R,CHARD MONCKTON MILNES was born in the year - OUDL Home

The Theatre in the 'Seventies 135company being disbanded, he broke away from his familyand went to London. There he accepted any employmenthe could obtain in connexion with the theatre, usually,as he told his son, at that class of theatre where the performancewas advertized to take place at an hour which,however often the hour was changed, the public evidentlyfound to be an inconvenient one. He had not been longin London when he wrote his first piece, a little dramacalled A Nighf's Adventure. After persistent efforts to gethis play produced, he contrived to win the sympathy ofWilliam Farren, the elder, then manager of the Olympic,and Farren put the piece upon the stage. It failed utterly,running—or, rather, staggering—for four nights only.This was in 1851, when Robertson was twenty-two.It was about this time that he met, and formed afriendship with, Henry James Byron—a friendship whichlasted till Robertson's death. Byron, slightly Robertson'sjunior, was also an actor and an aspiring playwright. Ishall have a good deal to say about Byron as an authorlater on. Meanwhile it is enough to record that these twoyoung men acted together in various companies, halfstarvedtogether, and lived to see each other popular andprosperous. Byron was the first of the two to succeed,and then, as I shall show, he did not forget his friend.They lived in a foolish, sentimental age.Among the tribulations which Byron and Robertsonsuffered jointly was one arising out of the hiring of apublic room in London for the performance of an entertainmentthey had written in collaboration—an entertainmentso artfully constructed that while Byron was on thestage in the first part Robertson could fill the office ofmoneytaker, and while Robertson occupied the stage,prior to their appearance in a duologue which finished theprogramme, Byron could take control of the pay-box.A kind patron paid the first week's rent in advance and