|
Watts Phillips (16 November 1825 – 2 December 1874) was a British illustrator, novelist and playwright best known for his play ''The Dead Heart'' which served as a model for Charles Dickens' ''A Tale of Two Cities''. In a memoir,〔Watts Phillips: Artist and Playwright by Emma Watts Phillips. 1891〕 his sister Emma recalled that he had “many difficulties” in his life and waged “a gallant struggle against chequered fortune.” She described him as a “bright and buoyant character”, “a really brilliant, energetic man, who had many gifts and accomplishments, with a cheerful, undaunted spirit, which to the last helped him to encounter trials, and a vein of humour which was as much at the service of his friends as it was to that of the public.” Emma also noted that “at times he sank into fits of despondency, from which he suffered much.” A friend wrote of him that, “Few men were quicker of temper, more bitter and sarcastic in anger – and very few were so ready to forget and forgive…he could never sleep after a quarrel…until there had been a reconciliation.” == Life == Watts Phillips was born in Hoxton in the East End of London, UK, second son of Esther Ann Watts and Thomas Phillips, a timber merchant and upholsterer. He was the grand nephew of Giles Firman Phillips, a watercolour artist of some repute familiarly known as 'Twilight' Phillips from a series of paintings depicting various landscapes at twilight.〔"WATTS PHILLIPS, ARTIST AND PLAYWRIGHT" by Emma Watts Phillips〕 Watts Phillips initially sought a career on the stage. After becoming acquainted with well-known figures of the theatre world, such as John Baldwin Buckstone and Mrs. Nesbitt, he began acting in Edinburgh, eventually playing roles at the Saddlers Wells Theatre in London. Acting did not pay well and, at the urging of his father, Phillips trained to be an illustrator under George Cruikshank, who remained a friend for the rest of his life. Phillips also studied oil painting and was a fellow student of Holman Hunt. Through Cruikshank and his theatre connections, Phillips became acquainted with Samuel Phelps, Robert Barnabas Brough and his family, Augustus Mayhew and his brother Henry Mayhew, Albert Richard Smith, Douglas Jerrold and Mark Lemon. He moved to Paris to study art, but fled to Brussels on the outbreak of the Revolutions of 1848, narrowly escaping some revolutionaries who, on hearing of an Englishman residing in Paris, fired their muskets through the door of his lodgings. Returning to London in 1849, he found work as an illustrator with David Bogue, a publisher. In 1851 he married the daughter of a stockbroker, Mary Elizabeth Mariner. Phillips separated from his wife a few years later on the grounds that she "made my life a misery on account of her ungovernable and most wicked temper." Elizabeth settled in Wales and Phillips referred to her in his letters as the "old Wreck Ashore." He formed a relationship with Caroline Huskisson in Paris and had four children. Except for occasional sojourns in England, Phillips lived in Paris, where he found ready work supplying illustrations for lithographers and as an occasional foreign correspondent for English papers. He lived "a gay Boulevard life" immersed in the French literary, artistic and theatre world, becoming friends with Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo and others. By 1861, overwork and a dissipated lifestyle began to tell on his health. He suffered from chronic indigestion, headaches and pains of all kinds, sometimes being confined to bed for weeks at a time and forced to relinquish lucrative assignments. In 1866 he returned to England where he remained for the rest of his life. Phillips retired to Edenbridge in Kent until 1870, when he moved to Brompton, London, an area known at the time as an artists' quarter. Despite declining health, he continued writing at his usual feverish pace. After a long illness, Watts Phillips died at his home. He stated in his will that he did not want any of his property "falling into the hands of the woman Elizabeth Phillips known as Lilly Phillips and of her child Basil of whom I am not the father and also of any other children she has had or may have by other men."〔Dictionary of National Biography, 1885–1900, Volume 45〕 His daughter,(May)Roland Watts Phillips, went on the stage, making her debut at the Lyceum Theatre, London, in 1879. She went to Australia where she had a career on the stage and in early films, dying in NSW in 1929.〔Source: Newspapers and Phillips Family History〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Watts Phillips」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|