Mrs. Boniface, believing “the poor young girl was in a fit,” got up as fast as she could, and roared out so loudly and effectually for help that everybody in the house was alarmed, and the itinerant actresses coming into the chamber discovered, to their intense astonishment, who it was that the landlady had given half of her bed to. The laughter spread, was taken up on the stairs, and echoed from room to room, until the whole house rang with it. The anger of the landlady was appeased. This occurred in 1730 or 1731.
An old friend of mine, who in his time has been actor, artist, journalist, dramatist, and novelist, and is now a well-known London editor, once told me the following story of his first connection with the stage.
He was a feeble, consumptive lad of sixteen, when the drunkenness and cruelty of a worthless step-father drove him penniless from home. All through one long, wretched, and utterly hopeless day he had been wandering through the streets of London seeking employment. Naturally shy, reserved, and timid, his awkward mode of addressing a stranger while perplexed what account to give of himself, together with the hesitation, stammering, and blushing which accompanied it, had brought upon him nothing but scornful treatment, insulting suspicions, and failure after failure. He found himself at the close of a long, hot day, with burning feet and aching limbs, hungry, faint, and plunged into the very lowest depths of despair, on the banks of the New River, where he had often been before to fish. His desire was to escape observation, and he dragged himself along, passed fishermen and boys, until, finding their line stretched out from one to another still far ahead, he sat down in the long grass completely exhausted, and turning on his face, wept silently.
Now it so happened that a tall, lank, sallow-faced young fisherman, with a beard of a fortnight’s growth, and clothes of a once fashionable cut, but then threadbare, discoloured, ill-fitting, and very greasy at the cuffs and collar, particularly noted the tall, thin boy, and presently strolled up to, and sat down beside him.
“Hallo, guv’nor,” said he; “what’s up?”
The poor boy had no voice and no heart to reply, so he pretended to be asleep.
“Wat’s yer been a doin’ on? Run away from home?”
After a pause, and without moving, the poor lad said,—
“I’ve got no home now.”
“Where do you come from?”