350 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [North Bridge.
. of the greatest hits in the annals of the Theatre
Royal; and it was announced in the following
day?s advertisements that the success had been so
triumphant that it would be repeated ?every
evening till further notice;? yet it ran only fortyone
nights consecutively, which seems trifling when
compared with the run of many pieces in London.
But the national element delighted the people ;
Mr. Homerton?s dignified Rob Roy, Mrs. Renaud?s
tragic dignity as Helen Macgregor (always an unattractive
part), Duff?s Dougal Cratur, Murray?s
Captain Thornton, and more than all, the Bailie
Jarvie of old Mackay (who now rests in the Calton
burying-ground) were loudly extolled. Sir Walter
Scott was in the boxes with his whole family,
and his loud laugh was heard from time to time,
and he ever after declared that the Bailie was
a complete realisation of his own conception of
the character. All the Waverley dramas, as they
were named, followed in quick succession; the
Scottish feeling of the plays, and the music that
went with them, completed their success ; the
treasury was filled well-nigh to overflowing, and
Mrs. Henry Siddons had no more difficulties with
her patent or lease.
When George IV. visited Edinburgh in August,
$822, he ordered Rob Roy to be played at this
house on the 27th, and scenes such as it had never
presented before were exhibited both within and
witbout the edifice. At an early hour in the
morning vast crowds assembled at every door, and
the rain which fell in torrents till six in the evening
had no effect in diminishing their numbers, and
when the doors were slowly opened, the rush for a
moment was so tremendous that most serious ap
prehensions were entertained, but no lives were
lost ; while the boxes had been let in such a way
as to preclude all reasonable ground of complaint.
In the pit and galleries the audience were so
closely packed, that it would have been difficult,
according to eye-witnesses, to introduce even the
point of a sabre between any two. All the wealth,
rank, and beauty of Scotland, filled the boxes, and
the waving of tartan plaids and plumed bonnets
produced hurricanes of acclamation long before the
arrival of the king, who occupied a species of
throne in the centre box, and behind him stood
the Marquis of Montrose, the Earl of Fife, and
other nobles. He wore the uniform of a marshal,
and at his entrance nearly the entire audience
joined the orchestra in the national anthem.
On this night Mr. Calcraft (long a Dublin
manager, and formerly an officer of cavalry) played
Rob Roy, and Mrs. Henry Siddons was Diana
Vernon; but the king was observed to applaud
the faithful Dougal as much as any of the others.
Up to 1851 Rub Roy had been acted about four
hundred times in this house; but at Perth, in
1829, it was represented by Ryder?s company for
five hundred nights ! One of the original cast of
the play was ? Old Miss Nicol,? as she was named
in latter years, who then took the part of the girl
Mattie.
To attempt to enumerate all the stars who came
in quick succession to the boards of the old Royal
(as the facilities for travel by land and sea increased)
would be a vain task, but the names of a
few may suffice. Between 1820 and 1830 there
were Vandenhoff, for tragedy, as Sir Giles Overreach,
and Sir William Wallace in the Battle of
Falkirk, &c. ; Jones for Mercutio and Charles
Surface ; the bulky Denham with his thick voice to
play JamesVI. to Murray?s Jingling Geordie; Mason
and Stanley, both excellent in comedy, though
well-nigh forgotten now; and always, of course,
Mrs. Henry Siddons, ?(beautiful and graceful, with
a voice which seemed to penetrate the audience ; ?
and there were Mrs. Renaud for tragedy, Mrs.
Nicol as a leading old lady, Miss Paton, and Miss
Noel with her Scottish melodies ; while the scenery
amid which they moved came from the master-hand
of David Roberts, ?and the orchestra included
hautbois of Mr. T. Fraser, which had witched the
soul and flooded the eyes of Burns.? Among
other favourites was Miss M. Tree (sister of Ellen
the ftiture Mrs. Charles Kean), who used to delight
the playgoers with her Rosina in the Barber d
SmiZZe, or the Maid of Milan, till she retired in
1825, on her mamage with Mr. Bradshaw, some
time M.P. for Canterbury.
Terry, Sinclair, and Russell, were among the
stars in those days. The last took such characters
as Sir Giles Overreach. On his re-appearance
in 1823, after several years? absence, ?to
our surprise,? says the Edinburgh Adverfiser, ?the
audience was thin, but among them we noticed
Sir Walter Scott? Thither came also Maria Foote
(afterwards Countess of Harrington), who took
with success such parts as Rosalind, Imogen, and
Beatrice.
The Edinburgh Theatrical Fund, for the relief
of decayed actors, was instituted at this prosperous
time, and at its first dinner in February, 1827,
under the presidency of Lord Meadowbank, Sir
Walter Scott, ever the player?s friend, avowed
himself, as most readers know, the author of the
? Waverley Novels.? Though it had been shrewdly
suspected by many before, ?(the rapturous feeling
of the company, on hearing the momentous Secret
let for@ from his own lips,? says a writer, ? no one
North Bridge.] MR. AND MRS. WYNDHAM. 351
who was present can ever forget. Scott, it may be
remarked, was sensible to various impulses which
are utterly blank to other men. There were associations
about Mr. Murray and his sister as ? come
of Scotland?s gentle bluid? and the grandchildren
of a man prominent in the Forty-five which helped
not a little to give him that strong and peculiar
interest in the Theatre Royal, which he constantly
displayed from 1809 downwards.?
The association here refeAed to was the circumstance
that Mrs. Henry Siddons and her brother
were the grandchildren of John Murray of Broughton,
who was secretary to Prince Charles Edward,
and gained a somewhat unenviable notoriety by
turning king?s evidence against Lord Lovat and
others, when he was taken prisoner subsequent to
the battle of Culloden.
Mrs. Henry Siddons? twenty-one years of the
patent ended in 1830; but her completion of
twenty-one annual payments of L2,ooo to the
representatives of Mr. John Jackson made her
sole proprietor of the house; and on the 29th of
March she took farewell of the Edinburgh stage,
in the character of Lady Townley in the Prmuked
Husband, and retired, into private life, carrying
with her, as we are told, ?the good wishes of all
in Edinburgh, for they had recognised in her not
merely the accomplished actress, but the good
mother, the refined lady, and the irreproachable
member of society.?
Her brother, Mr, Murray, obtaining a renewal of
the patent, leased the house from her for twentyone
ye?ars; but, save Rob Roy and Gzry Manner-
&, the day of the Waverley dramas was past, yet
to him the speculation did not prove an unsuccessful
one; and the supernumerary house, the Adelphi
in Leith Walk, was alike a rival, and a dead weight
on his hands, till, on the expiring of his lease,
he retired, in the zenith of his favour with the
Edinburgh public, in 1851, and with a moderate
competency, withdrew to St. Andrews, where he
died not long after.
After being let for a brief period to Mr. Lloyd
the comedian, Mr. Rollinson, and Mr. Leslie, all
of whom failed to make the speculation a paying
one, it passed into the management of its last lessees,
Mr. and Mrs. R. H. Wyndham, the greatest
favourites, as managers, and in public and private
life, that the Royal had ever possessed, not even
excepting Mrs. Henry Siddons.
Mr. Wyndham, a gentleman by education and
position, who adopted the stage by taste as a profession,
came to Edinburgh, about 1845, as a
member of Mr. Murray?s company, to support Miss
Helen Faucit, and after being in management at
,
*
the Adelphi, he obtained that of the Royal in
succession to Messrs. Rollinson and Leslie, and,
as managed by him and Mrs. Wyndham, it
speedily attained the rank and character of
one of the best-conducted theatres in the three
kingdoms. The former, always brilliant in light or
genteel comedy, was equally pleasing and powerful
in his favourite delineations of Irish character,
while Mrs. Wyndham was ever most touching and
pathetic in all tender, wifely, and motherly parts,
and could take with equal ease and excellence
Peg Woffington or Mrs. Haller, Widow Smilie or
Lady Macbeth.
Under their rkiime, the scenery and properties
attained a pitch of artistic excellence of which
their predecessors could have had not the slightest
conception; and some of the Waverley dramas
were set upon the stage with a magnificence and
correctness never before attempted. While pleasing
the public with a constant variety, these, the
last lessees of this famous old theatre, did much
for the intellectual enlightenment of Edinburgh by
producing upon their boards all the leading members
of the profession from London, and also
giving the citizens the full benefit of Italian opera
almost yearly.
Kean and Robson, Helen Faucit, old Paul
Bedford in conjunction with Wright, and latterly
J. L. Toole, the unfortunate Gustavus V. Brooke,
Madame Celeste, Alfred Wigan, Mrs. Stirling,
Sothern, Mesdames Ristori and Titiens, Mario and
Giuglini, and all the most famous artistes in every
branch of the modern drama, actors and singers,
were introduced to the Edinburgh public again
and again ; and, though last, not least in stature,
Sir William Don, of Newton-Don, ? the eccentric
Baronet.?
In recognition of these services, and their own
worth, a magnificent service of plate was presented
to them in 1869. It was unquestionably under
Mr. Wyndham?s management that the Edinburgh
stage was first raised to a perfect level with the
stages of London and Dublin, and it was under
his auspices that both Toole the comedian and
Irving the tragedian first made a name an the
boards.
The acquisition of the site occupied by the old
theatre by the Government for the sum of A5000
for the erection of a new General Post Office thereon,
though the latter had long been most necessary,
and the former was far from being an ornament to
the city, was a source of some excitement, and of
much regret to all old playgoers; and when the
night came t k t the curtain of fate was to close
upon it, after a chequered course of niriety years,
