Author: MATHEWS, Charles
Biography:
MATHEWS, Charles (1776-1835: ODNB)
Mathews, who became the leading comic actor of his generation, did not often publish verse and owes his place in this bibliography to a few anthologized songs. He was born on 28 June 1776 in London, the seventh son of James Mathews, a bookseller and Wesleyan Methodist preacher, and his wife Elizabeth (d 1810). He grew up in Richmond, Surrey, where he had the run of his father’s bookshop and the use of a room above a stable as a play theatre. From the age of 14 his heart was set on a career as a professional comic actor. After his debut in Richmond in 1793 he joined companies in Dublin (1794-5), Swansea in Wales (1795-8), and York (1798-1803) before his first performance in London in May 1803. In Swansea on 19 Sept. 1797 he married Eliza Kirkham Strong (q.v. Eliza Mathews); after her death, on 28 Mar. 1803 at St. Helen’s, York, he married another actor, Anne (or Ann) Jackson, with whom he had an only son. With a growing reputation, he was on contract with Drury Lane Theatre from 1804 to 1811 and with Covent Garden from 1812 to 1816; in the London off-season he continued to perform at provincial theatres. As a consequence of an injury in 1814 he could no longer take leading comic roles but he had developed a novel entertainment, at first for two performers but eventually as a one-man show, his “At-Home,” which he toured to great acclaim. In 1822 he took it to America. Back in England, he created a show entitled “A Trip to America,” which opened in 1824 and which he performed regularly at the Adelphi Theatre, in which he had acquired a half share. En route to the US again in 1834 he contracted a respiratory infection which led eventually to his abandoning the tour and returning with his wife to England in the spring of 1835. He died at Devonport, Plymouth, Devon, on 28 June and was buried there at St. Andrew’s on 30 June. His wife Anne published Memoirs of him in 2 vols in 1838. (ODNB 14 Apr. 2023; findmypast.com 15 Apr. 2023; ancestry.com 15 Apr. 2023) HJ