our little enterprise into one of
the small sensations of the day. The applause of the theatre found so
loud an echo in the press, that for the time nothing else was talked
about in private circles; and after a week or two we had to yield (we
did not find it difficult) to a pressure of demand for more public
performance in a larger theatre, by which a useful charity received
important help, and its committee showed their gratitude by an
entertainment to us at the Clarendon, a month or two later, when Lord
Lansdowne took the chair. There was also another performance by us at
the same theatre, before the close of the year, of a play by Beaumont
and Fletcher. I may not farther indicate the enjoyments that attended
the success, and gave always to the first of our series of performances
a pre-eminently pleasant place in memory.

Of the thing itself, however, it is necessary to be said that a modicum
of merit goes a long way in all such matters, and it would not be safe
now to assume that ours was much above the average of amateur attempts
in general. Lemon certainly had most of the stuff, conventional as well
as otherwise, of a regular actor in him, but this was not of a high
kind; and though Dickens had the title to be called a born comedian, the
turn for it being in his very nature, his strength was rather in the
vividness and variety of his assumptions, than in the completeness,
finish, or ideality he could give to any part of them. It is expressed
exactly by what he says of his youthful preference for the
representations of the elder Mathews. At the same time this was in
itself so thoroughly genuine and enjoyable, and had in it such quickness
and keenness of insight, that of its kind it was unrivalled; and it
enabled him to present in Bobadil, after a richly coloured picture of
bombastical extravagance and comic exaltation in the earlier scenes, a
contrast in the later of tragical humility and abasement, that had a
wonderful effect. But greatly as his acting contributed to the success
of the night, this was nothing to the service he had rendered as
manager. It would be difficult to describe it. He was the life and soul
of the entire affair. I never seemed till then to have known his
business capabilities. He took everything on himself, and did the whole
of it without an effort. He was stage-director, very often
stage-carpenter, scene-arranger, property-man, prompter, and
band-master. Without offending any one he kept eve