An actor's notebooks
being some memories, friendships, criticisms and experiences of Frank Archer
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| Frank Archer |
The author of this volume has not attempted to describe fully his theatrical career, although much of it is in the nature of an autobiography; it is a record rather of a few of the gifted and interesting people with whom he has had the good fortune to come into contact. Most of it was compiled before the attractive volume of his old friends and managers, Sir Squire and Lady Bancroft, came into his hands.
A few of the details necessarily touch on incidents which they have treated, but it cannot render their pleasant book of less value. Accounts of the Franco-German War and the Siege of Paris have been given to the world by many graphic and able pens; but the author, who happened to witness the first spark of that fearful conflagration, believes that the letters of his brother, which describe some of the events of that time, will not prove the least interesting part of his work.
To the many friends who have been helpful to him his best thanks are due, especially to Mr A. P. Watt, who, as literary executor of the late Wilkie Collins, gave permission for some of his letters to be published.
Excerpt:
Allusions to one's ancestors are apt to be a matter of some delicacy, and the word never recurs without that story of Sydney Smith coming to my mind. Being pestered by a lady as to who his grandfather was, he silenced her by remarking that his grandfather " dis- appeared about the time of the assizes, and we asked no questions." My father came from Huntingdonshire, and my mother from Cambridgeshire, although her mother of whom I shall have something to say — was born in London, where she lived until the time of her marriage.
When he was twenty-two my father established a private boarding school at Bishop's Stortford, in Hertfordshire, but eventually went up into Shropshire, the county in which I was born.
I do not know that there is a great deal with regard to my forbears or connections that can have any general interest. It is true that a niece of my great-grandfather on the maternal side married an Essex clergyman — the Reverend Samuel Bennett, B.D. — who was descended in a direct line from Colonel J. W. Bennett, the Secretary of Prince Rupert. To Miss Eva Scott, who wrote the interesting " Rupert, Prince Palatine,"
I am indebted for the statement that it was due to the Colonel's care that the " Rupert Correspondence " was preserved, part of which is now in the British Museum. My maternal grandmother had a favourite nephew, the Rev. D. G. Bishop, Vicar of Tibshelf, in Derbyshire, and once the master of Buntingford Grammar School, who married, I believe, either a daughter or a niece of Dr J. D. Morell, author of " An Introduction to Mental Philosophy."
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