Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 37.djvu/48

 with all the old warmth, but he had become aged and enfeebled, and though willing as ever to labour, he was compelled gradually to relinquish all active employment. He passed the greater part of the following years with his brother Charles who lived near Cork, and to whom and to whose family he was most tenderly attached. He died at Queenstown on 8 Dec. 1856. The citizens of Cork erected to his memory a statue, which is one of the most successful works of his countryman Foley, and his centenary was celebrated in 1890 by the same community. Another statue, erected to his memory in Sackville or O'Connell Street, Dublin, was unveiled on 8 Feb. 1893. A portrait by E. D. Leahy is in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Father Mathew was of middle height, well formed, and remarkably handsome. His complexion was pale, with hair dark and abundant, and eyes of the softest blue. His expression, somewhat stern and sombre in repose, was remarkable, when animated, for its gentleness and sweetness. 

MATHEWS. [See also .]

MATHEWS, CHARLES (1776–1835), actor, the seventh son of James Mathews, bookseller and Wesleyan local preacher, and his wife Elizabeth, was born 28 June 1776 at 18 Strand, London, a house pulled down on the erection of Hungerford Bridge. The family name, Matthews, was changed by his grandfather, also a bookseller, on inheriting a small estate, subsequently lost. Mathews, who claimed when a child to have been dandled by Garrick, was sent first to St. Martin's free school, where he developed a taste for mimicry, and afterwards to Merchant Taylors'. At a French school near Bedford Street, Strand, kept by a Madame Cottrell, which he attended in the evening, he met Robert William Elliston [q. v.], to whose Pyrrhus, in a school representation of Philips's ‘Distressed Mother,’ he played Phœnix. Other parts in tragedy and comedy were essayed at private theatres. After an unsatisfactory interview with Charles Macklin [q. v.], then very old, he played as an amateur, at the Richmond Theatre, Richmond to the Richard III of his friend Litchfield, and Bowkett in the ‘Son-in-Law,’ while at Canterbury he appeared as Richmond and Old Doyley in ‘Who's the Dupe?’ He also played on a solitary occasion, at Sadler's Wells, David Dunder in ‘Ways and Means.’ He wrote for periodicals, contributing to the ‘Ladies' Magazine,’ and sub-editing the ‘Thespian Magazine.’ At the suggestion of Hitchcock, the historian of the Irish stage, who offered him an engagement from Daly, manager of the Theatre Royal, Dublin, he induced his father to cancel his indentures, and went to Dublin, arriving 3 June 1794. Daly failed to redeem Hitchcock's promises, and Mathews, after appearing on 19 June for the benefit of Mrs. Wells (afterwards Mrs. Sumbell) as Jacob in the ‘Chapter of Accidents,’ and Lingo in the ‘Agreeable Surprise,’ found himself compelled to remain, at a salary of a guinea a week, as a walking gentleman. As a musician, a dancer, and a mimic he made some impression in Dublin, Cork, and Limerick, but he fumed under the inferiority of the characters allotted to him, which included Paris in ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ the Sexton in ‘Much Ado about Nothing,’ Albany in ‘Lear,’ Guildenstern, and the like. In more than one character he was hissed. While at Limerick he had a narrow escape from drowning. Quitting Dublin with Montague Talbot, a tragedian, in September 1795, with the intention of retiring from the stage, he was driven by stress of weather to Swansea. Here he acted with sufficient success to be reconciled to the stage, and to remain in Wales two years, playing a round of comic characters. On 19 Sept. 1797, on a salary of twelve shillings a week, he married, at Swansea, Eliza Kirkham Strong, a teacher in a school.

Applications to Tate Wilkinson of the York circuit were ultimately successful, and Mathews joined his new manager at Pontefract. He was at this time very tall, so thin that his early friends addressed him as ‘Stick,’ and, as Wilkinson said, a hiss would blow him off the stage; he had a face set awry, which Wilkinson persisted in regarding as a consequence of paralysis. He appeared as Silky in the ‘Road to Ruin’ and his favourite part of Lingo, and visited York, Leeds, and other towns, making at first little headway. Wilkinson recommended him to quit the stage, declaring that nature had interposed an insurmountable barrier between him and comic excellence. Mathews persisted, refusing no part, however small, and was rewarded by becoming one of the most popular actors that ever appeared on the circuit. Through his travels he had won high social reputation. In 1801 Mathews lost his eldest brother, William, a barrister,