(The CROW STORIES tell the adventures of two unusual corvi...)
The CROW STORIES tell the adventures of two unusual corvine beings. Hykso, who lives in the time of the pharaohs, leaves his home to search through the Course of Human Events for something to do worthy of his corvine intelligence. Dmitri, from Russia, is trying to solve the mystery of human endeavor -- what are the ingenious bipeds doing so obsessively? Their journeys entwine the two crows along with the humans they are trying to understand.
William Wheatley was born in New York City. His father, Frederick Wheatley, was an Irish entertainer who had strayed from Dublin to America, joining first the famous company of Warren and Wood at Baltimore and Philadelphia (c. 1803), then going to the Park Theatre in New York, where he remained a favorite until his retirement in 1829. Wheatley's mother was the actress, Sarah (Ross) Wheatley, born at St. John, New Brunswick, the daughter of a Scottish officer. She made her American début at the Park on November 12, 1805. The following year she married Frederick Wheatley and left the stage, only to return to it in 1811 upon her husband's failure in a business venture. From this time until her retirement in 1843, she acted with skill, understanding, and conspicuous success in various American theatres, but regularly at the Park Theatre. In the rôles of comic middle-aged and old women (Mrs. Malaprop, Juliet's nurse, etc. ), and in the revival of old plays she was, by universal admission, without a rival on the American stage. Of Wheatley's sisters, Julia had some success on the operatic stage as a contralto, married a wealthy New York man, and retired in 1840; Emma married a New York banker's son and retired from the stage, but returned in 1847, acting with great distinction until her death at thirty-two on July 16, 1854, a highly accomplished and beautiful woman.
Career
"Young Wheatley" began his career as Albert in J. S. Knowles's William Tell with the visiting actor W. C. Macready, at the Park Theatre, October 13, 1826. The boy's performance won signal public favor and so delighted the English tragedian that he took him on his starring tour through the United States. Returning home to the Park, Wheatley bettered his first success in a magnificent production of Tom Thumb, and after its long run found himself established as the chief "juvenile" in the nation's foremost theatre. He underwent a careful and thorough training by his parents before beginning his apprenticeship, in 1833, at the Bowery Theatre as a "walking gentleman. " In the summer of 1834 he became the "chief walking gentleman" at the Park, where he continued his rapid advance, winning special recognition as Michael in Victorine, Henry Morland in The Heir-at-Law, Nicholas Nickleby, Henry in Speed the Plough, and Charles in the first American performance of London Assurance. He perfected his naturally vivacious and energetic grace, and by painstaking study mastered his dramatic material as few American actors had been known to do. On July 8, 1836, at a benefit for himself at the Park in which he and his sister Emma took the leading parts, he brought out the tragedy, Sassacus, or the Indian Wife, generally believed to be his own. He was also for a time manager of the National Theatre, New York. The Park Theatre declining, Wheatley went to Philadelphia in 1842, where he played with E. A. Marshall's great stock company for one season, ending with a brilliant but premature farewell benefit at the Chestnut Street Theatre on March 24, 1843, in which he acted two of his most characteristic rôles, Doricourt in The Belle's Stratagem and Captain Murphy Maguire in The Serious Family. Then an unwise venture in Wall Street and an expedition to Nicaragua interrupted his professional career. A year or two later he was back again in the Philadelphia theatres, where, save for another starring engagement at the Park in 1847 with his sister Emma (Mrs. James Mason), he continued to perform until 1852. In that year he took over for a few months the direction of the Washington (D. C. ) Theatre, and thenceforth he divided his efforts between acting and managing. From 1853 to 1856 he shared with John Drew, the elder, the management of the Arch Street Theatre, Philadelphia, then became sole manager for two years, then co-partner with John Sleeper Clarke until the outbreak of the Civil War, when both men withdrew, and Wheatley, in spite of a disastrous fire, revived in a few months the glories of the Continental Theatre in the same city. Early in 1862 Wheatley reappeared in New York at Niblo's Garden and by July had leased that former circus. The following January he also opened the new Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, running the two in conjunction; but after a year's trial he confined himself to the sole management of the better situated theatre in New York. His earliest successes there - The Duke's Motto, Bel Demonio, The Connie Soogah, Arrahna-Pogue, in which he shared the important rôles with the foremost actors of the time - raised Niblo's Garden to a theatre of the first class, celebrated for its star actors and for its sumptuous productions of romantic dramas. In 1866 the unprecedented triumph of The Black Crook, in which Wheatley introduced to America for the first time the extravagant ballet spectacle, and committed that playhouse and its metropolitan successors to the new genre, made the fortune of every one concerned in its production and enabled him to retire from the profession, on August 31, 1868, with a handsome competency.