ABSTRACT
What we know of Jane M[arie] Scott, the young author of The Old Oak Chest, is intimately connected with the Adelphi Theatre, the home of melodrama in nineteenth-century London. The story begins with John Scott, an entrepreneur who made a fortune from the invention of a washing blue 1 and, in 1806, built a theatre in the Strand called the Sans Pareil for his stage-struck daughter (Bergan 10). A pupil of Thomas Arne, the noted English composer, Jane Scott was blessed with a “good deal of native talent” (Forman 419) if not good looks. The Theatrical Observer for December 1844 recalled:
Miss Scott developed strong symptoms of [the] dramatic disease and though her extraordinary talent was undoubted by her father and friends, it was delicately hinted that the greedy public not only expected intrinsic merit for their money, but also that it must be hallowed o’er with beauty to secure the first impression. Now Miss Scott, in addition to some natural defects had the smallpox and rickets unfavorably, but as genius comes in all disguises, she really had great talent, both as an actress and a writer, (qtd. Nelson 1806–1807: 3)
After three years of performing at the back of her father’s warehouse in the Strand, Jane succeeded in creating a large enough audience to convince her father to invest £10,000 in the building of a new theatre and acquire a license to perform minor entertainment.