Nickleby, and presumed to descend the chimney of her
house. "Very good," he is reported to have said on that occasion,
"then bring in the bottled lightning, a clean tumbler, and a
corkscrew."
The early days of George Frederick Cooke were passed at
Berwick-upon-Tweed. Left an orphan at a very tender age, he had been
cared for and reared by two aunts, his mother's sisters, who provided
him with such education as he ever obtained. There were no play-books
in the library of these ladies, yet somehow the youth contrived to
become acquainted with the British drama. Strolling companies
occasionally visited the town, and a certain passion for the theatre
possessed the boys of Berwick, with Cooke, of course, among them. They
formed themselves into an amateur company, and represented, after a
fashion, various plays, rather for their own entertainment, however,
than the edification of their friends. And they patronised, so far as
they could, every dramatic troupe that appeared in the neighbourhood
of Berwick. But they had more goodwill than money to bestow upon the
strollers, and were often driven to strange subterfuges in their
anxiety to see the play, and in their inability to pay the price of
admission to the theatre.
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