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xxiv INTRODUCTION.
itself and in the method of its telling, and there was so much dialogue ready for transplanting and only requiring a little subsequent pruning to render it fit for stage purposes, that it is not surprising that more than one theatre should have produced a version of the Cricket before the book was many days old. The adapter of the piece which was produced at the City of London Theatre on the 7th of January, 1846, modestly withheld his name—at least it is not printed on the " book of the play " which I have before me—that at the Adelphi, which was first played on the 31st of December, 1845, was by the industrious Edward Stirling. At the City of London the principal figure was Mrs. R. Honner, an actress much esteemed at the minor theatres in those days, who played Dot; at the Adelphi the Dot was Mrs. Fitzwilliam, the John Peerybingle 0. Smith, the Bertha Miss Woolgar, the Caleb Plummer a Mr. Lambert, the Spirit of the Cricket Miss Ellen Chaplin, and the Tilly Slowboy Edward Wright. This was a fairly strong cast, but was far surpassed at the Lyceum in an excellent adaptation by Albert Smith, when Sam Emery, who was always very strong in Dickens parts, played John Peerybingle, and the admirable Robert Keeley and his incomparable wife were the Caleb Plummer and the Dot. That the story has remained popular with play-goers even to the present day the numerous admirers of Mr. J. L. Toole's Caleb Plummer, in an arrangement of Dion Boucicault's version, can testify. |
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4.—-THE BATTLE OF LIFE
It was during Charles Dickens's residence at Rosemont, near Lausanne in the year 1846, and while the early numbers of Dombey and Son were in progress, that the Battle of Life was written. The difficulties which had been experienced before in carrying on two stories at the same time speedily presented themselves again, and, this time, with the aggravation that the two had to be practically opened together. " I ought to have considered before," Charles Dickens confessed, " that I have never before really tried the opening of two together—having always had one pretty far ahead when I |
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