The next I saw of Charles Mathews was when he came to this country in 1857, after his wife's death, and played at what was then the Broadway Theatre, on the corner of Anthony Street. I met him very frequently at dinner at Boucicault's house, and at my own. My father was a great invalid, and Charles used to go and visit him and sit by his bedside continually, and so we got to see a great deal of each other; and it was perfectly remarkable then, as it was afterward, how lightly he took all the cares and vicissitudes of life. He seemed to go through the world as a grasshopper does; when he found the ground a little rough he hopped and got over it. He was the most lightsome creature that can be imagined, and he never seemed to let care take hold of him. During this visit to America he

profits were exactly ten cents, and this particular dime he put upon his watchchain and wore for many years as a charm. This visit ended with his marriage to the wife of "Dolly " Davenport, formerly Miss Lizzie Weston.

Davenport was then at our theatre, Broadway near Broome Street, and the famous fracas between them occurred just outside of the stage door of the Metropolitan Theatre (afterward the Winter Garden), where Mathews was playing an engagement. The usual result followed: there was a great deal of gossip, much controversy in the newspapers, with the inevitable "simmering down;" and Mathews and his wife almost immediately afterward left America for England. Thence he went for a long tour to India, Australia, and New Zealand.

His last visit was made after my father's death, and when I had become the sole manager of the house on Broadway and Thirteenth Street. He brought over his wife, who, from being a very handsome, dark-haired woman, had become a brilliant blonde; as was the case with the majority of dark-haired women at that time. He opened at the Fifth Avenue Theatre, New York, and she played in one piece with him. I remember that was the time I produced "The Liar." Mrs. Mathews came to see it the first night, and he told me afterward that she had advised him not to play it. He replied, "My dear Lizzie, it is one of my big parts in London; why shouldn't I play it here? She said, "Don't think of it." He wanted to find out why he was not to play it, and asked two or three friends, who told him that I had embellished it with new scenery and many effects that he never thought of, and perhaps, if he were to play it, the audience would miss these things, and as he had plenty of other parts it would be just as well if he did not invite the comparison.

At last he wrote and told me he wished to see me, so I made an appointment and he came one day to my office, and said: "My dear Wallack, what is the reason I must wander about from place to place? what is the reason I can't get any chance with you? Here is the very theatre that suits me." I said: "My dear Charles, the reason simply is that the only auxiliary I have is myself; I have a very fine company, and when business is very dull I go on, and am a great help; but a star theatre I can never make it." Will you have me in your stock company?" he asked. "Are you joking?" I returned. And he replied, "No, not at all, I shall be delighted; think what you can give me, and if you come anywhere near what will suit me, nothing will be more charming than to find myself under the management of one I knew almost as a boy."

Harry Beckett.

After duly considering the matter I wrote to him, saying he must make his own proposition, and that I would meet

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his terms if I could. His reply was: "My dear Wallack, No! No! No!" Upon which I wrote: "My dear Mathews, I will give you one hundred pounds a week for the season." And he replied at once, 'My dear Wallack, Yes! Yes! Yes!" And that settled the matter.

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W. Farren.

He was a member of my company all through the season. I had then revived "The Veteran," to seventeen and eighteen hundred dollars a night, and had to defer his appearance. He came to me and said: "John, this is all wrong, I am taking your money and doing nothing." I replied, "Charles, take it and do nothing, and thank Heaven you are so well off." He asked: "Do you mind if I can make that money by playing an engagement at Brooklyn?" I answered: "No, certainly not; if you can relieve me of two or three of these five hundred dollars, I am willing." And this he did, in a measure, by what he made there. He was very ill at that time, too. It was then that he first told me what a charming club there was in Brooklyn, and was the cause of my ultimately joining the Brooklyn Club, of which I have been a member twelve or fifteen years.

I first brought him out in "London Assurance," at my theatre. I played Charles Courtly, and he played Dazzle. Gilbert was Sir Harcourt, Miss Plessy Mordaunt was Lady Gay Spanker, and William Floyd was Dolly. Then he went through a round of his favorite characters. He played Puff in "The Critic charmingly. Stoddart was the Don Whiskerandos, and his death was so excessively droll that Mathews said it was the first time this character had succeeded in making him laugh on the stage, to the neglect of his own "business. He appeared also during the engagement in "Aggravating Sam," one of his special favorites, and in his old part of Marplot in "The Busybody," which I had frequently played on the same boards.

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I was sitting in his dressing-room one night, when he said: "John, I have been

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thinking where to place you." I said: "What do you mean?" "Where to place you as an artist," he went on. I was naturally very anxious to hear what he had to say on that point, so I said: Don't be bashful." I thought perhaps he was going to be a little critical. "Say anything; it must do me good more than harm." He said: "I should call you a mixture of your father and myself. Of your father in melodrama and high comedy, and of myself in what we used in my younger days to call 'touch and go' playing." "Well," I said, "that's a pretty good mixture, and, seriously, the highest compliment I have ever received."

Charlotte Cushman.

journey back." The yacht was then lying off Tompkinsville, Staten Island. He came aboard and was delighted with her. I said: "Are you seasick?" "Oh, this is delicious," he answered, as he lay in the cockpit, smoking a cigar. I had given orders quietly to get the anchor up, and before he knew where he was we were under way, and he did not leave that boat for three or four days. He said he never had a more delightful time in his life.

A more charming table companion and more agreeable person than Charles Mathews could not possibly be. I have somewhere the speech he made (which he sent me in print afterward) at his benefit and last appearance on my stage. It was in a part called Sir Simon Simple, in "Not Such a Fool as he Looks." I had acted in the first piece the Captain of the Watch, an original part of his which I first saw him play at Covent Garden. That was the last time I ever saw Charles Mathews. I got a most affectionate letter from his wife after he had returned to England, in which she said she never could forget his description of how he was treated by me.

After that Mrs. Wallack met him several times in London, and he was always most attentive and kind to her. On one occasion she went to see him in "My Awful Dad." There was another piece played after it, and Mathews, when he was dressed, came into the box and asked Mrs. Wallack how she liked it. She was much pleased with it, so he said:

There is but one man, after myself, that can play this part, and that is John. I will make it a present to him." He did so, and she brought out the manuscript. I saw that two long acts would never do, and I rewrote it, making it into three acts. Much of the business is mine, including the address to the jury. I did the latter in imitation of a barrister I had heard in London. That was how I came to have "My Awful Dad." Harry Beckett played the son admirably.

But to return to Manchester and my early experiences there. Charlotte and Susan Cushman, with both of whom I afterward became very intimate, played "Romeo and Juliet" at the Queen's in 1845; and were the cause of my going to London, that Mecca of all young Eng

lish actors. Susan was the Juliet, and Charlotte said to Mr. Sloane who was then the lessee of that theatre, "Who is your Mercutio?" Sloane replied "There I think we shall be all right; I have got young Wallack." She asked "Whom do you mean by young Wallack? I know Mr. James Wallack; I have played with him, and have the greatest admiration for him. I know he has a son; is he on the stage?" "Yes," said Sloane. "I do not see his name here." "No, he calls himself Mr. Lester." "Very inexperienced, I am afraid," said Miss Cushman. Yes, very inexperienced, but he is said to have a good deal of promise about him." At the end of the first rehearsal without books, Charlotte Cushman put her hand on my shoulder and said: "Young gentleman, there is a great future before you, if you take care and do not let your vanity run away with you." After that we became great friends, and when she went to fulfil an engagement at the Haymarket she said to Mr. Webster:

"Wallack is the coming young man of the day.' As I had often seen my father in the part of Mercutio, I suppose, for a youngster, it was a better performance than they expected; and that was the commencement of my approach to London. Mr. Webster thought that he would very much like to get a young man who would hit the public, because Charles Mathews had just left him to go to the Lyceum Theatre. Webster had the Adelphi and the Haymarket both, at that time. Miss Cushman's recommendation of me worked upon him, and he finally engaged me to play at the latter house. My first appearance in London was in a piece called "The Little Devil," a two-act play which Mr. Mathews and his wife had been very successful in. Mr. Farren, Mr. Webster, and I consulted as to what would be best for my metropolitan début; and I said I had made some fame in this part of Mathews's at Liverpool, but I had played in a different version from that of Mathews and Vestris. I wanted to play my own version, as I had my own little business, and all that; but Mr. Webster declared that I should play in his, which was very poor; and also that I should sing. I had never sung a note on the stage, and I told him it would in all probability kill my first appearance, by reason of the extra nervousness in singing a duet with Priscilla Horton (afterward Mrs. German Reed), and particularly a drinking song, a thing I never dreamed of. Not only did Mr. Webster insist upon my doing this, which required a restudy (there is nothing so difficult as studying the rearrangement of a play you have already learned), but he insisted upon my sing