Father Of Australia's Theatre

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30763, 29 May 1965, Page 4

Father Of Australia's Theatre

Coppin The Great By Alec Bagot Melbourne University Press. 340 pp. Acknowledgements. Refs. Index.

Few commoners have been given the honorary title of “Great” but George Selth Coppin, known as the “Father of the Australian Theatre” in the 19th century, probably deserved it. His life was chequered to an unusual degree. Poverty was followed by prosperity, popularity by calumny, domestic felicity by bereavement. During the last forty years of his long life he was continually plagued by gout, but this seldom impaired his immense vitality. At an early age he married, in Dublin, Maria Burroughs, a woman much older than himself. Her death in Melbourne some years latei' left him inconsolable, though his next matrimonial venture—with Harriet Hilsden, a widow whom he had befriended—was equally happy. After her early death he married her eldest daughter by her first husband —Lucy Hilsden—whom he loved tenderly, and who bore him seven children. So much for his domestic history. George Coppin was born to | —and almost on—the stage. Though his grandfather was a Norfolk parson of good ancestry, who never forgave George’s father for taking up the disgraceful profession (circa 1818) of “strolling player,” and refused to meet his daughter-in-law, young George whose brilliant gifts, both as a comedian and musician were to be in due course recognised, knew that the stage was his natural element. By the time he was 20 he had rubbed shoulders with such eminent actors as T. G. Brooke and Charles Kean (son of the great Edmund), both of whom were to be associated with him many years later in Australia. It was by the toss of a coin that he decided in 1842 to try his luck in this new and rapidly growing colony, where his name was to become known during the next 20 years from Adelaide to Sydney, though he settled finally in Melbourne. Comedy (especially in the part of "Billy Barlow.” a sort of inspired commentator on local events) was Coppin’s great strength, but his gifts were not confined to acting. He was a first-rate man of business. ( and in the shifting fortunes of young Australia he was to make and lose three fortunes i in theatrical enterprises which ) he directed. He even transported from England in 1854 I a prefabricated theatre —his I “iron pot” as he called it—'which was the Olympic (theatre Melbourne. The golden ! opportunities to men of viaion (offered by the Australia of ■ those days also presented unpredictable hazards. and George Coppin over-reached his resources more than once. While doing excellent business in Adelaide with two theatres in 1851 the sudden gold-rush in New South Wales and Victoria depleted his audiences almost overnight, I and plunged him into bank-1

ruptcy. “During the last five months of 1851 not 50 males between the ages Of 16 and 50” were left to resist the lure of the goldfields.. George tried his hand at this precarious method of getting rich quick, but soon abandoned it: and with money becoming plentiful among the gold-miners struggled to his feet in the favoured provinces by once more resorting to his profession, as a result of which he was able to pay his creditors in full by 1854. His two famous theatrical partnerships—one with the handsome T. G. Brooke, and later with Charles Kean—though giving his adopted country the benefit of their first class talents—were neither of them happy from a personal angle. Poor Brooke eventually went to pieces through drink and matrimonial troubles and returned home, to be drowned some years later while returning for a new engagement in Australia. The Kean partnership ended in unseemly wrangles between the two men, but before doing so it added vividly to Coppins’s immensely variegated experiences. Acting as agent for the great, tragedian on an American tour, he was in New York when President Lincoln was murdered in Washington, and gave a graphic account in a letter to his wife of the re-

suiting chaos In America. The hazards and discomforts of sea-travel at the time are also disclosed in this chapter, and the unfortunate George's gout was in no way improved by sleeping in sea-swamped cabins.

During 60 years in Australia Coppin’s roles varied greatly in scope. His scrupulous honesty, in repaying creditors after his financial reverses brought him universal respect. He was one of the first advocates of life insurance and savings’ banks, in a country where a man’s sudden death could mean ruination to his family. When this happened he would arrange innumerable “benefit nights” in his theatres for victims of misfortune. He was a born showman, and introduced into Australia attractions as far apart as balloonists and roller-skating. He became a member at different times both of the Legislative Council and the Legislative Assembly of Victoria, and Leonard Mann in an appreciative foreword says “He . . . looked forward to a time when the Australians would be one people . . . and always strove to that end.” This is a tribute indeed to a “low comedian” and successful entrepreneur, and his proved altruism gives substance to his claim to be called “great." The book has some interesting illustrations.