Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 37.djvu/51

 Club through the generosity of a member, John Rowland Durrant.

At 101 Great Russell Street, to which Mathews now removed, he began in earnest an autobiography, previously attempted and ultimately abandoned. In 1834 he was again in New York, where he appeared in his entertainment ‘A Trip to America.’ A riot was anticipated, but was avoided, and damages were obtained in a suit against the ‘Philadelphia Gazette,’ which attacked and libelled him. Owing to a failure of voice his performances were few, and he arrived in Liverpool 10 March 1835. Illness now afflicted him, and he was with some difficulty carried to Plymouth, where in lodgings in Cocker Street he died on the morning of his fifty-ninth birthday, 28 June 1835. His body was interred in a vault in St. Andrew's Church, Plymouth. Mrs. Mathews, who had retired from the stage in 1810, survived her husband, whose ‘Memoirs’ she edited, and wrote ‘Anecdotes of Actors, with other Desultory Recollections, &c.,’ 8vo, 1844, and ‘Tea-Table Talk, Ennobled Actresses, and other Miscellanies,’ 2 vols. 8vo, 1857. She died, 12 Oct. 1869, at Chelsea Villa, Fulham.

Without rising into the highest rank as an actor, Mathews was in his way inimitable. He had genuine power as a comedian, and as a mimic he had no equal. He would take upon himself characters such as Coleridge or Curran, and wear for an hour not only the manner but apparently the intellectual gait of the man, and this with no apparent opportunity of preparation. To this gift Lord Byron bears testimony.

So great was his power in this direction that judges, statesmen, councillors feared and mistrusted him. Unlike his great predecessor, Samuel Foote [q. v.], he did ‘his spiriting gently,’ and even at royal bidding declined to imitate afresh those whose feelings had been hurt. Exclusive of his assumptions in his ‘At Homes,’ he must have played near four hundred different parts, many of them original. A nervous, irritable man, he shrank honestly from observation, and was silent in the presence of those he did not esteem. Affectionate and loyal in disposition, fond of home and yet not averse from congenial company, expensive in tastes, improvident, generous, and easily beguiled, he was a type of the actor of popular acceptation. Leigh Hunt, who calls him a man of genius in his way, praises his moderation, but charges him with restlessness, and says his principal excellence is as ‘officious valets and humorous old men.’ His Sir Fretful Plagiary Hunt regards as perfect. Mathews had the power of losing in the characters he took almost all trace of his own individuality, and could even disguise his voice. His Lying Valet, Risk in ‘Love laughs at Locksmiths,’ Don Manuel in ‘She would and she would not,’ and Old Philpot in the ‘Citizen’ are a few among many parts in which he won warmest commendation.

Horace Smith says: ‘There was but one Charles Mathews in the world—there never can be such another! Mimics, buffoons, jesters, wags, and even admirable comedians we shall never want; but what are the best of them compared to him?’ In the Mathews collection now in the Garrick Club are numerous portraits, among which may be signalled portraits by De Wilde as Sir Fretful Plagiary, Somno in ‘The Sleepwalker,’ as Matthew Daw in ‘The School for Friends,’ and as Buskin in ‘Killing no Murder;’ and by Harlowe in four different characters. Clint shows him as Flexible in a scene from ‘Love, Law, and Physic,’ introducing also Liston, Blanchard, and Emery. Very many portraits of Mathews, principally in character, appear in his wife's ‘Memoirs’ of him. Paintings of him and of his wife by Masquerier belonged to the Baroness Burdett Coutts, and two portraits of Mrs. Mathews are also in the Garrick Club. Many of Mathews's ‘At Homes’ have been published, and are valued for the illustrations. 

MATHEWS, CHARLES JAMES (1803–1878), actor and dramatist, son of Charles Mathews [q. v.], was born in Basnett Street, Liverpool, on 26 Dec. 1803, and christened at St. Helen's Church, York. After attending preliminary schools at Hackney and Fulham, he went to Merchant Taylors', where he boarded with the Rev. Thomas Cherry, the