Leybourne was still singing “Champagne Charlie is my Name” when I heard him, and the amusing sight was nightly afforded of lawyers’ clerks from Lincoln’s Inn, and shop-boys from Islington, and young men-about-town on twenty-five shillings a week, waving their mugs of beer or “goes” of whisky, and madly joining in the exhilarating chorus as though champagne was their daily beverage. But it was not to join in his bacchanalian choruses that the greater part of the audience crowded to hear Leybourne’s songs. The “star comique” was ever provided with offal for the pigs in front. And it was when the orchestra began on the opening bar of ditties like, “Oh, why did she leave her Jeremiah?” that necks were craned and ears set. For the pornographic part of the show was now “on.” The words of the song itself did not offend save by reason of their inanity. But between the verses the singer introduced long monologues known to music-hall bards as something “spoken.” It was in these “spoken” interpolations that Leybourne “let himself go.” He cheerily set out to discover how far a pornographic artist could proceed with a music-hall audience. Sometimes he played with suggestion and innuendo. But properly encouraged and liberally stimulated, he would spurt filth from his mouth as a juggler emits flames from the same orifice. The more reckless he became, the more delighted grew his audiences. That was Leybourne as I remember him. And Leybourne was typical of the music-hall as it then was. Off the stage poor George was a good-natured, light-hearted, generous, and conceited fellow—the friend of bookmakers, Cockney sportsmen, publicans, and sinners; and the model of the mere middle-class boy in offices, who imitated his dress and peculiarities, and regarded him as the mirror of Society. The great man drove from hall to hall in a little carriage drawn by a pair of wonderfully neat ponies. The champagne of his evening ditties became the usual tipple of the artist during his afternoon calls at his favourite bars. He drank, indeed, many of the sweets of artistic success—adulation, flattery, the favour of women, and the jealousy of men. He lived hard and died hard-up. For even in his time the shadow of a change was visible, though it was no bigger than a man’s hand.