The entrance to Kate Hamilton’s may best be located as the spot on which Appenrodt’s German sausage shop now stands, although the premises extended right through to Leicester Square.
“Don’t go yet, dear,” appealed a sweet siren as Bobby, looking at his watch, swore that when duty called one must obey, but eventually succumbed to a voice like a foghorn shouting, “John, a bottle of champagne,” and the beautiful Kate bowed approvingly from her throne. Kate Hamilton at this period must have weighed at least twenty stone, and had as hideous a physiognomy as any weather-beaten Deal pilot. Seated on a raised platform, with a bodice cut very low, this freak of nature sipped champagne steadily from midnight until daylight, and shook like a blanc mange every time she laughed.
Approached by a long tunnel from the street—where two janitors kept watch—a pressure of the bell gave instant admittance to a likely visitor, whilst an alarm gave immediate notice of the approach of the police.
Finding oneself within the “salon” during one of these periodical raids was not without interest. Carpets were turned up in the twinkling of an eye, boards were raised, and glasses and bottles—empty or full—were thrust promiscuously in; every one assumed a sweet and virtuous air and talked in subdued tones, whilst a bevy of police, headed by an inspector, marched solemnly in, and having completed the farce, marched solemnly out.
What the subsidy attached to this duty, and when and how paid, it is needless to inquire. Suffice to show that the hypocrisy that was to attain such eminence in these latter enlightened days was even then in its infancy, and worked as adroitly as any twentieth-century policeman could desire.
“Now we’re all right,” explained the foghorn, as the “salon” resumed its normal vivacity. “Bobby, my dear, come and sit next me,” and so, like a tomtit and a round of beef, the pasty-faced youth took the post of honour alongside the vibrating mass of humanity. The distinction conferred upon our hero was a much-coveted one amongst youngsters, and gave a “hall-marking” which henceforth proclaimed him a “man about town.” To dispense champagne ad libitum was one of its chief privileges—for the honour was not unaccompanied with responsibilities—and Florrie or Connie (or whoever the friend for the moment of the favoured one might be) not only held a carte blanche to order champagne, but to dispense it amongst all her acquaintances, by way of propitiation amongst the higher grades, and as an implied claim for reciprocity on those whose star might be in the ascendant later on.
Bobby, it is needless to say, was a proud man. But six months ago he had left school, and it seemed but yesterday that loving hands of mother and sisters had vied with one another in marking his linen and making brown holland bags with appropriate red bindings that were to contain his brushes and other requisites of his toilet. But these had long since been discarded as “bad form,” and a dressing case—on credit—with silver fittings had taken their place. It had been a question, indeed, whether the pony chaise would have to be put down to enable the worthy rector to provide the requisite £100 a year that was essential over and above the pay of a youngster in the service, and here was a young scamp swilling champagne like water, whilst the sisters’ allowance had been cut down to enable their brother to meet necessary expenses, and the boy that cleaned the knives had to look after the pony vice Simmons, the groom, dismissed. Not that Bobby was vicious by nature; on the contrary, his follies were to be attributed to that short-sighted policy that drives a youth on the curb up to a given moment, and then gives him his head; a lad who had never tasted anything stronger than an aperient suddenly engulfed in a deluge of champagne. In appearance he was delicate almost to effeminacy, with a gentle, courteous address, fair curly hair waved around his silly head, and he was popular alike with men and women. His good looks were his misfortune, and his amiability of temper led him into numerous scrapes, such as entanglements with designing chorus girls and the accompanying folly of too much champagne with too little money to pay for it. Not long previous to his arrival in London he had fallen desperately in love at Taunton with a strolling actress old enough to be his mother, who played very minor parts, and whose forte was pirouetting and pointing her huge foot at any patron in front whom she desired to signal out for honour. It had taken the combined talents of the adjutant, the rector, and George Hay to buy the sweet siren off with a promise that her son (nearly as old as poor Bobby) should get a berth on a sea-going merchantman. As a fact, he had promised to marry the charmer, and eventually to find money to run a company, and it was only by the accident of the show being in pawn in a Somersetshire village (where Julia Jemima was playing Juliet to a drunken former admirer’s Romeo) that an urgent appeal for funds brought the escapade to light.
“Of course,” Julia had once said by way of exciting his enthusiasm, “we can’t expect you to ‘go on’ all at once, but in time you could play up to me. You just study Romeo and get up Rover while you’re about it, and Hamlet and some of Charlie Matthews’s parts—you can easily knock them off, and one part do so ’elp another, dear.” Not that Master Bobby had been brought to realise at once the histrionic fame in store for him; on the contrary, he had jibbed considerably at the contemplation of having to don the spangled velvets and tights that constituted the “property” of the strollers, and it was only the herculean exertions of the lovely Julia Jemima—on her benefit night—smiling more bewitchingly, pirouetting if possible more gracefully, and gliding on one toe across the stage till the muscles of her calves stood out like a Sandow’s, that poor Bobby succumbed, and vowed that come who, come what, nothing should tear him from the divine creature. Happily our hero had not anticipated the effects of a combined attack of adjutant and father, and so, being rescued from one pitfall, we find him sailing steadily towards another amidst the brilliant scenes at Kate Hamilton’s.
“I’ve been in the profession, dear,” Connie was explaining as Bobby leaned over the throne to gaze on her, “and I often have half a mind to go back to it.” (She had once carried a banner through the run of the pantomime at the “Vic.”) The word “profession” acted like an electric shock; the lad blinked as the scales appeared to fall from his eyes; Julia Jemima appeared visibly before him; the spangles, the tights, and the muscular calf in mid-air floated through his brain in deadly proximity, as pulling out his watch with a shudder he bade a hurried good-bye, and dashed off in the fleetest four-wheeler to join the Major’s “lady” under the inhospitable walls of the Tower.
In the long, long ago the entertainments provided by Leicester Square were not of an exciting nature. The “Sans Souci,” Walhalla, and Burford’s Panorama (where Daly’s Theatre now stands) divided the honours till ’51, when Wylde’s Globe occupied the entire enclosure. This huge erection was sixty feet in diameter, and remained in existence till 1861, when it was pulled down to make way for entertainments combining instruction with pleasure.