ABSTRACT
The extract below records a meeting between three different, but congenial, men of note in the literary world in 1815: Scott, Byron, and the comedian Charles Mathews. It proved to be the last occasion on which Scott met Byron. Anne Mathews’s Memoirs of her husband inform readers that Scott considered this one of the happiest days of his life; and his own recollections of it support her view. Charles Mathews was the son of a bookseller and Wesleyan preacher and was born in the Strand, London. He attended St Martin’s Free School then the Merchant Taylors’ School, and began his career as an actor with years of playing comic characters in Dublin and Swansea, before joining Tate Wilkinson’s company on the York circuit. Mathews visited Edinburgh many times, where he dined often with Scott and the Ballantynes.
