Background
George Peabody Riddle was born on September 22, 1851 in Charlestown, Massachussets, the son of Edward and Charlotte (Cutter) Riddle. His father, a carriage dealer and auctioneer, had no connection with the stage, but his grandfather, William H. Riddle, was an actor. His grandmother, Mary (Lapsley) Riddle, who came of an old Philadelphia Quaker family, also was on the stage, and their two daughters, Eliza, who married Joseph M. Field, and Sarah, who married William Henry Smith, were of considerable prominence in the theatrical activities of their era.
Education
George Riddle attended the Chauncy Hall School in Boston, and graduated from Harvard in 1874, being odist at the class-day ceremonies, and having in his sophomore year won the Boylston prize for proficiency in public speaking. During his undergraduate days he had dabbled extensively in amateur stage performances and public readings, and immediately after his graduation he set out in earnest to obtain for himself a conspicuous position as an actor on the professional stage.
Career
He made his first professional appearance as a reader in Boston in October 1874, and immediately went to New York, where he secured an engagement as a member of a traveling company.
His début as an actor was in a miscellaneous program given at Norwich, Connecticut, December 24, 1874, in which he appeared as Romeo in the balcony scene of Romeo and Juliet; on January 30, 1875, at the Boston Theatre, he acted the same part in the entire play, with Mrs. Thomas Barry as Juliet.
On the following March 25, he acted with Edwin Booth, appearing as Titus in John Howard Payne's Brutus or the Fall of Tarquin. His first continuous engagement, beginning August 24, 1875, was with the Boston Museum stock company as Captain Dudley Smooth in Bulwer's Money.
He remained at that theatre for thirty-four weeks, acting thirty secondary characters. He then went to Canada and in Montreal, Toronto, and other cities appeared in a large number of characters varying from Romeo to Willie Hammond in Ten Nights in a Bar Room. These engagements were practically the end of his continuous professional acting.
From 1878 to 1881 he taught elocution at Harvard College. He made occasional appearances of note, however - with Mary Anderson at the Boston Theatre, Feburary 21, 1880, as Claude Melnotte to her Pauline in Bulwer's The Lady of Lyons, and at the same theatre Feburary 24, 1883, as Romeo to her Juliet.
He took the part of 14dipus Tyrannus in a university production of Sophocles' play in Greek at Sanders Theatre, Cambridge, May 17, 1881, and also, with Riddle alone acting his rôle in Greek, at the Globe Theatre, Boston, during the week of January 23, 1882, and during the following week at Booth's Theatre, New York, on both occasions Georgia Cayvan appearing as Jocasta.
On April 11, 1887, at the Hollis Street Theatre, Boston, came his disastrous experiment with The Earl, a blank-verse tragedy written by Edgar Fawcett. This play was acted for one week only, and in a letter he rashly stated that he was "very hopeful of being able to exist without the suffrages of Boston, whose damnation is purely local. " Later, in another letter (May 7, 1887), he acknowledged that he had been "injudicious and unreasonable. "
His home was for many years in Cambridge, Massachussets, where he lived with his sister, and death came to him in a Boston hospital a few hours after he had been found unconscious on Boston Common as the result of a cerebral hemorrhage.
Personality
He was of medium stature, and his mild manner, with an inability to rise to the heights of passion in the type of characters to which he aspired, was doubtless responsible for his abandonment of the profession he had hoped to make his life work.
