Charles Fechter
(1824-1879)
11 June 1862

Volume 7, page 101, sitting number 8649.

The actor Charles Albert Fechter was born in London on 23 October 1824, but his father being German-French, he was taken to France at a young age and educated there. He began his adult life as a sculptor, but had a natural inclination for the stage. In 1840 he made his debut at the Salle Molière. Next followed a tour of France and a visit to Italy before he appeared in Berlin in 1844 in La Dame aux camélias. He made his London debut at the Princess's Theatre in 1860 in an English translation of Ruy Blas and the following year astonished theatre goers with his interpretation of Hamlet, which was to become his most famous role and the part for which he is best remembered.

He toured the United States, where his audiences were almost as large as his fees, in 1869-1870 and again in 1872, when he decided to make America his home. As a place of retreat he bought a farm at Richmond, three miles from Quakertown, Pennsylvania, where he lived with his wife Lizzie Price. He became very fat, which somewhat limited the roles he could play. He died in 1879 after a painful illness.

An actor who despised stage conventions, he was also an author of French dramas to which he never appended his name, and the translator of Romeo and Juliette into French verse.