Weedon Grossmith

From Studio to Stage: Reminiscences of Weedon Grossmith

John Lane, 1913.

I had arranged with a boy from a school in Mornington Crescent to go to Primrose Hill, and when on our way there I picked up sixpence on the pavement, our delight was unbounded...We marched into the next sweetstuff shop, and I bought the whole round [of French Almond Rock] for sixpence. We went over Primrose Hill and round the side, where there was a pond, and bushes and fields...

I suddenly felt curious pains that compelled me to sit down for a while. The pains increased. The bitter almonds (and there were many) in the French Rock were doing their work; my friend commenced to cry, he too was suffering, but I couldn't be bothered with him. My thoughts were entirely concentrated on myself. I rolled on the grass in agony, I drew my knees up to my chin, and shot them out again...At last...I ran home, crying all the way, and confessed all to my dear mother...As for the other boy, I never saw him again; perhaps he died behind the bushes

The author is best known now for his collaboration with his brother George on The Diary of a Nobody, for which he did the illustrations. As the title of his autobiography indicates, he had also pursued a career as an actor. Hard up after returning from a tour of America, he agreed to appear in a revival of Woodcock's Little Game but came to regret it: 'I laboured under the great disadvantage of making my first appearance in London in a silly old-fashioned play.' It features an off-stage duel on Primrose Hill, which proves no more fatal than the French Almond Rock.