ROYAL ITALIAN OPERA,
COVENT GARDEN,
JULY 29TH, 1865.
On inquiry I found that an emissary from Covent Garden had bribed one of my box keepers, who, for the small sum of one sovereign, had betrayed his trust, and deluged my theatre with daring and mendacious announcements from the opposition house.
In 1866 Mr. Gye tried to carry out the arrangement with which he had audaciously threatened me in my own theatre just as the season of 1865 was terminating. I happened to hold a twenty-one years' lease of Her Majesty's Theatre; and to purchase Lord Dudley's interest in the establishment was a very different thing from purchasing mine. But what at once put a stop to Mr. Gye's action in the matter was an injunction obtained by Colonel Brownlow Knox to restrain Mr. Gye from dealing with the Royal Italian Opera as his property until the seemingly interminable case of Knox v. Gye had been decided.
In 1867 Mr. Gye may have been nurturing I know not what deadly scheme against my theatre. But this year a fatal accident came to his aid, and he was spared the trouble of executing any hostile design. It was in 1867 that Her Majesty's Theatre was destroyed by fire.
In 1868 came the proposition for partnership. Mr. Gye wished to grapple with me at closer quarters.
In 1869 Mr. Gye was intriguing with Lord Dudley to get Her Majesty's Theatre into his hands.
In 1870 Mr. Gye made his droll proposal to the effect that I should go equal shares with him in paying the rent of Her Majesty's Theatre, I binding myself not to open it.
In 1872 Mr. Gye engaged Mdlle. Albani, already under contract to me, and helped himself to my version of Lohengrin.
In 1873 he offered an engagement to one of my two leading stars, Mdlle. Nilsson; and I had myself to write explaining to him very clearly that she was engaged to me.
For two whole years Mr. Gye remained quiet as towards me. But in 1876, when I was on the point of completing the capital necessary for carrying out my grand National Opera project on the Thames Embankment, he wrote a letter which somehow found its way into the Times, denouncing the whole affair, and proving by an extraordinary manipulation of figures that my rent would be something like £40,000 a year.