Charles Young, who played with Kean at Drury Lane, was a dignified but
rather cold actor. Booth appeared also with Kean in 1817, and again in
1820 with Wallack and Cooper.
Mrs. Mardyn (the supposed mistress of Lord Byron) appeared on the Drury
Lane stage in 1815. She was boisterous, but so full of girlish gaiety and
reckless wildness that she became for a short time the favourite of the
town. She failed, however, when she reappeared in 1833 in a tragic part.
Charming Mrs. Nisbett, “that peach of a woman,” as Douglas Jerrold used to
call her, died in 1858, aged forty-five. The daughter of a drunken Irish
officer who took to the stage, she married an officer in the Life Guards
in 1831; but on the death of her husband by an accident, she returned to
her first love in 1832, and reappeared at Drury Lane. Her great triumph
was “The Love Chase,” which was produced at the Haymarket in 1837, and ran
for nearly one hundred nights. It was worth going a hundred miles to hear
Mrs. Nisbett’s merry, ringing, silvery laugh.
Irish Johnstone, who died in 1828, is described by Hazlitt as acting at
Drury Lane, “with his supple knees, his hat twisted round in his hand, his
good-humoured laugh, his arched eyebrows, his insinuating leer, and his
lubricated brogue curling round the ear like a well-oiled
moustachio.”[601]
Oxberry quitted Drury Lane with Elliston in 1820. In 1821 he took the
Craven’s Head Chop-house in Drury Lane, where he used to say to his
guests, “We vocalise on a Friday, conversationalise on a Sunday, and
chopise every day.” His best characters were Leo Luminati, Slender, and
Abel Day. Emery surpassed him in Tyke, Little Knight, and Robin Roughhead.
Farren, who was born about 1787, made his début at Covent Garden in 1818.
He was for some time at Drury Lane, and latterly manager of the Olympic.
In old men he took the place of Dowton. His finest performance was Lord
Ogleby, but in his prime he excelled also in Sir Peter Teazle, Sir Anthony
Absolute, Sir Fretful Plagiary, and the Bailie Nicol Jarvie.
John Pritt Harley was the son of a silk-mercer, and originally a clerk in
Chancery Lane. He was born in 1786 or 1790. He made his début at the
Lyceum in 1815, in “The Devil’s Bridge.” His first appearance at Drury
Lane was in 1815, as Lissardo in “The Wonder.” In farce he was
good-humoured, bustling, and droll; and he excelled in Caleb Quotem, Peter
Fidget, Bottom, and many Shaksperean characters. He died only a year or
two ago, repeating, it is said, this line of one of his old parts: “I have
an exposition of sleep come upon me.”
Miss Kelly, born in 1790, was at the Lyceum in 1808, and went from thence
to Drury Lane. She sang in operas, and was admirable in genteel comedy and
domestic tragedy. Her romps were scarcely inferior to Mrs. Jordan’s; her
waiting-maids were equal to Mrs. Orger’s. Charles Lamb, writing in 1818,
says of her--
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