| Lee Sugg now became watchful and jealous, and fancying that he also
possessed talent for something of which he had caught the first intimation
from Mr. Mathews, under the name of Ventriloquism, he from that
time put himself forward as one who, to use his own printed account of
himself in after-years, possessed "A power which God had given him, and
which the devil himself couldn't take away!" In short, after this man had
got up a very coarse imitation from his study of what he had heard and
seen done, he set up for himself; and few there are who have not heard,
or read, in large type, of " Lee Sugg, the great Ventriloquist."
Sometimes by his bills it would be seen (not however, till my husband's
fame was sufficiently established to make it a worthy boast) that he was
"The Original Imitator of Mathews at Home," etc.
|
Compiled by Steven Connor.
as part of The
Dumbstruck Archive, a continuing, online supplement to Dumbstruck:
A Cultural History of Ventriloquism (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2000).