loading . . . Guest Post by Elaine Thornton – Master Betty, Child Star of the Georgian Theatre I am delighted to welcome back a regular guest, Elaine Thornton to All Things Georgian to tell us an interesting story I hadn’t come across before:
In the early afternoon of 1 December 1804 groups of excited people began to gather outside London’s Covent Garden theatre. When the doors finally opened, a huge crowd stampeded into the auditorium, fighting for seats.
Covent Garden 1809 British Museum
The scene quickly descended into chaos: several hundred spectators jumped down from the packed lower boxes into the pit, adding to the crush in front of the stage. The situation became so serious, with audience members in danger of injury or suffocation and unable to escape, that the military were called in to restore order before the play could begin.
The cause of the hysteria was not the play itself, which was a mediocre tragedy called _Barbarossa_. The theatregoers were desperate to catch a glimpse of one of the actors, William Betty, who was making his London debut in the role of Selim, Sultan of Algiers.
William Henry West Betty by John Smart, England, 1806, watercolor on ivory. Cincinnat Art Museum -DSC04376
William was just thirteen years old. Child actors were not uncommon, especially in theatrical families, but they usually played parts suited to their age or participated in performances with other children. William took on lead roles in adult productions. He had already caused a sensation – and earned a fortune – dazzling audiences in Ireland, Scotland and northern England with his performances as Romeo and Hamlet.
Betty Hamlet by Northcote. Yale Center
William Henry Kent Betty had not come from a theatrical background. He was born in Shropshire on 13 September 1791, to an Irish father, also called William Henry Betty, and an English mother, Mary Stanton. Both parents came from well-off families: Betty senior was the son of a well-known Lisburn doctor, and Mary – also known as Polly –had inherited Hopton Court, a large country house and estate in the Shropshire village of Hopton Wafers.
They had married in 1790, but it soon became evident that William Betty was a gambler and a spendthrift. He is said to have sold his wife’s property secretly to pay his debts. By 1800, the family had moved to Northern Ireland, where they took a lease on a farm in County Down – and where Betty senior continued to pile up debts.
Young William must have had an aptitude for acting – and he must also have had a phenomenal memory, as he apparently learnt the role of Hamlet by heart in three hours. He was said to have been inspired to go on the stage by seeing the great Sarah Siddons act in Belfast in 1802, telling his father tearfully that he would ‘ _certainly die_ ’ if he did not become an actor.
Whether or not this story is true, it seems that Betty senior was actually the driving force behind his son’s precocious career. He engaged the prompter of the Belfast theatre, William Hough, to coach young William, and persuaded the theatre’s manager to let the boy act in a tragedy called _Zara._ William’s debut went well, and over the winter of 1803 he appeared in theatres in Dublin, Cork and Waterford, playing major Shakespearean roles to enthusiastic applause.
William was successful enough in Ireland to be engaged for a tour of Scotland and the north of England the following spring. Hough accompanied him as mentor and tutor. Betty senior had developed a flair for publicity and reports of the boy’s sensational achievements began circulating in the media. William was hailed as ‘ _the Young Roscius_ ’, a name that linked him to David Garrick, the greatest actor of the Georgian era. Garrick, who had died in 1779, had been nicknamed ‘ _Roscius_ ’ after a famous Roman actor.
William quickly became a national celebrity: the northern tour was a triumph, breaking all box office records. The manager of the Birmingham theatre considered that William’s drawing power ‘ _must absolutely surpass anything ever witnessed in the theatrical world_.’ By the summer of 1804, the boy was hot property: Drury Lane and Covent Garden were competing for his services.
Kemble as Coriolanus British Museum
In the end, Covent Garden won the contest by offering William the immense sum of fifty guineas a night, more than Philip John Kemble, the leading actor of the time, earned in a week. It was also agreed that William would act at Drury Lane in between his appearances at Covent Garden.
William’s arrival in the capital was greeted with frenzied press coverage. Betty senior had intensified his publicity campaign, making sure that ‘ _Betty merchandise_ ’ – which included miniature portraits, and mugs, medals and snuff boxes carrying the boy’s image – was on sale in the London shops before his debut.
William’s first performance at Covent Garden, as Selim in _Barbarossa_ , caused a furore. He was proclaimed to be a natural actor ‘governed by a wonderful instinct and by the magical inspiration of genius’, and he was compared to the young Mozart. The newspapers reported people in the audience fainting during his performances.
William’s appearances on stage were attended by all of high society, from the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Devonshire to the government ministers of the day. William Pitt the Younger, Lord Sidmouth and Charles James Fox were all devotees: during a performance of _Hamlet_ , Fox whispered to his neighbour that in his opinion, the Young Roscius was ‘ _better_ than Garrick’.
William, who was a very attractive-looking child, had his portrait painted by several fashionable artists, including John Opie and James Northcote. The Duke of Clarence, later William IV – whose mistress was Covent Garden’s comic actress Dora Jordan – accompanied the boy to pose for his portrait by Northcote and kept him amused during the lengthy sitting.
The strain on William must have been tremendous. He was being driven hard. He was on stage several nights a week, taking a leading role in every performance, and was paraded at fashionable dinners and parties until the early hours of the morning. By the end of December he was ill, and in mid-January he collapsed. The Duke of Clarence invited William to recuperate at his country home, Bushy Park.
It seems that William’s mother, Mary, had not wanted her son to become an actor at such an early age, but her objections had been ignored, and she had been overruled by her ambitious husband. William’s collapse had justified his mother’s concerns, but he was allowed little time to recover his health. By 31 January he was back on stage.
One person at least was having to grit his teeth as he watched Master Betty’s triumphal progress. Philip John Kemble was manager and part-owner of Covent Garden as well as its leading actor, and he had to swallow his pride – which was considerable – in order to stand aside and allow a boy of thirteen to take over his roles. Both he and his sister, Sarah Siddons, avoided appearing on stage with William.
The bubble was bound to burst at some point, and in April 1805 Betty senior made a fatal mistake. He sacked William Hough, the Belfast prompter who had acted as young William’s mentor from the start of his career. Shortly afterwards, the boy appeared as Richard III – a poor decision, as he was bound to lack credibility playing such a psychologically complex character. The _Morning Chronicle_ commented that William’s ‘ _friends_ ’ had been ‘ _injudicious_ ’ in allowing him to appear in the role.
Later that year, Kemble tried a little sabotage. William’s success had started a fashion for child actors, and Kemble took advantage of this to introduce a Miss Mudie, who was seven or eight years old, onto the Covent Garden stage. He seems to have intended her to fail by casting her in an inappropriate role, which he hoped would discredit children playing adult parts.
The _Morning Advertiser_ described Miss Mudie’s role of Peggy in Garrick’s comedy _The Country Girl_ as ‘ _a wanton and indecent character_ ’, and reported that the audience was ‘ _shocked and disgusted’_ by the sight of a little girl performing love scenes with an adult man. The poor child was hissed off the stage.
Betty as Orestes British Museum
If it was a trick, it was a cruel one, but it did little to halt the flow of aspiring child prodigies. When the normally tolerant and good-natured Dora Jordan tripped over four-year-old Master Wigley, who had been hired to play the bugle at Covent Garden, she is said to have muttered ‘ _Oh for the days of King Herod!’_
William was hired for a second London season, but with Hough gone, it started to become apparent that he was not the natural genius he had been proclaimed, but had been carefully coached by his mentor in each role. Criticism started to appear in the previously adulatory newspaper columns. The _Sun_ decided that the role of Hamlet was _‘far above his reach_ ’, and the _Oracle_ thought that his performance as Romeo proved that ‘ _though a Boy may be taught to _talk_ , he cannot be instructed to _feel_ like a Man.’_
William was not offered a third season in London, although he continued to tour the provinces successfully for several years. He retired from the stage in 1808 and went to university, matriculating at Christ’s College, Cambridge – although he left in 1810 without having completed his degree. His father died in 1811. William had no need to work; he had earned enough money to be able to live comfortably for the rest of his life.
Financially, the brief career of the _‘Young Roscius_ ’ had been a run-away success, but it must have been at a psychological cost. William had to cope with becoming a celebrity at the age of twelve and a ‘ _has-been_ ’ by the time he was seventeen. He made several attempts at come-backs, without success. In 1821 he was reported to have attempted suicide after a contract at Covent Garden was cancelled before his first appearance. Soon afterwards, in 1824, he gave up trying to return to the stage and settled down to the life of a country gentleman.
Rather sadly, he put his son, Henry, on the stage at the age of fifteen. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that he was hoping to enjoy a vicarious success. Henry turned out to be a decent, but in no way outstanding, actor.
William Betty was a victim of fashion and of his father’s ambition. His youth, looks and the publicity surrounding him touched off a hysteria that seems comparable to the ‘ _Beatlemania_ ’ of the 1960s, but as he grew up and lost his boyishness he fell out of fashion, and was abandoned by the high society supporters who had idolised him. There was no way back to the stardom he had experienced so early in his life. He died in 1874 and was buried in Highgate Cemetery.
**Sources:**
Jeffrey Kahan, _Bettymania and the Birth of Celebrity Culture_ , Lehigh University Press, 2010
Linda Kelly, _The Kemble Era_ , Bodley Head, 1980
Giles Playfair, _The Prodigy_ , Secker & Warburg, 1967
**Newspapers:**
_Ipswich Journal_
_Morning Advertiser_
_Morning Chronicle_
_Morning Post_
_Oracle and Daily Advertiser_
_The Sun_
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