A pothouse—pure and simple—across the Strand was a favourite after-theatre resort of this (then) brightest of companies, and in a specially reserved room might nightly be seen sweet Nelly Bromley, young as ever, despite her youthful brood of dukes and duchesses and his Grace of Beaufort; Eleanor Bufton, Fanny Josephs, Fanny Hughes, and a host of others, all charming, clever, and young, and, alas! all passed away.
The proprietor of this unpretentious hostelry was a pimply, fly-blown individual, who before you had been five minutes in his company told you that he was the rightful Duke of Norfolk, who by some legal jugglery had been choused out of his birthright; he, too, has long been swept away, and so the present peer remains unmolested in his title.
Passing through the Strand not long since, I was attracted by the new Tube station, and entering its portals for “auld lang syne” I was distressed, but not surprised, to find nothing of the happy hum that once characterised the transformed spot. For here stood the little Strand Theatre of the sixties in all the glory of its original popularity before it was improved (?) and modernised, only to find it had become out of the perspective, and so to be handed over to eternal obliteration.
The old Strand may surely claim to be the root of the theatrical genealogical tree, for from its original stock (company) sprang every sprig that struck root elsewhere to became famous either through theatrical enterprise, matrimonial enterprise, or any of the lucrative channels that commend themselves to commercial talent.
For the phalanx that once worked as a whole, would according to present custom, be split into a dozen “one-part” companies, with the necessary embroidery of Bodega men, motor-cum-masher women, and a sprinkling of earnest artistes by way of cohesion.
A few years later the family grouping that originally characterised the Strand was intruded upon by one H. B. Farnie, whose forte was the adaptation of opera-bouffe. Unquestionably an adept in this particular line, the man was a libertine of a pronounced character, with the result that the chorus at the Strand and the Opera Comique was the very daintiest conceivable. If a houri yielded to this Blue Beard’s blandishments, her advancement was assured, and she was fitted to minor parts; if his overtures fell on deaf ears, nothing was too bad for her, and her lot was not a successful one. Occasionally, as a consequence, the hum-drum routine of a rehearsal was enlivened by such unrehearsed incidents as the appearance of an irate brother, and, on one occasion, an exasperated fishmonger from the Theobald’s Road (the combination sounds boisterous), burst in at a critical period of a comic duet and belaboured the unhappy impresario to within an inch of his life.
These cases are, happily, rare at the present day, although, if rumour is correct, a Hebrew of dramatic tastes, who, a few years ago, developed into theatre owner, and staged his own pieces, could tell of a similar experience which practically led to his abandonment of the active pursuit of the drama.
When the fair Lardy Wilson, whom we last heard of at the Surrey, had risen into prominence by reason of her exalted connection, she joined the old Philharmonic, at Islington, in the zenith of its glory; so privileged indeed had this darling of Alfred become that, appearing in the “green room” on one occasion with an infant swaddled in purple and fine linen, the manager, band conductor, principals—male and female—and the chorus en bloc, are said to have bowed down and worshipped, as was only meet and proper and to be expected of a “loyal and dutiful” people.
“Wiry Sal” was also a delightful member of the company, and soon obtained European fame by being able to kick higher, in a graceful, abandoned way, than any exponent of the art before or since.
Pretty little Camille Dubois, who eventually developed into a Stanhope, was also at this delightful house. Her father at the time was conductor at the Opera Comique, and on one occasion having congratulated him on the execution of an excruciating morceau that I was aware had emanated from his inspired brain, I expressed a desire to procure a copy.