“To whom is the fund indebted for this munificent donation?” inquired the astonished Mayor.
“Put it down to Muster Richardson, the showman,” replied the donor, who then walked quietly from the room.
He often paid the ground-rent of the poorer proprietors of travelling shows, booths, and stalls, whose receipts, owing to bad weather, had not enabled them to pay the claims of the owner of the field, and who, but for Richardson’s kindness, would have been obliged to remain on the ground, losing the chance of making money elsewhere, until they could raise the required sum. He never seemed to expect repayment in such cases, and never referred to them afterwards. Saunders, who seems to have passed through an unusually long life in a chronic condition of impecuniosity, once borrowed ten pounds of him, and honourably and punctually repaid the money at the appointed time. Richardson seemed surprised, but he took the money, and made no remark. No very long time elapsed before Saunders wanted another loan, when, to his surprise, Richardson met his application with a decided refusal.
“I paid you honourably the money you lent me before,” observed Saunders with an aggrieved air.
“That’s it, Muster Saunders,” rejoined Richardson. “You did pay me that money, and I was never more surprised in my life; and I mean to take care you don’t surprise me again, either in that way, or any other way.”
In recruiting his company, he preferred actors who had learned a trade, such being, in his opinion, steadier and more to be depended upon than those who, like Kean, had been strollers from childhood. His pay-table was the head of the big drum, and his way of discharging an actor or musician with whom he was dissatisfied was to ask him, when giving him his week’s salary, to leave his name and address with the stage-manager, who was also wardrobe-keeper and scene-shifter. This post was held for many years by a man named Lewis, who was also the general servant of Richardson’s “living carriage,” and at his winter quarters, Woodland Cottage, Horsemonger Lane, long since pulled down, the site being occupied by a respectable row of houses, called Woodland Terrace.
He always strengthened his company, and produced his best dresses, for the London fairs, where his theatre, decked with banners and a good display of steel and brass armour, presented a striking appearance. His wardrobe and scene-waggon were always well stocked, and the dresses were not, as some persons imagined, the off castings of the theatres, but were made for him, and, having to be worn by daylight, were of really excellent quality. Cloaks were provided for the company to wear on parade when the weather happened to be wet.
It was a frequent boast of Richardson, that many of the most eminent members of the theatrical profession had graduated in his company, and it is known that Edmund Kean, James Wallack, Oxberry, and Saville Faucit were of the number. Kean always acknowledged that he made his first appearance in a principal part as Young Norval in Richardson’s theatre; but it is obvious from what is known of his boyhood that he must have been in the company several years before he could have essayed that character. So far as can be made out from his supposed age, he seems to have joined Richardson’s company in 1804, to the early part of which year we must assign the story told by Davis, who was afterwards associated in partnership with the younger Astley in the lesseeship of the Amphitheatre.
“I was passing down Great Surrey Street one morning,” Davis is reported to have said, “when just as I came to the place where the Riding House now stands, at the corner of the Magdalen as they call it, I saw Master Saunders packing up his traps. His booth, you see, had been standing there for some three or four days, or thereabouts; and on the parade-waggon I saw a slim young chap with marks of paint—and bad paint it was, for all the world like raddle on the back of a sheep—on his face, tying up some of the canvas. And when I had shook hands with Master Saunders, he turns him right round to this young chap, who had just threw a somerset behind his back, and says, ‘I say, you Mr. King Dick, if you don’t mind what you’re arter, and pack up that wan pretty tight and nimble, we shan’t be off afore to-morrow; and so, you mind your eye, my lad.’ That Mr. King Dick, as Master Saunders called him, was young Carey, that’s now your great Mr. Kean.”
Kean’s engagement with Richardson brings us to a portion of his personal history which is involved in the profoundest mystery. His biographers state that his mother, Anne Carey, was at the time a member of Richardson’s company, that Kean was unaware of the fact when he engaged, and that he left the troupe not very long afterwards, in consequence of his mother claiming and receiving his salary, the last circumstance being said to rest on the authority of Kean himself. Not much credence is due to the story on that account; for the great actor exercised his imagination on the subject of his origin and antecedents as freely as the Josiah Bounderby of the inimitable Dickens. But the results of a patient search among the gatherings relating to Bartholomew Fair in the library of the British Museum clearly prove that Kean’s mother was, when a member of Richardson’s company, the wife of an actor named Carey.