Neapolitan Vice Consulate
Dublin 10th August 1859 (nine)
THOS SNOWE
V Consul"
CHAPTER III.
NOCTURNAL NEGOTIATIONS—REOPENING OF HER MAJESTY'S THEATRE—SAYERS AND HEENAN PATRONIZE THE OPERA—ENGLISH AND ITALIAN OPERA COMBINED—SMITH AND HIS SPECULATIONS—DISCOVERY OF ADELINA PATTI—MY MANAGEMENT OF THE LYCEUM.
EARLY in the spring of 1860 I opened negotiations again with Lord Dudley, on behalf of Mr. Smith, to obtain the lease of Her Majesty's Theatre. After spending two days at Witley Court with his lordship I returned to London with the lease, and loaded with game.
The next step was to secure the services of Mdlle. Titiens, Giuglini, and others who still were bound to Mr. Lumley; and for that purpose Mr. Smith and myself started for the Continent. Mr. Lumley met us at Boulogne; the Channel, as in the previous year, being still too breezy for him to cross.
On our arrival we found that Mr. Lumley had prepared a sumptuous banquet. Every kind of expensive wine was on the table, together with the most famous liqueurs. The Bordeaux, the Burgundy, the Champagne, the Chartreuse, the Curaçao, and the Cognac were for us; whilst Mr. Lumley, like a clever diplomatist, confined himself to spring water. After I had made several attempts to broach the subject of our visit, which Lumley pretended not to understand, he showed himself quite astonished when he heard that Mr. Smith contemplated engaging his artists. To me fell the duty of conducting the negotiations between these two wily gentlemen; and it was not until about three or four o'clock the following morning that things began to get into focus. Mr. Lumley, in the meantime, had kept ordering innumerable syphons and fines champagnes for Mr. Smith, before whom the bottles were perpetually empty. As Mr. Smith warmed up, he wanted extensions for the following autumn, to which Lumley, reluctantly, of course, agreed. In the end the transfer was to cost some £16,000—I having obtained a reduction of £3,000 or £4,000 from the original price insisted on by Lumley. I afterwards had to draw an engagement that would prove satisfactory to both parties; a matter which was not finally settled until nearly six o'clock in the morning.
Mr. Smith having observed that he would see to the financial part being promptly carried out, Mr. Lumley replied that he would prefer to have bills drawn and handed over to him at once, payable at different dates, for the whole of the amount. He feared, he said, that some hostile creditor might attach any moneys in Smith's hands payable to him. Smith regretted that in France they could not purchase bill stamps, otherwise he would have been delighted to meet Mr. Lumley's views. Mr. Lumley, however, in getting a brush from his little hand-bag found some papers he could not account for, but which had somehow got in there; and these, to the astonishment of both Lumley and Smith, proved to be bill stamps. The next thing was to draw the various bills; and Smith remarked before leaving the banqueting-room that it would be better to finish the remains of the bottle then before him, lest the hotel servants should do so and get drunk. Mr. Lumley, instead of going to bed, went back to Paris by the early morning train, while Smith and myself returned to London.
The company for the season of 1860 was a marvellously attractive one.