ambition, and to erect in some portion of its limited but leafy
grounds a lath-and-plaster stage large enough for about eight
people to move upon without incurring the danger of falling
off into the adjoining fish pond and fountain. A few classical
statues in plaster, always slightly mutilated, gave an educational
tone to the place, and with a few coloured oil-lamps hung amongst
the bushes the proprietor felt he had gone as near the “Royal
Vauxhall Gardens” as possible for the small charge of a sixpenny
refreshment ticket. There were degrees of quality, of course,
amongst these places, which answered to the German beer-gardens,
though with inferior music. The Beulah Spa at
Norwood, the White Conduit House at Pentonville, the Yorkshire
Stingo in the Marylebone Road, the Monster at Pimlico,
the St Helena at Rotherhithe, the Globe at Mile End, the Red
Cow at Dalston, the Highbury Barn at Highbury, the Manor
House at Mare Street, Hackney, the Rosemary Branch at
Hoxton, and other rus-in-urbe retreats, were up to the level of
their time, if rarely beyond it.
The suspended animation of the law—the one Georgian act, which was mainly passed to check the singing of Jacobite songs in the tap-rooms and tea-gardens of the little London of 1730, when the whole population of the United Kingdom was only about six millions—encouraged the growth eventually of a number of “saloon theatres” in various London districts, which were allowed under the head of “Music and Dancing” to go as far on the light dramatic road as the patent theatres thought proper to permit. The 25 Geo. II. c. 36, which in later days was still the only act under which the music halls of forty millions and more of people were licensed, was always liberally interpreted, as long as it kept clear of politics.
The “saloon theatres,” always being taverns or attached to taverns, created a public who liked to mix its dramatic amusements with smoking and light refreshments. The principal “saloons” were the Effingham in the Whitechapel Road, the Bower in the Lower Marsh, Lambeth, the Albert at Islington, the Britannia at Hoxton, the Grecian in the City Road, the Union in Shoreditch, the Stingo at Paddington and several others of less importance. All these places had good companies, especially in the winter, and many of them nourished leading actors of exceptional merit. The dramas were chiefly rough adaptations from the contemporary French stage, occasionally flying as high as Alexandre Dumas the elder and Victor Hugo. Actors of real tragic power lived, worked and died in this confined area. Some went to America, and acquired fame and fortune; and among others, Frederick Robson, who was trained at the Grecian, first when it was the leading saloon theatre and afterwards when it became the leading music hall (a distinction with little difference), fought his way to the front after the abolition of the “patent rights” and was accepted as the greatest tragi-comic actor of his time. The Grecian saloon theatre, better known perhaps, with its pleasure garden or yard, as the Eagle Tavern, City Road, which formed the material of one of Charles Dickens’s Sketches by Boz, was a place managed with much taste, enterprise and discretion by its proprietor, Mr Rouse. It was the “saloon” where the one and only attempt, with limited means, was ever made to import almost all the original repertory of the Opéra Comique in Paris, with the result that many musical works were presented to a sixpenny audience that had never been heard before nor since in England. Auber, Hérold, Adolphe Adam, Boieldieu, Grétry, Donizetti, Bellini, Rossini and a host of others gave some sort of advanced musical education, through the Grecian, to a rather depressing part of London, long before board schools were established. The saloon theatres rarely offended the patent houses, and when they did the law was soon put in motion to show that Shakespeare could not be represented with impunity. The Union Saloon in Shoreditch, then under the direction of Mr Samuel Lane, who afterwards, with his wife, Mrs Sara Lane, at the Britannia Saloon, became the leading local theatrical manager of his day, was tempted in 1834 to give a performance of Othello. It was “raided” by the then rather “new police,” and all the actors, servants, audience, directors and musicians were taken into custody and marched off to Worship Street police station, confined for the remainder of the night, and fined and warned in the morning. The same and only law still exists for those who are helping to keep a “disorderly house,” but there are no holders of exclusive dramatic patent rights to set it in motion. The abolition of this privileged monopoly was effected about this time by a combination of distinguished literary men and dramatists, who were convinced, from observation and experience, that the patent theatres had failed to nurse the higher drama, while interfering with the beneficial freedom of public amusements.
The effect of Covent Garden and Drury Lane on the art of acting had resulted chiefly in limiting the market for theatrical employment, with a consequent all-round reduction of salaries. They kept the Lyceum Theatre (or English Opera House) for years in the position of a music hall, giving sometimes two performances a night, like a “gaff” in the New Cut or Whitechapel. They had not destroyed the “star” system, and Edmund Kean and the boy Betty—the “Infant Roscius”—were able to command sensational rewards. In the end Charles Dickens, Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd and others got the patents abolished, and the first step towards free trade in the drama was secured.
The effect of this change was to draw attention to the “saloon theatres,” where during the performances smoking, drinking, and even eating were allowed in the auditorium. An act was soon passed, known as the Theatres Act (1843), appointing a censor of stage-plays, and placing the London theatres under the control of a Crown officer, changing with ministries. This was the lord chamberlain for the time being. The lord chamberlain of this period drew a hard-and-fast line between theatres under his control, where no smoking and drinking were allowed “in front,” and theatres or halls where the old habits and customs of the audience were not to be interfered with. These latter were to go under the jurisdiction of the local magistrates, or other licensing authorities, under the 25 Geo. II. c. 36—the Music and Dancing Act—and so far a divorce was decreed between the taverns and the playhouses. The lord chamberlain eventually made certain concessions. Refreshment bars were allowed at the lord chamberlain’s theatres in unobtrusive positions, victualled under a special act of William IV., and private smoking-rooms were allowed at most theatres on application. All this implied that stage plays were to be kept free from open smoking and drinking, and miscellaneous entertainments were to enjoy their old social freedom. The position was accepted by those “saloon theatres” which were not tempted to become lord chamberlain houses, and the others, with many additions, started the first music halls.
Amongst the first of these halls, and certainly the very first as far as intelligent management was concerned, was the Canterbury in the Lower Marsh, Lambeth, which was next door to the old Bower Saloon, then transformed into a “minor theatre.” The Canterbury sprang from the usual tavern germ, its creator being Mr Charles Morton, who honourably earned the name of the “doyen of the music halls.” It justified its title by cultivating the best class of music, and exposed the prejudice and unfairness of Planché’s sarcasm in a Haymarket burlesque—“most music hall—most melancholy.” Mr Charles Morton added pictorial art to his other attractions, and obtained the support of Punch, which stamped the Canterbury as the “Royal Academy over the water.” At this time by a mere accident Gounod’s great opera of Faust, through defective international registration, fell into the public domain in England and became common property. The Canterbury, not daring to present it with scenery, costumes and action, for fear of the Stage-play Act, gave what was called “An Operatic Selection,” the singers standing in plain dresses in a row, like pupils at a school examination or a chorus in an oratorio at Exeter Hall. The music was well rendered by a thoroughly competent company, night after night, for a long period, so that by the time the opera attracted the tardy attention of the two principal opera managers at Her Majesty’s Theatre in the Haymarket and Covent Garden Theatre, the tunes most popular were being
