[BITList] A favourite Aunt

Tue Dec 24 07:06:14 GMT 2013

Not wanted at sea?

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Thomas,  (Walter) Brandon  (1848-1914), actor and playwright, was born on 24 December 1848 at 101 Mount Pleasant, Liverpool, the eldest of the three children of Walter Thomas (d. 1878), a bootseller, and his wife, Hannah Morris. He was educated at private schools to the age of twelve: first at the Mechanical Institute, Liverpool, and then at Plumb's House boarding-school, near Prescot. In September 1861 he became a shipwright and was then indentured as a joiner. Having learned bookkeeping, he took a clerkship with timber merchants in Liverpool and Bootle from 1865 until 1875, and then found a similar post in Hull, where his family had moved five years previously. Thomas supplemented his income with a little journalism, but his passion was the theatre. His first opportunity to perform publicly was at Baker Street schoolroom, Hull, where he sang and recited at Saturday temperance evenings. He was introduced to William and Madge Kendal, on tour in 1876, as a potential future actor.

In 1879 Thomas left for London and joined the Hare-Kendal team at the Court Theatre. He made a pseudonymous debut there, as Mr Brandon, in G. W. Godfrey's The Queen's Shilling. Under the same management at the St James's he played a variety of small parts and, during the off-seasons, gained provincial touring experience. In September 1885 he embarked on a gruelling but successful nine-month American tour with Rosina Vokes. On his return, though in continuing demand as singer and reciter at private At Homes and working men's clubs, he sought primarily to broaden his acting experience. He was well cast ('natural and true', said The Theatre) in Pinero's Sweet Lavender (Terry's, 21 March 1888) as the banker Geoffrey Wedderburn, his first important West End part. His speciality was Scots characters, such as Tammy Tamson in his own A Highland Legacy and Macphail in Pinero's The Cabinet Minister (Court, 23 April 1890). In 1891 Thomas successfully invested £1000 in a syndicate backing an experimental triple bill, comprising the premiere of his own play The Lancashire Sailor, coupled with A Commission and Cecil Clay's A Pantomime Rehearsal (Terry's, 6 June). He took prominent roles in all three and logged 152 performances. Pinero, considering him for casting as Cayley Drummle in The Second Mrs Tanqueray in 1893, was impressed by his 'vein of sympathetic kindly geniality'  (Collected Letters, 143); and Shaw praised his effectiveness as Sir Lucius in The Rivals (Court, 11 November 1895) 'mainly by not doing what is expected of him'  (Shaw, 1.254).

Thomas's debut as a playwright, with Comrades (Court, 16 December 1882), was generally regarded as promising. Several other pieces followed, including The Colour Sergeant (Princess's, 26 February 1885), A Highland Legacy (Strand, 17 November 1888)-his earliest play, dating from the 1860s, described by The Times as 'a little masterpiece'-and, least successfully, The Gold Craze (Princess's, 30 November 1889). But nothing in Thomas's career foreshadowed the phenomenal success of Charley's Aunt, a farcical comedy written for W. S. Penley as the Oxford undergraduate cajoled by two friends into impersonating an aunt (from Brazil, 'where the nuts come from') to act as chaperone for their respective sweethearts. First performed at Bury St Edmunds (29 February 1892) and toured through the provinces, it opened in London on 21 December at the Royalty and transferred to the Globe on 30 January, where on 19 December 1896 it completed a record 1469 performances. Continually revived in Britain and elsewhere, it was performed in London at Christmas every year from 1904 to 1930 (excepting 1906 and 1927). Thomas hoped posterity might remember him as a great actor, but he was destined to be known only as the author of Charley's Aunt. Though the plot is relatively slight, it is a clever, energetic piece, and deserves its status as a minor classic.

Thomas's acting career continued to flourish, notably as Pius X in Hall Caine's The Eternal City (His Majesty's, 1902) and John of Gaunt in Richard II (Her Majesty's, 1903). He also went on writing moderate successes, such as The Queen of Brilliants (Lyric, 8 September 1894) and No 22a Curzon Street (Garrick, 2 March 1898), but A Judge's Memory (Terry's, 13 March 1906) was not well received. He acted Colonel and Sir Francis Chesney, his role in the original Charley's Aunt, for the last time during the 1913-14 Christmas season at the Prince of Wales's.

An essentially clubbable man, Thomas belonged to the Hogarth, Eccentric, Savage, and Garrick. Between 1883 and 1903 he was a volunteer in the Artists' Rifles. Of soldierly bearing, but slim build, he stood just under 6 feet tall. Not from affectation, but owing to poor eyesight, he sported a monocle, which became a kind of trade mark.

On 22 December 1888, two days before his fortieth birthday and following long opposition on religious grounds from her Jewish family, Thomas married Marguerite Blanche Leverson (d. 1930). After his death she supervised revivals of his most famous play. There were three children, the two eldest of whom-Amy (1890-1974) and Jevan Brandon-Thomas (1898-1977)-pursued theatrical careers, partly sustained by performing in Charley's Aunt. Thomas died at his home, 47 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, on 19 June 1914, and was buried on the 22nd in Brompton cemetery.

John Russell Stephens 

Sources  J. Brandon-Thomas, Charley's aunt's father: a life of Brandon Thomas (1955) + A. Nicoll, Late nineteenth century drama, 1850-1900, 2nd edn (1959), vol. 5 of A history of English drama, 1660-1900  (1952-9) + A. Nicoll, English drama, 1900-1930 (1973) + J. Shattock, ed., The Cambridge bibliography of English literature, 3rd edn, 4 (1999) + J. P. Wearing, The London stage, 1890-1899: a calendar of plays and players, 2 vols. (1976) + J. P. Wearing, The London stage, 1900-1909: a calendar of plays and players, 2 vols. (1981) + The Times (20 June 1914) + The Times (23 June 1914) + The Theatre, 4th ser., 9 (1887), 170 + The Theatre, 4th ser., 11 (1888), 265 + The collected letters of Sir Arthur Pinero, ed. J. P. Wearing (1974) + G. B. Shaw, Our theatres in the nineties, rev. edn, 3 vols. (1932) + H. G. Hibbert, A playgoer's memories (1920) + The Theatre, 4th ser., 10 (1887), 51 + ILN (31 March 1888) + Men and women of the time (1891)
Likenesses  photograph, 1892, repro. in Brandon-Thomas, Charley's aunt's father · photograph, c.1895, V&A, theatre collections [see illus.] · Barraud, photograph, repro. in The Theatre, new ser., 9 (Jan-June 1887) · M. Beerbohm, caricature, repro. in Brandon-Thomas, Charley's aunt's father · A. S. Mallett, Allen & Co., lithograph · photographs, repro. in Brandon-Thomas, Charley's aunt's father
Wealth at death  £1315 18s. 4d.: probate, 25 Feb 1915, CGPLA Eng. & Wales

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