By F. C. Burnand, London, Bradbury and Co., 1879.
(This originally appeared in Punch.)
Horace Smith.
Whitehall; or, the Days of George IV. Dedicated to Sir Edmund Nagle, K.C.B. London. W. Marsh, 1827.
Horace Smith, one of the authors of Rejected Addresses, wrote a number of historical novels, most of which are now entirely forgotten. One of these was called Brambletye House, to ridicule which Dr. William Maginn wrote Whitehall.
“The author’s object,” said the Quarterly Review, in January 1828, “is to laugh down the Brambletye House species of novel; and for this purpose we are presented with such an historical romance as an author of Brambletye House, flourishing in Barbadoes 200 or 2,000 years hence, we are not certain which, nor is the circumstance of material moment, might fairly be expected to compose of and concerning the personages, manners, and events of the age and country in which we live * * * * The book is, in fact, a series of parodies upon unfortunate Mr. Horace Smith,—and it is paying the author no compliment to say that his mimicry (with all its imperfections) deserves to outlive the ponderous original.”
But Whitehall is itself, almost as heavy and as tedious, as the work it parodies.
Robert Louis Stevenson
The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson. This weird and powerful story was dramatised by Mr. T. Russell Sullivan, and produced at the Lyceum Theatre in August 1888, Mr. Richard Mansfield performed the two title parts.
Another, but very inferior version, was brought out at the Opera Comique, London, by Mr. Bandmann about the same time, which the critics very unkindly laughed at as a ridiculous burlesque. Legal proceedings, however, soon compelled Mr. Bandmann to withdraw his unfortunate adaptation, and hurriedly close the theatre.