BOY GENIUS

New Zealand Times, Volume LII, Issue 12199, 25 July 1925, Page 12

BOY GENIUS

The Jackie Coogan of a Hundred 1

How many, one wonders, of }be thousand# wbo have >i«» r d of btti® Jackie Ceogan havo remembered that more then a hundred years ago all London, all England indeed was goiag erassy <?vfir another small boy haiUK) by all as tho supreme geniup of the theatre? . . _ * True, Jactie Coogan has the tags over Willie of the eighteen hundreds, in‘that at ten Jackie has been' famous for years, while. Willie bad to wait wearily . till lie . was eleven before his gphius was univefselly recognised. William Henry West Betty, to give him his full name, was tom ut Shrewsbnre. ija I7®l. History seems to have little to say of;, him till ,'in 1802 his genius waa acclaimed in Belfast. But. bnoe given, -the verdict of wa* swiftly ; confirmed by the rest of the kingdoni. . MONEY TALKS It ft Jmpossible to deeoribe the fer. tours and toe enthusiasms of Willie’s admirer*. Crowds waited patiently outside tiie door of his lodgings to catch a glimpse of hia comings and goings, 'for the privilege of. stroking one of his glossy curl* great ladies intrigued and fought; n : :■ A r, - ■■■ - *■ Hie proof of Willie’s popularity can to given ip figures, for “money talked” in 1802 as in 1924. and it je on record that Willi# wa* paid at toe rate of

£§oo a week, The - high-brows of the eighteen, hundreds fleam to have been (is enthusiastic as tba rest of the world —indeed more so. A more classical' age than this named, gillie the Young Boseius—presumably in those days everyone knew till about Quintus Roscius, mast famjous of ancient Roman actors—and no one affected to despise either Willie or his art, !

A CAMBRIDGE UNDERGRADUATE Unfortunately, Willie, in the height of bis success made a great mistake. He decided that education was-neces-sary, and he left the stage for Cambridge, becoming-thus merely si clever and promising undergraduate of whom that University provides alone three thousand every year. . When he returned to the stage, educated maybe but shorn of glamour, no-one could be persuaded to take much interest in him, and in.a year or two he retired, to live another half-eentury in peaceful, retirement in the enjoyment of tba fortune the labours of his babyhood had brought him. and remembering perhaps sometimes on lonely evenings or" in the watches of the night that wonderful day when William Pitt. Prime Minister of England, adjourned Parliament in order that: the members might have the opportunity of admiring and applauding the little Willie’e interpretation of “Hamlet.”