Sample

Birth and a Basket

“Louder! Louder! I can't hear you.”
The voice, harsh and impatient, rang out from the shadows of the upper circle. The child on stage, eight years old and small for her age, peered out into the auditorium, trying to see her mother. The voice came again:
“If you want to succeed in the theatre, Peggie, you've got to be heard at the back of the gallery. Give her the intro again, Ernest.”
Peggie glanced down at the hated figure of ‘Uncle’ Ernest, seated at the piano in the orchestra pit. He smiled up at her; but there was no warmth in the smile. She lifted her head, cleared her throat as he played the introduction, drew a deep breath and launched once again into “My old man said follow the van . . .”, giving it all she could remember of Marie Lloyd's movements and gestures. There was a steely glint in her eye. She would show them!
“Better!” called her mother. “Much better. Wait there while I come down.”
Peggie stood with her hands clasped in front of her and gazed round the theatre. No house-lights were on, so the gold swags and red velvet of the auditorium could only be dimly seen. The stage itself, lit from above by a couple of ‘worker’ lamps and with oddly-shaped bits of scenery stacked in the wings, was like a huge shadowy cave. But it was familiar territory to the little girl. She had spent much of her young life backstage in theatres such as this, up and down the country.
These were the days, before cinemas, radio and television, when there were over 250 theatres in the British Isles, as well as countless halls, corn exchanges and institutes where ‘fit-up’ productions could be staged – often for one-night stands. The railway stations, on a Sunday, were crowded with actors and their paraphernalia, moving from town to town.
Peggie was actually christened Marjorie, and that name appears on her birth certificate; but early in life she became Peggie, and remained so until her death – always insisting on the ‘ie’ spelling rather than ‘Peggy’. She was born on August 26 1903 in Bridlington, Yorkshire. At the time her parents – both performers – were working for the famous George Edwardes Company. Edwardes ran two London theatres – the Gaiety and Daly’s – and mounted musical-comedy productions that toured the theatres in every major town in Britain.
Peggie’s mother, Maud Hodgson, was considerably irritated to find her theatrical career interrupted by a pregnancy, and travelled up to her mother’s in Bridlington at the last possible moment to give birth. As soon as she could she returned to London, taking the baby with her. The child was taken to the theatre every night, and slept in the dressing-room through the show. In those days, theatre companies used large wicker baskets, lined with black-and-white canvas, to transport costumes and ‘props’ from venue to venue. The tray from the top of one of these baskets was Peggie’s crib in her infancy. In old age she swore she could remember being cooed over by members of the company during rehearsals.
Although her mother was Yorkshire-born, her father, Reginald Schwitz-Guebel, was of Swiss extraction. His father, Jules, was a hotel-keeper in London’s Haymarket at the time of Reginald's birth in 1874. His mother, Elizabeth, was English. She died in 1903, so Peggie never knew her paternal grandmother. We don't know how or why Reginald became an actor – but perhaps the proximity of his father’s hotel to the theatres in the Haymarket had something to do with it. Did actors playing at Her Majesty’s, or at the nearby Theatre Royal, stay there? Anyway, by the time he married Maud Hodgson in Hull in 1902, he was already established as a promising light comedian who could also sing and dance. Under his anglicised stage-name of Reginald Switz he took over from George Graves as Baron Popoff in the first London production of Lehar’s ‘The Merry Widow’, which opened at Daly’s Theatre in 1907. The show starred Lily Elsie as the widow and Joseph Coyne as Prince Danilo and was a huge success.
It was after this run that Reginald and his wife sailed off to South Africa, leaving the four-year-old Peggie in Hornsey, near Hull, in the care of Maud’s eldest sister, Ethel – always known to Peggie as Aunty Pep. The couple had signed contracts with the newly-formed South African Theatres Trust – he to act in plays, she to appear in variety. (Maud had trained as a dancer with Madam Sismondi in Charing Cross Road, where Peggie herself did some of her training a few years later.) With them went Maud’s youngest sister Ada, who for some reason was always known as ‘Ribby’. Ribby had been a member of an increasingly popular dance troupe founded by one John Tiller. The Tiller Girls had toured in Germany, America and Japan. Ribby reluctantly left the troupe to form a double act with her sister for the South African trip.
It is hard to imagine how things were in South Africa at that time. The Second Boer War was not long over, and the process of welding the various territories, from the Cape Colony to the Transvaal, into the new Union of South Africa had only just begun. Perhaps the populace were war-weary and hungry for entertainment. In any event, the trip was a great success and the Switz’s returned to England two years later sufficiently well-off for Reginald to build a comfortable detached home in Norbury, near Croydon. It boasted a separate building alongside, which might have been a garage but was in fact a dance studio, with a smooth parquet floor, a wall of mirrors and a dancer's ‘barre’. Many famous names, Peggie would later assert, rehearsed in that ‘garage’.
Peggie came south to live in the Norbury house, and Aunty Pep came too to look after her while her parents were working, in London or on tour. The child started going to school, but was not happy there; she thought only of a career in the theatre, and spent hours in the studio practising her ballet steps and positions and developing the great physical flexibility which was to prove so valuable in later years. Although her mother often seemed cold and resentful towards her, she had the company of her beloved Auntie Pep – not to mention Pep’s little dog, Yankie, who had come down from Yorkshire with them – and life seemed good.
It was not to last. While in South Africa, Maud had fallen for the company's musical director, a handsome young man named Ernest Herman. Back in England, ‘Uncle’ Ernest became an increasingly frequent visitor to Norbury. Peggie had little idea of the tensions that were building up between her parents, until the day when Ernest rode up on his newly-acquired motorcycle combination and it was suggested that he should take Peggie out for a ride in the side-car. She was not keen. For all his good looks, she felt an instinctive dislike of Ernest. However, her mother grew angry and told her she was an ungrateful child. She was to go with Uncle Ernest, and no argument. Reluctantly, she obeyed.
They drove out of London into the Surrey woods, carpeted at that time of year with misty swathes of bluebells. In anyone else's company she would have enjoyed the beauty of it all, but she just could not feel comfortable with Ernest.
He took her to a tea-garden and bought her an ice-cream. When he asked if she would like another, she thought it would not be proper to seem too eager.
“Well...” she said, hesitantly.
“Right. We won't bother then,” said Ernest. “And don't pull your lips about like that. Your mouth is ugly enough as it is.” She would never forgive him for that remark.
When they arrived home, it was clear that something had happened. Her father was nowhere to be seen and her mother looked grim, and puffy round the eyes. Aunty Pep whisked Peggie off to her bedroom and explained to the child that there had been ‘a falling-out’ between her parents. It was a long time before Peggie realised that her outing with Ernest had been planned, to get her out of the way while her mother and father had a final showdown.
Soon afterwards, Pep and Peggie were sent away to stay with Grandma Hodgson, who now lived in Coventry. But Peggie did not get away from the theatre. Her grandmother’s thatched cottage stood on a lane that led up to the stage-door of the local music-hall, and she spent many a summer's evening sitting on the garden wall and listening to the show through the open door. Before long she knew the words of every song, the patter of every act. Often, the artistes would call at the cottage after the show.
While she was in Coventry, her parents finally separated – though they were never divorced. The Norbury house was sold, and Maud moved in with Ernest, in a rented flat in Soho. Peggie's happy summer in the Coventry cottage came to an end when her mother arrived to take her back to London. Tearfully she said goodbye to her grandmother, to Aunty Pep and Yankie, and steeled herself to living in the same flat as the man who, in her mind, had destroyed her family.
Her mother – a small, energetic woman, her dark waist-length hair piled on her head in a fashionable style
– came bustling through the pass-door and crossed the stage to where Peggie was standing. She put her hands on her daughter’s shoulders and looked down at Ernest.
“Well? What do you think? Is she ready?”
Ernest looked non-committal. “Maybe. With a little more rehearsal.”
“Yes. Well, we'll give her that. She needs to do one or two more impersonations to make it into an act. I thought she did Lillie Langtry rather well the other day. Then we'll put her on at the start of your act. We could bill her as ‘Baby Peggie’ – if the management will agree. Come, child – we’ve work to do.”
Her mother took her hand and led her down the steps and out through the stage-door into the bustle of Edwardian London: the clop of hooves, the wheezing and tooting of an occasional motor-car, the rumble of horse-trams, the pavements crowded with people – toffs in top-hats, labourers in flat caps, women in long skirts and small straw boaters, children in pinafores; everyone, apparently, going somewhere in a hurry. Peggie was unaware of it all. She was bursting with excitement and apprehension at the thought that she was actually going to appear on stage, in front of an audience. If only her father could be there to see her!
It was the start of a career that would take her halfway round the world – and more than once.

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