Before Baum’s management of the Alhambra it was conducted for a time by a man called Strange. This gentleman had been previously a waiter at the St. James’s Restaurant—the “Jimmy’s” of later days—and he was running the show, I think, in 1870. During that lurid year the Alhambra made a lot of money, for the war feeling ran high, and the management astutely gave prominence in its programme to rival national airs. Partisanship was evoked. The house was nightly crowded by patriots on both sides, and scuffles and encounters were among the ordinary diversions of the evening. It is wonderful to see how doughty and valorous your fighting man who stays at home can be! Strange was supposed by the supporters of the house to be consumed by a hopeless passion for the _première danseuse_, who spurned his addresses. I never asked him about it, for, although he always made an effort to be civil to persons of my calling, he was a churlish fellow, and he wore flowing side-whiskers, which was in itself an offence. Both he and the object of his middle-aged affection have been dead this many a day. My memory of the Alhambra stage is as a dream of fair women. Whether as ballet-girls, as singers, or as actresses in opera-bouffe, the women engaged were always lovely. They become visualized for me now in a procession of pretty faces and divine forms. There is Kate Santley, fair-haired and vivacious, and fresh from the music-halls and her success with “The Bells go ringing for Sarah!” There passes now Cornélie D’Anka, the golden-haired Hungarian, with the Amazonian figure and the exquisite voice; and behind her, as I look, looms, indistinct but recognizable, the figure of an Oriental potentate visiting our shores—that, indeed, of the Shah of Persia. Scasi, with her well-trained voice, passes from the Alhambra to the Surrey Gardens. Scasi, as will be seen, is Isaacs spelled backwards, and with the superfluous “a” deleted. She was the daughter of a furniture-dealer in Great Queen Street. The old Surrey Gardens, for which she abandoned the Alhambra, was the scene of the last appearance in public of the beautiful Valérie Reece—the late Lady Meux. Strange to think that the delightfully irresponsible little Bohémienne of the jocund days should have evolved into the owner of a Derby winner—Volodyvoski, which she leased to the American, Mr. Whitney—and the organizer and provider of equipment to a battery of artillery for service in South Africa. The name of Julia Seaman calls up to me that lady’s appearance in “The Black Crook,” in which fine production she played with extraordinary effect the part of the malignant fairy. A more inspiring performance than that in which I subsequently saw her at Paravicini’s theatre in Camden Town. She then essayed—not very convincingly—the rôle of Hamlet.