MR.J.L. TOOLE.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XX, Issue 3935, 26 June 1877, Page 2

MR.J.L. TOOLE.

[From the " World."] There is a handsome house facing Kensington Gardens marked out from its neighbors by the touches of bright color illumining balconies and conservatory. It is a house Avith a general air of expansion and adaptation to modern requirements, which speaks cosily of abundant internal comforts, yet with a vivacious sprightly exterior which says, as plainly as housefront can, cheerfulness and fun are as the air we breathe inside. This house is the residence and property of Mr J. L. Toole, the comedian, who, like a prudent well-to-do citizen, has invested some of his wellearned thousands in the lease of his dwelling-place, has put away other capital in additions and improvements, and who now owns for a term of yeaxs a capital house in a first-rate locality at an annual ground-rent of about a hundred a year, or less than a single night's performance on the half-profit system has often brought him. To the question, " What is Toole like off the stage ?" there can be but one reply, ' Funnier " (if possible)" ' — exalted authority will be quoted presently for the words in parentheses — " than he is on it." Fun is a feeble word to express the overflowing, energetic, and inexhaustible humor with which our prince of low comedians is endowed. Dine with him, walk, talk, ride, or sit with him, and you hear dramatic and other stories of the best kind told in the best manner, and with such marvellous mimetic power that you may come away with the feeling that your list of personal acquaintances has been enormously increased, and that human nature is a more eccentric thing than you had supposed. There has not been an actor of any mark for the last 30 years but Toole knows him, and can, and will, reproduce him in voice, manner, and idiosyncrasy, as he was or is both on and off the stage, together with some ludicrous incidents in which he or the narrator played chief parts. There is not a town possessing a theatre in the United Kingdom, but has furnished this natural low comedian with some matchless experience of character ; and this enormous wealth of material is distributed with a lavish hand, evidently delighting him who gives as well as those who receive. " What I really enjoy is a chat ; that is the form of recreation which refreshes me most after a hard night's work ; and if one can get a laugh at what some one else says, after having been engaged professionally in making other people laugh for several hours, why there's nothing more refreshing. Yes, Ido like nothing better for a rest than a talk." But we have gained the hall at Ormesquare ; let us look around, and find on the walls a pictorial history of the British stage. Here are the time-honored engravings, familiar to theatrical students, of°the heroes before Agamemnon—pictures, many of the originals of which are in the Charles Mathews Collection at the Garrick Club— and here are, what Mr Toole insists delight him equally, portraits and scenes of celebrities we have all known or heard of as nourishing in our time. Gossip says that the collection of pictures at Orme-square includes two hundred and seventy-three portraits of Mr Toole, in as many different parts ; but this is probably a humorous exaggeration. There are undoubtedly a vast number. That one frame ©f photographs, all of Mr Toole, a present from a Mend, contains him in about fifty different costumes ; and the latest addition to the pictures of the house — a series of admirable caricatures of the leading actors of the day by Mr Bryan — includes Mr Toole himself as Tottles and as Professor Muddle in the Spelling Bee ; and Mr Irving, Mr Phelps, Mr Charles Mathews, Mr

Compton, Mr H. J. Byron, Mr Thome, Mr Bancroft, Mr Hare, Mr Webster, Mr David James, are all capital examples of the artist's special gift. Beyond these, and filling an honored place at the entrance to our host's sanctum, is an autograph letter framed and glazed. Ifc is dated from MarlWough House, is signed " Albert Edward," and after conferring a favor in gracious phrase, goes on to say of the *' Steeplechase," which we all saw the other day at the Gaiety, "It is a capital farce, and I think Toole acts better in it (if possible)"— now see where our quotation comes from — " than any piece I have seen him in." Amongst the valuable and interesting curiosities and relies with which. Mr Toole's. home abounds, there are few xipon which he places highel* value than upon this flattering expression of opinion in a familiar note from his Royal Highness to a common friend; Yet there is a most interesting collection of autograph upstairs ; and works of art, each with its own little history, adorn every nook and cranny of the spacious house. . . . Without presuming to touch deeply upon private life, we may be permitted to say that the subject of this paper is essentially a domestic man, and so devoted a husband and father as to be generally accompanied by his family when his professional engagements necessitate more than a short absence from London. When Mr Toole visited America, for example, Mrs Toole and his son and daughter, and the latter's governess, were added to the professional fellow-travellers it was necessary to take ; and after we have shaken hands that afternoon, with a merry parting jest, the thought occurs how widely different the experience has been from much that one has read of comedians off the boards. Hypochoudriacal and gloomy creatures occasionally, whose fun and animal spirits left them with their stage dress, or dissolute profligates, whose irregularities were a proverb and whose homes were a disgrace, the remembrance of their careers brings into strong relief the cheerful brightness of the happy house we have left, which might be singled out as a typical example of a prosperous English middle-class home, in which the happiness of its master centres. The steady intelligent young fellow working away creditably for his destined profession; the charming little girl who is as the apple of her father's eye, and who is the first auditor of many a playful stroke of humor which afterwards becomes famous ; the abundant evidences of the thoughtful and affectionate care with which the comedian's tastes and wishes are studied; and above all his own happiness, enjoyment, and pride in and with his family, and his passionate yearning for home when he is away, all linger pleasantly in the memory when one recalls that merry afternoon with Toole and the ceaseless outpour of amazing stories, illustrated by choicer comic acting than the stage has seen, wherewith it was enriched.