Note 215 — A BOOK FOR A RAINY DAY (continued 2)

After Rawle’s death, his effects were sold at Hutchins’, Covent Garden, where this Charles the Second wig was bought by Suett, the actor, who, says Smith, “to prove to the company that it would suit him better than his harum-scarum opponent, put it upon his head, and, thus dignified, went on with his biddings, which were sometimes sarcastically serious, and at others ludicrously comic. The company, however, though so highly amused, thought it ungenerous to prolong the biddings, and therefore one and all declared that it ought to be knocked down to him before he took it off his head. Upon this Suett immediately attempted to take it off, but the ivory hammer, with the ruffled hand of the auctioneer, after being once flourished over his head, gave it in favour of the eccentric comedian.” Suett appeared in this wig in Fielding’s Tom Thumb, and we are told that “sick men laughed themselves well to see him peeping out of the black forest of hair.” Finally this wonderful wig was lost in the fire which destroyed the theatre at Birmingham. Mrs. Booth, the mother of the actress, was met by Suett, and all he said was: “Mrs. Booth, my wig’s gone.”