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MEMOIRS

ETC.

CHAPTER I...

Preliminary notice and remarks-Elliston-His parentage and family-Education-St. Paul's school-Early indications of ability-Public schools-First attempt at acting-Tragedy at a pastry-cook's-Mathews-Further progress in acting Unfortunate amateur Letter from New South Wales-Elliston's frailty and remorse-Youthful dilemmas -Flight from home-Terrors of the runaway-Fellowtravellers-Gout and ophthalmia.

It is well to be armed with three reasons for an undertaking. A kind of prescriptive claim attaches to the number; and three reasons are here principally suggested in defence of the following pages :

1. The versatile and desultory pursuits, apart from an active professional career, followed from time to time, by the subject of the present Memoirs.

2. The quality and extent of documents we have to deal with, in the composition of this history. 3. The constitution and natural temperament of the man himself.

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In respect of the first-like a dealer in a country town, who is a cheesemonger on one side of his glazed door, and a haberdasher on the other, having a back parlour, in which he carries on the more solemn mystery of a bank, so verily, at more than one period of his life, have been the complications of the omnivalent Robert William Elliston; with this difference only, that in the place of the bank was the playhouse treasury, a place, unprofitably for him, too frequently so represented.

The Memoirs of actors are generally but the history of the theatre, and of the drama only so far as they themselves might have had business with any particular play; but the range of Robert William was of a far wider extent. Diversified in his employments, sudden in his operations, we find him flying off indeed at a "Tangent," to become the centre of some circulating library, or the vertex of some Imperial Hotel." By the turn of his magic ring he will transport himself from place to place at the suggestion of a moment, and with the wand of harlequin erect ball-rooms, fill shops with merchandise, and string playhouses together like beads upon a thread.

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But in all this whirl of matter, Elliston still followed his profession with ardour, and courted it with the sincerest attachment. His spiritual barometer rose with the pressure of his atmosphere, and what was "set fair" only with him, would have parched up the green fields of ordinary fortitude. Such

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was the hey-day of his life-a season which might still have been protracted, would men but cultivate wisdom as they force wit, or take half the pains to retain they have exerted to acquire.

2. Respecting the quality and extent of the documents, &c., we feel with some confidence we can approach our readers. These consist, for the most part, of memoranda and original letters addressed to Mr. Elliston, extending over nearly the whole course of his life. The letters are numerous; several of them curious; and proceeding, as many of them do, from characters greatly eminent in their day, will so far constitute a feature in this work of unusual interest, and recommend the subject considerably beyond any labour of our own on its inquiry. No letter will find publication, of which we have not the original in our possession. They have been collected from time to time, by a gentleman connected, during many years, with Mr. Elliston himself, which, with many additional documents that passed into the hands of his executors, form an unbroken chain of biographic material. A few light incidental anecdotes, however, we have ventured to insert, on the sole authority of hearsay, but only where the question of their genuineness has appeared to be but of little moment.

Still will it be necessary to take a review of much theatrical matter with which the world has been made already acquainted; for the biography of our

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present subject is essentially interwoven with it and to recapitulate many events, the common property of cotemporary actors. Like Mr. Hardcastle, we must have affection with old houses, old furniture, old books, and not unfrequently, we can assure our readers, with old wine; but it will be with the view of broaching new fancies, and catching at some of those laughing spirits of recorded time, which till now may have eluded our vigilance. 3. The temperament of the man—

"That heart of pleasure and that soul of whim."

Research has certainly not yet disclosed to us that corner of the earth, nor have those simple elements of society been yet discovered, which could have contained Robert William Elliston in a state of obscurity! Wherever his presiding star might have thrown him, there most assuredly a "star" himself, would he have been. A wild, charming, restless eccentric, whose elastic nature touched boundingly on the ground of order, and who from the data of rule took the project of his erratic course; a material well fitted to the loom of dramatic machi

nery, but for the sake of substantial respectability, a quality rather to be locked up with the embroidered suit, till the setting sun announced the hour of the rising for the mimic scene.

Elliston was never in repose-his lamp perpetually exhausting, though no illumination was necessary -the fire of his imagination constantly under the

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blow-pipe, though no immediate work was passing through the furnace.

The manners of an actor can as little endure the light of day as the canvass of the playhouse itself, but Elliston ever mingled the conventions of the stage with the sober humanities of real life. This second nature, which he had so fondly contracted, was a sublime abstract of the mock heroic! His features dressed in a humorous solemnity, and a measured comicality pervading all his movements. To a natural love of eccentricity, the trick of his trade was ever clinging, so that in a great measure we might apply to him Goldsmith's sketch of Garrick himself

"On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting
'Twas only that when he was off he was acting;
With no reason on earth to go out of his way,
He turn'd and he varied full ten times a day."

"He carried with him," says the delightful Charles Lamb, "pit, boxes, and gallery, and set up his portable playhouse at the corner of streets." Elliston's theatrical life was displayed as vividly in the high roads, shops, and drawing-rooms, as on the scene itself; he had learnt, indeed, all the world was a stage, and he seemed resolved that no less should be his. He was, in fact, a perpetual showman of artificial manners, which with his perception of the humorous, and love of adventure, constituted him a Feature in the giddy round of life, whilst others were moving with

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