mr. j. l. toole.
There was Barnaby Rudge himself, there was his supernaturally wicked old raven; old Joe Willet, the landlord, stood smoking in his shirt-sleeves, while pretty Dolly Varden herself was tripping down to town. “There,” said my host, “isn’t that clever? It stood for many years at the ‘Hen and Chickens’ in Birmingham, and Dickens used to admire it very much when he used to visit that town on his reading tours.” Two little Japanese figures, reposing upon the top of the case which contained this model, looked down upon Mr. Toole as he stood beneath them. He set their arms and heads moving, observing, as he did so, “Often, when I am studying a part, I set those little figures going, they do for the public applauding.” In the study itself, the walls were thickly hung with pictorial reminiscences—chiefly of the theatrical past. There were portraits of Macready in character, with his small, neat writing beneath; there was Charles Matthews in some character as a boy, and a portrait of old John Reeve, a celebrated comedian in his day; there was Mr. Toole as Paw Clawdian; there was Liston as Paul Pry; there were any amount of portraits of his dear old friend Henry Irving. I was much interested in an old theatrical bill of 1813 announcing Edmund Kean’s appearance as Hamlet. And then Mr. Toole brought in a large framed letter which hung up in the hall. It was a letter from Thackeray to Charles Matthews when he was lessee of Covent Garden Theatre, and it was written on the occasion of the Queen’s first state visit to Covent Garden after her marriage in 1840.
the hall.
A pen and ink sketch by Thackeray adorned a large half of the page, in which he had represented Her Majesty with an enormous crown upon her head, and two or three queer sceptres in her hand, talking to the Prince Consort, who sat with her in the royal box, in the rear of which stood the members of the royal suite. In another corner of the hall there hung a letter, carefully framed, which bore the signature of “Nelson and Brontë,” and close beside it there was a clever pencil sketch by George Cruikshank, representing a London ’bus full of people of that period, and with the price, one shilling, marked up in large figures outside it—a curious glimpse of bygone days. In Mr. Toole’s dining room we found that clever lady artist, Folkard, who some time ago painted so faithful a likeness of old Mrs. Keeley, engaged in giving the finishing touches to an equally admirable portrait of my genial host himself.
mr. toole in "artful cards."
The dining room, no less than the other room, was crammed with “virtuous and bigoted articles.” There was some beautiful old china which had once belonged to Charles Dickens, and some handsome ivory elephants which Mr. Toole had brought with him from Columbo stood upon the sideboard. A very lovely oil painting by Keeley Halswelle, not in the least in his usual style, represented a far stretch of country, over the blue sky of which vast cumuli were massing themselves in snowy piles. There was a portrait, by Clint, of Stephen Kemble, who, like Mark Lemon, used to play Falstaff without padding. A painting of Joseph Jefferson, the celebrated American Rip Van Winkle, reminded me of a splendid picture of his which I always used to admire so much in the “Players’ Club” in New York, and I observed, as Mr. Toole pointed out a clever sketch by Mr. Weedon Grossmith, that it was curious to notice how many actors were also good painters. “Why, yes,” replied Toole with a quizzical smile, “I have painted a good many years myself.” “Oh, indeed,” said I—not immediately catching his meaning—“may I ask what you have painted?” “My face,” said he, with an amused chuckle of much enjoyment at having caught me.
mr. toole and his
japanese audience.