346 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [North Bridge.
Newcastle, to witness what all spoke of with
wonder. There were one day applications for 2,557
places, while there were only 630 of that kind in
the house. Porters and servants had to bivouac
for a night in the streets, on mats and palliasses, in
order that they might get an early chance to the
box-office next day. The gallery doors had to
be guarded by detachments of military, and the
bayonets, it is alleged, did not remain unacquainted
with blood. One day a sailor climbed to a window
in front of the house, for a professional and more
expeditious mode of admission ; but he told afterwards
that he no sooner got into the port-hole
than he was knocked on the head, and tumbled
down the hatchway. Great quantities of hats,
wigs, and shoes, pocket-books, and watches, were
lost in the throng, and it was alleged that a deputation
of London thieves, hearing of the business,
came down to ply their trade.? *
So much were the audience moved and thrilled,
that many ladies fainted, particularly when Mrs
Siddons impersonated Isabella in the Fatal Mar-
. riage, and she had to portray the agony of a wife,
on finding, after a second marriage, that her first
and most loved husband, Biron, is alive ; and concerning
this a curious story is told. A young
Aberdeenshire heiress, Miss Gordon of Gicht, was
borne out of her box in hysterics, screaming the
last words she had caught from the great actress,
?Oh, my Biron ! my Biron ! ? There was something
of an omen in this. In the course of a short
time after she was married to a gentleman whom
she had neither seen nor heard of at the epoch of
Mrs. Siddons? performance, the Honourable John
Byron, and to her it proved a ? fatal marriage,? in
many respects, though she became the mother of
the great Lord Byron. A lady who was present
in the theatre on that night died so recently as
In 1786 there died in hkr apartments in Shakespeare
Square an actress who had come to fulfil an
engagement, Mrs. Baddeley, a lady famous in those
days for her theatrical abilities, her beauty, and the
miseries into which she plunged herself by her imprudence.
Her Ophelia and inany other characters
won the admiratipn of Ganick; but her greatest
performances were Fanny in the Clandestine Ma7-
riage, and Mrs. Beverley in the Gamester.
In I 788 a new patent was procured in the names
of the Duke of Hamilton and Henry Dundas,
afterwards Viscount Melville, with the consent of
Mr. Jackson, at the expense of whom it was taken
out.
1855.
. - _. ~-
? Sketch of the Theatre Royal,? privately printed.
Mr. Jackson, the patentee, having become
bankrupt, Mr. Stephen Kemble leased the theatre
for one year, and among those he engaged in 1792
were Mr. and Mrs. Lee Lewes, of whom Kay gives,
us a curious sketch, as ?Widow Brisk? and the
?Tight Lad ? in the Road to Ruin. They had previously
appeared in Edinburgh in 1787, and became
marked favourites. Towards the close of
their second season Kemble played for a few nights,
while Mrs. Lewes took the parts of Lady Macbeth
and Lady Randolph.
Mrs. Esten, an actress greatly admired, now
became lessee and patentee, while Stepheo Kemble,
disappointed in his efforts to obtain entirely the
Theatre Royal, procured leave to erect a? rival
house, which he called a circus, at the head of
Leith walk, the future site of many successive
theatres. Mrs. Esten succeeded in obtaining a.
decree of the Court of Session to restrain Kemble
from producing plays; but the circus was nevertheless
permanently detrimental to the old theatre,
as it furnished entertainments for many years too
closely akin to theatrical amusements.
The ?? Annual Register ? for I 794 records a riot,
of which this theatre was the scene, at the time
when the French Revolution was at its height.
The play being Charles the Fir.rt, it excited keenly
the controversial spirit of the audience, among
whom a batch of Irish medical students in the pit
made some of their sentiments too audible. Some
gentlemen whose ideas were more monarchical, rose
in the boxes, and insisted that the orchestra should
play God Save the King, and that all should hear it
standing and uncovered; but the young Irish
democrats sat still, with their hats on, and much
violence ensued.
Two nights afterwards a great noise was made all
over the house, and it became evident that much
hostility was being engendered. On the subsequent
Saturday the two sets of people having each found
adherents, met in the house for the express purpose
of having a 4?row,?? and came armed with heavy
sticks, for there was a wild feeling abroad then, and
it required an outlet.
When the democrats refused to pay obeisance to
the National Anthem and respond to the cry of
? Off hats,? they were at once attacked with vigourchiefly
by officers of the Argyleshire Fencibles-and
a desperate fray ensued ; heads were broken and
jaws smashed on both sides, and many were borne
out bleeding, and conveyed away in sedans ; and
conspicuous in the conflict on the Tory side
towered the figure of young Walter Scott, then a
newly-fledged advocate. He never after ceased
to feel a glow of pleasure at the recollection of this
North Bridge.] THE PLAYHOUSE GHOST. 347
youthful frolic ; and it was a rich treat to hear him
tell of a Highland solicitor?s apprentice, who, on
hearing some one express a hope there would be
no blows, exclaimed, ? Plows, by Got ! ? and fell
on. At a distance of thirty years, on an opportunity
occurring of speaking a good word in favour
of an application of this person for a situation in the
Exchequer, Scott felt bound to use his influence,
from a friendly feeling about the Rayhouse Row.?
In 1797 there appeared in the Edinburgh
Theatre Henry Erskine Johnston, known in his
time as ? The Scottish Roscius,? from the circumstance
of his having been born in the High Street,
where his father was a barber ; the latter happened
to be shaving Henry Erskine, when intelligence
was brought that his wife had just presented him
with a son, whom he named from the learned
barrister then under his hands. Old Johnston
afterwards kept an oyster tavern in Shakespeare
Square, where he died in 1826.
Quitting a writer?s oflice in which he was a clerk,
his son came forth as an actor, his favourite parts
being those of Hamlet and Norval, and he was
nightly the attraction of Scottish playgoers, whom
he was wont to astonish by playing the Danish
Prince and Harlequin alternately. A young lady
who saw him acting in a piece called The Storming
of Srhgafatam fell deeply in love with him,
? and after a short, albeit impassioned courtship,
she became Mrs. Johnston, although at that period
only about fifteen.? From Edinburgh he went to
Dublin and elsewhere. We shall have to recur to
him as manager of the rival theatre in the city.
Prior to that his story was a painful one. His
young wife became, as an actress, the rage in
London, and, unhappily for him, yielded to the
temptations thrown in her way-she shone for a
few short years in the theatrical atmosphere of the
English metropolis, and then sank into insignificance,
while poor Johnston became a houseless
and heart-broken wanderer.
The old Theatre Royal had an unpleasant
tenant in the shape of a ghost, which made its appearance,
or rather made itself heard first during
the management of Mr. Jackson. His family
occupied a small house over the box-office and
immediately adjoining the theatre, and it was
alleged that long after the latter had closed and
the last candle been snuffed out, strange noises
pervaded the entire building, as if the mimic
scenes of the plays were being acted over again by
phantoms none could see. As the story spread
and grew, it caused some consternation. What
the real cause of this was has never been explained,
but it occurred for nights at a time.
Between 1794 and 1809 the old theatre was in
B very struggling condition. The debts that encumbered
it prevented the management from
bringing to it really good actors, and the want of
these prevented the debts from being paid OK
For the sum of ;EB,ozo Mr. Jackson, the old
manager, became the ostensible purchaser of the
house in 1800, and for several years after that date
it was conducted by Mr. Rock, who, though an
able and excellent actor, could never succeed in
making it an attractive or paying concern, ?? One
of the few points of his reign worthy of notice was
the appearance here of the Yourg Ros&s, a boy
who, for a brief space, passed as a great actor.
The Edinburgh public viewed with intense interest
this lad playing young Norval on the stage, and the
venerable author of the play blubbering in the
boxes, and declaring that until now his conception
of the character had never been realised.?
Many old favourites came in succession, whose
names are forgotten now. Among these was Mrs.
Charters, a sustainer, with success, of old lady
parts. Her husband, who died in 1798, had been
a comic actor on the same boards, in conjunction
with Mr. Henderson, in 1784. He had by nature
an enormous nose, and was deemed the perfection
of a Bardolph, in which character Kay depicts him,
with a three-cocked hat and knee breeches; and
Henderson, as FalstaK, in long slop-trousers, and
armed with a claymore! Mrs. Charters died in
1807, and her obituary is thus recorded in the
Edinburgh papers of the day :-
?Died here on Monday last, with the wellmerited
reputation of an honest and inoffensive
woman, Mrs. Charters, who has been in this
theatre for more than thirty years. She succeeded
the much-admired Mrs. Webb, and for many years
after that actress left the city was an excellent
substitute in Lady Dacre, Juliet?s Nurse, Deborah
Woodcock, Dorcas, Mrs. Bunale, &c., &c.?
In her own line she was worthily succeeded by
Mrs. Nicol, who retired from the Theatre Royal in
1834, after a brilliant career of twenty-seven years,
and died in 1835. In her old lady parts she was .
ably succeeded by her daughter, Miss Nicol, whose
name is still remembered with honour and regard
by all the old playgoers of Edinburgh.
Another Edinburgh favourite for upwards of
thirty years was Mr. Woods, the leading actor,
whom the public strenuously opposed every attempt
on the part of the management to change.
He retired from the boards in April, 1802, intending
to open an elocution class in the city, but died
in the December of that year. For his benefit in
I 784, he appeared as ?(Young Riot ? in a local
