[Charles Hallam Elton]. English actor and playwright, born in London on the 19th of May 1857, and educated at Westminster and Trinity College, Cambridge. He studied law for a time at the Inner Temple, though he was never called to the bar, and he was for several years on the staff of the Saturday Review. In 1879 he took to the stage, appearing first in Still Waters Run Deep and becoming a member of the Bancrofts’ company at the Haymarket theatre, London, from 1880 to 1885. Later he played there with Herbert Tree in Jim the Penman, The Red Lamp and other melodramas, as well as in Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband. But it was rather as a wit and a writer that his reputation was gained, his stories and mots becoming famous. He wrote alone, or in collaboration, a number of lively plays, of which the best known was Dear Old Charlie, and he published his Random Reminiscences (1902). He also collaborated with his wife, Frances Mary Brookfield, in an account of his parents Mrs. Brookfield and her Circle (1905). Frances M. Brookfield was also the author of The Cambridge Apostles (1906) and of some notable novels, especially My Lord of Essex (1907) and A Friar Observant (1909). In 1911 Brookfield was appointed joint-examiner (censor) of plays under the Lord Chamberlain—an appointment which had an element of humour in view of the character of some of his own plays. He died in London on the 20th of October 1913.
