Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 49.djvu/69

 ROBSON, THOMAS FREDERICK (1822?–1864), actor, whose real name was Thomas Robson Brownhill, was born at Margate, according to his own assertion, on 22 Feb. 1822. Apprenticed in 1836 to a Mr. Smellie, a copperplate engraver in Bedfordbury, Covent Garden, he amused his fellow-workmen by imitations and histrionic displays, and, finding his occupation distasteful and, as he complained, hurtful to his sight, he turned his attention to the amateur stage. After the failure of his master, who removed to Scotland, Brownhill carried on business as a master engraver in Brydges Street, Covent Garden. At the end of twelve months he gave up business and accepted a theatrical engagement. When and where he made his first effort as an amateur cannot be traced. His first recorded appearance as such was in a once well-known little theatre in Catherine Street, Strand, where he played Simon Mealbag in a play called ‘Grace Huntley.’ Other parts were taken, and he obtained reputation with the limited public that follows such entertainments by his singing of the well-known song ‘Lord Lovel.’ His first professional engagement was as ‘second utility man’ in a small theatre on the first floor of a private house in Whitstable. After acting in the country at Uxbridge, Northampton, Nottingham, Whitehaven, Chester, and elsewhere, he came to London, and played a three months' unprosperous engagement at the Standard. This was followed by an engagement under Rouse at the Grecian Saloon, where his reputation was to some extent made. There he stayed five years. He is said by Mr. Hollingshead (My Lifetime, i. 27) to have made his first appearance there as John Lump in the ‘Wags of Windsor.’ This was probably about 1845—certainly not in 1839, as Mr. Hollingshead states. At the Grecian, besides appearing in accepted characters in comedy, such as Mawworm, Zekiel Homespun, Justice Shallow, and Frank Oatland, he was first heard in many comic parts, and sang songs, by which his fame was subsequently established at the west end. In 1850 he was engaged for the Queen's theatre, Dublin, to play leading comic business. Here or at the Theatre Royal he remained three years. On 8 Nov. 1851, at the Theatre Royal in Dublin, he was Bottom in a revival of the ‘Midsummer Night's Dream.’ Engaged by W. Farren to replace, at the Olympic in London, Henry Compton (1805–1877) [q. v.], he appeared for the first time at that house on 28 March 1853 as Tom Twig in the farce of ‘Catching an Heiress.’ In Frank Talfourd's travesty of ‘Macbeth,’ produced on 25 April, he displayed for the first time his marvellous gifts in burlesque. These he revealed to even greater advantage in the ‘Shylock’ of the same author in the following July. During the same season he showed his power in serious parts, as the original Desmarets in Tom Taylor's ‘Plot and Passion.’ He played also in the ‘Camp’ of Planché at the Olympic, and carried away the town by his performance of Jem Bags in Henry Mayhew's ‘Wandering Minstrel,’ in which character he sang ‘Villikins and his Dinah,’ by E. L. Blanchard.

At the close of 1853 the Olympic, which had passed under the management of Alfred Wigan, was at the height of its popularity, Robson was regularly engaged there, and was recognised as the greatest comic actor of his day. In June 1854 in ‘Hush Money,’ a revived farce by Dance, he played Jaspar Touchwood; and in Palgrave Simpson's ‘Heads or Tails’ he was the first Quaile. On 17 Oct. he was the first Job Wort in Tom Taylor's ‘Blighted Being,’ and at Christmas obtained one of his most conspicuous successes in Planché's ‘Yellow Dwarf.’ In January 1855 he was Sowerby in ‘Tit for Tat,’ an adaptation by F. Talfourd of ‘Les maris me font rire.’ Among other performances may be mentioned the ‘Discreet Princess,’ April 1856, in which Robson's Prince Richcraft was painful in intensity, and Gustavus Adolphus Fitzmortimer, in ‘A Fascinating Individual,’ 11 June. In Brough's ‘Medea,’ 14 July, Robson's Medea was one of his finest burlesque creations. His Jones, in Talfourd's ‘Jones the Avenger’ (‘Le Massacre d'un Innocent’), was seen on 24 Nov. Zephyr, in ‘Young and Handsome,’ followed in January 1857. His Daddy Hardacre, in an adaptation so named of ‘La Fille de l'Avare,’ 26 March 1857, was one of his earliest essays in domestic drama. On 2 July he was Massaniello in Brough's burlesque of that name.

In August 1857, in partnership with Emden, he undertook the management of the Olympic, speaking, on the opening night, an address written by Robert Brough, and appearing both as Aaron Gurnock in Wilkie Collins's ‘Lighthouse,’ and as Massaniello. On the first production of the ‘Lighthouse’ by amateurs, at Tavistock House, Robson's part had been played by Charles Dickens. ‘The Subterfuge,’ an adaptation of ‘Livre troisième chapitre premier,’ was also given. After playing a country engagement he reappeared at the Olympic in the ‘Lighthouse,’ and was seen in Brough's ‘Doge of Duralto, or the Enchanted Isle.’ In June 1858 he was the first Peter Potts in Tom Taylor's ‘Going to the Bad,’ and on 13 Oct. the first Hans Grimm in Wilkie Collins's ‘Red Vial.’ On 2 Oct. he created one of his greatest characters