CHAPTER IV.

KATE HAMILTON—AND LEICESTER SQUARE.

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.

In 1863 the “Eldorado” Café Chantant, which was leading a precarious existence, put up the shutters, when a section of the (non-speculative) public made the brilliant, loyal, and dutiful suggestion that somebody should erect a “Denmark” Winter Garden as a memento of the Prince of Wales’s recent marriage, but the loyal, dutiful, sycophantic proposal did not commend itself as it no doubt ought to have done, and probably would to-day. The requisite capital was not forthcoming, and so not till 1873 did the new era commence, when £50,000 was offered for the Square by that monument of aspiring greatness, “Baron” Grant, who burst upon the horizon and then fizzled into space as meteors are wont to do.

It is impossible to deny the fascination that Leicester Square has for a considerable majority of Londoners. Up to the days of Charles II. the entire space was composed of rustic hedge-rows and lanes. Then Castle Street, Newport Street, Cranbourne Alley, and Bear Lane came into existence, the Square was railed round, and all the chief duels of the day were fought within its historic precincts.

Lord Warwick, Lord Mountford, the Duke of Hamilton, and Lord Mohun (a professional bully and expert shot), and a host of smaller fry have avenged their honour within its boundaries—and then adjourned to Locket’s Coffee House in its immediate vicinity. This ancient institution must not be confused with the palatial establishments known as Lockhart’s.

In the days of which we are writing, Leicester Square was a barren waste surrounded by rusty railings, trodden down in all directions; refuse of every description was shot into it, whilst in the centre stood a dilapidated equestrian statue that assumed various adornments as the freaks of drunken roysterers suggested. On the north side (where now stands the Empire) was The Shades, a low-class eating-house in the basement, approached by steps, where every knife, fork and spoon was indelibly stamped “Stolen from The Shades” as a delicate hint to its patrons. On the opposite side stood a huge wooden pump, of which more anon. At the adjoining eastern corner were the “tableaux vivants,” presided over by a judge in “wig and gown” where more blasphemy and filth was to be heard for a shilling than would appear possible, all within one hundred yards of such harmless (if disreputable) haunts as Kate Hamilton’s, which were overhauled nightly. It was many years afterwards (July, 1874) that the barren wilderness was made beautiful for ever by the generosity of “Baron” Grant. One can see him now, arrayed in white waistcoat and huge buttonhole, accompanied by an unpretentious bevy of councillors and Board of Works men, over whom a few bits of bunting fluttered, presenting his gift of many thousands in a speech that was quite inaudible. But, like medals and decorations, gifts in those days were not rewarded in the lavish manner of to-day. Had such a public benefit been conferred now, the donor would have been dubbed a baronet, or a privy councillor at least, with every prospect of a peerage should he again spring £20,000. Apropos of this gift, there was a peculiar sequel. When asked at the time whether he gave or retained the underground rights in addition to the recreation ground, the great man, in the zenith of his success, replied, “Yes, yes; I give it all.” Years after, however, when poor and friendless, hearing that underground works had made the subsoil more valuable than the surface, he enquired whether some remnant could not be claimed by him, but was forcibly reminded of the follies of his youth by a prompt negative, and left to die in penury without a helping hand.

Perhaps never was the irony of Fate more clearly exemplified than when, years after, two yokels who were gazing on Shakespeare’s monument were heard to say “That’s ’im as give the place.”

Situated exactly on the site of the Criterion Buffet was the “Pic,” a dancing saloon of a decidedly inferior class, where anybody entering (except perhaps the Angel Gabriel) was bound to have a row. Hat smashing in this delectable spot was the preliminary to a scrimmage, and when it is recollected what “hats” were in the long-ago sixties, it will be easily understood that any interference with them was an offence to be wiped out only with blood. Hats, it may be asserted without fear of contradiction, were the Alpha and Omega of dress amongst every section of the community; the postmen wore hats with their long scarlet coats; policemen wore hats with their swallow-tails; boys the height of fourpence in copper wore hats; the entire field at a cricket match wore flannels and hats; and the yokels and agricultural classes topped their smocks with hats. Not hats, be it understood, of the modern silky limited style, but huge extinguishers, with piles varying from solid beaver to the substance of a terrier’s coat; and to enter the “Pic” was tantamount to the annihilation of one of these creations. The “Kangaroo,” of whom mention is made elsewhere, was a standing dish at this establishment, and to such an extent was his position recognised that many men tipped him on entering to obviate molestation.

The “Pic,” despite its central position, never attained popularity, and was the resort of pickpockets, bullies, and “soiled doves” of a very mediocre class. On Boat Race nights, however, an organised gang of University “men” invariably raided it, and by smashing everything balanced the account to a certain extent.

No place of amusement has passed through so many convulsions as the edifice now known as the Alhambra. Erected in the sixties, it began life as a species of polytechnic, where it was hoped that the instruction afforded by the contemplation of two electric batteries and a diving bell, in conjunction with the exhilarating air of the neighbourhood, would attract sufficient audiences to meet rent and expenses; but the venture not having fulfilled the expectations of its youth, its portals were closed, and it next came into prominence during the Franco-German war. Here “patriotic songs” were the _pièce de résistance_, and towards 11 o’clock a dense throng waved flags and cheered and hooted indiscriminately the “Marseillaise,” the “Wacht am Rhein,” and everything and everybody. Jones, calmly smoking, would, without the slightest provocation, assault Brown, who was similarly innocently occupied, and who in turn resented the polite distinction. Stand-up fights took place nightly, and, as was anticipated, drew all London to the Alhambra towards 11 o’clock.

These indiscriminate nightly riots attracted, as may be assumed, all the bullies and sharpers in London, amongst whom stands prominently the “Kangaroo,” a gigantic black, who was known to everybody in the sixties. This ruffian, who was admittedly an expert pugilist, was the biggest coward that hovered round Piccadilly. No place was free from his unwelcome visits, and his ubiquity showed itself by his nightly appearance at the Pavilion, the Alhambra, the Café Riche, Barnes’s, the “Pic,” the Blue Posts, the Argyll, and Cremorne. From such places as Evans’s and Mott’s he was absolutely barred, and the moral effect of the reception he would have received deterred him—in his wisdom—from making the attempt.

His _modus operandi_ was simplicity itself; seating himself at some inoffensive man’s table, he helped himself to anything he might find within reach; if remonstrated with, he knocked the remonstrator down, and coolly walked out of the room.

On other occasions he would demand money, and if refused, applied the same remedy; if a party were seated at the Alhambra watching the performance, a black arm would suddenly appear over one’s shoulder, and glass by glass was lifted and coolly drained. Occasionally he met his match, when, having pocketed his thrashing, he commenced afresh in an adjoining night-house.

A plethora of coloured ex-prizefighters roamed about these latitudes in the long-ago sixties. Plantagenet Green, an admittedly scientific boxer unaccompanied by any heart, was everywhere much in evidence, and Bob Travers, one of the best and pluckiest that ever contested the middle-weight championship, might have been seen years after selling chutnee in the streets. In those unenlightened days prizefighters, although made much of, never forgot their place, and the illiterate abortions in rabbit-skin collars that intrude into every public resort at the present day and dub themselves “professors” were creations happily unknown.

Needless to add that the Alhambra, with its miscellaneous attractions, stood very high in the estimation of our subalterns, or a considerable portion who deferred to Bobby on all matters relating to “form.”

Armed with diminutive flags of every nationality in Europe, a select team were one evening enjoying the delights that led up to the “patriotic era,” as sitting around a table on the balcony they agreed upon the rendezvous should circumstances—and the fights—separate them. Ladies, moreover, graced the board, and sipped from time to time the exhilarating fluid that sparkled in various tumblers. George Hay meanwhile was explaining to an interested houri how by an extraordinary coincidence red, white, and blue predominated in most of the National colours of Europe, while Bobby was urging some argument on a fair creature in inaudible tones, when an apparition a yard long, and as black as ebony, passed over his head and deliberately seized a tumbler. Dazed for a moment, and ignorant of the notoriety of the “Kangaroo,” one and all sat spellbound as the ruffian deliberately emptied the glass and replaced it on the table.

George was the first to grasp the situation, as, springing from his chair, he confronted the bully, and inquired: “What are we to understand by this?” But, “What you d— please!” was barely out of his mouth when a swinging blow on the jaw sent him staggering towards the counter.

Dropping his cane and hat, the “Kangaroo” now advanced in an attitude that meant business, and dashing in his long left arm, essayed to fell George with one blow. But his adversary was prepared for this, and springing back lightly, got beyond danger. The “Kangaroo’s” arms, when reposing by his side, reached almost to his knees, and gave him an incalculable advantage with any but the most nimble. Realising this fact, George decided to change his tactics, and to direct all his blows for the neck or body of his opponent; he had been taught, indeed, that a negro’s head is practically invulnerable, but that a swinging slog in the loins would double up the most seasoned. A shower of blows now rattled on the black’s sides, as springing out of danger after every onslaught, the “Kangaroo” began to show signs of distress; standing well out of range, he appeared but to wait the opportunity, and picking up his hat and cane, he bolted down the stairs.

The “Kangaroo” had learnt a lesson, and was profoundly ignorant of the fact that his meek-looking opponent had a heart as big as a lion’s and was a pupil of Ben Caunt.

But patriotism and loyalism of the blatant type are apt to cloy even on the most gushing, and the fever pitch having been attained, the cooling process set in, and then a series of experiments ensued to try and keep up the demand for the disrated Alhambra.