Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Henderson, John (1747-1785)
HENDERSON, JOHN (1747–1785), actor, known as the ‘Bath Roscius,’ the son of an Irish factor in London, was born in Goldsmith Street, Cheapside, and was baptised on 8 March 1746–7. His family was originally Scottish, and he claimed descent from the Hendersons of Fordel with which Alexander Henderson [q. v.] was connected. After his father's death in 1748 his mother retired with her two sons to Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, and began herself the task of his education. At about eleven he went to school at Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, and subsequently learned drawing of Daniel Fournier [q. v.] He then lived with a relative of his mother, a Mr. Cripps, a working jeweller, in St. James's Street. He is said to have made his first attempt at acting in a room in the Old Parr's Head, Islington. In convivial circles he was known as Shandy, on account of his great admiration for Sterne. He wrote a not very brilliant ode intended to be spoken at the tomb of Sterne. He also imitated Garrick's delivery of the ‘Ode upon dedicating a Building and erecting a Statue to Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Avon,’ and was in the habit of reciting from Milton, Gray, Prior, and other poets. At the advice of Garrick, who in common with others had no great opinion of his capacities, he went to Bath, where Palmer, the manager, engaged him for three years at a salary rising from one guinea to two guineas a week. On 6 Oct. 1772, at Bath, he made, as Hamlet, and under the name of Courtney, his first appearance on any stage. His reception was favourable, and the performance was repeated on the 13th. On the 20th he appeared as Richard III, on 5 Nov. as Benedict, on the 12th as Macbeth, on the 21st as Bobadill, on the 28th as Bayes, on 12 Dec. as Don Felix in the ‘Wonder,’ and on the 15th as Essex, when he spoke an address. On the 26th, as Hotspur, he played for the first time under his own name, to which he subsequently kept. Fribble in ‘Miss in her Teens,’ King Lear, Hastings, Alonzo, and Alzuma were played during the season, and he also recited Garrick's ode. An experience such as this was necessarily far beyond his strength. His representations were followed, however, and he speedily acquired the name of the Bath Roscius, and won the friendship of John Beard [q. v.], Paul Whitehead [q. v.], and Thomas Gainsborough [q. v.] Besides painting his portrait and being a firm friend, Gainsborough wrote wisely warning him against his natural tendency to over-eating and conviviality [see a quotation from this letter in art. Gainsborough, Thomas].
At the close of both the first and second seasons Henderson went to London. Garrick, Foote, Harris, and Leake heard him rehearse, and refused him an engagement. Colman would not even hear him. He had accordingly to stay in Bath until the season of 1776–7. Abundant experience was afforded him, the parts he played including Pierre, Archer, Comus, Othello, Ranger, Sir John Brute, Zampa, Ford, Posthumus, Shylock, Falstaff, King John, Oakly, Valentine in ‘Love for Love,’ and very many other leading rôles in comedy and tragedy. With more judgment than is common in his profession, he urged Palmer not to give him so many parts. Cumberland pressed the claims of Henderson on Garrick, who had some thought of engaging him but did not, though Henderson offered to play at his own risk. It is supposed that an imitation of himself given in his own presence by Henderson had caused Garrick annoyance. Colman took the Haymarket from Foote in 1777, and it was here that Henderson made, as Shylock, his first appearance on 11 June 1777. His performance was a success. Macklin, then regarded as the ideal Shylock, gave him encouragement. Garrick saw him, and abstained from unfavourable comment, but discovered remarkable merit in the Tubal of some comparatively unknown actor. Hamlet, Falstaff, Richard III, Don Juan in the ‘Chances,’ Bayes and Leon in ‘Rule a Wife and have a Wife,’ strengthened his reputation. Colman, who is said to have taken 4,500l. during the thirty-six performances given by Henderson, gave him a free benefit. Coolness was, however, caused in consequence of Henderson imitating the manager to his face. Sheridan, who saw him act, engaged him at 10l. a week for Drury Lane, where he appeared on 30 Sept. 1777 as Hamlet. During the two years he remained at this house he played, in addition to his existing repertory, Æsop, Dominic in the ‘Spanish Friar,’ and other parts. His first original character was Brutus in the ‘Roman Sacrifice,’ on 13 Dec. 1777, an unprinted tragedy of William Shirley. Henderson was the original Edgar Atheling in Cumberland's ‘Battle of Hastings,’ on 24 Jan. 1778, and Bireno in Jephson's ‘Law of Lombardy’ on 8 Feb. 1779. In consequence of the coalition between the two companies he appeared at Covent Garden as Richard III on 5 Oct. 1778, and on 1 Jan. 1779 played Prologue and Chorus in ‘King Henry V.’ At Covent Garden he was the original Duke of Milan, altered by Cumberland from the piece of that name by Massinger and from Fenton's ‘Marianne,’ on 10 Nov. 1779. He played also Jaques and Tamerlane. In the summer of various years he visited Liverpool, Bristol, Birmingham, Dublin, and other towns.
At Covent Garden Henderson played till the close of his career, adding to his repertory Wolsey, Iago, Lusignan, and Evander in the ‘Grecian Daughter,’ Sir Giles Overreach, &c., and playing original parts in dramas by Cumberland, Mackenzie, Jephson, and others. In July 1784 he was for the first time in Edinburgh, and in the summer of 1785 he performed in Dublin. In the Lent of 1785, together with Thomas Sheridan, he gave readings in the Freemasons' Hall. On 8 Nov. 1785, at Covent Garden, his name appeared for the last time on the bill as Horatius in the ‘Roman Father.’ He was first attacked by fever, which seemed to be yielding to treatment when, in consequence of a spasm of the brain, he died at his house in Buckingham Street, Adelphi, on 25 Nov. 1785. This is the account given in the ‘European Magazine’ and other periodicals of the date, and by Ireland, his biographer. In the ‘Catalogue Raisonné of the Mathews Gallery of Pictures’ (1833), now in the Garrick Club, it is stated that he was ‘poisoned accidentally by his wife, who never knew the cause of his death.’ He was buried in Westminster Abbey, in the south cross, on 3 Dec. 1785. His pall-bearers were Steevens, Malone, Murphy, Hoole, Whitefoord, and the Hon. John Byng. Kemble, Macklin, Yates, and most of the best-known actors were present. His wife, Jane Figgins of Chippenham, whom he married on 13 Jan. 1779, was buried in Poets' Corner in the same edifice on 3 March 1819. By her he left an infant daughter. ‘Venice Preserved’ was played for Mrs. Henderson's benefit at Covent Garden on 25 Feb. 1786. Mrs. Siddons, whose genius Henderson was one of the first to recognise, was Belvidera, a part she had played to his Pierre. On this occasion Aikin was Pierre, and Pope Jaffier. Mrs. Siddons also declaimed a prologue written for the occasion by Murphy.
Henderson stood next to Garrick in public estimation. Garrick was jealous of him, and more than once decried him. His best parts, according to Cumberland, were Shylock, Sir Giles Overreach, and Falstaff. He was small of figure, short, and ill-proportioned in his limbs; his face was not too flexible, and his voice wanted fibre. By solidity of judgment, however, good elocution, diversified knowledge, and quick comprehension, he overcame all difficulties. In the delivery of soliloquies he is said to have had no equal. He had uncommon powers of mimicry. Rogers, in his ‘Table Talk,’ p. 110, ed. 1887, says: ‘Henderson was a truly great actor; his Hamlet and his Falstaff were equally good. He was a very fine reader too; in his comic readings superior, of course, to Mrs. Siddons; his John Gilpin was marvellous.’ Mrs. Siddons declared him ‘a fine actor, with no great personal advantages indeed, but he was the soul of intelligence.’ In his ‘Life of Mrs. Siddons’, ii. 81, Thomas Campbell says that by his death Covent Garden lost its best actor, and the British stage one of its brightest ornaments. Boaden, also Mrs. Siddons's biographer, calls Henderson ‘a man of great genius, and possessing the most versatile powers that I ever witnessed.’ He also said that the power of Henderson as an actor was analytic. He was not content with the mere light of common measure: he showed it you through a prism, and reflected all the delicate and mingling hues that enter into the composition of any ray of character. Kemble asked Mrs. Inchbald by letter concerning Henderson's Sir Giles Overreach, desiring to know what kind of hat, wig, cravat, &c., he wore, and saying, ‘I shall be uneasy if I have not an idea of his dress, even to the shape of his buckles and what rings he wears.’ Dugald Stewart, who heard him repeat a portion of a newspaper he had once read, declared his memory the most astonishing he had known. Henderson's letters display more information than was then general. His few poems have little merit. With Thomas Sheridan [q. v.] he wrote and signed ‘Sheridan's and Henderson's Practical Method of Reading and Writing English Poetry … a Necessary Introduction to Dr. Enfield's “Speaker,”’ London, 1796, 12mo, and probably earlier. Henderson had an interesting collection of books. He exhibited about 1767, at the Society of Arts and Sciences, a drawing which obtained a premium. Some of the etchings in Fournier's ‘Theory and Practice of Perspective,’ 4to, 1764, are by Henderson.
The portraits of Henderson as Macbeth, by Romney, and as Iago, by Stewart, with two other likenesses, are in the Garrick Club. The portrait of Henderson painted by his close friend Thomas Gainsborough [q. v.] is in London, in the possession of a descendant, by whom it is promised to a public collection.
[Books mentioned; A Genuine Narrative of the Life and Theatrical Transactions of Mr. John Henderson, commonly called the Bath Roscius, 3rd edition, London, 8vo, 1778, ascribed to Thomas Davies; Letters and Poems by the late Mr. John Henderson, with Anecdotes of his Life by John Ireland, Dublin, 1786; a Monody on the Death of Mr. John Henderson, by George Davies Harley [q. v.], Norwich, 1787, 4to; obituary notice of Henderson in various magazines for December 1785; Genest's Account of the English Stage; Davies's Dramatic Miscellanies, and Life of Garrick; Clark Russell's Representative Actors; Col. Chester's Westminster Abbey Registers; Reed's MS. Notitia Dramatica; Oulton's Hist. of the Theatres of London, 1796; Cumberland's Memoirs; Downes's Roscius Anglicanus; Recollections of O'Keeffe; Garrick Correspondence; Peake's Memoirs of the Colman Family; Bernhardt's Retrospections; Dibdin's Annals of the Edinburgh Stage.]