Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 46.djvu/267

 and cities, and repeated the visit in 1837 and 1838.

Power's last appearance on the London stage was at the Haymarket on Saturday evening, 1 Aug. 1840, when he filled the rôles of Captain O'Cutter in the ‘Jealous Wife;’ Sir Patrick O'Plenipo, A.D.C., in the ‘Irish Ambassador;’ and Tim More (a travelling tailor) in the ‘Irish Lion.’ He was announced to open the Haymarket season on Easter Monday, 12 April 1841, in his own farce, ‘Born to Good Luck, or the Irishman's Fortune.’

Meanwhile he paid a fourth visit to America, in 1840, in order to look after some property he had purchased in Texas, and 3,000l. he had invested in the United States Bank, which had stopped payment. On 11 March 1841 he left New York on the return voyage in the President, the largest steamer then afloat. There were 123 persons on board. The steamer was accompanied by the packet ship Orpheus, also bound for Liverpool. On the night of 12 March a tempest arose and raged during the whole of Saturday the 13th. Before the break of dawn on Sunday the 14th the President disappeared, and no vestige of her was afterwards recovered. Power was forty-four years old at the date of the disaster. He left a widow and four sons and three daughters. His eldest son, Sir William Tyrone Power, K.C.B., some time agent-general for New Zealand and author of various books of travel, still survives. His second son, Maurice, went on the stage, and died suddenly in 1849.

Tyrone Power was about five feet eight inches in height; his form was light and agile, with a very animated and expressive face, light complexion, blue eyes, and brown hair. He was best in representations of blundering, good-natured, and eccentric Irish characters; but his exuberant, rollicking humour, and his inexhaustible good spirits he infused into every comedy and farce, however indifferent, in which he acted.

On his return to London, after his first tour in America in 1836, he published ‘Impressions of America,’ in two volumes. He had previously published three romances—‘The Lost Heir’ (1830), ‘The Gipsy of the Abruzzo’ (1831), and ‘The King's Secret’ (1831). He also wrote the Irish farces, ‘Born to Good Luck, or the Irishman's Fortune;’ ‘How to pay the Rent;’ ‘O'Flannigan and the Fairies;’ ‘Paddy Carey, the Boy of Clogheen;’ the Irish drama ‘St. Patrick's Eve, or the Orders of the Day;’ and a comedy entitled ‘Married Lovers,’ all of which he produced himself.

[In Webb's and other notices of Power he has been confused with a contemporary actor, Thomas Powell, who, born at Swansea and there brought up as a compositor, achieved some success in his lifetime in the delineation of Irish character, and assumed the name of Tyrone Power. The real facts of the genuine Tyrone Power's Irish origin and early life were set out in a full biography of him by his friend J. W. Calcraft, manager of the Theatre Royal, Dublin, in the Dublin University Magazine for 1852 (vol. xl.). See also B. N. Webster's Acting National Drama, vol. ii.; Thomas Marshall's Lives of the most celebrated Actors and Actresses.]  POWERSCOURT,. [See .]

POWIS, titular. [See, 1617–1696; , d. 1745.]

POWIS,. [See, first , 1617–1696; , second , d. 1745.]

POWIS, second. [See, 1785–1848.]

POWIS, WILLIAM HENRY (1808–1836), wood-engraver, born in 1808, was regarded as one of the best wood-engravers in his day. Some cuts of great merit by him are in Martin and Westall's ‘Pictorial Illustrations of the Bible,’ published in 1833; in Scott's Bible, edition of 1834; ‘The Solace of Song,’ and other works. A very promising career was cut short by his death in 1836, at the early age of twenty-eight.

[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Chatto and Jackson's Treatise on Wood Engraving (ed. 1861), p. 544.]  POWLE. [See also .]

POWLE, GEORGE (fl. 1770), etcher and miniature-painter, was a pupil of Thomas Worlidge [q. v.], whose delicate and highly finished mode of etching he imitated, working entirely with the dry point. Worlidge's series of plates from antique gems, issued in 1768, was to a large extent the work of Powle. He at one time resided at Hereford and later at Worcester, where he was associated with Valentine Green, for whose engravings of Lady Pakington and Sir John Perrot he made the drawings. There he also came under the notice of John Berkeley of Spetchley, for whom he etched a portrait of Sir Robert Berkeley, the judge, and one of Berkeley himself in 1771. Berkeley, in his letters to Granger, speaks highly of Powle's character and skill. Powle's other plates, which are not numerous, include portraits of Thomas Belasyse, Lord Fauconberg; the Comtesse de Grammont, after Lely, and