During the time we shared rooms we were both taken ill with Russian influenza—and very ill we both were. Geraldine Ulmar came to see us, and brought, later, Dr. Mayer Collier, who proved “a very present help in trouble”. He rose high in his profession, and never ceased to be our very good friend, nor failed in his goodness to us all.
On October 31st, 1891, I find the following Press cutting appeared: “Mr. Esmond will shortly marry Miss Eva Moore, the younger sister (this, I may say, was, and still is, incorrect) of pretty Miss Decima Moore of the Savoy”. I was then playing in The Late Lamented, a play in which Mr. Ackerman May, the well-known agent, played a part. Herbert Standing was in the cast, though I remember very little about what he—or, for the matter of that, anyone else—played, except that he was supposed to be recovering from fever, and appeared with a copper blancmange mould on his head, wrapped in a blanket. It would seem that the humour was not of a subtle order.
We were married on November 19th, 1891, on the winnings of Harry and myself on a race. We backed a horse called “Common,” which ran, I imagine, in either the Liverpool Cup or the Manchester November Handicap. Where we got the tip from, I don’t know; anyway, it won at 40 to 1, and we were rich! Adding £50, borrowed from my sister Ada, to our winnings, we felt we could face the world, and we did.
The wedding was to be very quiet, but somehow ever so many people drifted into the Savoy Chapel on the morning of November 19th, among them Edward Terry, who signed the register.
As Harry was “on his way to the altar”, as the Victorian novelists would say, his best man, Patrick Rose, discovered that the buttons of his morning coat had—to say the least of it—seen better days. The material had worn away, leaving the metal foundation showing. He rushed into Terry’s Theatre, and covered each button with black grease paint!
We both played at our respective theatres in the evening, and certainly the best laugh—for that night, at least—was when Harry, in The Times, said: “I’m sick of ’umbug and deception. I’m a married gentleman! Let the world know it; I’m a young married English gentleman”.
Photograph by Gabell & Co., London, W. To face p. [28]
Wedding Bells
November 19th. 1891
CHAPTER III
WEDDING BELLS
“A wedding doesn’t change things much, except that the bride’s nearest relations can shut their eyes in peace.”