CHAPTER IV 



EARLY THEATRICAL EXPERIENCES 



Amateur Days — My Contemporaries — Joe Wilson of the Tivoli — Forbes 

 Robertson as a Boy — His Early Roles — First Notable Success — 

 Herbert Tree's Start— First Parts in Hamlet 



j Pallant was in great request in those days on account 

 I of his playing. It was before he succeeded in laying 

 the foundation of a fortune during the Kaffir boom. 

 j He never looked back after that and eventually he 

 I became Chairman of the Gaiety Theatre Company 

 and was interested in other theatrical ventures. 

 I Pallant was associated in early times with a clever 

 j troupe of amateur Christy minstrels. My early 

 1 efforts were for amateur theatricals, chiefly in shows 

 ij at the old Assembly Rooms in Stoke Newington. 

 There were several performances got up by Willie 

 Poole, who used to sit in the pew behind us at High- 

 bury in that church I have spoken of. I never gave 

 Poole any credit for histrionic talent, but a little later 

 he asked me to join him in a show he was getting up, 

 and I played Lord Glossmore in Money, and for a long 

 time in all his productions appeared in the curtain 

 raiser as Jeremy Diddler in Raising the Wind. 



We also gave The Lady of Lyons and The Ticket-of- 

 Leave Man. Joe Wilson, the present manager of the 

 Tivoli, was a splendid Jim Dalton in the latter — 

 an amateur, of course. Charlie Dickinson, who lived 

 in Highbury, was in some of the shows. He was also 

 in the " House," and still is a prominent member. 

 Walter Brammall, also known in Throgmorton Street, 



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