Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 3).djvu/270



R. JOHN SIMS REEVES, the son of a musician, was born at Shooter's Hill, and at the age of fourteen obtained the post of organist at North Cray Church. At seventeen he made his first appearance on the stage, as Count Rudolpho in "Sonnambula,' at Newcastle. His voice was then a baritone; but by 1847, when he made his first appearance in London as Edgar in "The Bride of Lammermoor" (in which character our second portrait shows him), his voice had become the pure high tenor of delicious quality which was to become famous over all the world.