The capacious area of the King’s Theatre, scarcely adequate to the large expectations founded upon his fame, was selected as the scene of his London début. An awkward collision with public opinion marked, however, the interval immediately preceding his appearance. An endeavour to elevate the prices of admission above the usual _concert-pitch_, raised a storm of opposition, that was only allayed by prompt and necessary concession. To attribute the attempt, thus properly frustrated, to an extortionate spirit on the part of Paganini, as was pretty generally done at the time, seems hardly fair. It is more reasonable to suppose that his ignorance of the English customs was taken advantage of, for the sordid purposes of others; and on this point it may be worth while here to say a few words. There is in London a class of needy and adventurous foreigners, who, with no available talent of their own, have just industry enough to make them beset those of their countrymen, whose genius or good fortune enables them to figure successfully in our metropolis. Whoever, at the period here referred to, has had occasion to direct his course through the Regent’s Quadrant, either in the twilight of a departing day, or during the brighter reign of gas and night, must have noted the loose, idle, swaggering gait, the tawdry and _outré_ habiliments, and the dark and dirty looks, of certain figures who loitered about in obstructive knots, or sauntered on in pairs or threes, among the more regulated passengers. Their equipment was ordinarily completed by a reeking cigar, which added to their sense of importance, and was an auxiliary to their impertinencies of demeanour towards the females, of whatever grade, who chanced to pass within their track. But their “high and _palmy_ state” was in the gallery of the King’s Theatre, where their pertinacious “manual exercise,” and their laudatory vociferations, in favour of the dancers who successively occupied the stage during the ballet, were a serious annoyance to all around them. Under this character, which seems to have no English term that will exactly fit it, they were (and still are) known as the _claqueurs_. Externally, they are altogether the personification of impudent pretence—and, to enable them to support their equivocal character, they seek out the private quarters of the great singer, or the fortunate artist, in whatever line, and, by all the arts of the meanest flattery, contrive to extract from his purse such tribute as his vanity, or his complaisance, may be willing to afford. It is no unnatural conjecture to suppose that, on the occasion just named, Paganini acted under a mistake produced by influence of this kind.[41]