I've spent the last few weeks working as an exam invigilator at my previous place of employment, seeing a very familiar world from a slightly different view. The whole point of exam invigilation is, of course, vigilance, and so I've done a passable impression of a meerkat look-out for several hours at a time, three days a week.
However, the huge advantage of invigilation is that it gives one a great deal of largely uninterrupted thinking time, and one morning this week, as I patrolled and scrutinised, I found myself also wondering about the nature of the original Benson company. In the light of re-reading Michael R Booth's 'Theatre in the Victorian Age' over the weekend, I wondered to what extent it fitted his definition of a touring theatre company of the late 19th century. Little did I know what that random passing-thought would lead to...!
(WARNING: This is going to be a VERY LONG post. You might want to go and make a cup of tea/coffee and grab a biscuit to sustain you before continuing...!)
I knew the basic story - how Walter Bentley had left his Company 'high and dry' in Cupar, Fife, doing a 'moonlight flit' to avoid his creditors, leaving the relatively inexperienced Benson to step in and save the day, armed with a cheque from his father, but I'd never really given Bentley himself much thought than that. I also knew that Bentley resurfaced a few years later, running another touring company and that his 'missing years' were spent successfully playing the lead in Henry Arthur Jones's play 'The Silver King'.
J.C. Trewin dispatches Bentley abruptly in two pages, effectively paraphrased from FRB's autobiography, and he comes across as an archetypal crooked Actor- Manager. However, on re-reading 'My Memoirs', Benson's considered character-analysis of Bentley paints a much less stereotypical portrait
Benson's careful choice of words here does hint at a bit of a "We could an if we would" backstory - that 'etc'! - and having done a bit of digging, I think Bentley's career up to the point where he abandons his company to their own fates is probably worthy of a novel.
The son of a prominent Free Scottish Church minister, his real name was William Begg. He did run away to sea at seventeen and then (according to his own account at least!) 'jumped ship' in Australia and evaded the authorities by hiding on a stock farm in North Queensland for three years. Making his way from there to Dunedin in New Zealand, where two of his brothers had already settled, William found himself drawn to amateur theatre through his brother, Frederick and. bitten by the acting bug, joined a professional company in Auckland. They were looking for a financial 'angel' and offered him the chance of some small roles in return. From there, having been unable to find further work in Australia, he returned to London in 1874 and took a role for £1 10s a week, playing at the Court Theatre. The influence of his aunt, Emily Faithfull, a noted campaigner for Women's Rights, appears to have led to his employment with Henry Irving at the Lyceum - a fact which, like Benson, he would use in his own publicity for many subsequent years.
I have to record a debt of gratitude here to the late Dr Sue-Anne Wallace who was Bentley's granddaughter, for the discovery of a three page biographical article in the 1915 Theatre Magazine, published in Australia and available here : Theatre Magazine 1 October 1915 .Wallace's own open access essay makes for fascinating reading Walter Bentley, Scottish Tragedian: Australasia’s Equivocal Theatre Migrant | SpringerLink as does her article on the Australian Theatre Heritage website: Theatrical Portraits of Walter Bentley - Theatre Heritage Australia.
However, neither Bentley's nor Wallace's account mentions the huge scandal of a court case which was widely reported by the British press in the final weeks of December 1881 and the early part of 1882, a scandal which may partly explain why he found himself so financially embarrassed by 1883 and which might also account for his decision to emigrate to Australia for the second time in his life.
In December 1881, Bentley was embroiled in a paternity suit, pursued by an actress called Josephine Hubert who alleged that he was the father of her daughter born “as a consequence of relations which came to subsist between them in Edinburgh and London” and for whom she was asking a settlement of £25 a year - around £2,600 today.
In November 1875 Josephine Hubert had been appearing at the Royal Princess Theatre in Nicholson Square and was renting "a large parlour and a nice little room at the front" at 10 Hill Place, from John Inglis, an out-of-work-chairmaker and his wife, Elizabeth.
Called to give evidence at the trial, six years later, Mrs Inglis commented that Bentley had been a very frequent visitor to her lodger's parlour - Bentley, at that time, was on tour with Irving in Edinburgh. He had visited at least twice a day, for a fortnight, sometimes arriving for breakfast or tea, and always for supper and often leaving after the household had retired to bed. Mrs Inglis told the court that she had caught the couple in a compromising position on at least one occasion: on opening the door to the parlour one evening around nine, Bentley had shouted at her, “For God’s sake, Mrs Inglis! Don't come in now!”. In the moment before closing the door again, she caught a glimpse of Hubert sitting in an armchair, with Bentley kneeling in front of her, his right hand around her waist and his left “where it should not have been.”
The week after this, Hubert had been unwell and so had not been at the theatre and Bentley had visited her bedroom ' for at least an hour'. Mrs Inglis also stated that he had stayed over night on at least one occasion. Hubert suggested that Bentley had plied her with brandy and then been 'inappropriately intimate' although he assured her they would be married.
Bentley, by the time of the trial, was married to someone else and had become a well-known actor on the Scottish touring circuit, with a Company of his own. His response to the allegations was to protest his complete innocence: “I was never alone with her”, “I certainly
never used familiarities with her”, “I only saw her twice” and “My behaviour
towards her was not beyond the courtesy due to an utter stranger”. 
Bentley as Hamlet
The dates of the child's birth didn't match up to the alleged affair either, although Hubert protested that they had resumed the relationship later in London when Bentley had taken her to 'a house of dubious repute'. She also alleged that she had contacted Bentley several times in 1876, that he had given her £5 and had visited her lodgings where he had sat with the child on his knee, that he had given her a signed photograph of himself and a ring and told her they would be married.
Bentley denied all of this and said the first he'd known of the child was when he started to get "annoying letters" from Hubert - writing as herself and then, later, with disguised handwriting, in the names of others, acting on her behalf.
Bentley's defence lawyer then produced another actor -Evelyn Bellew - who stated he had slept with Hubert six months after the events in Edinburgh, but denied Hubert's claim that they were engaged to be married. Hubert had apparently later written to him claiming he was the father of the child - although the baby was born full-term less than eight months after that relationship had ended.
In summing up, Bentley's counsel pronounced that "A review of the whole story of the pursuer (Hubert) and her self-contradictions showed that this was one of the most trumped-up cases ever brought before the Court." and that Hubert had "absolutely failed to prove that Bentley had anything to do with the paternity of this child."
The implication that Hubert was promiscuous and that she was misrepresenting her child's paternity for gain led to her losing the case. However, the judge, in passing judgement, refused to award the defendant costs because he felt the testimony of Elizabeth Inglis proved that Bentley had not told the truth about his relationship with Hubert.
The Aberdeen Press and Journal reported that the defence believed that "this action had been brought by an enemy to injure [the] defender." Initially, however, it would seem that the court case had the opposite effect. On the day after the judgement was delivered, Bentley gave an evening of dramatic readings at the Edinburgh Literary Institute where, according to the Dundee Evening Telegraph, "there was a good attendance, a large proportion of those present being ladies, and Mr Bentley was well-received." His reception on the following Saturday in Glasgow was reported in the North British Daily Mail "When he appeared upon the platform, he received quite an ovation, the cheers being continued for about two minutes." He continued to tour Scotland, with a programme of readings, to largely full audiences. Some venues, however, were less welcoming and there was a feeling in places like Bonnyrigg, for instance, that Mr Bentley was not the sort of act they should be welcoming as part of their lecture series after all.
In the meantime, actor Kyrle Bellew - (brother of Evelyn and also a former member of Irving's Company) took to the pages of 'The Era' to protest his own lack of involvement in the case:
and Josephine Hubert submitted a re-claiming note - essentially an appeal against the judgement.
By the end of March, mention was being made of a tour of 'Mr Walter Bentley's Shakespeare Company' with the Stage reporting that engagements had been made for a tour beginning in Reading on April 10th.
At the beginning of May, the appeal agreed with the original court decision, but Bentley did not emerge well from it. The panel felt that "there was a melancholy exhibition of falsehood on both sides" with one member going so far as to say that Bentley had told 'disgraceful falsehood' and a downright lie.
By then, Bentley was back on the road, touring Scotland and later England with a range of plays, including Hamlet and The Merchant of Venice, among other popular classics.
However, a bit of further digging has revealed that Bentley might have been right about the motive behind the case. When cross-examined about why she had approached an Aberdeen solicitor about the case after such a lapse of time, Hubert said a friend - Mrs Raisbeck Robinson, known professionally as Annie Baldwin - had told her to do so. The defence asked Hubert if she knew there had been a quarrel between Mrs Robinson and Mr Bentley, to which she replied 'No'.
The 'Quarrel' had happened in July 1881, and led to Mr Raisbeck Robinson - theatre lessee and husband Annie Baldwin - suing Bentley for slander, demanding £500 for the loss of his 'good name' as a result of a comment Bentley had made during a bizarre event at a performance at Her Majesty's Theatre and Opera House, Aberdeen in July 1881. The event was reported in some detail in several newspapers:
( I love the line about certain ominous sounds...)Edinburgh Evening News 1/9/1881
Raisbeck Robinson, an amateur performer and a solicitor, claimed that Bentley had actually told the audience that he'd requested a nightly settling of wages because the manager was a lawyer and therefore couldn't be trusted.
In fact, the Dundee Evening Telegraph reported - five days after the incident in the theatre - that the Robinsons had been taken to court by the Landlord of the Theatre because they owed £189 10s in rent and the Sheriff hearing the case ordered that theatrical property and effects including scenery and costumes should be sequestered and the lease terminated. Perhaps Bentley's comment was more truthful than slanderous. By August 10th 1881, Robinson's name appeared amongst a published list of bankrupts. Creditors were owed upwards of £1500, amongst them Walter Bentley, still owed £28 in takings from the twelve performance in Aberdeen. The Robinsons were told to surrender the key to both the theatre and their house, so that assets might be seized. They refused and a protracted series of increasingly bizarre court appearances by Robinson and Annie Baldwin ensued, resulting eventually in the Robinsons being prohibited from entering the theatre at all.
On Saturday the 27th of September, Robinson was arrested, having broken into the theatre shortly before midnight by smashing a window with his walking stick. He was charged with 'malicious mischief' and ordered to pay a fine of 40s or face seven days in prison. The Weekly Free Press and Aberdeen Herald reflected that " Darkness has reigned in the Thespian temple at Aberdeen for more than a week, and a solitary watchman keeps his lonely vigils in the silent theatre. Outside its walls, comedy, tragedy and farce have been on the bills..." (1/10/1881)
It must be wondered whether there was more that a little 'malicious mischief' in Baldwin's advice to Hubert. In any case, Robinson's case against Bentley was dismissed.
The following fulsome advertisement appearing in the Stirling Observer on January 4th 1883:
This would be the week that Benson joined the Company....but that account will have to wait for the next instalment! We've had QUITE enough drama for the time being!
