[H. F. Maltby [Henry Francis Maltby], playwright and actor on stage and screen.] Typed Letter Signed to theatre historian W. Macqueen-Pope, giving reminiscences of his visit to the tomb of ‘Maggoty’ Johnson, and visits to London theatre productions.

From the Macqueen-Pope papers. See his entry in the Oxford DNB. 2pp, 4to. Sixty lines of text. Aged and worn, but entirely legible. Signed ‘H. F. Maltby’ and addressed to ‘My dear Pope’. Most of the letter concerns the tomb of ‘Maggoty’ Johnson: ‘I first met that interesting old gentleman over forty years ago, when I was playing at the Theatre Royal Macclesfield with the late Mrs Bandman-Palmer. It was my landlady who advised me to visit the tomb as one of the objects of interest in the place. The tomb was then covered by a large stone on which was engraved all particulars of his death, [...] It then burst out into a very lengthy epitaph in doggerel’. He gives a facetious couplet from this, with the carved response of ‘the local vicar’. ‘I visited the grave again some twenty years later: but, alas! the iconoclasts, the vandals had been there with their cursed pocket knives and had carved their damned initials all over it - God rot hem! - and both stones were well night illegible.’ He mentions a production of ‘Madame Butterfly’ at the Duke of York’s, ‘where it was put on as an afterpiece to Jeromes flop “Miss Hobbs” and kept that running for months and months after its alloted span, Jerome drawing his fees all the time, though the audiences were careful not to get to the theatre till “Miss Hobbs” had finished. The cast of “Butterfly” was the same as “Hobbs” - Evelyn Millward, Allen Aynesworth, Herbert Wareing, Cosmo Stuart (Gordon Lennox) it was there Pucchini (can’t spell his name) saw it and decided [to] “operize” it. Also, didn’t “Charley’s Aunt” enjoy most of it’s very long run at The Globe Theatre? It was where I saw it. I think it moved there from the Royalty.’