double of Mathews. It was a wonderful piece of mimicry, and always brought down the house.

In the following year (1818) he made his debut in London at Covent Garden, appearing as Iago to the Othello of Charles Young, the Cassio of Charles Kemble, and the Desdemona of Miss O'Neil. He told my mother with great glee in after-years that one of the newspapers, criticising his first appearance, described him as "a small man of Jewish aspect, by no means pleasing." Whether the critic was right can be judged by the portrait prefixed to this volume. Besides a full-length water-color sketch by Deighton in my possession, there are three portraits of my father which I know. The original of the frontispiece is by Lonsdale, in the Garrick Club gallery; another, by Ambrose, belongs to me; while the third is the property of my friend Mr. J. C. Parkinson, and was acquired by him in rather an odd way. It had originally belonged to "Paddy" Green, forming one of the theatrical collection on the walls of Evans's, and was included in the sale of that collection at Christie's. Mr. Parkinson had noted the picture in the catalogue, and, being one of my most intimate friends, desired to buy it. He accordingly attended the sale, bought three other lots, but before the "Frederick Yates" was put up he was called away by a telegram. When he returned, the portrait had been sold. A year or two afterwards another theatrical collection, that of Lacy, the dramatic publisher in the Strand, came to the hammer at Christie's. Again Mr. Parkinson was present; again he saw in the catalogue "Portrait of Fred. Yates," which eventually he bid for and bought. When he got it home, he found, from a label on the back, that it was the same portrait which he had previously missed, and which Lacy had secured during his temporary absence.

I may say here that from persons who knew him well and who had seen him often, Charles Dickens and many celebrated actors among them, I have heard the highest praise of my father's histrionic powers. Notably of his versatility: he played no part badly, and he could play more parts and more diverse parts than most of his com

rades. He was the "stock" Iago of Covent Garden while engaged there, and was reckoned to play it specially well; he was a wonderful Jew, an excellent Frenchman, an impassioned lover, and excelled equally as a cool dandy or a reckless dare-devil. As a proof of this versatility, I note that his second appearance at Covent Garden was as Falstaff, on which occasion Macready played Hotspur for the first time. Dickens, writing to me after seeing Henry Irving, in his early days, as Rawdon Scudamore, in "Hunted Down," says: "He reminded me very much of your father." Dickens also thought Fechter very like my father in many respects. Of Dickens's general opinion of the acting of my father and my mother we shall see more farther on.

In 1825 he went into management on his own account, taking the Adelphi Theatre, with which his name was afterwards so largely identified, in conjunction with Daniel Terry, a clever actor, but who is now best known, if known at all, by his having been honored with the friendship of Sir Walter Scott. Although great success was achieved by the dramatization of popular novels, such as "The Flying Dutchman" and Fenimore Cooper's "Pilot," neither of the partners was a good business man, and the speculation ended in a large loss, Terry's share of which was paid by Scott, who was his surety. I find among my father's papers the following admirable letter from Sir Walter. It has never before been published, and it proves, as Lockhart points out in the famous "Life," how very much easier it was for Scott to give excellent advice than to practise what he preached.

"3 Walter Street, 17th January [no year]. "MY DEAR TERRY,-I duly received your letter, but am a little alarmed at the subject. My good fellow, you will have hard swimming, though wind and tide be with you, considering the large sums which you have to pay up, and that any check which may occupy a great share of your funds may make that hopeful undertaking precarious.

"I doubt greatly whether the Paris undertaking can succeed. The French (sic) have shown a disinclination to English actors; and for the British, they are, generally speaking, persons who care little about their own country or language while they sojourn in a foreign country. There are about twenty-five or thirty theatres in Paris already, and I fear it

would be a very rash speculation to erect or open another. I have no doubt you have taken better advice than mine; but having undertaken one good adventure, chiefly on credit, I think you should pause before being too sanguine in undertaking another.

"After all, if you do determine on this, I will send you an introduction to the secretary of our Ambassador; but I would have you reflect seriously that there is no royal road to riches any more than to wisdom, and that 'Catch is a good dog, but Holdfast a better.' Your fine family ought to make you cautious. If you can clear the Adelphi, you will establish their future; but a failure which might be brought about by an outlay of capital elsewhere would be an irremediable misfortune, anything short of absolute certainty of success (sic).

"I am sure you will not suppose that I would knowingly dissuade you from any beneficial plan for securing or hastening your advancement in life. But I must say, with General Tom Thumb, ‘King Arthur, beware!' Many a thing good in itself becomes ruinous to individuals who have not provided the funds necessary; and a London and Paris theatre sounds very like playing for a gammon, which may be the noblest, but is seldom the wisest game. Kind love to Mrs. Terry. I write in haste, so make allowance for errors of expression. Yours truly, WALTER SCOTT."

Readers of Lockhart will see how exactly Terry and Scott were running on parallel lines. After Terry's retirement in 1828, my father was joined in management by his friend and tutor Charles Mathews, and the palmy days of the Adelphi commenced then and there.

Four years previously Frederick Yates had married Miss Elizabeth Brunton, a young actress holding a good position at Covent Garden, and coming from a well-known theatrical family. Her grandfather, John Brunton, and, after him, her father, also John Brunton, had for very many years had the management of what was known in theatrical parlance as "the Norfolk circuit"-a number of towns in the eastern counties, with Norwich for their principal centre; her aunt, Miss Louisa Brunton, a handsome and clever actress, was married in 1807 to the seventh Earl of Craven; and her uncle, Richard Brunton, was in the army, was present at Waterloo, and died colonel of the 13th Hussars, then Light Dragoons.

A miniature of my mother in her youth, painted by Stump of Cork Street, admirably reproduced in this volume, shows her as a lovely girl; but in my recollection of the last half-thirty years-of her life, her charm lay

rather in the softness and sweetness of her expression than in regularity of feature. Her eyes were blue and rather hard, her complexion was dark; but her mouth, furnished with beautiful teeth, was singularly winning, her laugh infectious, and her voice one of the sweetest ever heard. In 1858, years after she had retired from the stage, Charles Dickens wrote to her in reference to her coming to one of his Readings: "Whenever you can come, your presence will give me a new interest in that evening. No one alive can have more delightful associations with the lightest sound of your voice than I have; and to give you a minute's interest and pleasure, in acknowledgment of the uncountable hours of happiness you gave me when you were a mysterious angel to me, would honestly grat

ify my heart." And again, after her death in 1860, Dickens wrote to me: "You know what a loving and faithful remembrance I always had of your mother as a part of my youth, no more capable of restoration than my youth itself. All the womanly goodness, grace, and beauty of my drama went out with her. To the last, I never could hear her voice without emotion. I think of her as of a beautiful part of my own youth, and the dream that we are all dreaming seems to darken." She was an excellent "all-round" actress, and raised the heroines of melodrama, or "domestic " drama, into a specialty, playing the characters with genuine pathos, wholly unaccompanied by exaggeration. In her private life she was one of the best of women, truly and unaffectedly pious, cheerful, and charitable; a loving, forgiving, and long-suffering wife, a most self-sacrificing and devoted mother.

I do not know the date of my christening, but the record is in the registry of Brompton Church, and the ceremony was performed by the Rev. Thomas Speidell, rector of Crick in Northamptonshire, a friend of Charles Mathews and Theodore Hook. The latter, who was intimate with my father-I can perfectly recollect seeing him at our house-was present at some little festivity on the occasion, as I have in my possession the following note to my mother:

complexion, and the fact that he was mous brewery at Bow, whence issued ndia Pale Ale" which, long before the Allsopp, had an enormous sale in the a splendid fortune for its proprietor.† to me at my baptism were accordingly , which evoked a joke from Theodore at are you going to call the boy?" he "Edmund Hodgson, after his godfaodgson." "What, big Hodgson, Brown

"Yes." "Humph!" said Hook,

better call him Bingo Stingo!" nd during all my early childhood, we Strand, forming part of the Adelphi a house which, during its previous had been visited by Sir Walter Scott, ibed in one of his letters as a curious r than a squirrel's cage, which he (Terto squeeze out of the vacant space of hich is accessible by a most complicated ircases and small passages." A small

I sleep on It," a drama by Buckstone, with my was played at the Adelphi with very great success. you never were in India,

you know not HODGSON'S ALE."

Indian Ale” in the "Ballads of Bon Gaultier."