Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 39.djvu/306

Munden At the Haymarket he played, 26 July 1811, Casimere in the 'Quadrupeds of Quedlinburgh,' taken by Colman from Canning. He was again at the Haymarket in 1812. During the two years, 1811-3, however, he was principally in the country, playing in Edinburgh (where he was introduced to Scott), Newcastle, Rochdale, Chester, Manchester, &c., obtaining large sums of money, and beginning for the first time to incur the charge of stinginess. He had hitherto been a popular and somewhat indulgent man, exercising hospitality at a house in Kentish Town, a witty companion, the secretary to the Beefsteak Club, and a martyr to gout. He now began a system of parsimony, which hardened into miserliness.

On 4 Oct. 1813, as Sir Abel Handy in 'Speed the Plough,' he made his first appearance at Drury Lane where, 11 March 1815, he created one of his greatest rôles, Dozey, an old sailor, in T. Dibdin's 'Past Ten o'Clock and a Rainy Night.' On 14 Dec. 1815 he was Vandunke in the 'Merchant of Bruges,' Kinnaird's alteration of the 'Beggar's Bush' of Beaumont and Fletcher. At Drury Lane he played few original parts of importance, the last being General Van in Knight's 'Veteran, or the Farmer's Sons,' 23 Feb. 1822. He had suffered much from illness, and took his farewell of the stage 31 May 1824, playing Sir Robert Bramble and Old Dozey, and reciting a farewell address. He was little seen after his retirement, being principally confined to the house, where he was nursed by his wife. Discontented with his receipts from his investment in government trusts, he sold out, and placing out his money at high interest experienced losses, which caused him anxieties that shortened his life. He refused many invitations to reappear, and after the death of a favourite daughter spent most of his time in bed. He died 6 Feb. 1832 in Bernard Street, Russell Square, and was buried in the vaults of St. George's, Bloomsbury. The disposition of his property, including a very inadequate provision for his wife, who died in 1836, caused unfavourable comment. He left several children. A son, Thomas Shepherd Munden, who died at Islington in July 1850, aged 50, wrote his father's biography.

There are few actors concerning whose appearance, method, and merits so much is known. Thanks to the utterances of Charles Lamb, Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, and Talfourd, the actor still lives to the present generation. Lamb's famous criticism begins, 'There is one face of Farley, one face of Knight, one (but what a one it is!) of Liston; but Munden has none that you can properly pin down and call his.' Lamb calls him 'not one but legion, not so much a comedian as a company.' Elsewhere, in a letter upon Munden's death in the 'Athenæum,' Lamb says: 'He was imaginative; he could impress upon an audience an idea; the low one, perhaps, of a leg of mutton and turnips; but such was the grandeur and singleness of his expression, that that single impression would convey to all his auditory a notion of all the pleasures they had all received from all the legs of muttons and turnips they had ever eaten in their lives.' Talfourd says: 'When he fixes his wonder-working face in any of its most amazing varieties, it looks as if the picture were carved out from a rock by Nature in a sportive vein, and might last for ever. It is like what we can imagine a mask of the old Grecian comedy to have been, only that it lives, and breathes, and changes. His most fantastical gestures are the grand idea of farce.' Talfourd knew of nothing finer than his Old Dozey. Munden was altogether lacking in simplicity, and was a confirmed grimacer. Hunt compares his features to the reflection of a man's face in a ruffled stream: they undergo a perpetual undulation of grin. Much of his acting is said to consist of 'two or three ludicrous gestures and an innumerable variety of as fanciful contortions of countenance as ever threw women into hysterics.' Hazlltt holds that compared with Liston Munden was a caricaturist. Mrs. Mathews chronicles concerning him 'that his heart and soul were in his vocation.' Boaden calls his style of comedy broad and voluptuous, indicates that he was self-conscious, and charges him with unfairness to his brother actors when on the stage, adding that he 'painted remarkably high for distant effects.' The anonymous author of 'Candid and Impartial Strictures on the Performers,' &c., 1795, calls his action 'hard and deficient in variety,' his voice strong, and his figure 'vulgar and heavy.' The 'Thespian Dictionary' says that he dressed his characters with judgment. In appearance Munden was short, with large blue eyes. Leigh Hunt says that 'his profile was not good when he looked grave. There was something close, carking, and even severe in it; but it was redeemed by his front face, which was handsome for one so old, and singularly pliable about the eyes and brows.' Genest numbers among his best impersonations Sir Francis Gripe, Ephraim Smooth, Old Dornton, Polonius, Hardcastle, Nipperton, Old Rapid, Captain Bertram, King in 'Tom Thumb,' Crack in the 'Turnpike Gate,' Sir Abel Handy, Sir Robert Bramble, Marrall, Kit Sly, and Moll Flagon, to which list should be added Menenius, Obadiah Prim in 'Honest