Part 3

It was for the benefit of a mother so different from Master Betty’s mother that he recited in private families. It is a matter of history that by one of these recitations he inspired another boy, two years older than himself, with a taste for the stage and a determination to gain thereon an honourable position. This third boy was Charles Young. His son and biographer has told us, that as Charles was one evening at Christmas time descending the stairs of his father’s house full dressed for _dessert_--his father, a London surgeon, lived in rather high style--he saw a slatternly woman seated on one of the chairs in the hall, with a boy standing by her side dressed in fantastic garb, with the blackest and most penetrating eyes he had ever beheld in human head. His first impression was that the two were strolling gipsies who had come for medical advice. Charles Young, we are told, ‘was soon undeceived, for he had no sooner taken his place by his father’s side than, to his surprise, the master, instead of manifesting displeasure, smirked and smiled, and, with an air of self-complacent patronage, desired his butler to bring in the boy. On his entry he was taken by the hand, patted on the head, and requested to favour the company with a specimen of his histrionic ability. With a self-possession marvellous in one so young he stood forth, knitted his brows, hunched up one shoulder-blade, and with sardonic grin and husky voice spouted forth Gloster’s opening soliloquy in “Richard the Third.” He then recited selections from some of our minor British poets, both grave and gay; danced a hornpipe; sang songs, both comic and pathetic; and, for fully an hour, displayed such versatility as to elicit vociferous applause from his auditory and substantial evidence of its sincerity by a shower of crown pieces and shillings, a napkin having been opened and spread upon the floor for their reception. The accumulated treasury having been poured into the gaping pockets of the lad’s trousers, with a smile of gratified vanity and grateful acknowledgment he withdrew, rejoined his tatterdemalion friend in the hall, and left the house rejoicing. The door was no sooner closed than the guests desired to know the name of the youthful prodigy who had so astonished them. The host replied that this was not the first time he had had him to amuse his friends; that he knew nothing of the lad’s history or antecedents, but that his name was Edmund Kean, and that of the woman who seemed to have charge of him and was his supposititious mother, Carey.’ This pretty scene, described by the Rev. Julian Young, had a supplement to it of which he was not aware. ‘She took all from me,’ was Edmund Kean’s cry when he used to tell similar incidents of his hard youthful times.

While Edmund was thus struggling, Master Betty had leaped into fame. Irish managers were ready to fight duels for the possession of him. When the announcement went forth that Mr. Frederick Jones, of the Crow Street Theatre, Dublin, was the possessor of the youthful phenomenon for nine nights, there was a rush of multitudes to secure places, with twenty times more applicants than places. There was ferocious fighting for what could be secured, and much spoliation, with peril of life and damage to limb, and an atmosphere filled with thunder and lightning, delightful to the Dublin mind.

On November 29, 1803, Master Betty, not in his own name, but simply as a ‘young gentleman, only twelve years of age,’ made his _début_ in Dublin as Douglas. The play-bill, indeed, did add, ‘his admirable talents have procured him the deserved appellation of the INFANT ROSCIUS.’ As there were sensitive people in Dublin who remembered that Dublin itself was in what would now be called a state of siege, and that it was unlawful to be out after a certain hour in the evening, these were won over by this delicious announcement: ‘The public are respectfully informed that no person coming from the theatre will be stopped till after eleven o’clock.’ This was the time, too, when travellers were induced to trust themselves to mail and stagecoaches by the assurance that the vehicles were made proof against shot. There was no certainty the travellers would not be fired at, but the comfort was that if the bullets did not go through the window and kill the travellers, they could not much injure the vehicle itself!

There was the unheard-of sum of four hundred pounds in that old Crow Street Theatre on that November night. The university students in the gallery, who generally made it rattle with their wit, were silent as soon as the curtain rose. The Dublin audience was by no means an audience easy to please, or one that would befool itself by passing mediocrity with the stamp of genius upon it. ‘Douglas,’ too, is a tragedy that must be attentively listened to, to be enjoyed, and enjoyment is out of the question if the poetry of the piece be a lost beauty to the deliverer of the lines. On this night, Dublin ratified the Belfast verdict. The graceful boy excited the utmost enthusiasm, and the manager offered him an engagement at an increasing salary, for any number of years. The offer was wisely declined by Master Betty’s father, and the ‘Infant Roscius’ went on his bright career. He played one other part, admirably suited to him in every respect, Prince Arthur, in ‘King John,’ and he fairly drowned the house in tears with it. Frederick, in ‘Lovers’ Vows,’ and Romeo, were only a trifle beyond his age, not at all beyond his grasp, though love-making was the circumstance which he could the least satisfactorily portray. A boy sighing like furnace to young beauty must have seemed as ridiculous as a Juliet of fifty, looking older than the Nurse, and who, one would think, ought to be ashamed of herself to be out in a balcony at that time of night, talking nonsense with that young fellow with a feather in his cap and a sword on his thigh! Dublin wits made fun of Master Betty’s wooing, and were epigrammatic upon it in the style of Martial, and saucy actresses seized the same theme to air their saucy wit. These casters of stones from the roadside could not impede the boy’s triumph. He produced immense effect, even in Thomson’s dreary ‘Tancred,’ but I am sorry to find it asserted that he acted Hamlet, after learning the

## part in three days. The great Betterton, greatest of the great masters

of their art, used to say that he had acted Hamlet and studied it for fifty years, and had not got to the bottom of its philosophy even then. However, the boy’s remarkable gifts made his Hamlet successful. There was a rare comedian who played with him, Richard Jones, with a cast in one eye. Accomplished Dick, whose only serious fault was excess in peppermint lozenges, acted Osric, Count Cassel, and Mercutio, in three of the pieces in which Master Betty played the principal characters. What a glorious true comedian was Dick! After delighting a whole generation with his comedy, Jones retired. He taught clergymen to read the Lord’s Prayer as if they were in earnest, and to deliver the messages of the Gospel as if they believed in them; and in this way Dick Jones did as much for the church as any of the bishops or archbishops of his time.

It is to be noted here that Master Betty’s first appearance in Dublin in 1803 was a more triumphant matter than John Kemble’s in 1781. This was in the older Smock Alley Theatre. The alley was so called from the Sallys who most did congregate there. He played high comedy as well as tragedy; but, says Mr. Gilbert, in his ‘History of Dublin,’ ‘his negligent delivery and heaviness of deportment impeded his progress until these defects were removed by the instruction of his friend, Captain Jephson.’ Is not this delicious? Fancy John Kemble being made an actor by a half-pay captain who had written a tragedy! This tragedy was called the ‘Count of Narbonne,’ and therein, says Gilbert, ‘Kemble’s reputation was first established.’ It was not on a very firm basis, for John was engaged only on the modest salary of 5_l._ a week!

Master Betty’s progress through the other parts of Ireland was as completely successful as at Dublin and Belfast. Mrs. Pero engaged him for six nights at Cork. His terms here were one-fourth of the receipts and one clear benefit, that is to say, the whole of the receipts free of expense. As the receipts rarely exceeded ten pounds, the prospects were not brilliant. But, with Master Betty, the ‘houses’ reached one hundred pounds. The smaller receipts may have arisen from a circumstance sufficient to keep an audience away. There was a Cork tailor hanged for robbery; but, after he was cut down, a Cork actor, named Glover, succeeded, by friction and other means, in bringing him to life again! On the same night, and for many nights, the tailor, drunk and unhanged, _would_ go to the theatre and publicly acknowledge the service of Mr. Glover in bringing him to life again! And it _is_ said that he was the third tailor who had outlived hanging during ten years!

There was no ghastly interruption of the performance of the Roscius. The engagement was extended to nine nights, and the one which followed at Waterford was equally successful. As he proceeded, Master Betty studied and extended his _répertoire_. He added to his list Octavian, and on his benefit nights he played in the farce, on one occasion Don Carlos in ‘Lovers’ Quarrels,’ on another Captain Flash in ‘Miss in her Teens.’ Subsequently, in Londonderry, the flood of success still increasing, the pit could only be entered at box prices. Master Betty played in Londonderry long before the time when a Mr. MacTaggart, an old citizen, used to be called upon between the acts to give his unbiassed critical opinions on the performances. It was the rarest fun for the house, and the most painful wholesomeness for the actors, Frank Connor and his father, Villars, Fitzsimons, Cunningham, O’Callaghan, and clever Miss M’Keevor (with her pretty voice and sparkling one eye), to hear the stern and salubrious criticism of Mr. MacTaggart, at the end of which there was a cry for the tune of ‘No Surrender!’ Not to wound certain susceptibilities, and yet be national, the key-bugle gentleman, who was half the orchestra, generally played ‘Norah Creena,’ and thus the play proceeded merrily.

Master Betty played Zanga at Londonderry, and he passed thence to Glasgow, where for fourteen nights he attracted crowded audiences, and added to his other parts Richard the Third, which he must have learnt as he sailed from Belfast up the Clyde. Jackson, the manager, went all but mad with delight and full houses. He wrote an account of his new treasure in terms more transcendent than ‘the transcendent boy’ himself could accept. Had Young Roscius been a divinity descended upon earth, the rhapsody could not have been more highly pitched; but it was fully endorsed by nine-tenths of the Glasgow people, and when a bold fellow ventured to write a satirical philippic against the divine idol of the hour, he was driven out of the city as guilty of something like sacrilege, profanation, and general unutterable wickedness.

On May 21, 1804, the transcendental Mr. Jackson was walking on the High Bridge, Edinburgh, when he met an old gentleman of some celebrity, the Rev. Mr. Home. ‘Sir,’ said Jackson, ‘your play, “Douglas,” is to be acted to-night with a new and wonderful actor. I hope you will come down to the house.’ Forty-eight years before (1756) Home had gone joyously down to the Edinburgh Theatre to see his ‘Douglas’ represented for the first time. West Digges (not Henry West Betty) was the Norval, and the house was half full of ministers of the Kirk, who got into a sea of troubles for presuming to see acted a play written by a fellow in the ministry.

The Lady Randolph was Mrs. Ward, daughter of a player of the Betterton period, and mother, I think, of Mrs. Roger Kemble. On that night one enthusiastic Scotsman was so delighted that at the end of the fourth act he arose and roared aloud, ‘Where’s Wully Shakespeare noo?’ Home had also seen Spranger Barry in the hero (he was the original Norval (Douglas) on the play being first acted in 1757 in London). Home was an aged man in 1804, and lived in retirement. He did not know his ‘Douglas’ was to be played, nor had he ever heard of Master Betty! Never heard of him whom Jackson said he had been presented to Earth by Heaven and Nature! ‘The pleasing movements of his perfect and divine nature,’ said Jackson, ‘were incorporated in his person previous to his birth.’ Home could not refuse to go and see this phenomenon. He stipulated to have his old place at the wing, that is, behind the stage door, partially opened, so that he could see up the stage. The old man was entirely overcome. Digges and Barry, he declared, were leather and prunella compared with this inspired child who acted his Norval as he the author had conceived it. Home’s enthusiasm was so excited that, when Master Betty was summoned by the ‘thunders’ of applause and the ‘hurricane’ of approbation to appear before the audience, Home tottered forward also, tears streaming from his eyes, and rapture beaming on his venerable countenance. The triumph was complete. The most impartial critics especially praised the boy’s conception of the poet, and it was the highest praise they could give. Between June 28 and August 9 he acted fifteen times, often under the most august patronage that could be found in Edinburgh. For the first time he played Selim (Achmet) in ‘Barbarossa’ during this engagement, and with such effect as to make him more the ‘darling’ than ever of duchesses and ladies in general. Four days after the later date named above, the marvellous boy stood before a Birmingham audience, whither he had gone covered with kisses from Scottish beauties, and laden with the approval, counsel, and blessing of Lords of Session.

Mr. Macready, father of the lately deceased actor, bargained for the Roscius, and overreached himself. He thought 10_l._ a night too much! He proposed that he should deduct 60_l._ from each night’s receipts, and that Master Betty should take half of what remained. The result was that Roscius got 50_l._ nightly instead of 10_l._ The first four nights were not overcrowded, but the boy grew on the town, and at last upon the whole country. Stage-coaches were advertised specially to carry

## parties from various distances to the Birmingham Theatre. The highest

receipt was 266_l._ to his Richard. Selim was the next. 261_l._ The lowest receipt was also to his Richard. On the first night he played it there was only 80_l._ in the house. He left Birmingham with the assurance of a local poet that he was Cooke, Kemble, Holman, Garrick, all in one. Sheffield was delighted to have him at raised prices of admission. He made his first appearance to deliver a rhymed deprecatory address, in reference to wide-cast ridicule on his being a mere boy, in which were these lines:

When at our Shakespeare’s shrine my swelling heart Bursts forth and claims some kindred tear to start, Frown not, if I avow that falling tear Inspires my soul and bids me persevere.

His Hamlet drew the highest sum at Sheffield, 140_l._; his Selim the lowest, 60_l._, which was just doubled when he played the same part for his own benefit. London had caught curiosity, if not enthusiasm, to see him; the Sheffield hotels became crowded with London families, and ‘Six-inside coaches to see the Young Roscius’ plied at Doncaster to carry people from the races. At Liverpool there were riots and spoliation at the box-office. At Chester wild delight. At Manchester tickets were put up to lottery. At Stockport he played morning and evening, and travelled after it all night to play at Leicester, where he also acted on some occasions twice in one day! and where every lady who could write occasional verses showered upon him a very deluge of rhyme.

November had now been reached. In that month John Kemble, who is supposed to have protested against the dignity of the stage being lowered by a speaking puppet, wrote a letter to Mr. Betty. In this letter John said: ‘I could not deny myself the satisfaction I feel in knowing I shall soon have the happiness of welcoming you and Master Betty to Covent Garden Theatre. Give me leave to say how heartily I congratulate the stage on the ornament and support it is, by the judgment of all the world, to receive from Master Betty’s extraordinary talents and exertions.’ After this we may dismiss as nonsense the lofty talk about the Kemble feeling as to the dignity of the stage being wounded. Mr. Kemble and Mrs. Siddons would not play in the same piece with Master Betty, as Jones, Charles Young, Miss Smith (Mrs. Bartley), and others had done in the country, but Mr. Kemble (as manager) was delighted that the Covent Garden treasury should profit by the extraordinary talents of a boy whom the Kemble followers continually depreciated.

On Saturday, December 1, 1804, Master Betty appeared at Covent Garden in the character of Selim. Soon after mid-day the old theatre--the one which Rich had built and to which he transferred his company from Lincoln’s Inn Fields--was beset by a crowd which swelled into a multitude, not one in ten of whom succeeded in fighting his way into the house when the doors were opened. Such a struggle--sometimes for life--had never been known. Even in the house strong men fainted like delicate girls; an hour passed before the shrieks of the suffering subsided, and we are even told that ‘the ladies in one or two boxes were employed almost the whole night in fanning the gentlemen who were behind them in the pit!’ The only wonder is that the excited multitude, faint for want of air, irritable by being overcrowded, and fierce in struggling for space which no victor in the struggle could obtain, ever was subdued to a condition of calm sufficient to enable them to enjoy the ‘rare delight’ within reach. However, in the second act Master Betty appeared--modest, self-possessed, and not at all moved out of his assumed character by the tempest of welcome which greeted him. From first to last, he ‘electrified’ the audience. He never failed, we are told, whenever he aimed at making a point. His attention to the business of the stage was that of a careful and conscientious veteran. His acting denoted study. His genius won applause--not his age, and youthful grace. There was ‘conception,’ rather than ‘instruction’ to be seen in all he did and said. His undertones could be heard at the very back of the galleries. The pathos, the joy, the exultation of a part (once so favourite a part with young actors), enchanted the audience. That they felt all these things sincerely is proved by the fact that--as one newspaper critic writes--‘the audience could not lower their minds to attend to the farce, which was not suffered to be concluded.’

The theatrical career of his ‘Young Roscius’ period amounted to this. He played at both houses in London from December 1804 to April 1805, in a wide range of characters, and supported by some of the first actors of the day. He then played in every town of importance throughout England and Scotland. He returned to London for the season 1805-6, and acted twenty-four nights at each theatre, at fifty guineas a night. Subsequently he acted in the country; and finally, he took leave of the stage at Bath in March 1808. Altogether, London possessed him but a few months. The madness which prevailed about him was ‘midsummer madness,’ though it was but a short fit. That he himself did not go mad is the great wonder. Princes of the blood called on him, the Lord Chancellor invited him, nobles had him day after day to dinner, and the King presented him to the Queen and Princesses in the room behind the Royal box. Ladies carried him off to the Park as those of Charles II.’s time did with Kynaston. When he was ill the sympathetic town rushed to read his bulletins with tremulous eagerness. Portraits of him abounded, presents were poured in upon him, poets and poetasters deafened the ear about him, misses patted his beautiful hair and asked ‘locks’ from him. The future King of France and Navarre, Count d’Artois, afterwards Charles X., witnessed his performance, in French, of ‘Zaphna,’ at Lady Percival’s; Gentleman Smith presented him with Garrick relics; Cambridge University gave ‘Roscius’ as the subject for the Brown Prize Medal, and the House of Commons adjourned, at the request of Pitt, in order to witness his ‘Hamlet.’ At the Westminster Latin Play (the ‘Adelphi’ of Terence) he was present in a sort of royal state, and the Archbishop of York all but publicly blest him. Some carping persons remarked that the boy was too ignorant to understand a word of the play that was acted in his presence. When it is remembered how Latin was and is pronounced at Westminster, it is not too much to say that Terence (had he been there) would not have understood much more of his own play than Master Betty did.

The boy reigned triumphantly through his little day, and the professional critics generally praised to the skies his mental capacity as well as his bodily endowments. They discovered beauty in both, and it is to the boy’s credit that their praise did not render him conceited. He studied new parts, and his attention to business, his modesty, his boyish spirits in the green room, his docility, and the respect he paid to older artists, were among the items of the professional critic’s praise.

Let us pass from the professional critics to the judgment of private individuals of undoubted ability to form and give one (we have only to premise that Master Betty played alternately at Covent Garden and Drury Lane). And first, Lord Henley. Writing to Lord Auckland, on December 7, 1804, he says, ‘I went to see the Young Roscius with an unprejudiced mind, or rather, perhaps, with the opinion you seem to have formed of him, and left the theatre in the highest admiration of his wonderful talents. As I scarcely remember Garrick, I may say (though there be, doubtless, room for improvement) that I never saw such fine acting, and yet the poor boy’s voice was that night a good deal affected by a cold. I would willingly pay a guinea for a place on every night of his appearing in a new character.’

Even Fox, intent as he was on public business, and absorbed by questions of magnitude concerning his country, and of importance touching himself, was caught by the general enthusiasm. There is a letter of his, dated December 17, 1804, addressed to his ‘Dear Young One,’ Lord Holland, who was then about thirty years old. The writer urges his nephew to hasten from Spain to England, on account of the serious parliamentary struggle likely to occur; adding, ‘there is always a chance of questions in which the Prince of Wales is

## particularly concerned;’ and subjoining the sagacious statesmanlike