A correspondent, with the not uncommon name of Jones, writes to say that Nesbitt M'Cron's first application for employment to Mr. Joseph Simmons was unsuccessful on 'account 'of his brogue,' and that Nesbitt never did duty as a policeman; that friends interviewed Mr. Simmons, and induced him to give the new man a "show." I am quite aware that Henniker Beaton, in his "Dramatic Stars," mentions the failure of Mr. Nesbitt in his first interview with Mr. Simmons; but I have indisputable evidence that Mr. Simmons, on hearing Nesbitt recite, engaged him on first application. That Nesbitt did police street duty for half a night is also beyond a doubt.
Mr. John Thomas Smith ("Sportsman," 15/6/'04), who (built the first theatre of any size in Melbourne, the Queen's, was a Sydney native, and therefore entitled to some notice in these annals. He was born in 1816, and educated by the historic pedagogue, Mr. Cape. He began life as a cadet or junior clerk in the Bank of Australasia on the foundation of that institution. From the bank he went to the Colonial Stores Department. This clerical work he found unsuitable, and he obtained an appointment as assistant teacher at the Aboriginal Station, then existing on the banks of the Yarra Yarra, where now are the Botanical Gardens. He voyaged to Melbourne at the end of the year 1837 in the steamer James Watt. He did not remain long at the Mission Station, on leaving which, on the advice of Captain Lonsdale, then commandant at the settlement, known as Beargrass, Mr. Smith turned his attention to commercial pursuits, and became manager for John Hodgson (afterwards well known in municipal and Political life). He soon, however, struck out for himself, and before many years had laid the foundations of business that afterwards brought him in a competence.
About the year 1845 he built the Queen's Theatre, amongst its early lessees and managers being George Coppin, Morton King and Charles Young. In 1842 Melbourne was incorporated, and Mr. Smith was elected to a seat in the Council, which I think he held until his death in 1879. Alongside the theatre, and on the corner of Queen-street and Little Bourke-street, was the St. John's Tavern, which Mr. Smith built and occupied while the theatre was in full swing. In 1853 Mr. Smith, then Mayor for the second time, gave a grand fancy dress ball in the theatre, the first of its kind in Victoria. The theatre had to be enlarged for the purpose, and to do so 40,000 English bricks at £21 per 1000 were used. During his third year as Mayor (1854-55) he gave another fancy dress ball in the old Exhibition Building, which stood on the site of the Mint. Of Mr. Smith's good qualities as a citizen it is not necessary here to speak. He gained high honours in the social and political life of his adopted colony. His sister was the mother of the three Gregorys, David, Edward and Charles, well known in cricketing circles in the sixties and seventies, and grandmother of the cricketing Gregorys of today.
To that old Queen's Theatre went Nesbitt M'Cron for a season, but his purse suffered much by his excesses whenever anything in business annoyed him, or he had been led into convivial company. From the Queen's he accepted a star engagement at Adelaide. He was bound under a peculiar arrangement. It was laid down in the bond that he was to receive £100 per week! — For four weeks. There were but twelve performances in the four weeks, and the last night of the twelve was to be for his benefit on terms. No money was to he paid him until the end of the engagement, and if he failed to make his appearance but once, the engagement was broken, and what he had earned declared forfeit. For eleven nights everything went well. The programme was frequently changed, and the house was crowded nightly. The piece selected for his benefit was "The Mountaineers," in which his Octavian was a masterly performance. After rehearsal he was invited to dine with some friends of the management, who professed great regard for the actor. He went to the dinner, drank wine, and became insensible! Word was sent to the theatre, and an actor named Thompson undertook the part. No mention of Mr. Nesbitt's "illness" was made, and no apology offered. The theatre was crammed to the roof, but Nesbitt never received one penny for his eleven nights' work, nor the proceeds of the benefit taken in his name.
Writing on this incident some years ago Mr. S. H. Banks said: "It was, of course, quite an accident that he became drunk, but the circumstances suggest something outside of accident on the part of some one, of which, it is to be hoped, the management was perfectly innocent.'" I shall have something more to say about Mr. Nesbitt later on.
While Nesbitt was absent from the Victoria Theatre, another actor of some note appeared upon the scene. This was Mr. Morton King, who had gained some experience on the English stage. He had come to New South Wales without any intention of acting, his object being to engage in trade. He started as a timber merchant, but the bad times of the early forties brought him down, and perforce he was obliged to return to the stage. He first played at the Victoria for a benefit, the play being "The Fall of Tarquin," Mr. King enacting the role of Brutus. He was then engaged by the management for a round of Shakespearean and other leading characters. In his young days he must have had a good appearance, and was recognized as an actor of merit. When I saw him, years after he had left the stage and was in political life, he had grown stout and florid. As an actor he was rather stilted, "mouthed," and "ranted" a deal, and had a somewhat harsh voice, I saw him act but once, of which more anon. The critics of his time said that he defied all the laws laid down by Hamlet in his instructions to the players. He suffered also by comparison with the recent "star," Nesbitt M'Cron. Mr. King was brought up to the silk trade, which he followed in the old country with success until he became stage struck. When about 30 years of age he came to Sydney, where he met George Coppin, and struck up a life-long friendship. After his appearance at the Victoria Theatre he went to Melbourne and Adelaide, and appeared in both cities, in a round of characters. In 1851 he opened a new theatre at Adelaide, with "The Lady of Lyons," he being the Claude Melnotte. The gold fever threw Mr. King back into business pursuits. Under his proper name, Mark Last King, he joined a Mr. Gibbon in business as auctioneers and estate agents and earned a competence which placed him in easy circumstances, until his death. In 1859 he entered Parliament as member for one of the Bourke County constituencies. The only occasion upon which I saw Mr. King upon the stage was at a performance of "The Merchant of Venice," by members of the Victorian Parliament, in aid of the Shakespeare Scholarship Fund. The performance was given in the Theatre Royal, Mr. King being the Shylock and Mr. George Coppin the Launcelot Gobbo. The other of the early lessees of the old Queen's, in Melbourne, was one well known in Sydney, and who died here, Charles Horace Frisbee Young. By a strange coincidence, one day last week, the same name cropped up in the Sydney Divorce Court. Charles Young, the name he was best known by, was born in Doncaster, in April 1819. His parents followed the dramatic profession, and with them he studied until he made his first appearance in London, the character being Little Pickle in "The Spoiled Child," and Young Norval in Holmes' tragedy of "Douglas." (In this tragedy there is a most extraordinary blunder. The author was a parson, and a man of great learning, yet he speaks of ''Mountains, inaccessible, by shepherds trod.")
Charles Young subsequently appeared as Noah Claypole, in "Oliver Twist." He left the stage for a time and spent four or five years at sea, chiefly in English coasting vessels. In 1843 he arrived, I think, at Hobart Town as second officer of a ship. Anyhow, at whichever port he landed, he met in Hobart Town his sister, the wife of Mr. G. H. Rogers, the well-known comedian. This determined him to again take to the stage and make his home in Australia. He made his first appearance at the Victoria Theatre, Hobart Town, in the character of Michael in "William Tell." He became the lessee of the Queen's Theatre, Melbourne, in 1851, being then in partnership with another old-time low comedian of great merit John P. Hydes.
Charlie Young's first wife was a Miss Thompson, daughter of a Liverpool merchant, her mother being a Miss Cooke, the daughter of James Cooke, who for 30 years was principal bass singer a the Theatre Royal, Drury-lane. Mrs. Young was niece to the late William L. Rede, and cousin to those well-known actresses, Mrs. W. West and Mrs. Waylett. Mr. and Mrs. Thompson came to Australia when the daughter was an infant, settling, I think, in Van Diemen's Land, where her mother, through a reversal of fortune, was again obliged to turn to the stage as a means of living. When but eight years of age, Mrs. Young played juvenile parts with great success. At 15 years of age she married Charles Young, at Launceston, Tasmania, and with Charlie assisted in the management of various theatres in which they had an interest. The couple went to England in 1857, Charlie obtaining an engagement as leading low comedian at the Strand Theatre, while the wife made her first appearance in England at Sadler’s Wells Theatre, under the management of Mr. Samuel Phelps, as Julia an "The Hunchback." She subsequently appeared in a long line of characters at the Haymarket. The English domestic life of the Youngs was not of the happiest. The wife seems to have been of a suspicious jealous character, and Charlie did not appear to have been as circumspect in his conduct as he should have been. The fact that husband and wife were playing at different houses, in totally different lines of business, and in the largest city in the world, "the city of magnificent distances" as far as theatres were concerned, may account for a lot of the trouble Anyhow, Mrs. Charles Young obtained a divorce, and Charlie came South once more. Mrs. Young then married an actor of parts more in her line, Hermann Vezin, from whom, if my memory serves me, she was divorced. On his return to Australia Charlie Young became the most popular low comedian in the colonies and as a burlesque actor had no compeer, which is saying a good deal, considering the dramatic talent which glutted the Australias in the sixties and seventies. We had then Harwood, Richard Stewart, Fred Young, Wigan, Bill Andrews, Harry Jackson, G. H. Rogers, J. C. Lambert, etc. Mr. Charles Young had a sister on the stage, Fanny, a very capable and pleasing actress, wife of a low comedian, who was known as George Washington Daniells. I don't know that Mr. Daniells ever blessed his godfather and godmother; but I do know that much "borak" was pocked at him over his name. He was, however, a good, steady fellow, notwithstanding his cognomen. Mr. Charles Young married secondly a lady who acted as Hebe at William Pitts Garrick's Head Hotel, Bourke street, Melbourne. My last chat with Charley Young was, in company with Sam Banks, at the Museum Hotel, which stood in William-street, Woolloomooloo, alongside the Blind Asylum workshops site (not then built), the exact site being where a large furniture warehouse now stands. The Museum Hotel was a red brick building standing in solitary glory, and a melancholy inn at any time. Charlie was then in bad health, crotchety, disappointed in life and not caring much how the curtain fell. He died there in January 1874.
In 1846-7-8 Mr. Nesbitt was again at the Victoria Theatre, Sydney, erratic occasionally, but still a great favourite with playgoers. Early in 1848, to relieve a strain, Mr. Nesbitt went to Maitland, then a quiet, a very quiet, town. East Maitland, the old Government town, I mean. I don't think West Maitland was then thought of excepting as a camping ground for teamsters. In Maitland in 1848 was an amateur dramatic club of some pretensions. A large building behind the old Fitzroy Arms had been transformed into a very handsome little theatre. Amongst the performing members of the club were Alfred Levien, father, I am told, of Mr. Harry Levien M.L.A., Solomon Cohen, Francis Sandoe John Sheppard, Sam Russell, Samuel Hawker Banks, and many other not half bad actors. The initial performance of the club was "the Rover's Bride" and "The Man With the Carpet Bag," in aid of the hospital funds. When it became known that the great star, Nesbitt, was ruralising in the town, he was waited upon and asked to assist in some of the performances. I think the club played weekly. Mr. Nesbitt made six appearances with the club, first as William Tell, then as Othello, and finally as Master Heywood in Douglas Jerrold's now-forgotten play, "The Rent Day"— the play only is forgotten, the landlord never forgets the rent day. Each of the parts named Mr. Nesbitt played twice, the leading lady being Mrs. Arabin, mentioned in connection with the opening of the Victoria Theatre ten years previously. In Mr. Nesbitt's time the club appears to have played twice a week, the performances in every sense being successful: good houses, consequently plenty of cash, the funds of the hospital benefiting largely, in addition to which the club was enabled to present Mr. Nesbitt with a purse of 50 sovereigns; not quite up to his Adelaide terms, but infinitely better, as he handled the cash.
Soon after his Maitland experience, Mr. Nesbitt, with his wife and family, left Sydney for San Francisco, then bursting upon the world's astonished gaze as a gold producing country of extraordinary wealth. In 1849 crowds of Sydney folk, known on the Pacific Slope as "Sydney Ducks," and not at all beloved, made their way to the fields, so that Nesbitt found many friends amongst the audiences, and he needed them, as events proved. He appeared at the American Theatre, Kearney-street, under the auspices, of Manager Attwater, and under his family name, M'Cron. James Stark and Mrs. Hudson Kirby (who subsequently come to Sydney as Mrs. Stark) were the leading performers. Business was very bad at the time (the end of 1848),
"Forty-nine" had not commenced to roar, but Attwater at once engaged M'Cron to alternate with Stark. The salary for three nights a week was good, and, as if going one better, in bad business it was paid nightly. Stark had been, playing to empty houses. M'Cron filled the theatre, a circumstance which annoyed Mrs. Kirby— who was engaged to be married to Stark— very much. The lady made no disguise of her feelings towards the Sydney actor, though there were others, from Sydney in the company, and left no stone unturned— as the saying is— to get Nesbitt out of the theatre. The outcome of her animosity will be detailed at another time.
(to be continued.)
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