Swann & Parker, Chapter 6 - Augustus Littleton, A Little Bit Of History

Augustus Charles Littleton, the only son of Sir Raithbone Littleton, was, on the surface, a pleasant enough sort of fellow, and by the standards of the day quite a good actor too.

He'd been born on the 12th of August, 1840, in the West Wing of Littleton Hall, which overlooked, in fact still overlooks, a small Cornish fishing village that must remain nameless.

And if ever an actor had been born to play King Lear it was Augustus Littleton, who came into this troubled world amidst a thunderstorm that is still spoken of in that part of Cornwall to this day; and a storm the locals said curdled the blood of the beautiful twenty-two year old Lady Littleton, who died two weeks after giving birth to the boy.

The young Littleton was introduced to Shakespeare's curmudgeonly old king very early - and many another English and Scottish king - when his uncle, Algernon Littleton-Smythe (an actor then working with Edwin Booth in America) had given Augustus a twelve volume set of the complete works of Shakespeare when the child was barely able to walk.

Baby Augustus had first used the volumes as oversized building blocks, then as steps to help him look out of the nursery window at the distant sea-wracked castle on top of St.Michael's Mount.

By the time Augustus was sent to Rugby School, where he was seen as something of a latter day Harry Flashman ( a man he befriended later in life), he knew all of Shakespeare by heart and was soon the leading dramatic light of that school's famous dramatic society, where his Hamlet was described by a local paper as being "...infused with a power and potency that goes far beyond the actor's age and experience..."; which means it was better than the stuff they were used to.

Augustus also became the leading light of that small Warwickshire town's whore houses and its not inconsiderable number of public houses, and the petty thieves, robbers, con-men and assorted blaggards who frequented such dives of vice and iniquity.

Then, in 1858, when Augustus was eighteen, his father, out walking with his handsome son - who was on vacation from the home of rugby football - fell from a high cliff to his death upon a rocky outcrop of beach.

To Be Continued...