The people of the place told me that, though Walton was dull and desolate, there were plenty of farmers in the neighbourhood who had buxom wives and pretty daughters, and that when anything really worth seeing was going on whole families would flock in, and render the place quite lively with their presence.
What would attract them? I put the question to myself as an impresario just beginning his career, but already accustomed to consider such questions. Our artillery drill was evidently not enough. The great sensation of the moment with the British public was Blondin and his tight-rope performances.
Would Blondin fetch them? I asked myself; and, Blondin himself being out of the question, would public announcements to the effect that Blondin would appear on a certain day have the desired result?
A day or two afterwards the walls of Walton-on-the-Naze as well as Colchester were covered with placards setting forth that on a fixed day Blondin would appear and walk on the tight-rope from the end of the pier to the top of the hotel in which we were staying.
On the day appointed the sun shone brightly, and long before the time at which Blondin was expected an army of holiday folks from the surrounding country came in with as many pretty girls as one could wish to see in the somewhat similar scene of the "statute fair" in the opera of Martha.
There was no room for the carts in the stables of the place, and they had to be packed close together on the beach.
The regimental band played on the pier, and the holiday folk had, I am sure, an agreeable time. Some disappointment may have been caused when telegrams in fac-simile were posted on the walls with the information that Blondin from indisposition would be unable to appear. But this was atoned for by an announcement that in lieu of the tight-rope performance there would be a grand display of fireworks; and the pyrotechnics, which the organizers of the hoax paid for, went off most brilliantly.
At one time, moreover, I used to find solace from my managerial cares in the pursuit of politics, and, with or without justification, I nourish the hope that I did something towards securing the return of Mr. W. H. Smith for Westminster. I was an active member of his committee, both in connection with the elections which went against him and the subsequent one which brought him triumphantly in. After his second failure I remember the late Mr. Lionel Lawson saying to me—
"The thing is impossible; I would not mind giving you a written promise to pay you £10,000 if ever he gets in."
Lists were at that time in the hands of the registration committees, showing on which side each elector gave his vote. It seemed useless to interfere with those who were marked "L," as voting firmly on the Liberal side. But among the Westminster shop-keepers there were numbers who were marked "LC," who apparently did not care on which side they voted, and who generally divided their vote between a Liberal and a Conservative candidate. With these undecided men there was evidently something to be done; and I gave them to understand that, having strong Conservative sympathies, I should feel it my duty to place on my free list those of the undecided who could bring themselves to support that side.