Abstract
Thomas Souness Hamblin, born May 18, 1800, in Pentonville, England , is hired as a teenager at London’s prestigious Drury Lane Theatre, where he meets the talented yet dissolute Edmund Kean and Robert Elliston. While touring and performing widely in the provinces, he falls in love with actress Elizabeth Blanchard, whose comedian father has reservations about the match. Hamblin overcomes those reservations and marries Elizabeth, who delivers their first child, a daughter. His ambition drives him to play Hamlet at the Drury Lane at age nineteen. He succeeds, but burns vital bridges and leaves with Elizabeth and their daughter for America, to take on greater challenges and seek greater acclaim.
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Notes
- 1.
A Thomas Hamblin died in fall 1802 in Berkshire, England, but it has proved impossible to verify whether this was Hamblin’s father. John Souness, Jr., died in December 1814.
- 2.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Pizarro. London: James Ridgway, 1799, 22–23.
- 3.
Joe Cowell , Thirty Years Passed Among the Players in England and America. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1844, pp. 27–28; James Winston, Drury Lane Journal: Selections from James Winston’s Diaries, 1819–1827, eds. Alfred L. Nelson and Gilbert B. Cross. London: Society for Theatre Research, 1974, 4.
- 4.
Drummond drawing, engraved by James Haywood, Jr., in extra-illustrated Ireland, Records of the New York Stage, Vol. I, Pt. IX, facing p. 159b, HTC. Elizabeth later alleged that when they met, Hamblin’s family was dependent on his salary for their subsistence, but this cannot be verified.
- 5.
The Companion (London), Apr. 30, 1828.
- 6.
Diary of Edmund Shaw Simpson, Folger, June 11, 1818.
- 7.
Cowell 36.
- 8.
Records of Drury Lane Theatre , vol. 367, Folger.
- 9.
Francis Courtney Wemyss, Theatrical Biography; or, the Life of an Actor and Manager. Glasgow: R. Griffin, 1848, 47.
- 10.
Wemyss 56; Ernest Bradlee Watson, Sheridan to Robertson: a Study of the Nineteenth-Century London Stage. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1926, 167.
- 11.
Highfill, Philip H., Kalman A. Burnim, and Edward A. Langhans, eds. A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Volume 5: Eagan to Garrett. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978, 69.
- 12.
Elliston to actor John Cooper, Mar. 12, 1820, Elliston Papers, Folger.
- 13.
Cowell 47.
- 14.
Ibid.
- 15.
The Times (London), Oct. 21, 1819.
- 16.
Souness to Elliston, Nov. 8, 1819, in Elliston Papers, HTC.
- 17.
Henry Crabb Robinson, The London Theatre 1811–1866. London: Society for Theatre Research, 1966, 90.
- 18.
The Ladies’ Monthly Museum, April 1, 1820.
- 19.
(London) Theatrical Inquisitor, April 1820, 239.
- 20.
“Dramaticus,” (London) Morning Post, n.d., 1820, Elliston Papers, HTC.
- 21.
Souness to Elliston April 14, 1820, Elliston Papers, HTC.
- 22.
Souness to Elliston April 15, 1820, Elliston Papers, HTC.
- 23.
Cowell 47.
- 24.
The European Magazine and Review, May 1820; William Hazlitt, The Collected Works of William Hazlitt, edited by A. R. Waller and Arnold Glover. New York: McClure, Phillips & Co., 1902–1904, XIII: 465.
- 25.
TSH to S. T. Russell, May 8, 1820, Elliston Papers, HTC.
- 26.
Christopher Murray, Robert William Elliston: Manager. London: Society for Theatre Research, 1975, 92–94. For a more thorough consideration of women in breeches roles and cross-dressing, see Theresa Saxon, “‘A Pair of Handsome Legs’: Women on Stage, Bodies on Show, in Mid-Nineteenth-Century American Theatre.” Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies (HJEAS), Vol. 15, No. 1, Expanding American Theatre History (Spring, 2009), pp. 27–44.
- 27.
John Russell Stephens, The Profession of the Playwright: British Theatre 1800–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, 32, 47; James Robinson Planché, Recollections and Reflections. New York: Da Capo, 1978, II:200; Brian Dobbs, Drury Lane: Three Centuries of the Theatre Royal, 1663–1971, London: Cassell, 1972, 144; New York New World, Aug. 8, 1840.
- 28.
De Camp was brother-in-law to Charles Kemble and uncle to Fanny Kemble.
- 29.
The British Stage and Literary Cabinet, April and May 1821; Newcastle Magazine, March 1, 1821, 436.
- 30.
Ibid.
- 31.
Clarke, Concise History, 7.
- 32.
The British Stage and Literary Cabinet, June 1821.
- 33.
The British Stage and Literary Cabinet, September 1821.
- 34.
In the late 1830s Elizabeth claimed that she had lost five children, of which this was apparently the first.
- 35.
Rev. John Genest, Some Account of the English Stage from the Restoration in 1660 to 1830 in Ten Volumes. London: H. E. Carrington, 1832, IX:213, 223.
- 36.
Salisbury and Winchester Journal, Aug. 11, 1823; The Mirror of the Stage; or, New Dramatic Censor, Oct. 20, 1823.
- 37.
This painting existed as late as 1911, owned by Hamblin’s grandson, actor Walter C. Jordan, but has been lost.
- 38.
(London) The Morning Post, Oct. 25, 1824.
- 39.
Ibid.; The Theatrical Examiner, Oct. 31, 1824; The Drama; or, Theatrical Pocket Magazine, Dec. 1824; The Times (London), Oct. 25, 1824; The Ladies’ Monthly Museum, November, 1824.
- 40.
(London) Morning Post, Nov. 1 and 3, 1824; (London) Examiner, Nov. 7, 1824; La Belle Assemblée, Dec. 1824.
- 41.
Genest, IX: 322.
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Bogar, T.A. (2018). “He Is Yet Very Young, Both in Years and Practice”. In: Thomas Hamblin and the Bowery Theatre. Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68406-2_2
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