It started life by being a big Sussex farmhouse.
Then some truly enterprising person took it on as a lodging-house for summer visitors, also for a tea-garden for motorists.
Then it happened that England's premier comedienne, Miss Vi Vassity, who was motoring through on her way from a week-end at Brighton, saw the place. She fell in love with it as the fulfilment of one of her dreams.
It appeared that she has always wanted to set up a lodging-house for hard-up theatrical girls who are what they call "resting," that is, out of a job for the moment.
I have picked up from Million and from the others that London's Love has the kindest heart in all London for those members of her profession who have been less successful than she has. She has a hundred pensioners; she is simply besieged with begging-letters. It is a wonder that there is any of her own salary left for this bright-haired, sharp-tongued artiste to live on!
Well, to cut a long story short, she bought the place. Here it is, crammed full of stage girls and women of one sort and another, mostly from the music-halls. The woman with the hair is Miss Alethea Ashton, the "serio." The honey-blonde in the dressing-jacket, who sat at one side of me at dinner, is "Marmora, the Twentieth Century Hebe," who renders classic poses or "breathing marbles."
The tiny, gipsy-looking one on my other side is Miss Verry Verry, the boy impersonator, who appears in man-o'-war suits and sailor hats. There is a snake-charmer lady and a ventriloquist's assistant, and I have not yet been able to discover who all the others were.
Miss Vi Vassity lets those pay her who can. The others owe "until their ship comes in"; but the mistress of the place keeps a shrewd though kindly eye on all their doings, and she comes down at least once a week herself to make sure that all is well with "Refuge" and "Refugettes."
The secret of her sudden pilgrimage into Sussex the other night was that she had received a telephone message at the club of The Thousand and One Nights to inform her of still another arrival at the "Refuge." This was the infant daughter of the ventriloquist's assistant, who is also the ventriloquist's wife. This event seems to have come off some weeks before it was expected. And at the time the "Refuge" was short of domestic service; there was no one to wait on the nurse who had been hastily summoned. The house was at sixes and sevens....
In a fever of hurry Miss Vi Vassity went down, taking with her a volunteer who said she loved little babies and would do anything to "be a bit of a help" in the house.