The Mapleson Memoirs, 1848-1888, vol I

by James Henry Mapleson

In fact, there was always some trouble going on, and it was with the greatest difficulty that we got through the season.

In the Boulogne contracts Lumley's artists were ceded not only for a summer, but also for an autumn season at Her Majesty's. As, however, they were to sing but three times a week, it occurred to me that English opera might be tried with advantage on the alternate nights. Arrangements were accordingly entered into, through the kindness of Mr. Thomas Chappell, with Mrs. L. Sherrington, Mr. Sims Reeves, and Mr. Santley. Charles Hallé was at the same time engaged as conductor.

Negotiations were also entered into with Macfarren for the production of an English work entitled Robin Hood, the libretto by Oxenford. The opera met with very great success, so much so that the chief attentions of the public were directed to the evenings on which Robin Hood was performed. I then opened negotiations with Vincent Wallace to prepare an opera to follow, entitled the Amber Witch, libretto by Chorley, in which Mr. Sims Reeves, Mrs. L. Sherrington, Santley, Patey, and others appeared.

But again the war cloud seemed to hover over the establishment, and again the Sheriff's officers appeared in force. It was thought advisable to transfer the Amber Witch to Drury Lane, leaving the myrmidons of the law in possession of the theatre and its belongings. The Amber Witch wardrobe (which somehow had fallen off the portico of the theatre early one Sunday morning) found its way to the other theatre. Here the part of the "Amber Witch" was undertaken by Madame Parepa, vice Sherrington.

Mr. Edward Tyrrel Smith, with whom I had business relations for some three or four years, was an extraordinary personage, whose like could only be met with in our own time, and in such capitals as London or Paris, where the population in general has certainly not the faintest idea how some small part of that population lives. Mr. E. T. Smith had made up his mind early in life to be the possessor, or at least the handler, of considerable sums of money; and he at one time found it worth his while, so as never to be without funds, to hire daily, at the rate of £1 a day, a thousand-pound note, which was obligingly entrusted to him by a money-lender of the period, one Sam Genese.

There are not many persons to whom such a loan would be worth the thirty-six and a half per cent. interest which Mr. E. T. Smith paid for it. He was an adept, however, at all kinds of business, and his thousand-pound note enabled him to make purchases on credit, which, without deposit money, he would have been unable to effect. Attending sales he would buy whatever happened to suit him, with a view to immediate resale, offering his thousand-pound note as a deposit, to discover, as a matter of course, that it could not be changed, and have the article for which he had bid marked down to him all the same. Then he would resell it, and pocket the difference.

The mere exhibition of the thousand-pound note secured him a certain amount of credit, and he was not likely ever to meet with an auctioneer able to change it. Before offering his (or rather Mr. Genese's) note he took care to write his name on the back of it. Afterwards his usurious friend would replace the note that had been endorsed by a brand new one, and occasions presented themselves in which it was a distinct advantage for E. T. Smith to be known as a gentleman who, in the course of a comparatively short space of time, had inscribed his name on several bank-notes, each for a thousand pounds.

Once, when St. Dunstan's Villa, in the Regent's Park, was knocked down to Smith for ten thousand pounds, the thousand-pound note which he had, as usual, in his waistcoat pocket was just what was wanted to satisfy the auctioneer's immediate demands. Smith handed up the note with the observation that he would turn the place into a second Cremorne Gardens, in which character it could not fail to attract thousands of people and bring in lots of money. At this announcement the auctioneer drew back and informed the apparently eager purchaser that the house could be converted to no such purpose.

One day, when I had run down to Brighton with Mr. Smith, then associated with me in the management of Drury Lane, we missed, by about half a minute, the return train we had intended to catch; and we had now two hours to wait. Smith could not remain idle, and strolling with me along the Parade his attention was attracted by a corner house which was for sale, and which, it at once struck him, might be turned to profitable account as a milliner's shop. He inquired as to the rent and other conditions, bought the house there and then, and at once ordered that the windows on the ground floor should be replaced by much larger ones of plate glass.

That night he started for Paris, and in the Passage du Saumon, where bonnets of almost the latest fashion can be purchased for moderate prices, laid in a stock of millinery for his Brighton "magasin des modes." While making his purchases in Paris he secured the services of two eligible young women, who were brought over to direct the Brighton establishment. This, within a very short time, he duly opened under the name of "Clémentine," and the house of Clémentine did such good business that a few weeks afterwards its spirited proprietor was able to sell it at seven hundred pounds' profit.