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 even dress. His method was modelled to some extent upon that of Bouffé, a brilliant French actor of the early part of the century. Humour and pathos were, however, equally at his command. He was a French scholar, and his greatest successes were made in Frenchmen or characters in which he spoke French or broken English—Tourbillon in ‘To Parents and Guardians,’ Château-Renaud, Talma Dufard, Adolphe Chavillard, Hector Mauléon in the ‘Roused Lion,’ and the Marquis de Belleterre in the ‘Poor Nobleman.’ In the piece last named his conquest of humiliation and his efforts to hide from the world the depths of his poverty had extreme pathos. Among purely English characters, his John Mildmay in ‘Still Waters run deep’ may count as his masterpiece.

No list of his plays, many of them unprinted, is obtainable. The following, included in various acting editions, are in the ‘British Museum Catalogue:’ ‘Loan of a Wife,’ a farce in one act; ‘A Model of a Wife,’ in one act; ‘Five Hundred Pounds Reward,’ a comic drama in two acts; and ‘Tit for Tat,’ a comedietta by Francis Talfourd and A. Wigan (January 1855).

Wigan's wife,, known as Mrs. Alfred Wigan (1805–1884), was daughter of Pincott, a showman, and his wife Elizabeth, a daughter of William Wallack and sister of James William Wallack [q. v.] She was at the outset a rope-dancer and performer on stilts. Her first appearance in London took place on 6 July 1818 at the English Opera House (Lyceum) as Chimpanzee in a pantomime drama entitled ‘La Perouse, or the Desolate Island,’ founded on Kotzebue. Her mother, Mrs. Pincott, was Umba and J. P. Cooke La Perouse. Leonora Pincott also took part in the ballet of ‘Don Juan,’ was Ganymede in ‘Midas,’ the Crown Prince in ‘Ah! What a Pity,’ and Julio in the ‘Devil's Bridge.’ She was next at Drury Lane, at which her uncle, James Wallack, was stage-manager (1826–8), playing pantomime, utility, and walking ladies. She was on 10 March 1827 the first Antoinette in ‘Comfortable Lodgings, or Paris in 1750.’ On 16 April she was the first Donna Mensia in Macfarlane's ‘Boy of Santillane, or Gil Blas and the Robbers of Asturia,’ on 1 May Clara de Lorenzo in ‘Turkish Lovers,’ and on 15 Oct. Henry Germaine in Thompson's adaptation ‘Gambler's Fate, or a Lapse of Twenty Years.’ In 1831 she was with Mme. Vestris at the Olympic, where her Catherine Seton, in a burlesque on ‘Mary Queen of Scots,’ attracted attention. In or about 1839 she married Alfred Wigan, whose senior by several years she was, and whom she had nursed during an illness. When (8 April 1844) the Lyceum opened under the Keeley management, Mrs. Wigan spoke as a police-inspector of fairies the opening lines of Gilbert à Beckett's ‘Forty Thieves,’ in which Wigan was Mustapha. She had a plump figure, a bright eye, and a mass of dark hair, but was not otherwise attractive. To her husband and his associate and partner, Robson, she was of great service, as she had stage knowledge and flair, though with no special expository capacity. She took, after her marriage, some important parts—Mrs. Candour and Mrs. Malaprop (both of which she over-accentuated), obtained applause as Mrs. Yellowleaf in the ‘Bengal Tiger,’ and Mrs. m'Cann in ‘Up at the Hills.’ Her best part was Mrs. Hector Sternhold in ‘Still Waters run deep,’ of which Mrs. Melfort was the original exponent; in this she outplayed her predecessor and Mrs. Stirling, who also took the part. She supported her husband at most of the theatres at which he appeared, and acquired a reputation in Frenchwomen. As an example of the unconsciousness of some performers during their acting Mr. Archer relates the story that Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Wigan, ‘having made some mistake in a cue at the end of an important scene, played the whole scene over again in blissful unconsciousness of their blunder’ (Masks or Faces, p. 69). She died on 17 April 1884. Her sister, Ellena Elizabeth Pincott, played on 14 March 1814 at Covent Garden the Duke of York in ‘Richard the Third.’

[The mist which ordinarily surrounds the beginning of theatrical careers is in the case of Alfred Wigan, and in a less degree that of his wife, thicker than usual, and the notices contributed presumably by himself to various periodicals are unlike and sometimes contradictory. The foregoing biography is drawn from personal knowledge and private information. Genest's Account of the English Stage; Scott and Howard's Blanchard; Theatre, 1884; Morley's Journal of a London Playgoer, pp. 61, 191, 231; Pascoe's Dramatic List; Theatrical Times, vol. i.; Cole's Life and Times of C. Kean; Stirling's Old Drury Lane, i. 309; Dutton Cook's Nights at the Play, 1883; Tallis's Dramatic Magazine; Men of the Time; Men of the Reign; Shepherd's Plays and Poems of Charles Dickens; Era Almanack, various years; Era, 8 Dec. 1878, 19 April 1884; Daily News, 19 April 1884.] 

WIGAN, HORACE (1818?–1885), actor and adapter of plays, born about 1818, younger brother of Alfred Sydney Wigan [q. v.], acted in Ireland, and was first seen in Dublin on 1 Aug. 1853 as Billy Lackaday in ‘Sweethearts and Wives.’ He subsequently replaced