of the larger houses was sacrificed to tables
for the accommodation of drinkers because there was more
room for bottles and glasses on the tables than on the narrow
ledges in front of the seats.

It was liquor in front of the house and licence on the stage.
Lion comiques scored some of their greatest successes in the
impersonation of dissipated " swells " who were always on
the drunken racket. The red-nosed comedian's favourite
topic was drink, and the only domestic touch in his songs
had reference as a rule to the lodger.

I remember that my old friend and colleague, the late
Dutton Cook of the World and the Pall Mall, writing as late
as the early 'eighties, said, " In lieu of the old tea-gardens,
often harmless enough, and even wholesome, there flourish
and flash and flare nowadays the gorgeous gin-palaces, wherein
the visitor must drink deep and often — he can stay upon no
other terms — or the malodorous music-halls, with their un-
seemly dances and gross songs."

But the father of the modern music-hall, Charles Morton,
lived to see the Augean stables cleansed, and passed away
full of years, the honoured head of the Palace Theatre,

MY LIFE

with no promenade, no drinking in the auditorium, and on
the stage a refined entertainment to which a matine'e girl
could take her mother or even her spinster aunt in perfect
confidence to see an entertainment in which no word was heard
and no action seen to which modesty and refinement could
take exception.

But my memories are not all of the evil side of the early
halls. There are others.

One of my earliest recollections is of Stead, " The Perfect
Cure," which was the one song of his life.

He first appeared in it at Weston's Music Hall. There
was nothing in the song. It was really idiotic, but it was
sung to a jumping dance in the style of Jump, Jim Crow,
and it was the dance, not the song, that caught on. Every-
body tried to do that dance. You saw it done in the drawing-
room. You saw it done in the street. The dance captured
and conquered the town.
| Stead was the music-hall sensation of the day, but when
" The Cure " died out, he died out with it. He was never a
success in anything else.

I think of the music-halls of my youth and many a phantom
rises from the grave of the buried years.

Mackney, the forerunner and prototype of the negro minstrel,
was singing his songs in the year that I was born, and when I
was a schoolboy we were all singing his songs. " In the
Strand " was one of them.

For the last few weeks I've been a-dodging
A girl I know that's got a lodging

In the Strand.

The first thing that put my heart in aflutter
Was her Balmoral boot, as she crossed the gutter

In the Strand.
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.

But I saw and chatted with Mackney over old music-hall
days when I was a middle-aged man.

MY LIFE 317

Unsworth, with his topical stump oration and his umbrella
banged on the table, " Am I right, or any other man ? "

Harry Clifton and his " moral " songs, " Paddle your own
Canoe," " PuUing Hard against the Stream," " Work, Boys,
Work, and be contented," and his rattling comic songs, " The
Calico Printer's Clerk " and " Polly Perkins of Paddington
Green."

Henri Clark, " The artistic comique," late of Miss Louisa
Pyne's Company. I remember him at the old South London
in his " Round the World in Thirty Minutes," and later when
Mr. and Mrs. Henri Clark toured with their own entertainment
and The World we live in, written and composed by my old
friend G. W. Hunt, of " By Jingo " fame.

G. W. Hunt's son was, as I have previously said, an artist
in my father's office when I was in the City, and I used to see a
great deal of the elder Hunt and hear much about Macdermott
long before I knew the great man personally.

Macdermott had been an actor at the Grecian, and was a
great friend of Henry Pettitt, and Henry Pettitt wrote a song
for him called " The Scamp," which was the foundation of
Macdermott 's fame, but it was in G. W. Hunt's " We don't
want to fight, but, by jingo, if we do!" that the lion
comique roared himself into song celebrity. The song made
an enormous sensation, and it is worth noting now that it
was reprinted as a special supplement with the music by the
Paris Figaro.

I knew another of the lions, the Great Vance, with his
" Slap ! Bang ! Here we are again ! " and " I'm a Chickaleery
bloke with my one, two, three."

I remember when Mr. Alfred G. Vance went on tour with
his own company and the following announcement : " Patrons,
H.R.H. the Prince of Wales and the Aristocracy and Clergy
of Great Britain and Ireland."

George Leybourne with his " Captain Cuff," " The Rollicking
Rams," " Mouse Traps," " Up in a Balloon, Boys ! " and his
" Champagne Charley " that went all over the world. I saw
Leybourne — he was a mechanic from the Midlands, his real
name was Saunders — drive away from the Canterbury in the
carriage and four that Bill Holland had presented to him as a
" moving picture " advertisement.

MY LIFE

And " Jolly " John Nash ! Nash was famous for his
laughing songs. I remember I wrote two for him and he never
sang either of them, but he was always a tonic, and on or off
the stage had an unfailing flow of old-fashioned beefsteaky
bonhomie.

Fred Albert, who used to improvise on the stage, W. B. Fair
with his " Tommy, make room for your Uncle ! " Fred Coyne,
Sam Torr, James Fawn, and later Charles Godfrey !

Godfrey delighted in the dramatic song. The song he liked
best himself was " On the Bridge at Midnight."

Godfrey was another of the music-hall stars who used to
confide in me. He was fond of driving about the country,
and so was I, and once we met when we were both driving
from Birmingham to London. I pulled up at an hotel at
Stony Stratford of non sequitur fame, and found Godfrey
there.

I met him in his phaeton almost as frequently as I used to
meet another music-hall celebrity — but he was a manager —
Mr. Sam Adams. I don't think I ever saw Sam Adams off
the box seat of his phaeton, and for several years I used to
meet him every afternoon, driving in the Park.

Artistic Albert Chevalier, still happily delighting us, brought
a new touch of what might be called " The Royal Gallery of
Illustration " into the variety hall song.

Jenny Hill, "The Vital Spark," Bessie Bellwood, Bessie
Bonehill, Kate Carney, Lottie Collins, Harriet Vernon, Julia
Mackay, the Sisters Leamar, and the Sisters Levey. The
names of the fair stars that shine again in memory's sky are
legion. Only a Prize Cake Competition such as my old friend
Mr. Frank Boyd is so fond of offering in The Pelican could
decide which is the memory prize among the fair visions of
the past.

The veteran Charles Coborn is still with us, and his " Man
who broke the Bank at Monte Carlo " and " Two Lovely
Black Eyes " — the song that drew all London to the Trocadero
— are classics.

In the days before the sketches the choice of varieties was
limited to singing and dancing, the feats of acrobats and the
performances of trained animals, and so the songs of the star
singer were the booms on which the halls relied.

MY LIFE 319

These songs when they caught on were sung or hummed or
whistled by all classes of society, and for this reason. In spite
of the hostility of the theatres in the ante-sketch days, the
popular music-hall songs were parodied in every burlesque
and extravaganza produced by theatrical managers.

Gilbert, Byron, and Burnand parodied the music-hall songs
of the day in all their earlier burlesques.

Mr. C. H. Hibbert has lately given us the story of the
music-hall, and told us how it has progressed from pot-house
to palace. I knew it in its pot-house days, and I have lived
to see the local free-and-easy become the local Empire, and
Art a welcome guest in the halls that were once given over to
vulgarity and double meaning.

Hardly a red nose now remains on the music-hall stage, the
lodger has gone to fight for his country, and the bibulous
bounder who delighted to call himself a rollicking ram has
become an anachronism. He has been wiped out of existence
by the Board of Control.

CHAPTER XXXIX

WHEN Charles I addressed the crowd from the scaffold he
called himself the Martyr of the People. He maintained that
because he represented law and order he had been doomed to
suffer.

In the London that I remember, a London that I knew by
day and knew by night, the police were the martyrs of the
people, or rather of a portion of the people, and with very
few sections of the people in the mid- Victorian days were the
police so popular as they are to-day.

The rough element of London was at its roughest in the
'sixties and the early 'seventies, and the London crowd that
assembled on the slightest provocation was invariably hostile
to the man in blue.

To assault and maltreat a policeman was the hooligan's
joy. To bonnet a policeman was one of the favourite forms
of amusement of the " swells " who turned night into day in
certain quarters of the West End.

The general public was far more resentful of police inter-
ference than it is now. The appearance of a policeman at a
place of public resort was as a red rag to a bull.

I remember the London police with their high hats, their
swallow-tailed coats, and their rattles, and I remember the
first appearance of the helmet, suggested, if I remember
rightly, by the Prince Consort.

In the days of my youth the entire police force of England
and Wales was less by several thousands of men than the
Metropolitan Police Force of to-day. The small number of
policemen in London was quite inadequate to its needs. As
late as the year 1869 there were only fifteen detectives in the
Metropolitan Police Force, and it was not until 1884 that the
police were supplied with whistles.

It is not to be wondered at in these circumstances that

320

MY LIFE 321

during the 'sixties and 'seventies crime had increased to a
very considerable extent, and apprehensions for crime had
similarly diminished.

In the rough quarters and the criminal areas the wise
policeman — wise from the personal point of view — avoided
whenever possible a physical encounter with members of the
criminal mob.

There were alleys and back-ways down which the police
never ventured except in twos and threes.

Until the coming of the electric light the main thorough-
fares after the shops were closed were after nightfall little
better than black patches, and they were the haunts of evil
characters, male and female, who plied their trade almost
with impunity.

The burglar flourished and his deeds were as daring as
those of the old highwayman, and at one time the garrotter
was the terror of wayfarers. To be garrotted was about as
ordinary an event in the life of a Londoner as it was to have
the influenza.

Respectable middle-aged and elderly men who spent the
evening out and had to return late to their suburban homes
frequently carried a life-preserver. The life-preserver was
as much in evidence in certain shop windows as the anti-gas
mask was a year ago.

The burglars and the footpads of the 'sixties were generally
armed, but the revolver was not then the favourite weapon of
criminal violence.

With the criminal areas of the 'seventies and 'eighties I
had a close acquaintance, rendered necessary by my journa-
listic duties, and I had the doubtful honour of the personal
acquaintance, not only of many notorious malefactors, but
of the captains of hooligan gangs. I was on nodding terms
with many of the inhabitants of the most larcenously-inclined
districts of the metropolis, and permitted to see them occa-
sionally in their home life.

It was an interesting experience, though not an exhilarating
one. It had no evil effect upon me, and only one consequence
that I regret. There are a number of habitual criminals who
occasionally relieve the monotony of their imprisonment by
writing me long letters from the convict gaol in which they

x

322 MY LIFE

happen to find themselves. I have at times been rather
uneasy in my mind as to the view the governors of His Majesty's
prisons may take of the matter.

I am not dealing here with the upper crust of criminal
society. The high mob does not dwell with the low mob
in the poverty areas and the black patches. The great
captains of modern crime have their luxurious flats in the
West End, their country houses, their motor-cars, and their
" establishments."

I knew one who had his own yacht, and it was on that
yacht that he conveyed the stolen Duchess of Devonshire
to America.

The people whose acquaintance I made in the criminal
areas were the criminals born on criminal soil and reared from
criminal stock, and their homes were of the poorest and
wretchedest description.

The only criminal homes in which I have seen signs of
prosperity are the homes of the receivers. In many of these
there are not only signs of well-to-do -ness, but even of
prosperity.

I have said that my long acquaintance with the criminal
class was not to my disadvantage. In one way it was to my
good. It brought me into close touch with the police and
with the heads of police in every district in London.

It was because of the knowledge I possessed that some years
ago Mr. John M. Le Sage asked me on behalf of the editor
of the Daily Telegraph, the then Hon. Harry Lawson, to
investigate the charges which had been brought against the
London police in connexion with the notorious D'Angeley
case.

The arrest of Madame D'Angeley in Regent Street on one
memorable night in 1909 led to an anti-police agitation which
spread into the Press, took the town by storm, was the subject
of heated discussion in the House of Commons, and eventually
led to a Royal Commission.

It was in connexion with this investigation that for many
weeks I walked about London in every direction through the
long night and often far into the dawn, and was able to publish
facts with regard to the infamous White Slave traffic that
was being carried on by foreigners — principally Germans

MY LIFE 323

in almost every quarter of London. And they were facts
which completely exonerated the police from the charges
brought against them by people utterly ignorant of the gigantic
and far-reaching conspiracy of vice with which the police
had to deal.

The results of the commission I undertook at the instance
of the Daily Telegraph are republished in two volumes," London
by Night " and " Watches of the Night," and my reminiscences
of that interesting journalistic experience may be left where
students of the seamy side of London life may find them if
they wish to.

The journalistic campaigns of which I am proudest are
those I have been permitted to undertake on behalf of the
children and the youth of the vast and mighty city in which
I was born.

In my investigations into the conditions of child life in the
poverty areas and the perils to youth in the black patches
and the criminal areas I always received the generous assistance
of my friends the officers and officials of the Metropolitan
Police. How keenly interested in the welfare of the people,
of whose lives they see so much, many of the police — from the
superintendent to the ordinary constable — are, only the
civilians who have been privileged to work side by side with
them can form any idea.

Only once in forty years have the friendly relations between
myself and the guardians of law and order been interrupted,
and that was when I took up and fought out in the Daily
Mail the case of the unfortunate Adolf Beck, the case to
which we owe the Court of Criminal Appeal. For a little
time, but only for a little time, Scotland Yard ceased to smile
upon me. Certain statements that I made were regarded as
reflecting upon the Yard methods.

But when I had proved my case beyond the shadow of
doubt the hatchet was buried, the pipe of peace was smoked,
and we once more " spoke as we passed by."

When I was writing " The Cry of the Children " I received
the greatest assistance from the police, who were as keenly
interested as I was in a campaign that had for its object
the safeguarding of infant life. I have been writing on
this subject for over thirty years, and I have lived to

324 MY LIFE

see it recognized as one of the most vital questions of the
day.

To-morrow will be the day of the child. To-day is the day
of the young man. But long ago far-seeing men saw the
urgent necessity from every point of view, moral, physical,
and patriotic, of teaching the lads of London to make better
use of the strength and vigour of youth.

In every district of London where hooliganism was flourish-
ing I have seen the wonderful work accomplished by clergymen
and philanthropists who believed in muscular Christianity.

The Board School and the Council School had helped to
keep the wretched little " London Arabs " off the streets, but
the decay of apprenticeship left thousands of lads when they
had passed the school age with nothing before them but
" blind alley " occupations.

There were small armies of lads in certain London districts
who after nightfall were the terror of peaceful citicens. Some
of them formed themselves into organized gangs and relieved
the high spirits and energy of youth by acts of more or less
criminal violence. Some of these gangs of boy bandits carried
sandbags as weapons of attack on unfortunate passers-by,
and the captains of some of the" gangs carried revolvers.

It was the Rev. Claude Eliot, of Hoxton, who first brought
me into touch with the movement for the establishment of
miniature rifle ranges in connexion with well-managed and
well-regulated boys' clubs, and I was able to watch the
marvellous change which this patriotic priest of God wrought
among the roughest elements in one of the roughest districts
of London.

It was a movement with which the late Prince Francis of
Teck had the deepest sympathy. Claude Eliot was stricken
down in the midst of his noble work, and some time afterwards
I received the following letter from Prince Francis :

" DEAR MR. SIMS, — I am having my annual display of the
New North Road Club for Lads, or rather the Claude Eliot
Memorial Club for Lads, on Thursday, 23rd. If you have
nothing better to do, would you do me the pleasure of dining
at 7.30 at the Marlborough Club and I will drive you down ?
Claude Hay is coming too, and that, coupled with the fact

MY LIFE 325

that I have just read your kind article in the Referee, emboldens
me to ask you, as I know how deep is the interest that you
take in all these institutions. " Yours sincerely,

" FRANCIS OF TECK."

Queen Mary's brother continued his interest in the Lads'
Rifle Club movement until he, too, alas, was removed in
the full tide of his young, busy, and patriotically useful life.

It was in connexion with another phase of a journalist's
life in London that I received the following interesting letter
from the Rev. Father Adderley :

" DEAR SIR, — Thank you very much for so kindly sending
me the books. It brings back to my mind the early days
of East End work when I was in Bethnal Green twenty years
ago. I wish if you ever have time you would call at S. Francis
House, 39 Albany Street, close by you. It is a house for
working lads kept by some Sisters with whom I am connected.
They would so like to see you, and your poems were so
inspiring. Hoping very much to see you when you are in
Birmingham, " I am, yours very truly,

" JAMES ADDERLEY."

The late William Stead was always my good friend, though
we differed on many matters, and he was a frequent corre-
spondent when I was engaged on any question in which he
himself was interested.

From the many letters I received from him I select the
following, but I may add that I did not put a strain upon
my native modesty by appearing on the platform at the
Queen's Hall and orating side by side with John Burns and
Bernard Shaw.

" DEAR MR. SIMS, — As you address probably the largest
congregation of any living man every Sunday, I make bold
to ask you whether you could be induced to come and say a
word at our conference at the Queen's Hall, for which I enclose

326 MY LIFE

you circular and ticket. Mr. Bernard Shaw is to be one of
the speakers, Mr. Burns and others.

" I am, yours sincerely,

" W. T. STEAD."

I have quoted these letters as they bear upon incidents in
my life which are among my pleasantest reminiscences — the
campaigns and crusades for the national well-being in which
in a modest way I have been privileged to play my part as a
Pressman.

CHAPTER XL

As I linger for a brief space in the glamour of the old days
of Fleet Street I am saddened by the thought of how few of
my early contemporaries remain.

That Fleet Street veteran, Mr. Thomas Catling, is still
happily with us, hale and hearty, and he was one of my
early guides, philosophers, and friends.

At the celebration of Tom Catling's fifty years in Fleet
Street a banquet was given in his honour by his brother
Pressmen, and the late Lord Burnham, who presided, made
a delightfully interesting speech, in which he referred to the
many changes the half-century had seen in the newspaper
Press.

The newspaper when I first became a Pressman had not
discovered the modern art of " window dressing." Such
headlines as were used were simple and unilluminative, and
there were no cross-lines.

The daily paper always had three or four closely printed
leading articles, and a mass of solidly set matter. The
happenings which to-day are set out with all the pomp and
circumstance of display were inserted in a solid lump with a
plain one-line heading.

In order to know the result of a law case or a police case
you had to read right through to the end of the report.
The " picturesque intro." when it first made its appearance
in the Daily Telegraph was a startling novelty, and when
George Sala and Godfrey Turner and the " young lions "
began to write in a lighter vein than the public had been
accustomed to, the new Press language was called " Daily
Telegraphese/'

?••• There was little or no advertising of a new paper in those
days, so newspapers of some sorts and weekly periodicals of
other sorts came out and went in again in shoals. It was

327

328 MY LIFE

nothing for a paper then to have an existence of a few months
and even of a few weeks.

This was especially the case with humorous and satirical
periodicals, which were always being started to take " Mr.
Punch's " number down. There was very little capital behind
them, but they generally had a clever and enthusiastic staff
of acknowledged humorists. The periodical of this class was
in those days more of a Bohemian toss-up than a commercial
speculation.

Some of these journals, though they were not long-lived,
made their mark in newspaperland, and are still quoted. The
Tomahawk, with the scathing cartoons of Matt Morgan, has
never been forgotten. The daring of the Tomahawk caused
its downfall. Nothing was sacred to it — not even the Throne.

James Mortimer's Figaro, and Stephen Fiske's Hornet, the
Bat, the Hawk, and the Dwarf ; Byron's Comic News, Sawyer's
Funny Folks, Zangwill and Ariel, Charles Ross and Judy, all
are Fleet Street memories.

My old friend and colleague, Mr. Horace Lennard, shares
my memories of those days, and recently gave a list of the
vapoury ventures with which Fleet Street was flooded in
the free-and-easy days of newspaperdom.

*I have known a paper started on £50 and " worked " by
three men. One printed it, and the other two wrote it. I
don't think there was even that amount of capital behind
a humorous periodical that I contributed to in the 'seventies.
It was called Punch's Baby, and the title was significant, for
it never grew up. It added itself to the infantile mortality
returns at the age of three weeks. I remember that I called
the column that I started in it " Almonds and Raisins."

The daily newspaper of that period made up for its lack
of variety by devoting an enormous amount of its space to
reports of the Parliamentary debates, and the Parliamentary
debates of those days were worthy of it.

The House of Commons was a house of orators. Gladstone
and Disraeli and John Bright never took part in a debate
but all the world was eager to read what they had said, and
no one would miss a line of it. Lord Salisbury was " a great
master of gibes and flouts and sneers," but his flouting and
his sneering always made good newspaper copy.

MY LIFE 329

I can remember when no professing Jew was permitted to
take his place in the august assembly, and I can recall the
excitement when Baron Lionel Rothschild, after being returned
again and again and each time rejected by the House, was by
the joint operation of an Act of Parliament and a resolution
of the House of Commons permitted to take his seat and
record his vote.

And then the time came when Charles Bradlaugh was
returned to Parliament and ejected from the House because
he was a Freethinker, and ejected with a sufficient amount of
personal violence to damage the honourable gentleman's
clothing considerably. But the junior member for North-
ampton triumphed in the end like Baron Rothschild, and now
at St. Stephen's men of the Ancient Faith may sit side by
side with men of no faith at all.

Even in the long Parliamentary debates in the old-fashioned
newspaper that I remember there was nothing to guide your
eye.

I remember a young American lady saying to me one day
in the long ago, " I can't stand your newspapers ! You have
to read them right through before you know what they're
about. Now in America we just pick up a newspaper, we
look at the headlines, and we needn't read the rest if we don't
want to."

Since those days the English Press has been Americanized,
and in some respects — not all — to its great advantage. No
London newspaper to-day disdains the revealing headline.

The paragraph in the 'sixties and 'seventies was not much
indulged in. In the ordinary mid-Victorian newspaper the
idea of the editor seemed to be to pack as much black print
into his space as his space would hold.

When in 1877 the Referee was started and I wrote my entire
contribution in a series of paragraphs with stars between
them, I was seriously told by a well-known journalist that that
sort of thing would never do. It didn't fill the space or give
the public enough for their money.

But I am writing those paragraphs still.

*****

With the close of the nineteenth century I may bring these
reminiscences of London life to an end. With all that has

330 MY LIFE

happened in the twentieth century the younger generation
is as familiar as the older generation.

There are young men now in Fleet Street who in the years
to come will tell the story of London life in the first half of the
twentieth century. But they will have to deal with phases
of London life that are largely shorn of the distinctive
features that made the strength of their appeal to the old
brigade.

With the passing of the old tavern life a great change has
come over Fleet Street. The comradeship of the teacup
and cigarette is not as the comradeship of the tankard and
the pipe.

The old highway of Bohemia is no longer the gay haunt of
cultured vagabondage.

In the bars of Fleet Street and the Strand you may search
in vain for the merry little coterie every member of which had
made or was making a name in journalism, in literature, in art,
or in the drama.

In what tavern, coffee-room, or dining-saloon in Fleet
Street will you see gathered together o' nights in their accus-
tomed " boxes," with substantial English fare in front of
them, journalists, dramatists, and artists of high renown ?
Where will you find a " song and supper room " with a dozen
men famous as artists, as writers, as advocates, as scientists,
eating their chops, smoking their pipes, drinking their hot
grog at midnight, and listening to an entertainment in which
no woman takes part, held in a popular establishment through
the portals of which no petticoat is allowed to pass ?

These were the days of the giants, and the giants did not
mind stooping to take their pleasure in Bohemia. They
gathered gaily around the flowing bowl, and often went home
in a growler at three or four o'clock in the morning from the
sing-song or the supper-rooms or the Bohemian club. And the
cabby who knew his business was quite prepared to get
off the box and see his distinguished fare safely up the steps —
if there were any — to the front door.

The early and the mid- Victorian days were the days of
Thackeray, of Dickens, of Tennyson, of Browning, of Landseer
and Millais, of Watts — of the pre-Raphaelites, Holman Hunt,
Burne-Jones and Rossetti — of Huxley and Tyndall, of Darwin

MY LIFE 331

and Ruskin, and of a great and noble army of men, many of
whom to-day are spoken of as " giants."

I do not — Heaven forbid ! — suggest that all these gentlemen
took the joy of life from the Rabelaisian point of view, but
many of them loved the feast of friendship and sounded the
note joyously in their work.

That was a phase of life in London in the 'sixties and
'seventies. The East End crowded the flaring gin-palaces,
and the West End in less ostentatious establishments, and, with
liquor of a better quality, drank copiously without fear and
without reproach.

In the middle-class home of suburban respectability the
nightcap was a matter of course. At ten o'clock the maid
would enter with a tray on which were decanters of brandy
and Irish whisky — Scotch had not then come into fashion —
and of gin, or more frequently Hollands, and on the tray
were sugar and lemon and a great silver-lidded jug of hot
water. Cold spirits and aerated waters were a later sacrifice
to the growing temperance of the age.

It was an age of good cheer, heavy eating, and heavy
drinking, of high animal spirits and of rowdy revelry.

But it was an age that the innocent gaiety and pleasant
freedom of our twentieth-century Sunday would have filled
with horror. For children to play a game of ball in the back
garden was a desecration of the Sabbath which would have
caused the neighbours to ostracize the family.

Sunday golf, Sunday tennis, Sunday cricket ! If the
immediate ancestors of those of us who play these games on
Sunday to-day could hear of our proceedings they would turn
in their graves.

The first Sunday Concert ever held was given at the Royal
Albert Hall in 1871, and was followed by a long and bitter
contest with the Lord's Day Observance Society.

The Sabbatarian tradition survived in the spirit long after
it had been destroyed in the letter. I remember when my
friend Robert Newman first started the Sunday concerts at
the Queen's Hall. The programme consisted of performances
on the grand organ and a few vocal items, mostly of a sacred
character, and on the programme you were " particularly
requested not to applaud."

332 MY LIFE

I strongly urged Mr. Newman to remove the prohibition,
which seemed to be Pharisaical. After swallowing the camel
of a Sunday concert, why gape at the gnat of signifying the
pleasure it had given you ? Mr. Newman agreed with me,
and the prohibition was withdrawn. From that day the
audience rapidly increased, and the Sunday afternoon concerts
at the Queen's Hall became one of the Sunday delights of
London.

The National Sunday League, with which I had the honour
of being for many years associated, had done yeoman service
for the cause long before the Queen's Hall and the Albert Hall
gave Sunday afternoon entertainments.

At the time that the League, of which Mr. Henry Mills
was the secretary and the backbone, was fighting for a
free Sunday, the great Sunday attraction to Londoners
was the Hall of Science, where we went to hear lectures,
sometimes of a startling character, by Charles Bradlaugh,
Annie Besant, and Dr. Aveling.

But the Sunday League fought steadfastly and gallantly,
and it is largely due to the efforts of the League that the prin-
cipal museums are now open to the public on the only day
that a very considerable portion have the leisure to visit them.
And now we have Sunday concerts given in every part of
London, and we have Sunday picture shows, and, though they
are still more or less private performances, Sunday plays.
But I can remember a time when there was absolutely nothing
in London open to the public but the public.

That is a phase of London life which the journalist who
chronicles his experiences of the first half of the twentieth
century will not have to deal with, for it is a phase that
London will never see again.

CHAPTER XLI

MID- VICTORIAN journalism was like mid- Victorian furniture,
solid and heavy. When it indulged in sentiment the sentiment
was like the sentimental song of the period, simple.

The passionate note of our modern songs was a rarity. We
loved " The Old Arm chair " and the idyllic home was " In
my Cottage near a Wood/' and we implored the woodman to
spare the tree that had sheltered us in our childhood.

" Truth in Absence " was the lover's creed, " Ever of Thee "
he was fondly dreaming, and the young man at the piano
sang to his lady love, " Thou art my own, my guiding star."
If he were separated from the fair one the burden of his lay
was " Her bright smile haunts me still." Our dearest memory
was that " We wandered by the sea-beat shore, and gathered
shells in days of yore." And we were always asking Ben Bolt
if he remembered sweet Alice.

The simple story songs of " Claribel " were in every drawing-
room, and if we went into the garden on a summer night we
gazed aloft and sang to the " Beautiful Star." We peered
into the canary's cage and warbled " Sing, Birdie, sing."
Every maid of London sang " Maid of Athens," and sometimes
the gentle maiden turned from the canary and looked out
at the passing regiment and murmured coyly, " The Captain
with his whiskers took a sly glance at me."

Our novels were moral and generally plain, straightforward
stories of true love that ended happily until Ouida came with
Mars on the war-path of passion and Venus in various dis-
guises, now in the drawing-room, now in the camp, and now
among the roses of Provence. But Ouida was something of a
shock in the middle-class homes that subscribed to the circulat-
ing libraries.

Poor Louise de la Ramee ! I knew her in the days of her

333

334 MY LIFE

pride and prosperity, and I had a pathetic little letter from an
old friend who saw her in the last days, when she lay in pain
and poverty, forgotten by the world that had once been at
her feet.

There was plenty of strong dramatic situation, and plenty
of clever character-drawing too, in the novels that were of
such absorbing interest to us in the 'seventies. A great public
waited eagerly for all the earlier novels of the long series that
commenced with " Lady Audley's Secret " and ended only
the other day when Miss Braddon laid aside for ever the pen
that she had plied so pleasantly and so profitably for half a
century.

I remember the distress in my boyhood's home when the
periodical Robin Goodfdlow, in which " Lady Audley's Secret "
appeared, suddenly ceased publication before we had dis-
covered what Lady Audley's secret was.

Then came Zola, and Zolaism spread, and the young
writers of the world rushed into realism in all languages. But
Zolaism was too strong for the English palate at first, and
when one of the famous Vizetelly brothers published an
English edition of one of the novels he was prosecuted and
imprisoned. That was in the days before the decadents
had flooded the land with the poisonous fruits of their
philosophy.

There was much that was gross and vicious in the old days,
but it was not daintily arrayed. The scarlet woman did not
wear a halo out of doors and work slippers for curates at
home. The vice and virtue of mid-Victorian days were
marked in plain figures. The literature of Holywell Street
had not overflowed into Bond Street. Virtue went smiling in
the sunshine and vice flaunted in the gas-light, and they did
not dress so very much alike that it was with difficulty you
could tell one from the other.

The degenerates had not established a literature and drama
of their own. Apollo did not sing his swan-song in a convict
gaol.

But the changes that came in the later years of the century
were not all for the worse. Women and children were emanci-
pated from the thraldom that they had borne for centuries, a

MY LIFE 335

thraldom which was looked upon as part of the constitution
of the country.

The young woman of to-day, though she smokes cigarettes
and talks slang, is far healthier in body and brain than were
her sisters in the 'sixties. She has enlarged her outlook and
her feet. She does not weep at your frown or have hysterics
if you smile at another of her sex. She is useful not only in
the home but out of it.

Even if she be a bachelor girl, she is better able to take care
of herself than she was in the old days of the sheltered life,
because she is allowed to know something of the world before
she leaves the shelter of the parental wing. And in the great
tragedy through which our country is passing the young
woman has shown herself a valuable asset entirely apart
from the kitchen and cradle aspect of the feminine ques-
tion.

And the child has ceased to be regarded as a chattel. Its
right to have at least the opportunity of a healthy and happy
life has been recognized even by the law. The fight for the
recognition of the rights of childhood was a long and fierce
one. But the battle has been won, and the safeguarding of
the future of England's children is to-day recognized by all
classes of the community as a national duty, not only from
the human, but from the patriotic point of view.

When my friend Mrs. E. M. Burgwin, until lately the
Superintendent of Special Schools, first aroused my personal
interest in the welfare of the children, she was the head
mistress at the Orange Street School in the Mint.

In those days thousands of little children were sent to school
in a starving condition. The State said that they must be
educated, and if they did not attend the parents would be
summoned and fined. But the State troubled itself only
about the brain of the child, and gave no thought to its body.

To-day there is no child in the land who need go foodless
to school and return foodless to a foodless home.

And the little children and the babies are no longer to be
found in the crowded public-house all day long and far into
the night. But in the old times I have seen scores of children,
babies in arms, and little ones of the tenderest years, crushed

336 MY LIFE

in among the crowd in the gin-palace and the beer-house at
midnight. And I have seen babies in arms being fed with
beer, and little girls of four sipping the gin from their mothers'
glasses.

That, thank God, is a phase of London life which has
disappeared for ever !

EPILOGUE

IN the dawn of the new century, so far as these rambling
memories of the happy bygone years are concerned, I part
with my readers. Many of my older readers may remember
much that I have forgotten or that I have omitted to chronicle.
To deal with even all the theatrical happenings of sixty years
in the space at my disposal would have made my chronicle
of old days a dictionary of dates rather than a story of the
past.

If I have not touched life at all points in these memories
of the last half of the nineteenth century I have touched it at
all those points which appeal to me personally. I have con-
fined myself to those points for the reason that these are the
personal reminiscences of one who during those fifty years
has been mainly occupied with the newspaper and the theatre.

And now, amid the strain and stress of the fierce and
furious conflict in which all that we hold dearest is at stake,
with our cities darkened in gloom unknown since the days of
the swinging lamps, the lanterns, and the torches, with our
newspapers shrinking gradually to the small sheets of centuries
ago, with all the young manhood of the nation called to arms,
and with women in the hour of their country's need performing
tasks of which their late Victorian mothers never dreamt and
from which their mid-Victorian grandmothers would have
shrunk in hysterical dismay, the London of my youth seems
to be divided from the London of to-day not by fifty years
but by a whole century.

I wander Fleet Street by night, and it brings back no
joyous memories of the 'seventies and the 'eighties. I strain
my eyes in the darkness and wait expectantly for the passing
shades of Dr. Johnson and Boswell and the Fleet Streeters of
their day.

337 Y

338 MY LIFE

I find myself at night in the Strand and Leicester Square
and Shaftesbury Avenue, where Theatreland has spread from
its old boundaries, and I see in front of the Temples of Thespis
only a ghostly blue light that suggests the entrance to a police
station. There were no blazing electric lights in Theatreland
fifty years ago, but the gas flared gaily above the portals of
the playhouse, and a long line of opal-shaded lights made gay
the passages that led you to the fairyland of make-believe.

The darkness of Theatreland to-day carries my memory
back to one bygone light of the night and to one light alone.
And that is the wretched sandwichman with a lighted candle
under a cardboard hat who perambulated the streets about
Leicester Square as an advertisement for the dreadful old
" Judge and Jury " show whose ways were darkness.

Thirty years ago I remember a Regent Street that was as
dark at night as Piccadilly Circus is now. But even before the
coming of the arc lamp some of us had started " A League of
Light/' and asked the shopkeepers to keep their shops
unshuttered and their lights going to make a brighter London
by night, and many of the West End shopkeepers gladly fell
in with the suggestion, as it enabled them to advertise their
wares to the passing thousands who only came West after
nightfall.

But in all the years that I remember the taverns and the
gin-palaces and the bars and the saloons were aflare. And as
the cry of the Londoner became that of the dying Goethe —
" Light, more light ! " — so did the lamps of the liquor trade
become larger and the beaming of Electra's rays more blinding.

In the days of my youth the public-house was a beacon-
light in the loneliest thoroughfare and on the darkest night.
In the days of my more than maturity if I look for a public-
house as a landmark during my night rambles I have to strike
a match to see it, and when I see it it is closed " by legislature's
harsh decree," although there may be yet two hours to
midnight.

But I recall a time when there were plenty of bars and
drinking saloons that were open till three or four o'clock in
the morning, and some of the most notorious as the resort of
evildoers and criminal roughs stood in the very shadow of the
Houses of the Lawgivers.

MY LIFE 339

And in the Houses of the Lawgivers, if there was no preach-
ing of class hatred there was scant show of sympathy with the
classes that were unrepresented. In the days of my youth
there was far more pity expressed for the savage and the far-off
heathen than for the downtrodden and the poor of our own
land.

The man who dreamed of social reform and put his dream
into words was a dangerous demagogue, and the prison was
his proper place. And to prison I saw many a man sent for
preaching that which to-day would be his passport to
Parliament.

Those were the shadows that lay upon the London of the
long ago. It was a drabber London, a smaller London, a
more disorderly London, a less healthy London than the
London that we have now.

But it was the London that I loved, the London hallowed
by a hundred happy memories.

It is in a London lying under the stress and strain of
Britain's war for her existence, in a London that at night is a
city shrouded in the gloom of the grave, a London sheltering
herself in that gloom from the hurtling bombs of death from
the skies above, a London restrained in its liberties and its
liquor as it has never been since it became a European capital,
that these memories of the old days of peace and joy, of
buoyant good humour and rollicking fun, of festivity by day
and revelry by night, of old-time plays and old-time players,
of dead and gone dancing gardens " with a thousand extra
lights," of Halls of Harmony and Haunts of Discord, have
been written day by day and mainly from memory.

Writing of the pleasures of the past, my thoughts have
been taken for a time from the pain of the present.

If these rambling recollections of sixty years of a Londoner's
life have rendered a similar service to my readers, they have
at least been written to some good and useful purpose.

And so with a grateful heart for the golden days that were
and a heart full of faith in the golden days to be, I cease to
look back and fix my gaze fearlessly on the future.

INDEX

ABRAHAMS, Morris, 76
Adams, Sam, 318
Adderley, Rev. James, 325
Addison, Fanny, 303
Adelaide Gallery, 76, 161
Adelphi Theatre, 76, 90-92, 132,

161-164, 206, 208-209, 212, 215,

266-270, 272-280, 291
Agricultural Hall, Islington, 83,

3"

Albert, Fred, 318
Albery, James, 302
Alboni, Marietta, 147
Alderson, Clifton, 244
Alexander, Sir George, 205-206
Alhambra Theatre, 98, 141, 156,

158-160, 213-215, 221
Allen, Tom, 175
Anderson, T., 172, 175
Angle, B. J., 172, 175
Aquarium, Royal, 108-109
Archer, Fred, 258

William, 134, 200
Armfelt, Count, 248, 250
Ashby-Sterry, J., 26, 55
Ashley, Henry, 156
Ashton, Jack, 171
Asquith, H. H. 239-240
Astley, Sir John, 82-83
Astley's Amphitheatre, 3, 141, 177-

178, 284
Avenue Theatre (later, Playhouse),

224
Ayrton, A. S., 236

BALFOUR, Jabez, 145
Ballantine, Serjeant, 26, 143-144

Walter, 26, 155
Balzac, 27, 120-125
Bancroft, Lady (formerly Marie
Wilton), 50, 92-93. 274, 304

Sir, Squire, 92-93, 160, 304

Bandmann, Herr, 44, 286
Barker, Richard, 51, 164
Barnard, Fred, 18-19, 136
Barnato, Barney, 109
Barnay, Ludwig, 281
Barnes, J. H. 233, 236, 240
Barnett, J. C., 266-267
Baroda, Gaekwar of, 143-144
Barrett, George, 42, 129, 183-184

Wilson, 63-64, 75-76, 78, 112-
114, 117, 126, 128-131, 165,
183-184, 298-299

Mrs. Wilson, 113
Barrie, Sir J. M., 118
Barry, Helen, 76, 213

Shiel, 294, 307
Bateman, " Papa," 14

Isabel, 163

Kate, 91
Battenberg, Princess Henry of,

271

Baum, John, 215
Beau champ, John, 163
Beck, Adolf, 119, 323
Bedford, Paul, 2, 91
Belasco, F., 187
Bell, Captain Leonard, 176
Bellew, J. M., 120, 167, 189, 253

Kyrle, 186-187, 2O5
Bellwood, Bessie, 318
Belmore, George, 240, 304
Benedict, Sir Julius, 293
Benson, participator in Kerr and

Benson frauds, 56
Beresford, Lord William, 27, 30
Bernhardt, Sarah, 151-152, 199
Bertram, Charles, 228, 313
Beveridge, J. D., 164, 203
Bierce, Ambrose, 26, 43, 120-122,

178

Bigelow, L., 279
Billington, Mrs., 91, 213

341

342

INDEX

Birmingham, Prince of Wales's

Theatre, 224-225, 268
Bishop, Alfred, 200
Black, William, 250
Blackpool Winter Gardens, 220
Blanchard, E. L., 50, 58, 286-287
Blanche, Ada, 201
Blind, Karl, 53, 55

Mathilde, 53
Blondin, 108
Bonehill, Bessie, 318
Bonn, 26-30

Bonnemains, Madame, 222
Boosey, John, 17, 19

William, 17, 19
Booth, Edwin, 77, 177, 241
Boucicault, Dion, 91, 130, 241, 286,

294, 304

Boulanger, General, 221-222
Bower Saloon, 90, 303
Bowman, Maggie, 273
Boyne, Leonard, 131, 165, 203
Braddon, Miss, 31, 334
Bradlaugh, Charles, 329, 332
Brandon, Olga, 267
Branscombe, Maude, 302
Bravo, Florence, 140
Brennan, Maggie, 286
Brewer, Charles, 258-259
Bright, John, 3, 236, 328
Britannia Theatre, Hoxton, 50
Broadmoor Asylum, 67
Bromley, Nellie, 296
Brooke, G. V., 300-301
Brough, Fanny, 240

Lionel, 189, 201, 213, 274-275,

3«>3

William, 294
Brougham, John, 178, 294

Lord, 3

Brought on, Phyllis, 201
Brown, Hablot, K., 70
Brown-Potter, Mrs., 185—190
Browning, Robert, 203
Bruce, Edgar, 73-75, 287
Brunton, William, 58
Buchanan, Robert, 165, 181-182,

203-211, 239-240
Buckerfield, Mr., 267
Buckstone, John Baldwin, 3. 93
Bunhill Fields, 6-7
Bunyan, John, 7
Burgwin, Mrs. E. M., 135, 335
Bumand, Sir F. C., 68-70, 92, 130,
294> 3io

Burnham, Lord, 327
Burns, John, 135, 325-326
Burton Crescent Murder, 222-223
Butler, Richard, 172, 307

Samuel, 53

Byron, H. J., 39, 7°. 73. 92-93, 130.
274, 294-295, 297

CAMBRIDGE, Duke of, 228-230
Cameron, Violet, 154-155, 195, 307
Campbell, E. T., 172

Mrs. Patrick, 138, 166, 205-

207, 291

Carleton, Will, 251
Carney, Kate, 318
Carr, Comyns, 168
Carrington, Lord, 167
Carroll, Lewis, 247
Carte, D'Oyly, 160
Carton, Claude, 74

R. C., 206
Caryll, Ivan, 19, 157, 209, 223-224,

308

Catling, Tom, 42, 327
Cavendish, Ada, 92
Cecil, Arthur, 157, 200, 310
Celeste, Madame, 3, 91
Cellier, Alfred, 218-219, 308

Frank, 218
Chambers, J. G., 172
Chaplin, Charlie, 301

Mr. Henry (later, Viscount),

256

Chapman, Blanche, 188
Chappell, Arthur, 151-152
Chat, 43

Chattell, Hettie, 244
Chatterton, F. B., 130, 199, 217,

284
Chatto, Andrew, 42, 120, 122-125,

179

Chevalier, Albert, 318
Chicago Times, 274
Churchill, Lord Randolph, 238-239
"Claribel," 333
Clark, Henri, 317
Clarke, Hamilton, 214

John S., 92, 294

Savile, 42, 58, 88
Claude, Angelina, 73, 303
Clay, Cecil, 160, 286

Frederick, 155-156, 159-160,
195, 200, 213, 225

Lila, 84-89
Clay ton, | John, 296

INDEX

343

Clifton, Harry, 317
Cobbe, Frances Power, 53
Coborn, Charles, 307, 318
Cody, Colonel, 169
Cohen, Arthur, 135
Colas, Stella, 278
Coleman, Edward, 247

Fatty, 1 08

Collette, Charles, 200
Collins, Arthur, 283, 289-290

Lottie, 318

Mortimer, 58, 168
Colosseum, Regent's Park, 99
Colvin, Sidney, 55
Compton, Henry, 93
Connolly, Michael, 212
Conquest, George, 53~54. i°7
Con way, Moncure D., 55
Cook, Dutton, 168, 315
Cooke, Aynsley, 115-116
Cooper, Frank, 114
Coote, Charles, 129
Corbet, James, 169-170
Corri, Clarence C., 224
Costa, Michael, 226-227
Court Theatre, Sloane Square, 113,

117

Courtneidge, Robert, 154
Coveney, Harriet, 114, 219
Covent Garden Theatre, 213-214,

302

Cox, Serjeant, 143
Coyne, Fred, 318
Craven, H. T., 294-295, 304
Cremorne, 39-40, 141, 215
Crichton, Haldane, 114
Criterion Restaurant, 101

Theatre, 118
Crook, John, 224
Croydon Theatre, 140
Crystal Palace, 99, 108

DACRE, Arthur, 190-193
Daily Mail, 323

News, 248, 250

Telegraph, 322-323, 327^
Dallas, E. J., 223

J. J., 202
Dalziel, Brothers, 66, 71-72

Gilbert, 18, 136
Danby, Charles, 202
Dance, George, 224
D'Angeley, Madame, 322
Danvers, Ramsay, 118
Dark Blue, 54-56

D'Auban, John, 202

Daubigny, Delacour (= George R.

Sims), 212

Davenport Brothers, 312
Davis, Charley, 175
Deane, Dorothy, 303
Decori, Louis, 245-246
Decourcelle, Pierre, 245
De Groof, the flying man, 40
De"jazet, Mme., 151
Devant, David, 312
Devereux, William, 273
Devonshire, Duke of 21, 23
Dewar, 92

Dickens, Charles, 99, 122, 178, 180,
277

Charles, junr., 307
Diehl, Louis, 81, 83-85, 87
Dietz, Ella, 53
Dilke, Ashton, 72, 87

Sir Charles, 1 36
Disraeli, Benjamin, 3, 328
Dixey, Henry E., 200-201
Dobbs, Hannah, 139
Dobson, Austin, 26
Donato, 105
Donelly, Ned, 174-175
Doone, Neville, 129
Dor6, Gustave, 122, 124
Douglas, J. H., 172

John, 244
Dove, Owen, 118
Dowsett, Punch, 173
Drury Lane Theatre, 12, 74-75,

141, 157, 217, 281, 294
Druscovitch, Inspector, 56
Duleep Singh, Maharajah, 158
Dumas, Alexandre, 178, 180
Du Maurier, George, 70
Duncan, Emily, 201

EAST, Quartermaine, 255'
Eastbourne, 20-23
Eastlake, Miss, 117, 129
Edouin, Willie, 202, 274
Edwardes, George, 194-195, 306
Edwards, George Spencer, 42, 139
Egyptian Hall, 312
Eldred, Joseph, 51, 112
Eliot, Rev. Claude, 324

George, 235
Ellison, Isabel, 157
Emden, Henry, 289
Emery, Sam, 293

Winifred, 165, 206

344

Emmet, 91
Empire Theatre, 100
Engelbach, E. C., 298-299
Escott, T. H. S., 168
Eugenie, Empress, 6, 94
Euston Square Murder, 139
Evans, Fred, 285
Evening News, I, 41
Exeter, Theatre Royal, 129

FAIRBROTHER, 83^1167,244,247,273

Faithfull, Emily, 53

Falconer, Edmund, 91

Family Herald, 88

Faraday, Michael, 18, 20

Farini, 108

Farnie, H. B., 42, 73, 154, 219

Farren, Nellie, 51, 201, 296

William, 295
Faucit, Helen (later, Lady Martin),

3.293
Fawcett, Mrs. Millicent Garrett,

196

Fawn, James, 318
Fawsitt, Amy, 295
Fechter, Charles, 2, 90, 130, 277-

278

Fenwick-Miller, Mrs., 53
Fernandez, James, 76, 90, 165,

.267, 303

Finck, Herman, 219-220
Finette, Mile, 159
Fisher, David, 294

W. H., 236
Fiske, Stephen, 328
Fitzgerald, John, 222
Fleet Street, 3, 57-59, 96, 327-331
Fletcher, Charles, 219-220
Florence, Billy, 200
Foley, Marie, 247
Foli, Signor, 215
Forbes, Archibald, 60, 168, 250
Forde, Athol, 273
Fordham, George, 259
Foster, Tommy, 161
Fox, Rose, 200
Fowler, Emily, 51, 93

Joe, 173-174
Francis, E. J., 173
Franks, Charles, 174
French, Messrs. Samuel, 89
Freund, John, 54-55
Frost-Smith, R., 172
Fun, 14-15, 26, 65-72, 120, 249,

272

INDEX

GAIETY Theatre, 51, 194-202, 219,

279, 306

Gandillot, Leon, 245
Garden, E. W., 163
Gardiner, E. W., 240
Garibaldi, 10-11
Garland, G. J., 172
Garrick Theatre, Whitechapel,

51-52
Gatti, Messrs., 76, 132, 161-162,

164, 203, 205-207
Gautier, Theophile, 180
Giddens, George, 118
Gilbert, Sir John, 70

Sir W. S., 26, 51, 55, 66, 69-70,
73, 156, 201, 218, 242, 275,
281, 303, 310
Gilchrist, Connie, 201, 223
GiU, C. F., 145
Gilmer, Albert, 247
Gladstone, W. E., 3, 236, 271, 328
Glendinning, John, 273
Glenny, Charles, 165
Globe Theatre, Wych St., 155,

302

Glover, James, 212-213
Glyn, Miss, 3
Godfrey, Charles, 318
Goldschmidt, Otto, 147

Walter, C., 149

Gooch, Walter, 76-80, 130, 132
Goodall, Bella, 302
Goode, Chesterfield. 174

Jim, 71, 172
Goodwin, Nat, 114
Goron, M., 221
Gough, James, 188
Graham, Clara, 303
Grain, Corney, 310
Grant, Baron, 213-214
Gray, David, 209, 211
Grecian Theatre, 107
Green, Plantagenet, 97
Greet, William, 298-299
Gregory, F., 156
Greville, Eva, 196
Griffiths, Brothers, 149
Grimwood, Mr. and Mrs. St. Clair,

243-244

Grisi, Giulia, 151
Grossmith, George, senr., 47, 310

George, junr., 199, 201

Weedon, 157

Grove, Archibald, 238-239
Grundy, Sydney, 63-64, 165-168

INDEX

345

Gurney, Edmund, 247
Gye, Frederick, 52

HACKER, The Misses, 139
Halfpenny Journal, 31
Hall, Marshall, 145
Halliday, Andrew, 286
Hamber, Captain, 233-235
Hamer, Hetty, 201
Hamilton, Duke of, 28, 256

Henry, 289

Hanwell College, 23-26
Harcourt, Sir William Vernon,

55

Hare, Sir John, 205
Harris, Sir Augustus, 74-75, 96,

157, 281-290, 302
Charles, 282-283, 308
Harte, Bret, 120, 200, 250-253
Hastings, Marquess of, 2, 254,

256-257
Hawkins, Sir Henry, 144, 229

Tommy, 173-174
Hawley, Sir Joseph, 254, 257
Hawtrey, Charles, 157
Hay, Claude, 324

John, 120, 185, 251
Haymarket, 2, 39

Theatre, 93~94> 274, 294, 301
Heenan, J. C., 2, 170, 176
Hemming, Alfred, 75, 111-113,

"5

Henderson, Alexander, 275
Herbert, Miss, 92

William, 163

Her Majesty's Theatre, 308
Herman, Henry, 126-128
Herring, Paul, 285
Herv6, F. R., 213
Heslop, John, 228
Hewitt, Agnes, 244
Hibbert, C. H., 319
Hicks, Seymour, 202
Hill, Caroline, 157

Jenny, 112, 318

W. J., 118, 236
Hindlip, Lord, 7
Hippesley, George, 273
Hodges, Frederick, 139
Hodson, Henrietta (later, Mrs.
Henry Labouchere), 46, 92,

155. 303
Sylvia, 294
Holland, Fanny, 310

William, 103-104, 220, 317

Hollingshead, John, 51, 159, 194,

199-200, 223, 278-279, 306
Holmes, T. Knox, 201
Holt, Thomas Lyttelton, 43
Honey, George, 42, 93

Tom, 37
Hood, Basil, 223

Marion, 159, 201

Thomas, 2, 122

Thomas, junr., 58, 66, 68-69,

1 20, 122, 249
Hope Family, 6-7
Hopley, Thomas, 22-23
Hoskins, actor at Sadler's Wells,

13-14. 15
Hotten, John Camden, 120-122,

178-179, 253
Howard, J. B., 294
Sydney, 240, 244
Walter, 247
Howes, Billy, 83
Hudspeth, Miss, 287
Hughes, Thomas, 55
Hugo, Victor, 312
Hunt, G. W., 35, 317
Huntley, Mrs., 240

IBSEN, Henrik, 200
Ide, professional pedestrian, 83
Imperial Music Hall, 100
Irving, Sir Henry, 14—15, 47-49,
93, 130, 199, 214, 271, 275, 286
Islington, 11-13

JACK the Ripper Murders, 141-142
Jackson, Harry, 76-78, 307
Jacobi, Georges, 159-160, 201, 221
James, David, 42, 93, 202, 237, 295

Kate, 203

ay, Harriet, 204, 210
ecks, Clara, 163
efferson, Joseph, 91
enn, Joe, 173
errold, Douglas, 248

Tom, 58

Johnson, M., 209
Johnson's Folly, 149-150
Jones, Avonia, 300-301
Edward, 127
H. A., 127, 162
Maria, 195
Wilton, in

Josephs, Fanny, 92, 303-304
Jousiffe, Charles, 182-183
Sidney, 182-183

346

INDEX

Joyce, Walter, 42
Judic, Mme., 152
Jullien, 216-217

" KANGAROO," 97-98

Kean, Charles, 2, 130

Keeley, Mrs., 3, 189, 293, 304-305

Keene, Alec, 171

Charles, 70
Kendal, Mrs. (formerly Madge

Robertson), 51, 188-189
Kenealy, Dr., 144
Kennington, 9-10
Kerr, Fred, 156

Orpheus C., 177, 179
Kettner's Restaurant, 74
Kilrain, Jake, 171
King, Tom, 171
Kingsford, Dr. Anna, 53-54
Kingsley, Henry, 55
Knifton, 174
Knight, Joseph, 133

LAGRANGE, Count de, 2, 254, 256
Lang, Andrew, 55, 250
Langham, Nat, 171
Langtry, Mrs. (later, Lady de

Bathe), 63, 207
Law, Arthur, 310
Lawler, Kate, 114
Leamar, Sisters, 318
Le Bert, Mena, 247
Lecky, W. E., 203
Leclercq, Carlotta, 90, 166
Charles, 285
Rose, 285, 294
Lee, Richard, 77-78
Leeds, Grand Theatre, 75-76, 112-

"3

Leeds Mercury, in

Lefroy Murder, 139-140

Le Hay, John, 307

Leicester, Ernest, 247

Leigh, H. S., 26, 42, 55, 58, 296

Mrs. Henry, 163, 273
Leland, Charles, 26
Lemmens-Sherrington, Madame,

215

Lennard, Horace, 328
Leno, Dan, 116-117, 223
Le Sage, J. M., 322
Leslie, Fanny, 78, 213
U Fred, 202

H. J., 306, 308-309
Leuville, Marquis de, 231-236

Levey, Sisters, 318
Levy, Florence, 196
Lewis, Amelia, 54-55

Sir George, 133, 140

Leopold, 46-48

Lillian, 188

Leybourne, George, 317
Light, Rev. C. R., 183
Lind, Jenny, 3, 147-149

Letty, 201, 303
Lingard, Alice, 166
Linton, Mrs. Lynn, 168
Liverpool, Prince of Wales Theatre,

"5

Lockwood, Sir Frank, 144

Loftus, Cissie, 201

London :

betting houses, 2, 36 ?7
eating establishments, 95-97,

33°

fairs, 103

night life, 2, 38-41, 97-98,
100-102, 106-107, 314-316

police, 320-322

sharpers, 262-265

slums, 134-138

street cries, 3-4

street shows, 105-106
London Figaro, 94
Lonnen, E. J., 195
Loseby, Connie, 51
Lotta, 307

Love, Mabel, 196, 303
Lowe, Robert, 236
Lucy, Sir Henry. 168, 249
Ludwig of Bavaria, 197-198
Lutz, Baron von. 197-198

Meyer, 196-198, 311
Lyceum Theatre, 14, 46-49, 141,

268

Lyle, Listen, 247
Lynn, Dr., 312
Lyric Theatre, 88, 204, 224
Lytton, Marie, 108, 199-200

MAAS, Joseph, 213
McCabe, Frederick, 311-312
Macaulay, 7
Macdermott, G. H., 317
Macdonald, George, 55
Mace, Jem, 170
Machell, Captain, 256
McKay, Joseph, 58, 166

Julia, 318

Wallis, 58

INDEX

347

McKay, William, 58

McKinder, Lionel, 199

Mackney, 316

McClean, Joe, 52

Maclean, Roderick, 67-70

Macnaghten, Sir Melville, 175

MacNeill, Archie, 171

Madden, Mike, 171

Maddick, George, 42

Maitland, Lydia, 92

Majendie, Colonel Vivian, 175-176

Majilton, Charles, 118

Mai vein, 146-150

Manchester, Theatre Royal, 224

Mansell, Brothers, 155

Mansfield, Richard, 240-241

Manuel, E., 76

Marguerite, Mademoiselle, 312

Mario, Signer, 3, 150-151

Sisters, 112

Marius, " Mons," 73, 154
Markham, Pauline, 274, 303
Marlborough, Duchess of, 68
Marriott, Frederick, 43-44

Miss, 276-277
Marston, Henry, 277
Martin, Bob, 196
Maskelyne, J. N., 312
Massey, Rose, 301-302
Mathews, Charles, 3, 200

Sir Charles, 144, 271
Matthews, Frank, 93

Julia, 279
Maude, Cyril, 202
Maurice, Edmund, 273
May, Phil, 112-113
Maybrick, Michael, 149
May hew, Henry, 33
Mellon, Mrs. Alfred, 118
Men and Women, 251-252
Menken, Adah Isaacs, 42, 122,

176-180

Meritt, Paul, 74, 96, 107-108, 288
Merivale, Herman, 62-64
Merrick, Leonard, 113
Metropolitan Music Hall, 76
Middlesex Music Hall, 155
Millar, Gertie, 199, 201
Millard, Evelyn, 203
Miller, Joaquin, 55, 251
Mills, Henry, 332

lilly-Christine, 105
Milward, Jessie, 165, 270
Mitchell, Charley, 171, 174
Modjeska, Madame, 113, 117

Mohawk Minstrels, 311
Monico, Cafe, 161
Montgomery, Walter, 278-279
Montague, H. J., 93, 302, 304
Montijo, Count Jose de, 6
Moon, Nellie, 104
Moore, Augustus, 195

Charles, 175

NeUie, 296
Moore and Burgess Minstrels, 99,

209-210, 310-311
Morgan, Anna, 188

Matt, 69, 328

Wilford, 42
Morley, Samuel, 137
Morning A dvertiser, 77
Mortimer, James, 94, 328
Morton, Charles, 315-316

Maddison, 293
Moss, Arthur B., 135-136
Munroe, Kitty, 156, 303
Murray, David Christie, 127

Grenville, 167-168

Henry, 207-208

Mr. and Mrs. Leigh, 93, 293
Musgrave, Frank, 222

NAPOLEON III, 10, 24

Napper, Ted, 172-173

Nash, Jolly John, 318

Nation, W. H. C., 305-306

Neil, Mrs. Lang, 313

Neilson, Adelaide, 132-134, 199-

200

Julia, 206, 273
Nethersole, Olga, 165, 206
Neville, Henry, 94, 240, 295
New Brighton, 116-117
Newgate, 3

Newman, Robert, 331-332
Newry, Lord, 94
Newton, H. Chance, 307
Nicholls, Harry, 273
Nilsson, Christine, 150
North, Colonel, 109-110
North London Railway Murder

X43

Woolwich Gardens, 103-104
Nottingham, Theatre Royal, 118
Nutt, " Commodore," 105

OAKLEY, Banner, 145
O'Connor, T. P., 211
Oddenino, Cavaliere, 37
Odell, E. J., 72

348

INDEX

Offenbach, Jacques, 151, 154

" Old Tear 'em " (John Arthur

Roebuck), 3
Oliffe, Geraldine, 247
Oh'ver, Patty, 92, 293-294
Olympic Theatre, 72
One and All, 88
Opera Comique Theatre, 88, 156,

207, 228, 307
Or, Henriette d', 213
Orridge, Miss, 83
O'Shea, John Augustus, 58
Ouida, 333-334
Oxenford, John, 59, 293
Oxford Music Hall, 99-100, 154-155

PALACE Theatre, 315-316
Palmer, Minnie, 307-308
Palmerston, Lord, 3, 171
Park Theatre, Camden Town, 129
Parker, Admiral, 7

Harry, 307
Parry, John, 200, 310

Serjeant, 143
Pateman, Bella, 240

Robert, 240-241, 244
Patti, Adelina, 3
Paul, Mrs. Howard, 213, 310
Pavilion Theatre, Whitechapel, 76
Payne, Edmund, 199, 201

George, 2

Pearcey, Mrs., 145-146
Peckham, 7
Peel, General, 2, 254
Penge Murder, 140-141
Penley, W. S., 74
Penny Sunday Times, 43
Perrin, George, 215
Pettitt, Henry, 74, 96-97, 107,

161-163, 165, 184, 194, 281
Phelps, Samuel, 2, 12-13, 277» 293
Philharmonic Theatre, 154
Phillips, Watts, 78
Piccadilly Annual, 122
Pictorial World, 18, 136
Pinero, Sir Arthur, 205-206, 289
Pollock, Sir Frederick, 55
Pond, Christopher, 96
Power, Nellie, 296
Price, Lillian, 196
Prince, R. A., 269-271
Prince of Wales's Theatre :

Coventry Street, 306

Tottenham Court Road, 50,
93-94* 272. 274, 304

Princess's Theatre, 49, 76-79, 117,
128-131, 161-162, 230-231, 240,
243-247

Prowse, " Jeff," 57

Punch, 70

Punch's Baby, 328

RACHEL, Madame, 145

Raleigh, Cecil, 49-50, 157, 290

Read, James Canham, 146

Reade, Charles, 49, 141, 180

Redford, G. A., 224-225

Reece, Robert, 296-298

Reed, Mr. and Mrs. German, 310

Rees, Micky, 71, 172

Reeves, Sims, 152-153

Referee, 53, 56, 133, 147-149, 172-

173. 325, 329
Richards, proprietor of Garrick

Theatre, Whitechapel, 52
Riel, Madame, 56

Mademoiselle, 55
Righton, Edward, 236
Rignold, George, 244

Lionel, 118, 166
Riviere, Jules, 160, 213, 215-216,

225

Roberts, Arthur, 155, 223
Robertson, Tom, 50, 70, 93, 130

Wybrow, 108
Robina, Fanny, 196
Robins, Elizabeth, 165, 206-207
Robinson, Sir J. R., 248-252
Robson, 91, 294, 303
Rochefort, Henri, 209
Rodgers, Katherine, 286
Roe, Bassett, 240
Rogers, Jimmy, 92
Ronald, Landon, 224
Rorke, Mary, 163
Rosa, Mademoiselle, 201
Rose, Edward, 74
Rosebery, Lord, 255-256
Roselle, Amy, 190-193

Percy, 190

Rosherville Gardens, 103
Ross, Charles, 328
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 55, 182
Rothschild, Baron Lionel de, 329
Rous, Admiral, 2, 254
Rousby, Mrs., 46
Routledge, Messrs., 182
Royalty Theatre, 73, 92, 114, 156,

212, 294, 305
Royce, E. W., 190-191, 202

INDEX

349

Ruskin, John, 55, 125, 196
Russell, Sir Charles (later, Lord

Russell of Killowen), 255
Lord John (later, Earl Rus-
sell), 3
Ryder, John, 163-164, 287

SADLER'S Wells Theatre, 12-13, *5»

71, 172, 174, 276-277
St. George's Hall, 310
St. James's Hall, 215

Theatre, 55, 206-207, 219,

302

St. John, Florence, 154-155, 195
Sala, G. A., 26, 43-44, 50, 60-62,

68-69, 123, 327
Salisbury, Marquess of, 136-137,

328

Sampson, Henry, 15, 65-66, 71-72,
82-83, 109-110, 121, 133, 172,
249

Sandemanians, 17-20
San Francisco News Letter, 43-44
Sanger, Rachel, 274
Santley, Kate, 156
Saunders, Charlotte, 92
Savoy Theatre, 218
Sayers, Tom, 2, 170, 173
Schneider, Hortense, 151
Schroter, Max, 212
Scott, Clement, 70, 76, 78, 133,

213, 240, 308
Scudamore, Frank, 33
Sedgwick, Amy, 93
Selby, Mrs. Charles, 92
Shaw, George Bernard, 88, 325-326
Sheehan, John, 42
Shine, John L., 114, 166
Shirley, Arthur, 243-245
Shoosmith, The Misses, 20-23
Short Cuts, 238-239
Siddons, Mrs. Scott, 77
Simms, George E., 229

William Gilmore, 186
Sims Family, 6-8, 17
Sims, George R. :

birth of, 5

parentage and ancestry, 5-8

childhood, 9-19

schooldays, 20-26

at Bonn, 26-30

enters his father's office, 31

journalistic beginnings, 44-56

his first play, Crutch and
Toothpick, 72-74

Sims, George R. (contd.) :

The Lights o' London, 75-83,

126-131, I33-I35» 165,
A Dress Rehearsal, 84-89
his first novel, " Rogues and

Vagabonds," 88
appointed editor of One 6-

All, 88
Romany Rye, 113, 129, 131,

161, 201

The Member for Slocum, 114
TheCorsican-Brother-Babes-in-

the-Wood, 115
Mother-in-Law, 115, 117
Flats, 118
The Gay City, 118
The Halfway House, 118
translates " Les Contes Dro-

latiques," 122-125
In the Ranks, 97, 129, 163—

164, 267, 270, 282-283
articles on " How the Poor

Live," 135-138 ; on " Lon-
don by Night," 323
Blue-Eyed Susan, 155
The Merry Duchess, 156, 164
The Golden Ring, 159, 215,

225
The Last Chance, 164—165,

267
The Harbour Lights, 165, 267-

269

The Golden Ladder, 165
The Silver Falls, 165
The English Rose, 165, 203,

208-209
The Trumpet Call, 138, 165,

205

The Glass of Fashion, 166-167
" Dagonet Ballads," 44, 181-

189, 232, 250

The Wife's Ordeal, 189-193
Faust Up-to-date, 194-196,

198, 219

Carmen Up-to-Data, 199, 226
The White Rose, 205, 291
The Lights of Home, 205
The Black Domino, 205
Jack in the Box, 213
Little Christopher Columbus,

Dandy Dick Whittington> 224
The Dandy Fifth, 224
Master and Man, 240-242
The Star of India, 243-244

35°

INDEX

Sims, George R. (contd.) :

Two Little Vagabonds, 245-

247
The Gipsy Earl, 272-273, 276-

277, 279-280
his contributions to Fun, 14-

15. 26, 65-71, 272
to the Pictorial World,

18
to the Weekly Dispatch,

36, 44-45, 67, 72
to the Evening News, i,

4i
to the San Francisco

News Letter, 43-44
to the Dark Blue, 54-56
to Woman, 55
to the Referee, 147-149,

249-250, 298, 324, 3
to the Daily News,

250
to Men and Women, 251-

252
to the Daily Telegraph,

322-323

to the Daily Mail, 323
Sinclair, Annie, 213

Henry, 294
Sinden, Topsy, 201
Sketchley, Arthur, 26, 69
Slaughter, Walter, 223
Sleigh, Serjeant, 143
Smith, Albert, 99, 312
Bruce, 164
E. T., 141, 284, 305
Sir Henry, 176
Jem, 171

Soldene, Emily, 154
Solomon, Teddy, 194-195
Sothern, E. H., 93
Sousa, 153
Sou tar, Robert, 51
South London Music Hall, 223
Southwark, Lord, 135
Spiers, Felix, 96
Sporting Life, 83
Sprake, Henry, 212
Standing, Herbert, 118
Stanley, Alma, 201
Stead, " The Perfect Cure," 316

William, 325-326
Stephens, H. Pottinger, 194

Mrs., 129

Stephenson, B. C., 74, 219
Stevenson, John Dinmore, 8-10

Sterling, Antoinette, 149
Stirling, Mrs., 3, 304
Stockholm, 118-119
Stone, George, 195
Straight, Sir Douglas, 143
Strand Theatre, 156, 222, 294,

307

Strange, Frederick, 157-158
Stride, Jimmy, 217
Sugden, Mr. and Mrs. Charles, 245
Sullivan, Sir Arthur, 74, 160, 195,

218-219, 225-226, 242
J. L., 171-172
Surrey Theatre, 104
Sutherland, Duke of, 139
Swanborough, Arthur, 42, 73
Edward, 42
Mrs., 73

Sweden, Crown Prince of, 119
Swift, Owen, 171
Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 42,

45. 55. 178, 1 80, 185-186
Sydney, Ethel, 199

TAYLOR, J. G., 159

Tom, 46, 55, 94

Teck, Prince Francis of, 324-325
Tempest, Marie, 127
Terriss, Ellaline, 157

William, 165, 268-272, 294
Terry, Edward, 202

EUen, 268

Fred, 270, 273

Kate, 94

Thackeray, W. M., 103, 122
Th6rese, Mme., 152
Thomas, Brandon, 231

Moy, 250

Thompson, Lydia, 273-277
Thomson, John, 42-45, 65, 72,

121-122, 178-180
Thorne, Tom, 42, 93, 295
Thumb, Tom, 105
Tichborne Case, 144, 255
Tilbury, John Christian, 275
Tiller, John, 220
Tinsley, William, 42
Tit-Bits, 1 68, 238
Tomkin, Gilbert, 175
Tomlins, Frederick Guest, 49
Toole, J. L., 91, 201, 303
Tree, Sir Herbert, 52-53, 166, 203,

205, 308

Turner, Godfrey, 327
Tyndall, Kate, 244, 247

INDEX

3S1

UNITY Club, 41-46
Unsworth, 317

VAN BIENE, Auguste, 226-227
Vance, A. G., 317
Vaudeville Theatre, 223, 295
Vaughan, Harry, 83

Kate, 201

Venne, Lottie, 74, 166
Verbeck, 312-313
Vernon, Harriet, 318
Verrey's Restaurant, 253
Vezin, Herman, 295
Victoria, Queen, 68, 139

Theatre, 292
Vining, George, 130
Vizetelly Brothers, 334
Vokes Family, 285-287, 307
Vokins, Master, 285

WAINWRIGHT, Henry, 142-143

Wakefield, R., 172

Wakeman, Keith, 273

Wales, Prince of (later, Edward

VII), 71, 136
Walker, Chris, 247
Waller, Lewis, 78

Mrs. Lewis, 78
Walton, George, 115
Ward, Artemus, 312
Warner. Charles, in, 161, 164-

165, 267-268, 293
Warren, Minnie, 105
Weathersby, Eliza, 114
Webster, Augusta, 53

Ben, 2, 90
Weekly Dispatch, 42-43, 45, 67, 72,

1 80

Welcome Guest, 31, 88
Weldon, Georgina, 181
Wellington, Duke of, 3, 11-12
Wells, Ernest, 157, 175
Weston, E. P., 83

White, Charles, 277-278
Whitmarsh, Dr., 145
Widdicombe, 91
Wigan, Alfred, 51, 93

Mrs. Alfred, 93
Wild, William, 158
Wilde, Oscar, 242
Willard, E. S., 129
Williams, Arthur, 114, 219

Eva, 247

Montagu, 143, 302
Willmore, Jenny, 92
Wilmot, Maud, 196
Wills, W. G., 58
Wilson, Farlow, 43-44
Winchilsea, Earl of, 168
Winslow, Dr. Forbes, 141
Winter, William, 241-242
Wood, Sir Henry, 224
Woodin, W. S., 312
Woolgar, Miss (later, Mrs. Alfred

Mellon), 3, 90
Worcester, 5
World, 1 68, 249
Wright, 2

Wyatt, Frank, 244, 307
Wylam, Edward, 70
Wyndham, Sir Charles, 52, 73, 75,
1 1 8, 236, 288, 297

YARDLEY, Charles, 7-8

Tom, 7

William, 8, 52, 194, 201
Yates, Edmund, 55, 133-134, 166-

168, 185, 249
Yohe, May, 157, 224
Yorkshire Post, in
Young, Charles, 93

ZANGWILL, Israel, 328
Zazel, 1 08
Zerffi, Dr., 53
Zola, Emile, 134, 334

PRINTED AT THE COMPLETE PRB3S

WEST NORWOOD

LONDON

.

Sims, George Robert
5^52 My life

1917

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