Normally I wax prosaic about a subject, but my thoughts upon the poor player hereunder described in an Australian obituary, will come later, when his portrait is delivered.
"Connected with the epoch of which I speak there rises before me the image of an actor who has sometimes been called the English Lemaitre. This was the unfortunate Charles Dillon, who certainly possessd the gift of genius, although, as in the case of his great French prototype, it was accompanied by infirmities which clouded its brightness and shortened his life.
He was a singularly ugly man. with no forehead worth speaking of, and in order to remedy nature's oversight in this respect, he was accustomed to shave off a portion of his front hair; his nose was nondescript, his eyes glittered with a light that could be either mirthful or baleful, according to the mood of the moment, and a heavy black moustache concealed a vast mouth, that bristled with what might be called fangs rather than teeth. Yet when you saw him in Belphegor, -or in King Lear, upon the stage, or you listened to his conversation, overturning with humorous anecdote, outside of the theatre, you forgot all about his ordinary features.
His was born at Diss, in Suffolk, in the year 1819, and commenced his career in Richardson's Theatre, which used to travel from fair to fair in England, and present to a succession of critical audiences a thrilling drama, a dance, and a pantomime in the short space of 20 miuutes. Charles Dillon's mother had been betrayed, deserted, and left starve by a strolling player named Church; and the boy adopted the name of a strolling actor who had befriended him. On quitting Richardson's booth, he connected himself with a sucession of provincial companies, and had his full share of the hardships and privations which were — at that time — inseparable from such a career.
During an engagement at Stafford he played Iago to Brooke's Othello, and the Desdemona of the tragedy was a pretty brunette named Clara Conquest, who had not long before consented to become Mrs. Dillon. Having acquired an established reputation in Edinburgh, Dublin, Liverpool, and Manchester, he procured an engagement in London, where he made his first appearance at Sadler's Wells Theatre, on the 21st of April, 1850. The character he chose was that in which, a few years later, he presented himself to a Melbourne audience at the Theatre Royal, namely, that of Belphegor, in a translation of "Paillasse." Next morning The Times declared that his acting would " become a topic of conversation amongst all whose discourse turned upon the merits of plays and players." Charles Dillon's reputation was made.
Less than six months afterwards he became the lessee of the Lyceum, where his company included Miss Marie Wilton (Mrs. Bancroft), J. L. Toole, Miss Woolgar, and Mr. William Brough; and the highest critical authorities in London, The Times, The Daily News, the Saturday Review, the Spectator, and the Atheneum, concurred in praising his Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth, Louis the Eleventh, D’Artagnan, and Claude Melnotte. With his careless and thriftless habits and complete ignorance of finance it was inevitable that Dillon should get into difficulties, and when his creditors became importunate and he was impressed with the fear of being arrested, he fled to the United States. On the voyage he had the misfortune to break his leg in two places daring a violent storm, and he landed in New York penniless and a cripple.
He procured an engagement at Wallack's Theatre, and limped out to the stage as Belphegor to confront a thin and chilly audience. But he vindicated his powers as an actor, and gained a fair amount of fame, but very little money. Thence he stretched across the country to California and Nevada, and, having scraped together the means of paying his passage to Australia, came out here, where he made a great hit in his favourite character ot the starving mountebank. I remember few things more exquisite in their kind than his simple, natural expression of silent anguish and hopeless sorrow in the great scene where the famishing man, sublime in his friendless misery, and utterly broken down with grief and hunger, heroically strove to shake himself together, and to struggle through his exhibition of professional buffoonery in the public street. His little bit of business with the shawl, after he had made the discovery that the wife he adored had abandoned him, was almost agonising in its silent pathos.
I think his Lear came next in point of high quality. His elocution betrayed at times a want of culture and refinement, but the more passionate scenes of the tragedy atoned for all deficiencies. In the delivery of that magnificent imprecation beginning, " Hear, Nature, hear," the actor displayed an immensity of feeling, an impetuosity of manner, a dreadful energy of purpose, and a pathos of expression which sent a thrill through the spectators, and the storm of passion which spent itself in a rain of tears brought the water into many eyes. When, stunned by the incredible ingratitude of both his daughters, he turned, in blank amazement, to the heavens for comfort in his desolation, Dillon was equally impressive, pathetic, and effective. He tell off somewhat, in the third act; but throughout the mad scene, and in the midst of those "bursts of reason's half-extinguished I glare," he displayed that quality ot sensibility which was one of the distinguishing features of his acting. There were tears in in his voice as he uttered the words, "Pray do not mock me," and the last scene in the last act was altogether admirable; while the touching iteration of the word “never." In that wonderful dying speech of Lears, uttered " in doubt more touching than despair," was so mournfully cadenced as to give it its full, sorrow-fraught meaning. The performance, taken as a whole, was so grand as to astonish and perplex you; because its uncommon merit was so inconsistent with the common character of the actor's mind and ordinary manner.
On the stage he was a man of genius, off it he was very apt to become a mere bibulous Bohemian ; and I doubt whether the plandits of a crowded theatre gave him so much pleasure as he felt when leaning over the back bar ot the Argus Hotel and narrating anecdotes of his professional career, and of the many famous actors and actrtsses he had known, to a circle of listeners which comprised some of the brightest men at that time connected with the press, the stage, and the legal Profession. He was, like most actors, an excellent mimic, and could reproduce Charles Kean, Fechter, Phelps, and other players to the life so as to give the utmost dramatic effect to the stories he would tell of each.
He left Australia towards the end of 1867 reappearing at Sadler’s Wells as Lear in February, 1868; playing afterwards at Drury Lane, from whence his besetting weakness banished him in 1878. Then he dropped out of London life altogether, and fell back upon the management ot a strolling company. At Hawick, in Berwickshire, in June, 1881, poor Dillon played his last part, Othello, to a pitifully small audience, treated his company to some ale at a tavern adjoining the theatre, amused them by relating some of his Australian experiences, sallied out into High Street in a cheerful mood, raised his hand to his head, exclaiming, “God! can this be death?” and fell dead upon the pavement.” —The Australasian, Oct 2 1886
[Pictures to come…]
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