The few glimpses we have had of his private character do not prepare us to expect much elegance or refinement in Incledon, off or on the stage. Indeed, it must be confessed that he was vain, coarse, irritable at times, and dissipated; but he had the redeeming traits of frankness and generosity; and allowances must be made for his having lived in 'three-bottle' days. Cyrus Redding tells an amusing story of Incledon's having been invited to a dinner at 'The Pope's Head' Inn, Plymouth, in order that he might be induced to entertain the company afterwards. The wine of course circulated freely, and Incledon, as was his wont, freely partook of it. He attempted a recitation of the lines from 'Samson Agonistes,' beginning 'Total eclipse!' but the good cheer had proved too much for his wits, his head sank upon his shoulders, and he became for a time totally eclipsed himself:—he had been 'dining out' daily, for a week before. It was, however (though he drank hard), very rarely that he succumbed like this. And Fitz Ball (Edward Ball)—who, by the way, mentions that latterly Incledon got very fat—tells a story which may be fitly inserted here. Being once at Bury St. Edmund's, whilst some military ball was going on, Incledon, well in his cups, said something to a young officer about 'featherbed captains,' which the military hero chose to regard as a personal affront, and accordingly, accompanied by some friends (so the story goes), besieged Incledon's room the next morning, and demanded satisfaction. In the first place, there was great difficulty about waking the singer from his deep, vinous slumbers; and when at last he did awake, he was quite at a loss to know why his privacy had been invaded. On learning, however, that 'satisfaction' was what was wanted, he sat up in bed and sang, in his most exquisite manner, 'Black-eyed Susan,' so that there was at last not a dry eye in the room. When he had finished, 'There, my fine fellow!' said Incledon blandly, 'that has satisfied thousands—let it satisfy you;' and, putting out his hand, it was as generously taken as it was offered.
Some accounts give Incledon three wives, others two; but those who are at all acquainted with the history of the stage, seventy or eighty years ago, will admit that this is a point upon which Incledon himself might possibly not have been very clear. There was one 'Mrs. Incledon,' however, who, like the songster himself, was very fond of good living; and there is a story that once, when Incledon was entertaining at dinner, at his house, No. 13, Brompton Crescent, his friend and medical adviser, Dr. Moseley of Chelsea Hospital, and two or three others, the dish of fish was artfully so arranged that a fine dory (to which the host and hostess were both very partial) was completely overlaid by herrings; and it was not until the guests had all been helped to the humbler fish, that the gourmands' favourite was—as if by accident—discovered. On this memorable occasion we hear that 'pink and white champagne' were handed round; that on its production, the trio 'Beviamo tutte tre' was sung by Shield, Parkes, and Incledon, with appropriate action; and that, when the conversation turned upon the sort of deaths which the Chelsea veterans died, Incledon, delighted with Dr. Moseley's satisfactory account of them, got up and persuaded all who were present to join in singing Dr. Callcott's noble glee, 'Peace to the Souls of the Heroes!'
Incledon, though he made plenty of money, was often pecuniarily embarrassed, owing no doubt to that 'lax and sailor-like twist of mind' which, as Leigh Hunt says, always hung about him. An instance of this occurs in a letter preserved among the Egerton MSS., in which Incledon, writing to the magniloquent George Robins, from Ipswich, in February, 1816, tells how he had been arrested a few days before, at Colchester, for £19, by a Mr. Marriot of Fleet Street, for the balance of a bill of over £100. The singer had recently taken a house, and had been put to great expense in furnishing it; and his object in writing to Robins was to get him to contradict, in London, the report that 'Incledon was about to fly from the kingdom.' He adds that he was then going on to Norwich, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, and Dublin, and finishes by saying that his wife was with him, and that his being 'arrested has given my Poor Little Woman so great a Shock that she will not soon get over. She is now very Ill, and continually in Tears.' He nevertheless was supposed[50] to have been worth £8,000 when he died, leaving this third wife a widow with three children. He was buried in Hampstead churchyard, on the 20th February, 1826, aged sixty-four, by the side of his first and second wives, and five of their children.
So lived and so died Charley Incledon—'generous as a prince,' as Charles Mathews wrote of him, 'never ashamed of his antecedents;' and as Dowton says,
'Unrivalled in his native minstrelsy.'
One of his sons, Charles, who had been unsuccessful as a farmer near Bury St. Edmund's, attempted, under Braham's auspices, to succeed as a singer: he made his début either as Hawthorn in 'Love in a Village,' or as Young Meadows, at Covent Garden, on the 3rd October, 1829; but in this attempt, too, the poor fellow (who had a large family, and who had, moreover, a strong objection to the stage on moral and religious grounds) failed. Another son, Frank, became a well-to-do London tradesman; and a daughter married well, and settled in Sunderland.