The streaky nobleman and the toothless lady who could sing three octaves had been presented through his enterprise to an East-end audience, and when the “Phil” opened under such unique auspices, Egremont lost no time in securing a footing.
He also belonged to the “Howlers,” a half club, half pot-house, in the vicinity of the Strand.
But the poor old “Phil” has long since been burnt to the ground, Egremont has disappeared below the horizon, and the memories of the seventies are gone to join the mountain of reminiscences of the long-ago Sixties.
Across the river, the Surrey—run on broader lines—was also responsible for the hatching of numerous future hereditary legislators, and during the pantomime season might be found such goddesses as Val Reece, Lardy Wilson, and a score of others, many of whom have since swelled the pages of Debrett and similar works of our religion.
It is no more than the truth to assert that this latter lady—for she had a way with her not strictly histrionic—very nearly upset by her personality a certain Anglo-Russian marriage at a critical period of the negotiations.
The Lamp of Burlesque had not yet been lighted, nor even trimmed, in the future Gaiety—which at the time was a “rub-a-dub” of the lowest class—and so the rumours of duels that filled the air years later between a military attaché and an off-shoot of the noble House of Clanricarde still slumbered in the womb of futurity, only to be roused to vitality by the nimble graces of Kate Vaughan and sweet little Nell Farren.
Passing the Charing Cross Hotel one day, an old semi-theatrical warrior returned visibly to my mind, and I could again see Alfred Paget descending the stairs after one of those informal meetings of directors that occasionally took place in Edward Watkins’s rooms. For the would-be juvenile on the high road to senile decay that the present generation may remember was a very different man to the Lord Alfred of the Sixties, or, looking further back, to the handsome young equerry who pranced beside the late Queen’s carriage in all the glory of manhood. And then incidents long forgotten were re-enacted in my muddled brain; how as a director of the South-Eastern he claimed, or obtained, or arranged, that all repairs on his steam yacht should be done by the artificers and engineers of the company. And then, by no great effort, the Santa Maria appeared lying off Margate Pier, and Old Alfred—as he was gradually becoming—faultlessly attired on “post captain” lines, waiting for his boon companion, Alec Henderson, or possibly a “Poppit,” as all his “frivolities” were christened. And then the launch lying at the steps, and the revels on board, and the grateful “poppits” going over the side after being presented with a straw hat or some article of female attire found in the state cabin, belonging to heaven knows who, during the more respectable cruises. And then the trips to Boulogne and the stocking the store-room with cheap wines, which the genial old sinner chuckled would thus evade duty and come in handy at second-chop gatherings. For with all his display his lordship was undoubtedly thrifty, and could have stated blindfolded the exact number of cigars or cigarettes that were lying about, no matter how apparently negligently.
Lord Alfred had been a yachtsman all his life, and he would tell how our late Queen—with that characteristic woman’s tact that never left her—wrote to him on the occasion of a former yacht being run down by a Channel mail packet, “You must not be ashamed to accept the enclosed £500 as a gift from the Sovereign to a subject.”
“Mighty different woman now,” he would add, pouting his lips, and then toddling off with a six-foot telescope to take the harmless bearings of any “poppits” within hail.
His chum “Alec” was a charming man, and when he and Lionel Brough—as on one occasion—began capping one reminiscence by another on the deck of the Santa Maria the show was as good as anything to be seen at the Opera Comique or Strand, or any of the various theatres of which he was lessee. Years before he had married Lydia Thompson, a name that conveys nothing to the present generation, but who in the sixties was the cleverest and prettiest of burlesque actresses, and there was not a youngster worth his salt that was not desperately in love with her. Lydia Thompson was aunt to Violet Cameron, who attained a certain position in the later seventies at the Strand, but was overshadowed by Florence St. John, one of the very few who, in addition to being the most chic of actresses, possessed a pure and cultivated voice.