gone altogether to decay. Be this as it may, I keep my own opinion to myself; being contented to record the most important part of the matter-id est, THE issue. Mr. Kemble performed six nights, on each of which he filled most of the crevices in Covent Garden Theatre; and if his acting had no other effect, it possessed the very useful and salutary one of bringing other performers to their proper level; for while Hamlet by Mr. Macready failed to attract much more than half a house at the Haymarket, Hamlet by Mr. Charles Kemble filled Covent Garden Theatre to overflowing. This is one thing which redounds to the honour, and to the renown of Mr. Charles Kemble; and another is, that in a determination his performance should be solidly useful to the lessee of a theatre of which he is a considerable shareholder, no persuasion, and no offer, however tempting, could induce him to accept one farthing for his six performances. Such conduct as this is so totally without precedent amongst the theatrical community, that it is a duty to record it, which is quite equal to the pleasure doing of it. Mr. Kemble's reappearance must have contributed at least FIFTEEN HUNDRED POUNDS to the treasury of the theatre, which, without such aid, it never would have seen; and as that contribution arrived at so ticklish a period of the season, as that of Lent, it must have been doubly acceptable. Heaven forbid that, as an old manager, I should begrudge Madame Vestris such a piece of good fortune as this -on the contrary, I rejoice in it, and repeat, that there is no meed too great for so much talent and beauty as she personally subscribes to her present perilous undertaking-but I cannot help adding, it is an instance of such extraordinary and timely "luck that, acceptable as it would always have been, never fell to my lot. Having so fully given my opinion on the utter impossibility, under existing circumstances, of making money, or barely of avoiding ruin, by the management of the patent theatres, and having adduced so many instances in favour of my argument, I regret to make the farther addition, to the list of sufferers, of this delightful lady. I have been told, and I believe it to be true, that Madame Vestris has received £10,000 more than was taken in the best of Mr. Macready's two seasons; and I have moreover heard, which I sincerely trust is not true, that notwithstanding such great receipts, she has lost £3,000. That she has suffered some loss admits of no dispute, for she honestly confessed as much in her parting address: and if, therefore, with her acknowledged attainments, her admirable tact and taste, her professional station, her indefatigable labours, her popularity, and the all powerful charm her sex carries along with it, she has not been able to "put money in her house;" WHO can be expected to do so? There are several points, in

the past season's management, open to objection, in my humble opinion-still this is only a matter of opinion between two persons of experience: but that any management of so much liberality and industry should not be highly prosperous, is a disgrace to a civilized country.

This, however, is not the last singular instance of the manner in which some of my arguments have been borne out, nor of the advantages enjoyed by others that were denied to me, nor of the doings that were approved of in others, while they were condemned in me. When, after years of severe trial and severe loss, after the introduction of all attainable talent, foreign and native, after the representation of some of the most popular pieces ever known, I was advised, AFTER THE SEASON HAD ALREADY EXTENDED TO 142 NIGHTS, to give a few promenade concerts to enable me the more effectually to return to the usual dramatic preformances, the yell from one end of the theatrical part of the metropolis to the other was enough to make the welkin ring. I was denounced as a common mountebank, and my respected vituperator, George Robins mustered up an extra quantity of senatorial language to astound the listeners to his harangue, at the General Annual Meeting of the Proprietors. At this said General Meeting, the delight of the body at having secured such" a catch" as the then new Lessee amounted almost to fits-they had all sorts of visions of dividends floating before their eyes, shares were set down at once as at a premium, and it was not doubted that there would be a scramble in the market, even to get a peep at one. Halcyon dreams! what a pity it is the beauties should ever have awoke from them! I have more than once come to the conclusion, after reading this report of their past, and their present, and this anticipation of their future fortunes that if I had happened to have entered the room in the midst to their disappointments on the one hand, and their ecstacies on the other, they would have thrown all the looking-glasses in it at my head. It is really distressing, if you come to think it over, that all the flow of language displayed at this memorable meeting, should have been distributed, however gratuitously, in vain, and that the vocabulary of slang and slipslop should have been exhausted to no earthly purpose.

It was not very long after they had indulged in the brightest of all possible prospects, that the new lessee, the pet of Mr. Durrant, and the pride of one or two others of his colleagues, who had been promising to them (for he knew better than to promise any thing of the kind to himself) a most auspicious opening, began to waver in the fulfilment of such promise. As the introduction of all such expensive expedients as Mr. Bunn has resorted to was voted quite out of the question, and the sole

reliance was to be placed on a good, and not too expensive a working company, it was reasonably expected that an effective, force would be collected together for the opening of the campaign. When, however, it became manifest that the aforesaid "working company" consisted principally of the dramatis personæ recently figuring at the Strand Theatre, and that with themselves they imported the additional treat of the pieces they had been playing, then their faith in the "pet" began to waver, and shares subsided at once to par. Confidence was not altogether shaken because a strong impression prevailed that something in reserve was coming out to astonish and delight mankind. Durrant was as certain as he was of his life, that Hammond was bottling up some first-rate idea to take them all by storm, and redeem all the incipient errors of the season. When, however, the panic in the Drury Lane money market became known, shares fell at once to a deplorable discount, and from that moment until the final close of NINETY NINE NIGHTS, between the 26th October, 1839 and 28th February, 1840, all was "like a phantasma or a hideous dream." A Drury Lane season, the first of a new lessee, and that lessee "Durrant's pet," to extend but to four months and in those four months not a hundred nights of performance! By the term, "Durrant's pet," I feel assured my worthy friend, Mr. Hammond, will not be weak enough to suppose that my aim is to turn him into ridicule; for, though it may not be of much use to him, I have a very high opinion of him. My object is to throw into the ridicule they so justly deserve a medling set of people, who without a particle of information or experience, consider themselves to be theatrical judges, and by obtruding their advice where it is neither wished nor asked, lead to the involvement of a man, in schemes which, without such counsel, he never would have dreamt. When the doors of the theatre were finally shut, the wretched shares which had been fluctuating between premium, par, and discount, turned sulky, and were heard no more of, until all of a sudden a tangible offer was made by Mr. Beale. Unluckily for the good of the concern, Beale did not happen to be "a pet," and an alteration in the terms accepted at the first meeting having been insisted on at the second, Mr. Beale "took up his bed and walked."

But as Mr. George Robins said of my efforts last year, "the worst remains behind," for the building which had been consecrated to the genius of Kemble and Mrs. Siddons (not that ei ther of them ever played in it!) has been turned into " THE SHILLING THEATRE!" What the devil will Robins say now, when THE VERY ACT into which I was forced but for a short time as a matter of expediency, is now adopted as a deliberate letting from the body of the proprietary to a new tenant? The shares which,

under George's hammer, stood little chance of realizing a shilling a piece, would not now, I should say, be taken as a gift! and all this has been the result of " weeding" the old committee (almost each of whom was a practical man of business, generally conversant with theatrical affairs, especially with those of Drury Lane) and substituting in the place of those, so weeded, two gentlemen as deliciously ignorant of them as a young sucking pig. If I mistake not, there will be some capital FUN at the NEXT General meeting; but, in the mean time, it is quite fun enough for me to see the commission of the deeds for which I was so impudently assailed, now carried out by the indirect means of the parties who assailed me.

The howl about legitimacy, so fully commented upon in the ensuing pages will, I suppose, soon cease to be heard; it is dying in the distance daily; for while the miserable pretence of plays "from the text of Shakspeare" have failed of drawing an extra shilling, the Merry Wives of Windsor, in its altered OPERATIC FORM, has drawn in the Covent Garden Theatre some of the best houses of the past season. So it did in the season of 1823-24, when I was stage manager under Mr. Elliston. I placed it, for the first time, in that shape, upon the stage of Drury Lane Theatre, supported then in a manner I very much doubt if it will be soon supported again. Dowton, Wallack, Harley, Braham, Gattie, Browne, Miss Stephens, and Madame Vestris, sustaining the principal part of the responsibility. The concoctors of humbug must not suppose the people do not see through all this. Stuff! they may be gulled at first, but they very soon rise up out of the deception which has been practised upon them.

Then, look at one of the very last attempts at a little bit of legitimacy that has met with as signal and melancholy a discomfiture as can well be imagined or believed. The theatre erected by Miss Kelly in Dean Street, Soho, for the purpose of bringing to perfection the growth of dramatic codlings, where the theatrical genius of the empire, under so inspired an instructress, was to expand and ripen, to the astonishment and delight of the whole empire-where a wholesome state of things was alone to be looked for, and where, in fact, all the best doings of other people were completely to be outdone, opened its portals on Monday, May 25th, and closed them four days afterwards, on Friday, May 29th. Does not this speak volumes to those silly people who will not understand the public character, nor learn that there is no such thing as cramming down the public throat doctrines that are not palatable to the public taste? I rank myself amongst the foremost of Miss Kelly's admirers, and was gratified in affording her the use of Drury Lane Theatre to

take her farewell (as I conceived it to be) of the playgoing world she had so long delighted; but she should not have allowed herself to come to light again, and especially in the light in which she did come. How, on calm consideration, can this gifted actress reconcile to herself the outlay of the gainings of a long theatrical life, on the erection of an additional theatre to the eighteen, or twenty, already in existence in an untheatrical city? where almost all the others are on the verge of bankruptcy, and above all in such an outlandish part of the world as Dean Street, Soho? Why Liquorpond Street would have been nearer the mark! And this too, with the case of the Saint James's Theatre, the last construction, under nearly similar circumstances staring her in the face! She possessed the comforts, and for aught I know to the contrary, the luxuries of life-she was full of fame, as she is of talent, and in the hopes of proving all preceding managers wrong and herself right, she has placed both in jeopardy. It is a case of positive lunacy, or rare conceit. regret it deeply for the sake of the fair Artiste, but I rejoice at it for the sake of the art.

I

Other circumstances, more painful than all the rest, have rendered a proem to the following pages absolutely necessary; for since the completion of the major part of them, several melancholy deaths have occurred: of those whose lives are mixed up with the subject-matter of them. So distressing a mortality, within so short a space of time, has seldom occurred; and although there is not a remark upon any of its victims that I should desire to alter, it may be a question whether I should have named them at all; could I have foreseen the termination of their worldly career. When these volumes were more than two-thirds on their journey towards completion, intelligence was received of the death of Mr. Stephen Price, my predecessor in the lesseeship of Drury Lane Theatre, and a gentleman who had long held a conspicuous situation in the dramatic world of the new world. Then James Smith, the humorous, the intelligent, the agreeable-one whom society in general, and more especially the society of letters, could ill af ford to lose! Then Sir Thomas Mash, so much of whose official correspondence is herein interspersed, has passed away from the scene of action, whereon he had amassed vast riches and vast honours! Then, again, one of the principal devotees at the shrine of the dramatic art, popular in all circles, and beloved in his own, General Lincoln Stanhope, was suddenly torn from the enjoyments of this fragile life! And the unpretending, anxious, industrious, willing little actor, and confidential friend and servant, John Hughes (whilome the factotum of the gifted Kean, and Secretary to the Drury Lane Theatrical Fund) has

VOL. I.-2