Charles Dillon (2)

Charles Church, called Dillon, or perhaps Charles John Church was an unsophisticated actor; not classically trained, nor the pupil of a great actor turned elocutionist, but simply a man who gained, by long experience as a strolling player, the basics of acting and pleasing a crowd.

Of his acting not much is written but what is written stands out, and is repeated over and over again: his Belphegor. The play from which the character draws its fame, in its English version was called "Belphegor: the Mountbank" or "Belphegor, or the Pride of Birth" or "Belphegor; Wife's Inconstancy" and the iteration goes on. It was a piece called "Paillasse" by D'Ennery who adapted it for the stage for Frédéric Lemaître. Such was its success that it crossed the channel in translation.

Its plot is simple; a strolling player, a Mountebank arrives — with his wife — at a nobleman's house during a fair, and the wife is informed by the Nobleman's trusted counsellor, that she is the daughter of that nobleman and is thus advised to abandon her husband through a legal dissolution, and to take up her station. Both Belphegor and his wife laugh at the suggestion and leave, only to have the nobleman's counsellor pursue, and convince the wife to return with him, using the leverage of her sick daughter to achieve his aim.

Belphegor is then hounded from town to village, in company of his faithful son. Belphegor eventually returns — disguised — to the home of the nobleman to find that the companion that has been the nobleman's counsel was an escaped convict and confidence trickster, who is then exposed by Belphegor.

Finally it is revealed that it is really Belphegor, the Mountebank himself, who is the long lost child of the desperate nobleman.

Dillon is always spoken of as having portrayed that role with such anguish and emotion, that it moved all who saw the performance. What is interesting is that the well from which the emotion was draw may well have been Dillon's childhood itself. Born is Diss, Norfolk, his mother was betrayed by a strolling player and then abandoned. This strolling player we think, was one Arthur Church, and Charles' mother was then taken in by another kinder actor, who according to Charles himself was named Dillon and whose kindness he relayed by carrying his name. One has to wonder about the resonant power of Dillon's own domestic tragedy, and how he turned that chaos into a force that was focussed through various 'abandonment and wandering' roles.

He was also known for his King Lear, which is no surprise, given the familiar nature of the anguish that Dillon obviously carried with him throughout his life.

(Ben Webster at the 1851 Adelphi version)