Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 37.djvu/52

 head-master, who is said to have taken a strong dislike to him. Mathews was then removed to a private school in the Clapham Road, kept by Richardson the lexicographer, where he formed friendships with John Mitchell Kemble and Julian Young, and was one of Richardson's assistants in copying extracts for the dictionary. On 4 May 1819 he was articled to Augustus Pugin [q. v.] as an architect, and designed the picture gallery for his father's cottage in Kentish Town, where he subsequently met Byron, Scott, Moore, Coleridge, Colman, Lamb, Leigh Hunt, the Smiths, Campbell, and other men of eminence. In company with his master he visited York, Oxford, and various country towns, executing sketches, some of which were inserted in architectural works.

A visit with Pugin to Paris, in which he saw the principal French comedians, fostered a lurking disposition towards the stage, and he made after his return his first appearance as an amateur at the Lyceum Theatre on 26 April 1822, playing, under the name of M. Perlet, Dorival, a comedian in ‘Le Comédien d'Etampes,’ a French piece subsequently adapted by him under the title of ‘He would be an Actor,’ singing a song as M. Emile of the Porte Saint-Martin Theatre, and acting in his own name as Werther in the ‘Sorrows of Werther,’ by John Poole, in which his mother took the part of Charlotte. His imitations of French actors were received with much favour. His father urged him to adopt the stage, but he liked his profession. Refusing a renewed invitation to join John Nash [q. v.], the architect, he went over in 1823 to Ireland, when his articles had expired, for the purpose of building for Lord Blessington a house at Mountjoy Forest, co. Tyrone. Very little progress, or none at all, was made with the scheme. Mathews stayed hunting, shooting, fishing, &c., and discussing details of the house, never to be built, and then accepted an invitation from his patron to accompany him to Italy. In Naples he stayed a year at the Palazzo Belvedere, the party including his host and hostess, Miss Power, the sister of Lady Blessington, and Count D'Orsay, with whom he had a misunderstanding almost leading to a duel. His imitations of Italian life and manners were the delight of a fashionable world, English and foreign. Madden, in his ‘Life of Blessington,’ describes him at the period as an admirable sketcher and a close student of his profession, ‘full of humour, vivacity, and drollery, but gentlemanlike withal, marvellously mercurial, always in motion,’ but steady and well conducted.

After a couple of years spent in Wales as architect to a Welsh iron and coal company at Coed Talwn, North Wales, where he built Hartsheath Hall, an inn, a bridge, and some cottages, he entered the employ of Nash, but kept on an office in Parliament Street as a practising architect. His leisure time he occupied in writing songs and trifling pieces for the theatre. Among the latter were ‘Pong-wong,’ ‘Pyramus and Thisbe,’ ‘Truth,’ ‘My Wife's Mother,’ ‘The Wolf and the Lamb,’ and ‘The Court Jesters.’ On 30 April 1827, in company with D'Egville, he started once more, on an allowance from his father, for Italy. Milan and Venice were visited, and in the former city the travellers, who exhibited some paintings, were admitted members of the academy. From Trieste they proceeded to Florence, where Mathews caught the small-pox. At the Palazzo San Clementi Lord Normanby had erected a private theatre, in which Mathews played comic characters, such as Peter in ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ Launcelot Gobbo, and Falstaff in the ‘First Part of King Henry IV.’ From Rome, where Mathews suffered much from malaria, they returned to Venice, and at the close of 1830 Mathews arrived home on crutches. Five years of a desultory life, spent in visiting at the houses of noblemen and the like, followed, and included his acceptance of the post of district surveyor at Bow.

His father's failure put an end to this idle career, and on 28 Sept. 1835 he turned his theatrical abilities to account, and, in conjunction with Yates, opened the Adelphi Theatre. The first piece was ‘Mandrin,’ an adaptation by Mathews of a well-known French melodrama. The speculation failed, and Mathews retired from management. On 6 Nov. 1835 he appeared at the Olympic in his own piece, the ‘Humpbacked Lover,’ in which he played George Rattleton, and in a farce by Leman Rede, called ‘The Old and Young Stagers,’ Liston, who recited a prologue, being the old stager, and Mathews the young. His performance was fashionable, though his success was not triumphant.

On 18 July 1838, at Kensington Church, he married his manager, Madame Vestris [see ]. A visit to America which followed was unsuccessful. Mathews then reappeared at the Olympic in ‘Patter versus Clatter,’ to the end a favourite piece. On 30 Sept. 1839 Mathews and his wife opened Covent Garden with an elaborate revival of ‘Love's Labour's Lost,’ the company including Robert Keeley, Bartley, Meadows, Anderson, Mrs. Nisbett, and Mrs. Humby. This was a failure. ‘Love’ by Sheridan Knowles followed, introducing Miss Ellen Tree, with little better result, and Mathews found himself involved in debts