Nat Gould

Richard Brinsley Peake 1792-1847

Richard Brinsley Peake was born on 19 February 1792 in Gerrard Street, Soho in London, the son of Richard Peake 1757-1829 and his wife nee Ann Downs 1771-1818. He was baptised in June 1757 at St. Mary's church in Stafford, the playwright and politician Richard Brinsley Sheridan standing as sponsor.

He was articled to the well-known engraver James Heath, with whom he remained from 1809 to 1817, by which time he was ready to commit himself to writing for the stage. His first play seems to have been a dramatic sketch The Bridge that Carries Us Safe Over, which was staged at the English Opera House in 1817. Over a long and productive career he wrote over forty works in a variety of forms, including burlesques, farces (with and without music), comedies of manners, melodramatic romances, musical romances, at least one "operatic romance," and a work called The Meltonians, which has been described as "a perfectly illegitimate drama and extravaganza." (1)

A prolific writer, Peake also wrote the text for an 1816 collection of pictures called French Characteristic Costumes, an annal of Cockney sports called Snobson's "Seasons" (1838), a three-volume account of Cartouche, the Celebrated French Robber (1844), and his most important non-dramatic work, The Memoirs of the Colman Family (1841), which details the lives of the theatre family of that name. (2)

For the final ten years of his life Richard Brinsley Peake also served as Treasurer at the Lyceum Theatre in London.

He had married Susannah Snell Foreman, and they had the following children:

Anna Susannah Peake. She was born on 10 October 1825.

Emma Charlotte Peake. She was born on 22 March 1829, and was baptised on 27 April 1829 at St Martin's-in-the-Fields church in London.

Helen Peake. She was born on 22 August 1831.

Richard William Henry Peake. He was born on 17 October 1835. He was baptised on 6 January 1836 at St Pancras Old Church in London.

John Charles Stevenson Peake. He was born in 1835, and died on 17 October 1835.

Their father Richard Brinsley Peake died on 4 October 1847. Despite all his varied activities, he left his family in precarious financial circumstances (3).

(1) Dictionary of National Biography : article by John Russell Stephens.
(2) When Presumption first appeared in 1823, a contemporary reviewer had these decidedly ambivalent comments about Peake and his play: "This gentleman has a very extensive knowledge of what is called the public taste, that is, he can tell when to introduce a pun, or how to dress up an old joke, so as to make the audience laugh for the twentieth time. Possessing this wonderful faculty in a most miraculous manner, he has produced several pieces of the lighter kind, which have been well received. A pun with him was like liquor to the sot,—"meat, drink, washing, and lodging;" but genius will play strange vagaries, so Mr. Peake, supposing supernatural horrors would flow as readily from his creative fancy as wit and humour, turned away from the laughter loving Thalia, to woo her woe-stricken sister;—but oh! the fate of "vaulting ambition," for, after all the efforts of Messrs. Treasurer, Composer,—Scene-painter, Carpenter, &c. the mis-begotten imp of their creation, "Presumption," with difficulty sustains its vitality." Mirror New Series volume 1 (1823) page 12.
(3) The Times (7 Oct 1847.