(Excerpt from Memories of Fifty Years
William Wallack and...)
Excerpt from Memories of Fifty Years
William Wallack and Elizabeth Field Granger, his wife, had four children who left their marks upon the British and the American stage - Hen ry, James William, Mary and Elizabeth. Mary Wallack - Mrs. Stanley - Mrs. Hill - made her American début at the Chatham Theatre, New York, in June, 1827. She remained there for a season or two, retired into private life, and died in New Orleans in 1834. Elizabeth Wallack Mrs. Pincott - never came to this country. She was the mother Of Mrs. Alfred Wigan.
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Henry James Montague appears from records that are none too authentic to have been born in a Staffordshire village on the date here given, and to have been the son of an Anglican clergyman. His real name was Mann. His age at the time of his death, the date of which is undisputed, is given on the monument erected to his memory by Lester Wallack in Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn, as twenty-seven, but this is obviously inaccurate, since there are reliable records of his appearances in important characters in the London theatres as early as 1863.
Career
Montague's first connection with the stage was probably in a secretarial capacity in London with Dion Boucicault, and for about ten years thereafter he was acting continuously at the St. James's, Princess, Vaudeville, Globe and other theatres, in such rôles as Lord Beaufoy in School, Charles Courtly in London Assurance, Claude Melnotte in The Lady of Lyons, and Careless in The School for Scandal. He came to the United States in 1874 and appeared here for the first time in Wallack's Theatre, New York, October 6, as Tom Gilroy in Partners for Life, becoming an immediate favorite, especially with the feminine portion of theatre audiences, not so much for the quality of his acting, which was of the conventional leading-man type, as for his striking face and figure, his graceful manner, his personal magnetism, and his ability to look the parts assigned to him without the addition or disguise of make-up. He was associated with Lester Wallack in that actor-manager's New York theatre, and on tour, throughout his entire American career, which continued less than four years.
His appearance and technical skill confined him mainly to plays of his own period, although on occasion he played such roles as Gratiano in The Merchant of Venice, for which, says William Winter, he lacked animal spirits and dash, and also Harry Dornton in The Road to Ruin and Captain Dudley Smooth in Money. Winter sums him up definitely when he says that he "endeared himself by what he was rather than by what he did". His health was failing during his last months on the stage, and going to San Francisco to play an engagement of four weeks at the California Theatre, he died suddenly of hemorrhage of the lungs. Funeral services were held both in San Francisco and in New York at the Little Church Around the Corner, where a memorial window was later erected to his memory.
Achievements
Among the impersonations by which Montague was best known in modern plays were Manuel in The Romance of a Poor Young Man, Julian Beauclerc in Diplomacy, Captain Molyneux in The Shaughraun, Captain D'Alroy in Caste, Arthur in False Shame, and Tom Dexter in The Overland Route.
