Weedon Grossmith

Walter Weedon Grossmith (9 June 1854 – 14 June 1919), better known as Weedon Grossmith, was an English writer, painter, actor and playwright best known as co-author of The Diary of a Nobody (1892) with his famous brother, music hall comedian and Gilbert and Sullivan star, George Grossmith. Weedon Grossmith also illustrated The Diary of a Nobody to much acclaim.

Grossmith trained as a painter, but was unable to make a living in that capacity and went on the stage largely for financial reasons. He was successful as an actor and as an impresario, and wrote several plays. As an actor he specialised in comedy roles, and his typical characters, harassed and scheming, became so identified with him that the "Weedon Grossmith part" became a regular feature of the theatre of his day.

Grossmith was born in London and grew up in St. Pancras and Hampstead, London. His father, George Grossmith (1820–80), was the chief court reporter for The Times and other newspapers at the Bow Street police court and a lecturer and entertainer. His mother was Louisa Emmeline Grossmith née Weedon (d. 1882). His brother, George, became famous as the principal comedian of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and was the most famous comedy-sketch pianist of the Victorian era.

Grossmith was educated at Massingham House on Haverstock Hill in Hampstead, and then at the North London Collegiate in Camden Town and Simpson's School, a local private establishment. Interested in art, he trained as a painter at the West London School of Art, the Slade and the Royal Academy. His goal was to become a fashionable portrait painter. He had portraits and other pictures hung at the Academy (beginning with a full-length portrait of his father) and at the Grosvenor Gallery and elsewhere. However, his career as an artist was not as successful as he had hoped.Richard D'Oyly Carte, having seen him in amateur performances, encouraged him to take to the stage professionally. Having, as he later recalled, liabilities of £700 and cash assets of £6, he consulted his fellow-artists Frank Holl and Luke Fildes about abandoning art in favour of the theatre:

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