p. 329

100.
fine-figured woman with pleasing and hand-
some features which however were of the doll
expression. Miss Brobston did not long con-
tinue on the boards and subsequently became
the wife of Mr. Alexander Wilson the actor
who had been in his time a sea captain a mer-
chant a player and an ingenious manipulator
of stage costume. He was the lessee of the
National theatre in Church street New York
which was burnt down some years ago while
under the proprietorship of Mr. Wallack. It
was a very splendid theatre.

Miss Brobston always moved in a respectable
circle of acquaintance bore an unsullied repu-
tation and was amiable in disposition and lady-
like in manners. We believe she yet lives on
the banks of the Hudson in the peace of her
family fireside.

Mr. Smalley who personated Bob Acres on
this occasion was certainly not adequate to the
task of a legitimate low comedian although
he possessed great and unique talent in his pe-
culiar way. He was very low in stature (about
five feet four or five inches) much lower in
good breeding and was a personification of
ignorance and assumption ; yet he excelled in
some things. In pantomime he went beyond
any other man attempting similar feats. As a
buffo pantomimist he certainly exceeded all
competitors. The great Gabriel Ravel reminds
us in certain efforts more nearly of Smalley
than any like performer. As the Chimpanzee
in "La Perouse" we never saw him equalled--
not by Gougha or Gouffe--who made of the
animal a perfect beast. Smalley as it were
infused a degree of comic sentiment into it and
with extraordinary agility he ran up to the very
apex of the vast elevated dome. He possessed
astonishing powers as a vocalist and had a
voice quite as extensive in register as any tenor
we have ever had among us. He was always
doubly encored in his songs either comic or
serious. He was from Saddler's Wells at Lon-
don a house which at that period was devoted
to spectacle and harlequinades etc. but which
in 1844 was made by poor Mrs. Warner (that
very clever actress) in conjunction with Messrs.
Phelps and Greenwood into a Shaksperian
Temple. Smalley was addicted to revels but
did not continuously indulge in deep potations.
Whenever he did so his conduct was insuffer-
able. He was an adept in pugilism and only
wanted physical power to have made a very
dangerous man to society in that disgraceful
practice. If he had any redeeming virtue it
was an instinct to do a charitable act in a queer
mode. His great natural abilities were dis-
graced by a most perverted nature. He as-
sailed old Mr. Francis one night at Mrs. Rubi-
cam's eating-house (which by-thebye was a
most comfortable symposium retreat) in a most
shameful and cowardly way. In short he be-
came very unpopular after that. As he was a
novel feature at that time in the dramatic world
we have given this sketch of this truly gifted
individual in a more lengthened manner than
the subject would seem to justify. He subse-
quently returned to London where he died soon
after.

Mr. Wilmot the husband of Mrs. Wilmot was
not much of an actor. He had a tolerably fair
voice as a singer. He was a small man and
generally neatly dressed--a specimen of a cock-
ney upper servant. Mr. Cooper I believe
brought him to this country in 1804 as a kind
of valet de chambre. He found him behind the
scenes of Drury Lane. Wilmot attended him
there and Cooper brought him out.

Mrs. Bray in the above cast was formerly
Miss Mullen of the Chesnut street theatre. She
had been in the West Indies where she married
a cousin of Mr. John Bray that we mention
elsewhere. He was there as an actor. She
was a very useful actress indeed in some
things talented and possessed a very excellent
singing voice.

Jacobs was an English Jew and was a clever
vocalist but no actor.

Louis Mestayer played small French parts
very well. He was a Frenchman by birth and
had come early to this country. He had a good
deal of comic talent was an excellent panto-
mimist but his foreign accent and a deficiency
in the knowledge of the English language pre-
vented him from rising in the dramatic scale.
He was a most ingenious mechanic. He was
what may be termed a "funny fellow" and we
have often laughed at his whimsicalities. His
descendants on our stage all evince great
cleverness in various lines. The Chesnut street
theatre was an excellent school for novices in
those days but a sad place for the young
aspirant's ambitious views. There seemed an
insuperable bar to promotion in that ancien
regime to the minor performer. "Once a cap-
tain always a captain--once a private always a
private." That was the maxim of the old Ches-
nut street cabinet. These fogy ideas bred great
discontent among the secondary people--after
the leading performer's grade--the latter of
course being secured in their positions by
compact. The notion of an American having
talent was then deemed eminently utopian.
Some of us wild young Americans would venture
to indulge in prophetic speculations as to the
future of the drama but we were only laughed
at or sneered at. We have lived to see our
vaticinations most triumphantly realized. How
men who came hither from England with
good sense of observation and education having
their own children born here could indulge in
such fantasies I never could understand. But
such is the mystery of national rejudice. When
those children grew up and were about donning
the sock and buskin then did the prejudiced
scales of their parents fall from their eyes and
their professional influences pave the way to
the success of their offspring. We have done
full justice to the old Chesnut street company.
We were raised among them. What we say
emanates from the heart. We reverence the
memory of the members of that company ; we
dwell with delight on their merits ; but candor
and independence oblige as thus simply to de-
clare our sentiments.

In addition to those performers who appeared
upon the opening night at the Olympic the fol-
lowing were attached to the company : --Mrs.

Thorton Mrs. Morris Mr. Southey Miss Ellis
(who made her debut there) Miss E. White Mr.
Foster (who some time after the commence-
ment of the season made his appearance.) and
Miss Hanley.

Mrs. Beaumont a fine dashing actress ap-
peared as Euphrasia in "the Grecian Daughter"
on the 13th of January and played other parts.
But not meeting with adequate support by rea-
son of the weakness of the tragic department
she withdrew and afterward acted an engage-
ment at the Chesnut where the tragic muse yet
resided in respectable force.

Mrs. Beaumont was deemed a very fine act-
ress and drew excellent houses at the Chesnut
street theatre. She was the first exponent here
of the school of acting which introduced melo-
dramatic traits or telling points into legitimate
acting. It is a style that more immediately
pleased the popular sympathies of the day. It
was then new and its energies elicited a reci-
procity of feeling in the audience who had been
used to the dignified calm of the impassioned
school. It was a mode that relieved the cold and
declamatory manner of dialogue and soliloquy
on the stage. If executed with judgment (a
difficult task) it imparts to the loftiest abstrac-
tions of the tragic muse a winning grace wich
would otherwise deaden the sources of feeling
by its frigid classical proprieties which only
satisfy the rigid critic. It offers to our mental
perceptions and natural feelings a brilliant color-
ing of art and nature in picturesque varieties of
delineation captivating our rapt illusions to
the scene not only through its novelty but
its mixed excellence.

Mr. Knox from the Park theatre made his
appearance at the Olympic in January and
performed with Mrs. Beaumont. He was a very
good actor one of the real sterling sort but not
to be relied upon at all times. He married Miss
Ryckman of the Park and went to the West In-
dies where he soon fell a victim to the climate.

On the 11th of January Andrew Allen the
costumer who for many years before his death
on every benefit occasion and indeed in every
position of his various vocations announced
himself as the oldest American actor sported
his figure as the Hon. Tom Shuffleton. He did
thus much for the honorable exquisite--he exci-
ted the risibles of the audience and that is say-
ing a good deal.

Poor Allen made the people laugh more off
the stage than on it We shall note some of
his eccentricities elsewhere.

Shakspere's "Winter's Tale" was produced
for the first time in Philadelphia during this
season with great splendor--Leontus Mr. Mc-
Kenzie ; Antigonus Mr. Tyler ; Hermione Mrs.
Beaumont ; Perdita Miss Brobston.

On the 20th of March Mr. Claude from the
New York theatres made his appearance
here as Romeo. Mrs. Ellis the mother of Miss
Ellis by great diligence succeeded in bring-
ing out her version of "Marmion" at this
theatre before James N. Barker could produce
it at the Chesnut. At Southey's benefit Mr.
Horton made his first appearance in this city as
Lothario ; and at Dwyer's benefit Mr. Fisher