In a valley at the foot of the Slieve Croob mountains, in County Antrim, there is a pretty village called Ballynahinch. The head of the river Lagan, which flows by Belfast into the lough, is to be found in that valley. Near the town is a ‘spa,’ with a couple of wells, and a delicious air, sufficient in itself to cure all travellers from Dublin who have narrowly escaped being poisoned by the Liffey, in whose murderous stinks the metropolitan authorities seem to think the chief attraction to draw strangers to Dublin is now to be found.
To the flax-cultivating Ballynahinch, in the last quarter of the last century, a gentleman named Betty brought (after a brief sojourn at Lisburn) his young English wife and their only child, a boy. This married couple were of very good blood. The lady was of the Stantons, of Hopton Court. Mr. Betty’s father was a physician of some celebrity, at Lisburn, where, and in the neighbourhood, he practised to such good purpose that he left a handsome fortune to his son. That son invested a portion of his inheritance in a farm, and in the manufacture of linen at Ballynahinch. Whence the Bettys originally came it would be hard to say. A good many Huguenots lie in the churchyard at Lisburn, and the Bettys may have originally sprung from a kindred source. In the reign of George the Second there was a Rev. Joseph Betty, who created a great sensation by a sermon which he preached at Oxford. Whether the Betty of Oxford was an ancestor of him of Ballynahinch is a question which may be left to Mr. Forster, the pedigree hunter.
I have said that with his young wife Mr. Betty took to Ireland their son. Their boy was, and remained, their only child. He was born at Shrewsbury, which place is also proud of having given birth to famous Admiral Benbow, also to Orton, the eminent Nonconformist. Master Betty was English born and Irish bred; half-bred, however; for his English mother was his nurse, his companion, his friend—in other words, his true mother. Such an only child used to be called ‘a parlour child,’ to denote that there was more intercourse between child and parent than exists in a ‘nursery child,’ to whom the nurse seems his natural guide and ruler.
The English lady happened to be a lady well endowed as to her mind, her tastes, and her accomplishments. She was exactly the mother for such a boy. She was not only excessively fond of reading the best poets, but of reading passages aloud, or reciting them from memory. Her audience was her boy. His tastes were in sympathy with his mother’s, and he was never more delighted than when he sat listening to her reading or reciting, except when he was reciting passages to her. It was a peculiar training; it really shaped the boy’s life—and it was no ill shape which the life took. The father had his share, however, in clearing the path for the bright, though brief, career. One day the father, whose intellectual tastes responded to his wife’s, repeated to his son the speech of Cardinal Wolsey, beginning, ‘Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness.’ In doing this, he suited the action to the word. Young Betty had never seen this before, and he asked the meaning of it. ‘It is what is called acting,’ said the father. The boy thought over it, tried by himself action and motion with elocution, and he spoke and acted the cardinal’s soliloquy before his mother with an effect that excited in her the greatest surprise and admiration.
Not the faintest idea of the stage had, at this time, entered the minds of any of the family. The eager young lad himself was satisfied with reading plays, learning passages from them, and reciting speeches from ‘Douglas’ and ‘Zara,’ from ‘Pizarro’ and the ‘Stranger.’ He also repeated the episodical tales from Thomson’s ‘Seasons.’ Only the above trace of his learning anything from Shakespeare is to be found, but he listened to readings from the national poet by one or other of his parents. This course had its natural results. By degrees the boy took to rude attempts, from domestic materials, of dress. ‘Properties’ were created out of anything that could be turned to the purpose; a screen was adopted for scenery; audiences of ones and twos were pressed by the stage-struck youth to tarry and see him act; and finally his father, well qualified, taught him fencing, the son proving an apt pupil, and becoming a swordsman as perfect and graceful as Edmund Kean himself.
His reputation spread beyond home into distant branches of the family. Those branches shook with disgust. The parents were warned that if they did not take care the boy would come to the evil end of being a play-actor! They were alarmed. The domestic stage was suppressed; silence reigned where the echoes of the dramatic poets once pleasantly rang, and the heir of Hopton Court and Hopton Wafers was ignominiously packed off to school. When I say ‘the heir,’ it is because Master Betty was so called; but it really seems as if his claim resembled that of the Irish gentleman who was kept out of his property by the rightful owner.
There is no record of Master Betty’s school life. We only know that it did not suppress his taste for dramatic poetry and dramatic action. At this time, 1802, Mrs. Siddons, who had been acting with her brother, John Kemble, to empty houses at Drury Lane, left England, in disgust at the so-called ‘Drury treasury,’ for Ireland. It was the journey on which she set out with such morbid feelings of despair, as if she were assured of the trip ending by some catastrophe. It was, in fact, all triumph, and in the course of her triumphant career she arrived in Belfast, where, with other parts, she acted Elvira in ‘Pizarro.’ She had not thought much of the part of the camp-follower when she was first cast for it, and Sheridan was so dilatory that she had to learn the last portion of the character after the curtain had risen for the first acting of the piece. But Sarah Siddons was a true artist. She ever made the best of the very worst materials; she invested Elvira with dignity, and it became by far the most popular of the characters of which she was the original representative. Young Betty entered a theatre for the first time to see Sheridan’s ‘Pizarro’ acted at the Belfast theatre, and Mrs. Siddons as Elvira. The boy’s tastes were in the right direction. He had neither eyes, nor ears, nor senses, but for her. He was, so to speak, ‘stricken’ by her majestic march, her awful brow, her graceful action, and her incomparable delivery. He drank at a fresh fountain; he beheld a new guiding light; he went home in a trance; he now knew what was meant by ‘the stage,’ what acting was, what appropriate speech meant, what it was to be an actor, and what a delicious reward there was for an inspired artist in the music of tumultuous applause. When Master Betty awoke from his dream it was to announce to his parents that he should certainly die if he were not allowed to be a play-actor!
He was only eleven years old, and those parents did not wish to lose him. They at first humoured his bent, and listened smilingly to his rehearsal of the whole part of Elvira. They had to listen to other parts, and still had to hear his impressive iteration of his resolution to die if he were thwarted in his views. At length they yielded. The father addressed himself to Mr. Atkins, the proprietor and manager of the Belfast theatre, who consented that the boy should give him a taste of his quality. When this was done, Atkins was sufficiently struck by its novelty not to know exactly what to make of it. He called into council Hough, the prompter, who was warm in his approval. ‘You are my guardian angel!’ exclaimed the excited boy to the old prompter. Atkins, with full faith in Hough’s verdict, observed, when the lad had left, ‘I never expected to see another Garrick, but I have seen an infant Garrick in Master Betty!’
After some preliminary bargaining, Atkins would not go further than engage the promising ‘infant’ for four nights. The terms were that, after deducting twelve pounds for the expenses of the house, the rest was to be divided between the manager and the débutant. The tragedy of ‘Zara’ was accordingly announced for August 16, 1803, ‘Osman (Sultan of Jerusalem) by a Young Gentleman.’ Now, that year (and several before and after it) was a troubled year, part of a perilous time, for Ireland. Sedition was abroad, and everybody, true man or not, was required to be at home early. The manager could not have got his tragedy and farce ended and his audience dismissed to their homes within the legal time but for the order which he obtained from the military commander of the district that (as printed in the bill), ‘At the request of the manager the drums have been ordered to beat an hour later at night.’ The performance was further advertised ‘to begin precisely at six o’clock, that the theatre may be closed by nine.’ The prices were reckoned by the Irish equivalent of English shillings—‘Boxes, 3s. 3d.; Pit, 2s. 2d.; Gallery, 1s. 1d.’ In return for the military courtesy, if not as a regular manifestation of loyalty, it was also stated in the bill, ‘GOD SAVE THE KING’ (in capital letters!) ‘will be played at the end of the second act, and RULE BRITANNIA at the end of the play.’
Belfast was, as it is, an intellectual town. The audience assembled were not likely to be carried away by a mere phenomenon. They listened, became interested, then deeply stirred, and at last enthusiastic. The next day the whole town was talking of the almost perfection with which this boy represented the rage, jealousy, and despair of Osman. In truth, there was something more than cleverness in this representation. Let anyone, if he can, read Aaron Hill’s adaptation of Voltaire’s ‘Zaire’ through. He will see of what dry bones it is made. Those heavy lines, long speeches, dull movement of dull plot, stirred now and then by a rant or a roar, require a great deal more than cleverness to make them endurable. No human being could live out five acts of such stuff if genius did not uphold the stuff itself. It was exquisite Mrs. Cibber who gave ‘Zara’ life when she made her début on the stage, when the tragedy was first played in 1736. Spranger Barry added fresh vigour to that life when he acted Osman in 1751. Garrick’s genius in Lusignan galvanised the dead heap into living beauty, never more so than in his last performance in 1776; but the great genius was Mrs. Cibber; neither Mrs. Bellamy, nor Mrs. Barry, nor Miss Younge, equalled her. Mrs. Siddons, after them, made Zara live again, and was nearly equal to Mrs. Cibber. Since her time there has been neither a Zara, nor Lusignan, nor grown-up Osman, of any note; and nothing short of genius could make the dry bones live. Voltaire’s ‘Zaire’ is as dull as Hill’s, but it has revived, and been played at the Théâtre Français. But every character is well played, from Mounet Sully, who acts Orosmane, to Dupont Vernon, in Corasmin. The accomplished Berton plays Nerestan; and it is a lesson to actors only to hear Maubant deliver the famous lines beginning with ‘Mon Dieu, j’ai combattu.’
Mdlle. Sarah Bernhardt is the Zaire, and I can fancy her a French Cibber. She dies, however, on the stage too much in the horrible fashion of the ‘Sphinx’; but what attracts French audience is, that the piece abounds in passages which such audiences may hail in ecstasy or denounce in disgust. The passages are political, religious, and cunningly framed free-thinking passages. For these the audience waits, and signalises their coming by an enthusiasm of delight or an excess of displeasure.
At Belfast there was only the eleven-years-old Osman to enthral an audience. The rest were respectable players. It is not to be believed that such an audience would have been stirred as they were on that August night had there not been some mind behind the voice of the young débutant. He had never been on a stage before, had only once seen a play acted, had received only a few hints from the old prompter, yet he seemed to be the very part he represented. There were many doubters and disbelievers in Belfast, but they, for the most part, went to the theatre and were convinced. The three other parts he played were Douglas, Rolla, and, for his benefit on August 29, Romeo. From that moment he was ‘renowned,’ and his career certain of success.
While this boy snatched a triumph, there was another eagerly, painfully, yet hopefully and determinedly, struggling for one. This boy scarcely knew by what name to pass, for his mother was a certain Nance Carey, and his reputed father was one of two brothers, he did not know which, named Kean. This boy claimed in after years to be an illegitimate son of the Duke of Norfolk, and he referred, in a way, to this claim when he called his first child Howard. For Nance Carey the boy had no love. There was but one woman who was kind to him in his childhood, Miss Tidswell, of Drury Lane Theatre, and Edmund Kean used to say, ‘If she was not my mother, why was she kind to me?’ When I pass Orange Court, Leicester Square, I look with curiosity at the hole where he got a month’s schooling.
Born and dragged up, the young life experiences of Edmund Kean were exactly opposite to those of William Henry West Betty. He had indeed, because of his childish beauty, been allowed at three years old to stand or lie as Cupid in one of Noverre’s ballets; and he had, as an unlucky imp in the witches’ scene of ‘Macbeth,’ been rebuked by the offended John Kemble. Since then he had rolled or been kicked about the world. When Master Betty, at the age of eleven, or nearly twelve, was laying the foundations of his fortune at Belfast, Edmund Kean was fifteen, and had often laid himself to sleep on the lee side of a haystack, for want of wherewith to pay for a better lodging. He had danced and tumbled at fairs, and had sung in taverns; he had tramped about the country, carrying Nance Carey’s box of falbalas for sale; he had been over sea and land; he had joined Richardson’s booth company, and, at Windsor, it is said that George III. had heard him recite, and had expressed his approbation in the shape of two guineas, which Miss Carey took from him.
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 5l. 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 10l. a night too much! He proposed that he should deduct 60l. from each night’s receipts, and that Master Betty should take half of what remained. The result was that Roscius got 50l. nightly instead of 10l. 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 266l. to his Richard. Selim was the next. 261l. The lowest receipt was also to his Richard. On the first night he played it there was only 80l. 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, 140l.; his Selim the lowest, 60l., 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 remark: ‘It is very desirable that the power, strength, and union of the Opposition should appear considerable while out of office, in order that if ever they should come in it may be plain that they have an existence of their own, and are not the mere creatures of the Crown.’ But Fox breaks suddenly away from subjects of crafty statesmanship, with this sentence: ‘Everybody here is mad about this Boy Actor, even Uncle Dick is full of astonishment and admiration. We go to town to-morrow to see him, and from what I have heard, I own I shall be disappointed if he is not a prodigy.’
On the same day Fox wrote a letter from St. Anne’s Hill to the Hon. C. Grey (the Lord Grey of the Reform Bill). It is bristling with ‘politicks,’ but between reference to party battles and remarks on Burke, the statesman says: ‘Everybody is mad about this Young Roscius, and we go to town to-morrow to see him. The accounts of him seem incredible; but the opinion of him is nearly unanimous, and Fitzpatrick, who went strongly prepossessed against him, was perfectly astonished and full of admiration.’
We do not find any letter of Fox’s extant to tell us his opinion of the ‘tenth wonder.’ We can go with him to the play, nevertheless. ‘While young Betty was in all his glory,’ says Samuel Rogers, in his ‘Table Talk,’ ‘I went with Fox and Mrs. Fox, after dining with them in Arlington Street, to see him act Hamlet; and, during the play scene, Fox, to my infinite surprise, said, “This is finer than Garrick!”’ Fox would not have said so if he had not thought so. He did not say as much to Master Betty, but he best proved his sympathy by sitting with and reading to him passages from the great dramatists, mingled with excellent counsel.
Windham, the famous statesman, who as much loved to see a pugilistic fight as Fox did to throw double sixes, and to whom a stroll in Leicester Fields was as agreeable as an hour with an Italian poet was to Fox—Windham hurried through the Fields to Covent Garden. His diary for the year 1804 is lost; but in that for 1805 we come upon his opinion of the attractive player, after visits in both years. On January 31, 1805, there is this entry in his diary;—‘Went, according to arrangement, with Elliot and Grenville to play; Master Betty in Frederick’ (‘Lovers’ Vows’). ‘Lord Spencer, who had been shooting at Osterley, came afterwards. Liked Master B. better than before, but still inclined to my former opinion; his action certainly very graceful, except now and then that he is a little tottering on his legs, and his recitation just, but his countenance not expressive; his voice neither powerful nor pleasing.’
The criticisms of actors were generally less favourable. Kemble was ‘riveted,’ we are told, by the acting of Master Betty; but he was contemptuously silent. Mrs. Siddons, according to Campbell, ‘never concealed her disgust at the popular infatuation.’ At the end of the play Lord Abercorn came into her box and told her that that boy, Betty, would eclipse everything which had been called acting, in England. ‘My Lord,’ she answered, ‘he is a very clever, pretty boy; but nothing more.’ Mrs. Siddons, however, was meanly jealous of all that stood between her and the public. When Mrs. Siddons was young, she was jealous of grand old Mrs. Crawford. When Mrs. Siddons was old, and had retired, she was jealous of young Miss O’Neill. She querulously said that the public were fond of setting up new idols in order to annoy their former favourites. George Frederick Cooke who had played Glenalvon to Master Betty’s Norval—played it finely too, at his very best—and could not crush the boy, after whom everybody was repeating the line he made so famous,
The blood of Douglas can protect itself!
—Cooke alluded to him in his diary, for 1811, thus: ‘I was visited by Master Payne, the American Young Roscius; I thought him a polite, sensible youth, and the reverse of our Young Roscius.’ This was an ebullition of irritability. Even those who could not praise Roscius as a tenth wonder, acknowledged his courtesy and were struck by his good common sense. Boaden, who makes the singular remark that ‘all the favouritism, and more than the innocence, of former patronesses was lavished on him,’ also tells us more intelligibly, that Master Betty ‘never lost the genuine modesty of his carriage; and his temper, at least, was as steady as his diligence.’ One actor said, ‘Among clever boys he would have been a Triton among minnows;’ but Mrs. Inchbald remarked, ‘Had I never seen boys act, I might have thought him extraordinary.’ ‘Baby-faced child!’ said Campbell. ‘Handsome face! graceful figure! marvellous power!’ is the testimony of Mrs. Mathews. The most unbiassed judgment I can find is Miss Seward’s, who wrote thus of him in 1804, after seeing him as Osman in ‘Zara’: ‘It could not have been conceived or represented with more grace, sensibility, and fire, though he is veritably an effeminate boy of thirteen; but his features are cast in a diminutive mould, particularly his nose and mouth. This circumstance must at every period of life be injurious to stage effect; nor do I think his ear for blank verse faultless. Like Cooke, he never fails to give the passions their whole force, by gesture and action natural and just; but he does not do equal justice to the harmony. It is, I think, superfluous to look forward to the mature fruit of this luxuriant blossom.’ Miss Seward was right; but she was less correct in her prophecy, ‘He will not live to bear it. Energies various and violent will blast in no short time the vital powers, evidently delicate.’ He survived this prophecy just seventy years! One other opinion of him I cannot forbear adding. It is Elliston’s, and it is in the very loftiest of Robert William’s manner, who was born a little more than one hundred years ago! ‘Sir, my opinion of the young gentleman’s talents will never transpire during my life. I have written my convictions down. They have been attested by competent witnesses, and sealed and deposited in the iron safe at my banker’s, to be drawn forth and opened, with other important documents, at my death. The world will then know what Mr. Elliston thought of Master Betty!’
The Young Roscius withdrew from the stage and entered Christ’s College, Cambridge. He there enjoyed quiet study and luxurious seclusion. Meanwhile that once boy with the flashing eyes, Edmund Kean, had got a modest post at the Haymarket, where he played Rosencrantz to Mr. Rae’s Hamlet. He had also struggled his way to Belfast, and had acted Osman to Mrs. Siddons’ Zara. ‘He plays well, very well,’ said the lady: ‘but there is too little of him to make a great actor.’ Edmund, too, had married ‘Mary Chambers,’ at Stroud, and Mr. Beverley had turned the young couple out of his company, ‘to teach them not to do it again!’ In 1812, ‘Mr. Betty,’ come to man’s estate, returned to the stage, at Bath. A few months previously Mr. and Mrs. Kean were wandering from town to town. In rooms, to which the public were invited by written bills, in Kean’s hand, they recited scenes from plays and sang duets; and he trilled songs, spoke soliloquies, danced hornpipes, and gave imitations!—and starved, and hoped—and would by no means despair.
Mr. Betty’s second career lasted from 1812 to 1824, when he made his last bow at Southampton, as the Earl of Warwick. Within the above period he acted at Covent Garden, in 1812 and 1813. He proved to be a highly ‘respectable’ actor; but the phenomenon no longer existed. His last performance in London was in June 1813, when he played ‘Richard III.’ and ‘Tristram Fickle’ for his benefit. In the following January Edmund Kean, three years his senior, took the town by storm in Shylock, and made his conquest good by his incomparable Richard. The genius of Mr. Betty left him with his youth. Edmund Kean drowned his genius in wine and rioting before his manhood was matured. Forty-eight years have elapsed since he was carried to his grave in Richmond churchyard. Honoured and regretted, all that was mortal of the once highly-gifted boy, who lived to be a venerable and much-loved old man, ‘fourscore years and upwards,’ was borne to his last resting-place in the cemetery at Highgate. Requiescat in pace!