ugh beautiful childhood to witching
girlhood. The daughter of a strolling actor who led his company of
buskers through every county in Ireland from Cork to Donegal, the love
of things theatrical was in her veins; and while she was still playing
with her dolls she was impersonating the Duke of York to her father's
Richard III. Everywhere the little witch, with the merry dancing eyes,
won hearts and applause by her sprightly acting, until even so excellent
a judge of histrionic art as John Kemble sought to carry her away to
London and to a wider sphere of activity.

From Dublin, he wrote to Harris, manager of Covent Garden Theatre:

"There is a very pretty Irish girl here, with a touch of
the brogue on her tongue; she has much talent and some
genius. With a little expense and some trouble we might
make her an object for John Bull's admiration in the
juvenile tragedy. I have sounded the fair lady on the
subject of a London engagement. She proposes to append a
very long family, to which I have given a decided
negative. If she accepts the offered terms I shall sign,
seal and ship herself and clan off from Cork direct. She
is very pretty, and so, in fact, is her brogue, which, by
the way, she only uses in conversation. She totally
forgets it when with Shakespeare and other illustrious
companions."

And thus it was that John O'Neill's daughter carried her charms and
gifts to London town in the autumn of 1812, when she justified Kemble's
discernment by one of the most brilliant series of impersonations,
ranging from Juliet to Belvidera, that had been seen up to that time on
the English stage. For seven years she shone a very bright star in the
firmament of the drama, winning as much popularity off as on the stage,
before she consented to yield her hand to one of the many suitors who
sought it--Mr William Wrixon Becher, a Member of Parliament of some
distinction. Eliza O'Neill lived to be addressed as "my Lady," and to
see her eldest son a Baronet, and her second boy wedded to a daughter of
the second Earl of Listowel.

Five years before Miss O'Neill's Juliet came to captivate London,
another idol of the stage was led to the altar by William, first Earl of
Craven. Louisa Brunton, for that was the name of Craven's Countess, was
cradled, like her successor, on the stage; for her father was well known
at every town on the Norwich Circuit as manager of a popular c