We were all at the Play last night, to see Miss o’Neal (sic) in” Isabella”. I do not think she was quite equal to my expectation. I fancy I want something more than can be.  Acting seldom satisfies me. I took two Pocket handkerchiefs but had very little occasion for either. She is an elegant creature however and hugs Mr Younge  delightfully.

(See letter to Anna Austen dated 29th November 1814, written from 23 Hans Place, London)

Here we have Jane Austen terribly disappointed at not being moved to copious tears by Miss o’ Neil at a performance of Isabella or the Fateful Marriage by David Garrick.

I have always loved this paragraph of this letter. And I have often wondered what the two actors involved were like.

Do allow me to throw a little more light on them.

Here is a picture of Miss O’ Neil.

She was the daughter of an Irish actor, John O’Neill, stage manager of the Drogheda Theatre, and his wife, a Miss Featherstone. She was born at Drogheda in Ireland in 1791.

Following the family tradition, she appeared on the stage in Drogheda as a young child, and later spent two years in Belfast before going to appear in the theatre at Dublin, where she rapidly became popular in such roles as Juliet and Jane Shore.

In 1814 she was engaged by Thomas Harris , the manager of the theatre to appear at Covent Garden in London.

She made her début as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet and had an immediate triumph. Her entry in the Oxford Companion to the Theatre states:

Her first performance as Juliet as overwhelmingly successful and for five years  she had a career of unbroken triumph,being particularly admired in comedy-her Lady Teazle was excellent- but also appearing in tragedy.

She was hailed as Sarah Siddons’s successor as a tragedienne, and stories were told of men borne fainting from the theatre after witnessing her performances. No wonder  then that Jane Austen was disappointed not to have been moved by her performance.

For five years, in parts including Belvidera (in Venice Preserv’d), Mrs Haller (in The Stranger), and Jane Shore, she dominated the London stage as the leading actress of the time. But her attempt at emulating Sarah Siddons in  the role Lady Randolph in Home’s Douglas was one of her few failures .

Poor Sir Thomas and Tom Bertram :they would have been most disappointed, Douglas being one of their favourites:

And I am convinced to the contrary. Nobody is fonder of the exercise of talent in young people, or promotes it more, than my father, and for anything of the acting, spouting, reciting kind, I think he has always a decided taste. I am sure he encouraged it in us as boys. How many a time have we mourned over the dead body of Julius Caesar, and to be’d and not to be’d, in this very room, for his amusement? And I am sure, my name was Norval, every evening of my life through one Christmas holidays.”

Mansfield Park , Chapter 13.

William Charles Macready, the actor thought that the role Lady Randolph was

unsuited alike to her juvenile appearance and her style of acting

( See: Macready’s Reminiscencesand selections from his diaries and letters. Edited by Sir Frederick Pollock)

Sir Walter Scott , an admirer of her talents had noted that she:

excels rather in those feminine & soft characters than in those where force & dignity are required…

On 3 July 1819 Miss O’Neill made what was announced as her last appearance before Christmas, as Mrs Haller in The Stranger. However this turned out to be her last performance on the stage, ever.

On 18 December 1819 she married William Wrixon-Becher (1780–1850), who was  the Member of Parliament for the Irish constituency of Mallow.

Her reputation for virtue and propriety was fiercely guarded, and like Mrs Siddons’s reputation, was hard won at a time when actresses were seen little more as women of easy virtue and the stage was considered, in many respects rightly, as the haunt of prostitutes. Her behaviour was always exemplary. For example, when the under-age Lord Normanby,the son of the earl of Mulgrave

had proposed marriage to her by letter she did not reply to him but immediately sent the letter to his father, the clear inference being that she would not engage in such a correspondence with an underage man,especially without the knowledge of his father..

The Gentleman’s Magazine wrote about her wedding to  Mr Becher, informing its readers that under the marriage settlement:

Mr B. settles £1000 a year on the lady; and refuses to take a shilling of her fortune…

Mr Wrixon-Becher was a considerable landowner at Ballygiblin, County Cork, Iralnd and was created a baronet in 1831 .Eliza seems to have had a happy ending to her story, unlike many of the leading actresses of her day-Mrs Siddons knew terrible personal tragedy as did Mrs Jordan.

The couple had three sons and two daughters. Eliza O Neil , otherwise known as Lady Wrixon-Becher, died on 29 October 1872 at Ballygiblin.

So, who was the Mr Younge  Miss O’Neil hugged so delightfully?

Charles Mayne Young was a very successful actor-a leading man- of the same  period. He was the son of Thomas Young, a surgeon, and his wife, Anna and was born in Fenchurch Street, London, on 10 January 1777. He was educated first at Eton College, where he remained for three years, and afterwards, in 1791–2, at Merchant Taylors’ School.

Sadly, Charles Young’s father was seemingly a brutal and debauched tyrant who treated his family with great cruelty. He eventually abandoned his wife for another woman. The entire family took refuge with an unmarried sister of Mrs Young, by whom they were brought up under circumstances of  some financial difficulty.

Charles Young eventually found employment as a clerk in a well-known city house, Loughnan & Co.  But it appears that he was struck with the itch for acting as much as poor Mr Yates in Mansfield Park.

After playing at one or two small theatres as an amateur he appeared under the name of Mr Green at Liverpool in 1798 as young Norval in John Home’s tragedy Douglas. Echos of Mansfield Park once again ….

Encouraged by his success in this role, he accepted an engagement in Manchester to play leading parts and, importantly  did so under his own name. After acting in Liverpool and Glasgow he made his first appearance in Edinburgh in January 1802 as Doricourt in Hannah Cowley’s The Belle’s Stratagem.

He acted on stage during the entire season, and here became friends with Walter Scott, whose friendship he retained throughout his life, and with whom he stayed more than once. He returned to act in Liverpool where he in the same company, his wife to be, Julia Ann Grimani. They married at St Anne’s Church, Liverpool, on the 9th March 1805. Sadly she died at the reputed age of twenty-one, on 17 July 1806, shortly after giving birth to their only son.

Young, who had some financial and practical share in management in the theatres at Manchester and elsewhere then moved to London, after some negotiations with George Colman. In June 1807 he made his first appearance there at the Haymarket, playing Hamlet .

In November 1808, as the original Daran in Frederick Reynolds’s play The Exile, Young appeared for the first time as a member of the Covent Garden company, then, when the theatre was burnt down, acted at the Haymarket Opera House.

With all the company he migrated to the other Haymarket house The Little Theatre in the Hay, otherwise known the summer theatre, as mentioned by Lydia Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. Here he played the roles of Othello, Macbeth, and Frederick in Elizabeth Inchbald’s Lover’s Vows.

He was engaged to act as supporting actor to  John Philip Kemble, and on occasion to replace him. After the opening of the new theatre in Covent Garden, Young’s portrayal of Cassius was considered to be as good as Kemble’s Brutus, and gradually, as Kemble’s performances lessened in number, Young became accepted as the leading English tragedian—until his supremacy was eventually challenged by Edmund Kean.

Like Miss O’Neil, Charles Young led a blameless private life and was much respected. He was about 5 feet 7 inches in height, had dark eyes and a dark complexion, and was slightly plump. He had an admirable voice and a good presence . No wonder Jane Austen was thrilled by his being hugged so delightfully …..

His last performance on the stage took place on 31 January 1832 when he appeared as Hamlet. He made a speech declaring that his reasons for quitting the stage were that he felt his strength declining and wished to be remembered at his best.

During his retirement he lived principally in Brighton, where he died on 29 June 1856. He was buried in the churchyard at Southwick Green, near Brighton. He had one surviving son, the Reverend Julian Charles Young, wrote his biography.

So there you have it: a little about two bright stars of the London stage now long forgotten except for  those of us who dissect Jane Austen’s letters line by line…