The Death of Alexander, A Theatrical Performance at Benham Place at Christmas 1809

Keppel Craven's diary for December 1809 tells us that he and his friend William Gell were at Benham for Christmas and there was a numerous house-party engaged, as usual, on performing a play.

It was The Death of Alexander the Great, or the Rival Queens, by Nathaniel Lee, a Restoration tragedy that had been performed at the Drury Lane Theatre, and had been frequently revived throughout the 18th century. It is a grandiose, bombastic work, full of flights of rhetoric that were tempting to send up.

The star, playing the rôle of Alexander, was John Nixon, who had been a friend of the family since 1797, when he had taken part in The Robbers. A gentleman, known as a wit, he was a keen amateur actor and was nicknamed Punch, because of his rather prominent hook nose.

The plot features the jealousy of Alexander's first wife Roxana when he marries another one, the Persian princess Statira, for reasons of state. The story is much sentimentalized. The young friends seem to have taken a light-hearted approach to the play, turning the tragedy into a spoof.

Keppel writes to Charlotte Lindsay on Jan 14, 1810, "Our friend Gell will tell you all we have done here, and give an account of our literary as well as Dramatic pursuits; the Rival Queen of Punch crowned our entertainments, & to him I refer you."

Gell drew a lively caricature of Nixon playing the role in 1809, which is preserved in one of his sketchbooks.[1]

John Nixon was also something of an artist, who gave Elizabeth Craven two views he drew at Benham, which she had framed and hung in her dressing-room at Brandenburgh House.[2]

[1] Information courtesy of Jill Kamp.

[2] An Historical and Topographical Account of Fulham Including the Hamlet of Hammersmith

By Thomas Faulkner · 1813, p. 428.