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YOUNG, POWER, AND LEVER

Of how many years of entertainment and genial amusement to me was that night the forerunner. I can also remember one of the first performances of the Freischütz, or, as it was then popularly called, the Der Freischütz, in London. Likewise some kind of musical burlesque, in which Madame Vestris sang all the favourite airs of that charming opera, showing how the nurse lulled her bantling to sleep, how the footman blacked the shoes, and how the housemaid trundled the mop, to the soft strains of the various choruses of Weber’s beautiful masterpiece. In those far-off days there was no elaborately-painted drop to give a cheerful termination to the end of the entertainment, but a gloomy, dark-green baize curtain, with which my spirits fell at the same moment, betokening a termination to that night’s joy; and who could tell when the delight-giving cousin would be again propitious. I amused my friend Mr Irving^[10] by telling him one day that I had been brought up in the stage-box at his theatre, which was then the property of our cousin, Lord Exeter. Yes, it was there I first saw dear Charles Young in The Stranger, and cried so bitterly that my red and swollen eyes prevented my appearing at the ball to which I had been looking forward for weeks; it was then that I made acquaintance with Power, one of the best Irishmen that ever trod or tripped the stage. I say this, not excepting the inimitable Boucicault himself, or my true friend and fellow-actor, Charles Lever. But I must pull up, or my dramatic hobby will take the bit in his mouth, and convert every theatre into Astley’s. Adorable Astley’s!—what a treat you were to me, and how I loved Mazeppa and his horse, the friends of so many years, who continued to urge on his wild career far beyond the allotted span of an equine life; how often have I watched the dear old beast swimming across the mighty rushing river after the tempting bin of corn, visible to my eyes from a side-box.