Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 47.djvu/361

 oratorian was her nephew. ‘I owe the larger half of what I am to my mother,’ Reade said of her. His elder brother, Edward Anderdon Reade [q. v.], is separately noticed. Between the age of eight and thirteen he was under the care at Rose Hill, near Iffley, of a clergyman named Slatter, who subjected him to severe discipline. Two subsequent years were more profitably spent at the private school of the Rev. Mr. Hearn at Staines. From 1829 to 1831 he was at home with his father, and while spending much time in athletic sports, in which he excelled, pursued unaided a systematic course of study.

In 1831 he was elected to a demyship at Magdalen College, Oxford. While an undergraduate, he read privately with Robert Lowe, afterwards Viscount Sherbrooke. After obtaining a third class in literis humanioribus he graduated B.A. on 18 June 1835 (M.A. 1838), and on 22 July 1835 was elected fellow of his college. He was chosen Vinerian scholar in the same year. In 1844 he became bursar, and was re-elected in 1849. He was made dean of arts at Magdalen in 1845, when he scared the more sedate members of the university by flaunting about in a green coat and brass buttons. On 1 July 1847 he proceeded to the degree of D.C.L. In 1851 he was chosen vice-president of his college, and duly wrote the Latin record of his year of office. His suite of five rooms in the college, at 2 New Buildings, was beautifully situated, looking southwards on the cloisters and tower. But while he retained his fellowship and his rooms in college till his death, he spent much time, after taking his degree, in London, where he had permanent lodgings in Leicester Square, and he gradually withdrew from university life. He had originally contemplated a legal career. In November 1836 he had entered his name at Lincoln's Inn as a law student. His first instructor in law was Samuel Warren [q. v.], the novelist. In 1842 he gained the Vinerian fellowship, and on 16 Jan. 1843 was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn. But his interest in law was evanescent, and he sought more congenial occupation in the study of music and literature. Besides playing the fiddle with exceptional feeling and dexterity, he became a noted connoisseur in regard to the value and structure of Cremona instruments. Finally determining to seek fame as a novelist and dramatist, he began laboriously and systematically to accumulate materials which might be of use in such directions. He classified and arranged in ledgers extracts and cuttings from an enormous range of books (especially of travel), from newspapers and reports of royal commissions. ‘I am a painstaking man,’ he remarked towards the end of his career, ‘and I owe my success to it.’

His first incursion into literature was as a dramatist. On 7 May 1851 his maiden work, a three-act comedy, ‘The Ladies' Battle’ (a version of Scribe and Legouvé's ‘Duel en Amour’), was produced at the Olympic Theatre. There followed on 11 Aug. 1851, again at the Olympic, a four-act tragedy, ‘Angelo;’ on 12 April 1852 ‘A Village Tale,’ at the Strand; on 26 April 1852 ‘The Lost Husband,’ in four acts, at the Strand; and on 10 Jan. 1853, at Drury Lane, a five-act melodrama, ‘Gold,’ illustrative of the earliest gold-digger's life in Australia, which for many months poured the precious metal abundantly into the coffers of the theatre. But his chief success as a dramatist was achieved by the brilliant comedy, in two acts, ‘Masks and Faces,’ which he wrote in collaboration with Tom Taylor. It was triumphantly received on its first performance on 20 Nov. 1852 at the Haymarket, when Triplet and Peg Woffington were impersonated respectively by Benjamin Webster and Mrs. Stirling. Expanded into three acts, it was revived on 6 Nov. 1875 at the same house, under the Bancrofts' management. The play, which still holds the stage, is brightly written and cleverly constructed.

While ‘Masks and Faces’ was in rehearsal, Reade made the acquaintance of an actress at the Haymarket, Mrs. Laura Seymour, who was many years his intimate friend, and it was she who, after reading the manuscript of ‘Masks and Faces,’ first urged him to put to the test his capabilities as a novelist. Acting upon her advice, he turned his comedy into a prose narrative, and thus came to realise his true vocation. By 3 Aug. 1852 Reade's first novel was completed; on 15 Dec. he dedicated it to his brother-dramatist, and early in the following year it was published under the title of ‘Peg Woffington.’ Later on, in 1853, he produced as a companion volume another charming little fiction, entitled ‘Christie Johnstone,’ part of which he had sketched at an earlier period. Each volume had an instant and immense success. But Reade was through life of a litigious and somewhat vain disposition, and, convinced that he was receiving inadequate remuneration alike from his plays and his two novels, he embarked on a series of lawsuits, which proved very disastrous to his pecuniary position. From Bentley, the publisher of his two novels, he received only 30l. apiece. An action at law resulted in his being mulcted in costs to the amount of 220l. No more successful were six suits which he brought