the dining room.
mr. toole as
"rev. aminadab sleek."
mr. toole as "paul pry."
“There,” said he, “that’s the first time my name ever appeared on a London playbill. I appeared on that occasion for ‘one night only’ at the Haymarket Theatre, where a benefit was being given for Mr. Fred Webster, in July, 1852.” I glanced round the little room, in which are gathered so many memories of the picturesque past, and in which so many of the best known men of the present day are so frequently to be found having a chat with “Dear Old Johnny Toole.” There was an amusing photograph of Toole up to his waist in a hot lake in New Zealand surrounded by a number of Maoris. There was a portrait of himself in his first part in “My Friend the Major.” Charles Matthews, in “My Awful Dad,” smiled across the room at Paul Bedford and Toole, who were standing within a picture frame together. There was a quaint old coloured print representing Grimaldi—for whom Mr. Toole has a great admiration, and whose snuff-box he regards as quite a treasure—in private life, and in his clown’s costume. But to enumerate further the interesting pictures that hang upon the walls of his little dressing-room would be to far exceed my allotted space. I happened on the following night to be delivering a lecture at the Playgoers’ Club on the Church and Stage, and before I left I asked Mr. Toole his opinion on the subject. “Why,” he said, “I think that the Church and the Stage have a great deal in common, and I think that they ought to be great friends, but I don’t see that we need reforming any more than any other branches of the community. For my own part, I have the greatest respect for the clergy, and a great many friends amongst them, and I always go to church when I can. I am very fond of going to Westminster Abbey. I like the music; it’s so solemn, you know—it always stirs me. I was very much amused at an incident which occurred to me the other day. I was playing in York, so on Sunday I went to the Minster as usual; on the following day, a man I knew came up to me and said, quite in good faith, ‘Why, I saw you in church yesterday, and you were behaving quite quietly!’ Just as though he had expected me to go in costume, and behave as though I were on the stage. But that is one of the ridiculous ideas that people get into their heads about actors. Still, I think, all that kind of thing is dying down now-a-days.”
