Later the sweet girl went on tour with one of Alec Henderson’s companies, and met a bagman she eventually married.
The bagman has since developed into one of the largest shopkeepers in Knightsbridge, and so good came out of evil, and the course “true love” usually runs in marrying an Italian waiter and living on macaroni was diverted, and everything a real “loidy” should have became hers for life.
And the development of the fair creature’s life was frequently under my observation. Beginning with a preference for a “steak and a glass of stout,” she soon developed into an authority on champagne; instead of worsted gloves—or no gloves—nothing but Dumont’s mauve mousquetaires would satisfy her, and so blasée did she become during her nightly visits to Romano’s that she could not sum up sufficient energy to remove her sixteen-franc gloves when picking an artichoke. One marvels at the true origin of these phenomena when under observation during the transition state from gutter to Debrett, for although all of us have seen the mothers, no human eye has ever seen the male progenitor of any of these extraordinary beings, who toil not neither do they spin, yet rise to the highest positions, have their babies kissed by the Kaiser, and all by sheer superficial excellence.
Yet another face arises before me, and sweet Grace O—, resisting every blandishment of Jew and Gentile, stands prominently out in the simple attire of a modest maiden, amid the sables and baubles by which she was surrounded. No adorers waited for her, although the bombardment by letter and overture was incessant; smirky acting-managers enlisted against her, reminded her that no stalls were booked by her clientèle, parcels at the stage door remained as they were left, and nightly the sweet girl trudged across Waterloo Bridge to her humble abode at Kennington, whilst half a dozen broughams only awaited the chance of flicking her to a cabinet particulier at the Café Riche or Kettner’s. Often, as she told me at a later period, she entered her hovel tired and hungry with nothing better than a herring and a crust with which to fortify herself for the monotonous routine of next day and every day, the lot then, and now, of many a tender plant in uncongenial soil.
But every created thing has its breaking point—the balloon overflated will eventually burst, and the egg pressed too hard will assuredly break; and sweet Grace, no exception to the unalterable law of Nature, like a lily before the hurricane, bent before the assault that assailed her on every side.
It was like an ironclad charging an outrigger, when men of the Farnie type entered the lists against an honest and attractive chorister, and the sequel of short duration in Ashley Place was told me by the unhappy girl. Gold at this stage was lavished upon her, and a miniature brougham and tiger—intended as a surprise—was scornfully ignored as it waited for her at the Royalty, and was eventually on sale—as unused as on the day it left its builders—in Long Acre. “I can endure this gilded cage so long as no one knows it, but the shame of the brougham! I would rather have dropped than enter it.” So spoke the woman, and within a month she walked out of the palatial establishment to revert to her humble life.
It was a perky Jew, enormously rich, with great back-door theatrical influence, that sought to shape this phenomenal disposition into a regard for his uncongenial charms. But manly beauty of such matured and pronounced types, with its Malacca canes and vulgar jewellery—like olives and a love for babies—are acquired tastes, and not the baits to allure the “Graces” of this sordid world, and years after, when chance again threw me across her path, our heroine was the happy wife of a worthy City clerk, and Ashley Place and the Jew and the brougham had long since been forgotten like the incidents of a hideous nightmare.
This is no overdrawn fairy tale, and what existed then exists now, at least in one popular resort, and two sisters with youth, good looks, and stage experience now “resting,” could tell how the only accomplishment of which they were deficient was their inability to fill a few stalls—on terms.
In later years the infant phenomenon became the craze, and Topsey, of the Royalty, and Connie, of the music-halls, and a cloud of imitators all bid for recognition. Some—like Esther—had the golden sceptre held out, and “came and sat beside the king,” whilst others less fortunate fulfilled their natural destiny and became the wives of the local tobacconist or greengrocer, and many of them would now be shocked if asked the number of yards between the pond and the Hampstead Fever Hospital, or the sensations of dancing to a hurdy-gurdy on the boulevards of Camden Town.
And so history is made, and pedigrees traced to “de” something—who came over with the Conqueror—with here and there a stiffening from a Chicago pork butchery, and it only remains for you and me, my brother snobs, to pray that whatever trials the Fates may have in store for us, we may not be bereft of our old nobility.