Andrew Macdonald (poet) - London

London

After just a few months in Edinburgh Macdonald travelled south to London, where, on 5 September 1787, Vimonda opened at George Colman’s theatre in the Haymarket, the principal characters played by Mr Bensley, Mr Aickin, Mr Kemble, Mr Johnson, Mr Bannister jun., Miss Woolery, and Mrs Kemble. A review the next day praised the acting. Another reviewer suggested that, whilst Vimonda had some of the faults of a first play, the playwright had promise.

With the composer William Shield he started work on an opera. To earn some money, Macdonald wrote for newspapers, mostly satirical pieces under the pseudonym Matthew Bramble (the name of a character in the novel Humphrey Clinker, by fellow Scot, Tobias Smollett). Financial worries forced the family to move from Brompton to ‘a mean residence’ in Kentish Town. Although by nature buoyant, amiable, and engaging, the pressure of his hardships overwhelmed Macdonald, and ‘having no powerful friends to patronise his abilities, and suffering under the infirmities of a weak constitution, he fell victim, at the age of three and thirty, to sickness, disappointment and misfortune.’ Andrew Macdonald died on 22 August 1790, leaving his wife and young child destitute.