CHARLES READE.

Otago Witness, Issue 1856, 17 June 1887, Page 32

CHARLES READE.

Charles Reade Avas born at IpsdenjHouse, Oxfordshire, on June 8, 1814. He was descended on the father's side from King Henry 111 and from King John, and' on the mother's side from John Balliol, besides being connected by marriage with Charlemange.'His "sire," though here styled "a Bayard," seems to have been a commonplace country gentleman. His mother was daughter of Major Scott or Scott-Waring, the "jackal", of Warren Hastings. She was, we jaro repeatedly assured, "in every fibre a lady." " Haydn taught her music, and Sheridan epigram and repari.ee" — a novel branch of education. She was "a devoted mother!"' yet when her children came home from school or, college " she loved them for a day, tolerated them for a week, and then devoutly! wished they were out of the house." "She was honey one moment and vinegar the next,"

and " much as she loved the baby Charles, she loved her own whims and j fancies more." Yet she seems to have been a woman of strength of character and originality—she " abominated the low wit of Dickens," but found "James, with his loveladies, interesting'^ — and Charles Reade was no doubt right in boasting himself "his mother's son;" though he can scarcely be responsible for the statement that her brain was "the replica "of his. She became anardent Evangelical, was intimatewith many 'distinguished clergymen of • that school, and died at the age of 90. Charles Reade's first schoolmaster was the Rev. Mr Slatter, of Iffte y, a merciless martinet ; his second was the amiable and indulgent Mr Hearn, curate of Staines. Here Charles narrowly escaped being killed by the fall of a church, and in- ■ geniously shielded a schoolfellow who had told Mr Hearn a lie. In 1831 he was elected to a Demy-ship'at Magdalen College, Oxford," on the strength of having written an essay, as his biographer phrases it, " con brio, yet judgmatically." He read little (his tutor, by the way, was Robert Lowe, afterwards Lord Sherbrooke), but once a Demy, he could scarcely miss a fellowship save by gross mis- ■ conduct or stupidity. He was called to the bar in 1842 but never practised. An attempt to establish a trade in Italian violins was unsuccessful,- and for some years, though \\U income of about £330 should have sufficed for a bachelor, he was in serious pecuniary straits. So early as 1835 he had begun to make notes with a view to writing fiction, but he did not set to work seriously until 1850. Then "I wrote," he says, "about thirteen dramas which nobody would play." One of these luckless works brought him into contact with Mrs Seymour, then an actress at the Haymarket. He called to read her a play, and was mortally offended by lier asking, "Why don't you write novels?" She mistook his wroth for the 1 pride of poverty, and sent him a£s note ; and thus began a thirty years' intimacy, which Mr Compton Reade asserts, with unnecessary vehemence, to have been ' purely Platonic. Soon afterwards, Tom Taylor's collaboration enabled him to mould the idea of "Masks and Faces" into actable form. The play was produced at the Haymarket in 1852 ; and from this time forward the story of his career resolves itself into a list of his plays, novels, and controversies.