BOOKS.

T. W. ROBERTSON.*

Mn. T. Eno An PEMBERTON, the author of an exceedingly entertaining memoir of Sothern, has performed a similar service for the author of Caste with considerable success. There is a tendency nowadays, to adapt a recent remark of Sir Charles Bowen's, to write ponderous biographies of Nobody ; but Mr. Pemberton's sketch hardly comes under this condemnation, for Robertson achieved something more than mere ephemeral fame. He was not a great dramatist, as his biographer would have us believe, for his portraiture was essentially based on contemporary types, and the humanity of his dramatis persons was veiled by the social conventions of his period. Still, it was no small achievement to emanci- pate English comedy from its abject subservience to Gallic exemplars, and to produce a series of plays which were at once original, wholesome, and amusing. More than that, he was the pioneer in a new style of stage-management, of which thoroughness, naturalness, and an avoidance of all extrava- gance, were the leading principles. His detestation of stage conventionalities cannot be better illustrated than by some of the footnotes to his pieces. Thus, he writes of Captain Sound, R.N. : "His manner is to be hearty, but not rough ; in every respect that of a captain of a man-of-war, and not of a half-penny steamboat." That Robertson should have been a reformer is a remark- able proof of his individuality, when we reflect on his antecedents and training. He came of a theatrical family, honourably connected with the stage through four generations. His great-grandfather was a well-known member of the York Theatre as far back as 1750, and as for the number of Robert- sons who have been before the public as actors or managers, or both, since that date, their name is simply legion.

T. W. Robertson was the son of the manager of the Lincoln circuit, and made his first appearance on the boards at the age of five. The remark which he put into the mouth of one of his characters about being "nursed on rose-pink and cradled in properties," is strictly applicable to his own case. He played children's parts until he went to school at Spalding and then at Whittlesea, his sojourn at the latter place being cut short by the res angusta domi,—business in the Lincoln circuit having become so bad that economy compelled, rather than suggested, his return to the stage. Daring the few years that ensued. Robertson gained an ex- haustive practical acquaintance with almost every conceivable department of histrionic and theatrical activity. He played in every description of part, from Hamlet to farce, achieving especial success in eccentric comedy ; wrote comic songs and duets, and sang and danced to them ; dramatised numerous stories for the company ; acted as manager, prompter, scene- painter, and general factotum. He found time, however, to go on with his education ; picked up more than a smattering of French ; and in 1848, actuated by the laudable desire to extend his intellectual equipment, applied for, and obtained, the post of English-speaking usher in a school at Utrecht. The new venture was a dolorous failure. Robertson was half- starved and wholly miserable ; and was beholden to the generosity of the British Consul for the means to make his way home. The boys at this school were bullied by a native usher with whom Robertson was at daggers drawn, and who served as the prototype for the grotesque and highly impossible Krux in School. The materials for this caricature and an impaired digestion seem to exhaust Robertson's debt to Holland. Meantime, the Lincoln circuit, long on the down grade, was now on its last legs. The growth of railways gave the death- b]ow to these old circuits. The small towns, on whose support they had chiefly depended, were no longer isolated. People went to the larger cities instead of patiently waiting for the advent of Thespis and his cart. And so it came about that, with bankruptcy imminent, the manager disbanded his com- pany; and young Robertson, then about twenty years of age, gravitated to London, where he was eventually destined to win both fame and fortune. At first he kept himself afloat by accepting any acting engagements that came in his way. For years he seldom got more than a guinea a week, and was often glad to get it. In 1851, a two-act comic drama was accepted The Lys and Writings of T. W. Robertoon. By T. Edgar Pemberton. Loudon : Bentley and Son.

by William Farren, and played at the Olympic, only to be cordially damned by the Press and public, and Robertson had once more to resort to his acting. He played an immense number of small parts in London and in the provinces, and occasionally made a hit in a small way. The story of the entertainment he organised with H. J. Byron is well known, but bears retelling. It was given at the Gallery of Illustra- tion, and by the time the doors were open the two enter- tainers had not a farthing between them. The programme was so arranged that Robertson could act as money-taker in the first part, while Byron relieved him in the second, the final item being a duologue. The incident is narrated by Mr. Pemberton as follows

The performance was advertised to commence at eight, but the clock stood at a good ten minutes past that hour before any- one troubled the anxious Robertson in his little box-office. At last a gentleman tendered a sovereign, and asked if there were any front seats left.' 'Oh yes,' replied Robertson pleasantly. both right and left. I will bring you your change' (poor fellow ! he had none of his own) in a minute, sir.' The gentleman entered the empty room. Robertson rushed out to get change, returned eighteen shillings to his patron, and expended fourponce out of the remaining two shillings on stout for the dejected Byron, who, in an agony of nervousness, was peeping through the curtain. In his own hands Robertson bore to his partner the pewter con- taining the invigorating draught. 'Have the critics arrived ?' asked Byron in an anxious voice.—' No,' replied Robertson ; but,. then, they are always late.'—' Are they P' asked Byron, dubiously. —` Of course they are,' was the answer. ' Come, you had better commence and get it over.'—' Tom,' said Byron, with the spirit of prophecy upon him, I think this is going to be a failure.' To- this Robertson deigned no reply, and returned to his pay-box. The pianist (of course there was a pianist) rattled through an overture ; the curtain rose ; and Byron, attired in the evening- dress that Robertson was to wear later on, commenced the enter- tainment.' The first part of the programme was entitled The Origin of Man ' ; and looking fixedly at the solitary occupant of the house,' the unfortunate entertainer commenced as follows : In the beginning there was only one man—" Yes,' inter- rupted the house '; 'and I'm the d—d fool ; ' and hurrying out to Robertson, this inconsiderate gentleman demanded his money back, and said he had come to see The Chinese.' Depressed, but not disconcerted, Robertson assured the malcontent that Byron was a Chinaman ; but the money had to be returned. Here a little difficulty occurred. 'The house' had received its change for its sovereign ; fourpence out of its two shillings had been expended on Byron's stout ; and this the ' pay-box ' was in no position to refund. Robertson, however, dejected though he must have been, was equal to the emergency; and returning one shilling and eightpence, said calmly that • on such occasions they only charged fourpenee.' It appears that, in another room in the Gallery of Illustration, some ingenious Chinese jugglers were giving a performance, and that a stray lamb had wandered into the wrong fold."

The record of Robertson's life for years to come is a dreary round of drudgery. He made a great number of adaptations, and wrote not a few original plays and farces. In 1854, he was appointed prompter at the Olympic, then under the manage- ment of Charles Mathews and Madame Vestris, at the salary of RS a week. He tried to enlist in the Horse Guards, but failed to pass the medical test. He went in 1855 to Paris as acting manager and interpreter to an ill-starred company recruited by an entrepreneur of the ominous name of Ruin de Fe, who

only paid his troupe a week's salary for three weeks' work. In 1856, he married a young actress, named Burton, whose devotion he fully repaid through nine years of incessant drudgery as actor, hack-writer, and journalist. After a while, he gave up the stage and stuck to writing. But his devoted wife, though a delicate woman, continued, in spite of doctors' warnings, to fulfil her duties at the various theatres at which she found lucrative employment, until her health gave way, and she came home to die, within three months of the production of Society, the turning-point of his career.. He felt the blow deeply ; indeed, it is said that he never was the same man again, though he was very happy in his second marriage. Most of his subsequent plays—Ours, School, and

Caste in particular—were brilliant successes; though his career as a playwright was chequered by some dismal fiascos, terribly trying to his sensitive temperament. His income for 1869 and 1870 averaged just £4,000; but he bad no longer the health to enjoy it. He was delicate to start with ; his life had been one of unceasing effort., and even privation ; organic heart-disease declared itself in the last years of his life, and he died in February, 1871, little more than a fortnight after the disastrous prernave of War, at the age of forty-two.

As a man, Robertson had many admirable qualities. Jeffer-

son, the inimitable American actor, has left it on record in his delightful autobiography, "that of all men I have ever talked with, Tom Robertson was the most entertaining.'"

Artemus Ward's friendship for him is illustrated by a charac- teristic anecdote, also related by Mr. Jefferson ;—

" Artemus Ward died not many months after his London abut, attended to the last by Tom Rqbertson. A strong attachment had sprung up between thorn, and the devotion of his newfound English friend was touching in the extreme, and characteristic of Robertson's noble nature. Just before Ward's death, Robertson poured out some medicine in a glass and offered it to his friend. Ward said : My dear Tom, I can't take that dreadful stuff!' --` Come, come,' said Robertson, urging him to swallow the nauseous drug, there's a dear fellow ! Do now, for my sake ; you know I would do anything for you.'—' Would you ? ' said Ward, feebly stretching out his hand to grasp his friend's, per- haps for the last time.—' I would, indeed ! ' said Robertson.— ' Then you take it,' said Ward. The humorist passed away but a few hours afterwards."

But Robertson was much more than a witty talker and entertaining companion. He was a man of considerable, though almost entirely self-acquired, culture, and all the

drudgery and sordid surroundings of three parts of his life never destroyed the native refinement and fastidiousness of his nature. His affection for both of his wives and for his children seems to have been of the truest and tenderest kind, coupled—which is, unhappily, rare in Bohemia—with a wise forethought for their future.

Mr. Pemberton has done his work well on the whole. The admirable papers by Robertson on "Stage Types" were well worth reprinting. On the other hand, the collection of epigrams from his plays would have gained immensely by the

weeding-out of a number of very obvious truisms. The quota- tions, again—especially those from the pen of Mr. Clement Scott—might have been reduced in bulk. But these blemishes may be readily overlooked in view of the general readableness of the volume.