please buy me a pair of breeches and make a boy of me!"
After the run of "The Wandering Heir" in Liverpool, Mr. Reade organized a company to take it on tour. He commenced operations in Nottingham, where he invited me to come and stay with him for a few days; and a very jolly time we had of it out of the theatre. In it, he was still doomed to be unfortunate, for the houses were wretched. Subsequently, he brought the piece and his company to Leeds; here again he was disappointed, so was I. Anyhow, it was of no use crying over spilt milk, so I proposed that we should go over to the Theatre House in York for two or three weeks.
Dear old York is a charming city at all times, but in the summer it is delightful. This holiday is one of the pleasantest recollections of my life: we both cast care to the winds, and gave ourselves up to idleness and enjoyment. In the few brief holidays of my busy life, like a truant school-boy I have always felt that I had broken bounds, and that if I were found out I should be chained and secured, perhaps beaten, before I was driven back to my books; and I believe this was what Reade felt at that time. Certainly, he was the biggest boy in the house, always a jest on his tongue, always a laugh on his lips. Day by day we explored the antiquities of the city and the neighborhood. Then there was driving, boating, and swimming. In those days he stripped like Hercules, and easily knocked me out of time in swimming, though in walking I certainly had the best of it. At night we returned, hungry as hunters; and so, with good company, good fare, quaint stories, honest mirth, and song, the joyous hours sped fast, till the bell of the old minster reminded us that it was time to go to rest, if we meant to get up at a reasonable hour on the morrow. The days passed all too quickly. He had to return to take charge of his company, and I had to go somewhere to act,—I forget where now. The night before we left York, a strange and remarkable coincidence occurred. As we strolled along in the moonlight, by the river's bank, he told us a terrible story of a man who had married a servant of his. There was a child born of the union, a little boy of four or five. The poor servant had left the child with her mother. The husband, a morose and drunken ruffian, who when he was not drunk was mad, quarrelled with his wife, and in a fit of drunken frenzy took the child away. Some weeks after, the poor little fellow was found strangled in a cellar in St. Giles's. Suspicion, of course, attached to the father, but he had disappeared; no trace of him could be found. The poor mother left Mr. Reade's service, drooped, and died. At this stage of the story we had approached the bridge. Just under the archway a strange object was gently floating up and down in the water, under the moonbeams. It was the dead face of the man, the very man he had been talking about.
The next day we left York.
Up to the very last, Mr. Reade regarded this little holiday as a green spot in his life. Only last summer, after a fit of despondency, he brightened up and exclaimed, "Ah, John! if we could only recall the days and nights at York, at Lion House,[1]—the wit, the dalliance, the health, the strength, the appetite, the happy hours! Ah me! ah me! the days that are no more!"
The tour of "The Wandering Heir" continued to be unsatisfactory. The want of attraction in the piece Reade charged to the stupidity of the public. He became quite obstinate on the subject, and, to prove the provincial public wrong, he took the Queen's Theatre, then in the market, and brought out the unfortunate play there. It commenced admirably, but got so dreadfully out of latitude at the end that just as it was in sight of port—smash, it came to pieces. The result, as usual, was a considerable loss. Soon after this he telegraphed me to dine with him at the Garrick, to discuss an important proposal, which turned out to be that I should join him in manage-
- ↑ My house at Leeds.
