Horatio Lloyd's Autobiography
Serialised in the Glasgow Weekly Herald from May the 22nd 1886
Horatio
Lloyd, was Arthur Lloyd's father and a well respected and popular actor and comedian in his own
right. For most of his career, which was during the early to mid 1800s,
he performed mainly in Edinburgh and Glasgow.
The following pages are from Horatio's Autobiography 'Life of an Actor' Serialised in The Glasgow Weekly Herald over 15 weeks from May 22, 1886.
Right - Horatio Lloyd and his son Richard Delarue in 1889, the year Horatio died - Courtesy James Francis and Robert Cunningham. Click to enlarge.
The whole Autobiography is indexed on this page and each Chapter reflects one week's edition of the newspaper's serialisation of it. You may click the Chapter or Section headings below to go directly to that part, and there is a next and last Chapter link at the bottom of each page.
The Life of an Actor an Autobiography
By H. F. Lloyd, Comedian
Late of the Theatre-Royal, Edinburgh and Glasgow
INDEX
Chapter One
Introductory and Retrospective
My Birth and Early Recollections
Bartlemy Fair and its Effects
School Days at Dotheboys Hall
Experiences with Mr Squeers
The Real Home of the Smikes
A Reminiscence of Dickens
Chapter Two
Drifting into the Profession
Actresses of my Time
The Great Actors
My First Appearance in Public
My First Love Affair
The Wicked Uncle
Not Born to be Drowned
Private Theatricals - An Ambition for Tragedy
An Awkward Contretemps
I Try Low Comedy
Lady Amateurs
Nature Best After All
Chapter Three
Entering the Profession - Dishonest Theatrical Agent
Adventure with a Corpse
Resurrection or Not
Joe Ostler and Amateur
Getting Disenchanted
The Theatre-Royal Thaxted
Romance and Reality in Interiors
I Lodge with the Constable
Chapter Four
Endeth the First Lesson - A Strange Bed-Fellow
An End to the Thaxted Engagement
In Love Once More
Advice From the Constable
I Return Home Sadder and Wiser
I Cross the Border - An Honest Theatrical Agent
Scotland From the Cockney Point of View
A Theatrical Waif
The Death Warrant
My Experience of the Scotish Dialect
Chapter Five
Goodbye
To Caledonia by Road
Davy Wilkie
The Process of Disillusion
The Green Room - Idea of Wit
Early Days in Scotland - An Offer from Glasgow
My first Benefit
Theatrical Sharp Practice
Mr Alexander and his Theatre
My first Appearance in Glasgow
Edmund Kean
The Lord Mayor has a Mishap
Kean and the Rhumatic Lago
Glasgow Society Half a Century Ago
Chapter Six
Had Up Before the Magistrate
At the Pope's Eye
Climbing the Ladder - Charles Young's Farewell to the Stage
The Tragedian's Hints in Comedy
Young Kemble on Scotch Applause
An Actor's Ruse
The Cholera and the Theatre
Phelps
An Early Friend of Kean
I Settle in Edinburgh
The Jack Bag Snuff Box
Scotch Friendships
Edinburgh - The Quaker Family and the Theatre
A Quakeress Transformed
A Double Life
Chapter Seven
No Song, No Supper - A Realistic Performance
A Man of Business
The Adelphi
Mr Yates and His Elephant
The Grand Vizier in a Difficulty
Unrehearsed Business
Steady Sailing - A Slip of the Mind
Pleasant News
With David Prince Miller
Last Days of the Edinburgh Theatrical Fund
The Shakespeare Club and How it Ended
With a Travelling Companion at Alloa
Theatre Alloa
Macbeth, Macduff and The Bull-Dog
Macready, His Temper and His Manner
Compliments The Gravedigger
Chapter Eight
How Old Should Hamlet's Grave Digger Be?
An Offer From London
More Offers and More Refusals
My First Management - A Sailor's High Jinks
The Widow's Ruse
Dying a Second Time
My Experience as a Glasgow Manager
Theatre Royal Glasgow
Mr Murray in Glasgow, After Nineteen Years
How the Accounts Stood
A Newspaper War
Chapter Nine
Old Friends - The Loss of Mr Elton, The Tragedian
Another Squabble
An Elton Benefit in Glasgow
With Mr Sims Reeves at Aberdeen
Some Reminiscences of Reeves and Cowell
Montague Stanley's Farewell to the Stage
Stanley as a Man and as an Actor
An Ideal Macaire
Chapter Ten
A Chapter of Anecdotes - Celebrities in the Edinburgh Green Room
Kemble's Advice to "Cassio"
Kemble and Cooke
"Hamlet" and Mr Powse
Kemble and the Poker
Edmund Kean
Madame Vestris's Chief Attraction
"Pritchard's Conquering Eye"
Jamie Birrell and Mrs Henry Siddons
More Anecdotes - A Brief Engagement in Glasgow
Jenny Lind
An Unscrupulous Manager
Kean's Deathbed - A Tragic Incident
Chapter Eleven
Kean's Post-Mortem
Charles Kean
Alexander's Idea of Filling up the Time
A Utility Man
Alexander's Cat
One of Alexander's "Very Last" Farewells
Severs an Old Connection - A Story of G. V. Brooke
The Sequel
Chapter Twelve
Kean in Comedy
Lord Dalhouse as Godfather
Jenny Lind in Scotland
Warm Words with Mr Murray
Farewell to Edinburgh
Off to Glasgow
Alfred Bunn
An Incident Unrehearsed
My Most Immemorial Years - Bunn on Stage Managers
"Cautious John's" Idea of Management
Phelps at Rehearsal
Chapter Thirteen
Murray, Calvert, and Egerton as Stage Managers
My Unfortunate Venture as a Lessee
Harcourt Bland
My Missfortunes in Brief
In the Sanctuary
Back to "St Mungo's Bells" - Mr Murray's Death
Some Recollections of Murray
I Return to Glasgow
Chapter Fourteen
Another Personal Venture
Death of Edmund Glover
Miss Menkin and her "Fiery Untamed Steed"
Post Meridian - Mr Sothern at at the Prince's
Visit of the Keans
George Hamblin - How His Nickname Arose
"Our American Cousin" - A Question of Copyright
Rows with Mr Sothern
At Cambridge - The Wit of the Undergraduate
Chapter Fifteen
Clearing for the Last Act - The Disruption and its Effect on the Proffession
Major Sir Walter Scott and his Father's Novels
Sir Walter Scott
A Clergyman's Love Verses
A Donkey I met in Dublin
Some Glasgow Shakespearean Critics
Helen Faucit on "Touchstone"
Garrick's Farewell
Garrick's Death and Funeral
Here I Break Off and say Farewell
Editorial
The Glasgow Weekly Herald's serialisation of Horatio Lloyd's Autobiography was very kindly transcribed from the original archive newspapers of 1886 for this site by Barbara Cherrie, with help from Raymond Tasker, Charles Bowman, Norman King Lloyd, J.P.A. Morgan, Barbara Annan, and myself, and is used Courtesy The Mitchell Library, Glasgow.