future, purchased, at a very cheap rate, a quantity of timber that had been used as scaffolding at the funeral of Augusta, Duchess Dowager of Wales. He then bided his time till 1780, when an election for Westminster took place. It having been the custom, at the close of elections, for the mob to destroy and make bonfires of the hustings, Astley, mingling in the crowd, represented that as he would give beer for the timber, if it were carried to his establishment, it would be a more eligible mode of disposing of it than burning. The hint was taken, and with the material thus cheaply obtained, Astley covered in and completely remodelled the Riding School, adding a stage, two tier of boxes, pit, and gallery. But as this was the first attempt to exhibit horsemanship in a covered building, and the bare idea of doing so was, at the time, considered preposterously absurd, he, as a sort of compromise with public opinion, caused the dome-shaped roof to be painted with representations of branches and leaves of trees, and gave the new edifice the airy appellation of “The Royal Grove.”
The discoveries and death of Captain Cook caused a remarkable sensation in England, not long after the time that Astley, by building the Royal Grove, was enabled to perform in the winter season, and by candle-light. So, with the originality of genius—for who else would ever have thought of such a thing!—he brought out a grand equestrian dramatic spectacle, entitled “The Death of Captain Cook.” However strange to our minds may be the idea of the great discoverer sailing round the world, and wooing the dusky maids of ocean isles, mounted on a white charger, the piece was most successful, forming a very important step in the ladder by which the quondam sergeant-major rose to fame and fortune. And when it had nearly run out in London, Astley, with the energy of a soldier, carried it—men, horses, and properties—over to Dublin, thus reaping a second golden harvest from what may not be inaptly termed his horse-marine entertainment.
One of Astley’s objects in constructing his new building was to be enabled to give up his annual winter visits to France; but the proprietors of the patent theatres raising formidable legal objections to winter entertainments and dramatic representations at the Royal Grove, he was compelled to continue his journeys to Paris. And Louis XVI. presenting him with a piece of ground in the Fauxbourg du Temple, he erected a circus there, long since known as Franconi’s. The regulations of the Parisian police not allowing him to have a stage, and as he could not well perform feats of tumbling, &c., without one, he ingeniously evaded the law by constructing a platform in several pieces, which in a few moments could be fixed together and supported on horses’ backs. A woodcut of this curious stage, supported by sixteen horses, was appended to his French bills, one of which, now before the writer, merely states:
Par Permission du Roi.—Exercises surprenans des Sieurs Astley. Rue de Fauxbourg du Temple.
Master Astley, whose first appearance has already been noticed, was now a very handsome young man, as agile and graceful as Vestris, and was frequently invited to perform before the Court at Versailles. The unfortunate Marie Antoinette presented him with a gold medal, studded round with diamonds.
The breaking out of the French Revolution put an end to Astley’s Parisian performances; so, building a circus in Dublin, he carried on his winter campaigns in Ireland; and in 1792 he gave the principal cares and management of the business up to his son.
In the following year, war having broken out with France, the Duke of York was sent on the Continent in command of the British Army; and Astley, who had made himself very useful in superintending the embarkation of the cavalry and artillery horses, went with his Royal Highness. In what character or capacity Astley was employed at this time, he never divulged, but there can be no doubt that public rumour was correct in stating, that he had been expressly commissioned by the King to take care of the Duke. His old regiment, the Fifteenth, was in the same army, and Astley, knowing by experience the wants of actual service, presented the men with a large supply of needles, thread, buttons, bristles, twine, leather—everything, in short, requisite in mending clothes and shoes. He also purchased a large quantity of flannel, and setting all the females employed at the Royal Grove to work, they soon made a warm waistcoat for every man of the regiment; and in a corner of each garment there was sewn what Astley termed “a friend in need,” in other words, a splendid shilling. This patriotic generosity being duly chronicled in the newspapers of the period, did not, as may readily be imagined, lessen the popularity of the Royal Grove, or the nightly receipts of cash taken at the doors of that place of entertainment.
In 1794 Astley was suddenly recalled from the Continent by the total destruction of the Royal Grove and nineteen adjoining houses by fire. Nothing daunted, he immediately commenced to rebuild it on a more elegant and extended scale, and on the following Easter opened the new house, naming it the Amphitheatre of Arts.
At the peace of Amiens, in 1803, Astley went to Paris, and finding that the circus he had erected in the Fauxbourg du Temple had been used as a barrack by the Revolutionary government, he petitioned Bonaparte, then First Consul, for compensation. To the surprise of every one, the petition was favourably received, and compensation awarded. But scarcely had the money been paid ere hostilities again broke out, and all Englishmen in France were subjected to a long and painful detention as prisoners of war. By a rare union, however, of cunning and courage, Astley, disguised as an invalid French officer, and furnished with a false passport, made his way to the immediate vicinity of the frontier. There, at a certain favourable point on the road, a brace of pistols presented to the heads of the astonished postilions induced them to drive speedily across the boundary line, and our adventurer soon found himself safe on neutral soil. Though favoured by fortune in this bold escape from a cruel imprison-
