That great statesman, Burleigh, Bacon’s uncle, lived on the site of the
present Burleigh Street. He was of birth so humble that his father could
only be entitled a gentleman by courtesy. Slow but sure of judgment,
silent, distrustful of brilliant men, such as Essex and Raleigh, he made
himself, by unremitting skill, assiduity, and fidelity, the most trusted
and powerful person in Queen Elizabeth’s privy council. Here, fresh from
his frets with the rash Essex, the old wily statesman pondered over the
fate of Mary of Scotland, or strove for means to foil Philip of Spain and
his Armada. Here also lived his eldest son, Sir Thomas Cecil, subsequently
the second Lord Burleigh and Earl of Exeter, who died 1622, whose daughter
married the heir of Lord Chancellor Hatton, the dancing chancellor.
Burleigh Street replaced the old house in 1678, when Salisbury Street was
built.
The “Little Adelphi” Theatre was opened in 1806 under the name of the
“Sans Souci” by Mr. John Scott, a celebrated colour-maker, famous for a
certain fashionable blue dye. The entertainments (optical and mechanical)
were varied by songs, recitations, and dances, the proprietor’s daughter
being a clever amateur actress. Its real success did not begin till 1821,
when Pierce Egan’s dull and rather vulgar book of London low life, _Tom
and Jerry_, was dramatised--Wrench as Tom, Reeve as Jerry. Subsequently
Power, the best Irishman that trod the boards in London, appeared here in
melodrama. In 1826 Terry and Yates became joint lessees and managers.
Ballantyne and Scott backed up Terry, Sir Walter being always eager for
money. Scott eventually had to pay £1750 for the speculative printer; he
seems from the outset to have entertained fears of Terry’s failure.[335]
Here Keely too made his first hit as Jemmy Green.
In 1839 Mr. Rice, “the original Jim Crow,” was playing at the
Adelphi.[336] This Mr. Rice was an American actor who had studied the
drolleries of the Negro singers and dancers, especially those of one Jim
Crow, an old boatman who hung about the wharfs of Vicksburg, the same town
on the Mississippi that has lately stood so severe a siege. He initiated
among us negro tunes and negro dances. This was the fatal beginning of
those “negro entertainments,” falsely so called.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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