ured bruiser with an
immense capacity for eating beef--in a couple of rounds. Peters was
one of the best of fellows when he wasn't drunk, and could wink one
eye in a manner I have never seen equalled by that later idol of the
British public, M---- L----.

Alas! poor Peters from fat purses fell to thin times. He petered out,
in fact, as far as the Mile End workhouse, where I discovered him one
sad day, and was ultimately able to get him married to the lady who
sold winkles on the pavement just outside. Her previous pitch had been
just outside the Hoxton Theatre, but she told me she found Mile End
more disposed to her wares. The marriage turned out a very happy one,
I am glad to say, and it pleased me to think that Jim, having had his
wink, was at least sure of his winkle.

I remember another old friend of mine--John Madden--he made a hit
in that ill-fated play, _A Little Bit Off the Top_--who had an
extraordinary passion for shell-fish. I have often seen him seated on
Southend Pier eating shrimps out of a paper-bag. By the way, I ought
to add that he always purchased the shrimps in town and travelled down
with them.

Poor John, he might still be eating shrimps to-day if he hadn't caught
a chill throwing off his sable coat during a rehearsal at the "Lane."

Talking of fur coats, Florence Montgomery, who flourished in the early
eighties, and took the town by storm singing, "Let me share your
umbrella," in tights, had a perfect passion for them. She had one for
every day in the week, as she laughingly told me once. She vanished
suddenly, and everybody thought she had eloped with the Russian Duke
B---- (he had been paying her marked attention), but it turned out
afterwards that she had married a dustman.

I met him casually at one of the yearly dinners given to this
hardworking body of men--a most affable person he was too and deeply
interested in the chemical properties of manure--and it came out. Some
people might have thought a marriage like this a bit of a hygienic
risk, but Florence always had a heart of gold.

I have often thought this possession to be a particular attribute of
the theatrical profession. Bessie Bean, the "Cocoa Queen," possessed
it in a marked degree. I remember we called her the "Cocoa Queen"
because she always fancied "a drop of something comforting" just
before the curtain went up on the Third Act. Only, unfortunately, it
wasn't cocoa.

Arthur Batchen, manager of the Fly-by-Night Theatre an