Keeley, Robert

1793

1869

Robert Keeley was born into a large family in 1793 at No. 3 Grange Court, Carey Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields. His father was a watchmaker. Although he was apprenticed to a printer, Keeley’s appetite for the stage was whetted by participation in amateur theatricals, and he joined a strolling company in Richmond, and then passed four years on the Norwich circuit under Brunton. He was engaged by Elliston for the Olympic, where he appeared in 1818 as the original Leporello in “Don Giovanni in London”, and then he appeared at the Adelphi for two seasons as the original Jemmy Green in “Tom and Jerry”. He joined Charles Kemble at Covent Garden in 1822, where he acted a number of low comic and pathetic roles. With his wife Mary Goward, whom he married in 1829 (q.v.), he was engaged at the Coburg (renamed the Victoria) in 1833, and, after a visit to America, with Madame Vestris at the Olympic in 1838 and with Macready at Drury Lane in 1841-42. In 1844 the Keeleys joined Strutt in the management of the Lyceum until 1847, producing burlesques and adaptations of Dickens’s novels. Keeley continued engagements at various London theatres until his retirement in 1857. He died at Brompton on 3 February 1869. His widow survived another 30 years. A genuine comedian, with a small stature and many mannerisms, Keeley was a master of pathos. Dickens praised his acting of Dogberry and Verges, and those characters ‘into which, by a few words or a little touch, he threw a certain homely tenderness quite his own.’ He became a member of the Garrick Club in 1859. One of his daughters, Mary Lucy (1831-1870), made her debut at the Lyceum in 1845 and married the comedian Albert Smith. Another daughter, Louise (1833-1877), appeared at Drury Lane in July 1856 and acted as Toole’s leading lady; she married the police magistrate Montagu Williams. (DNB, OCT)