impulse, he was none the less an artist. He was a writer of ability and won success as a dramatist. As his own manager several years ago he was successful. He was at all times, in all places a student capable of teaching the brightest, but ever eager to broaden his own intellect.
During his life there were times that the call of travel and adventure was compelling, more powerful than the lure of the footlights, and the success he was achieving in his chosen profession. At such times he would equip his yacht, Moonstone, for a long cruise, and with his friend Frank A. Connor set sail for some distant land. In this way he visited several times practically every country in the world except Russia, and he was planning with keen anticipation the treat he would give himself when this tour was completed by journeying through Russia.
From Rev. J. C. M. Bellew, well known in England and America as a Shakespearian reader, as well as a minister, Kyrle Bellew inherited his talent for the stage. Previous to the Oxford movement in 1869, which resulted in the resignation of Mr. Bellew's father from the Church of England, and in his entrance to the Roman Catholic Church, the minister had wished his son, Harold, to enter the ministry, but Harold preferred the Navy, following in the footsteps of his grandfather, Admiral Kyrle, and joined H. M. S. "Conway" Training Ship at Liverpool. Leaving the navy at the urgent advice of his father, a move of which he ever afterwards spoke regretfully, Kyrle Bellew set out in 1871 for Australia, which ended in an expedition to the new gold diggings at Yugiltar Reefs. For three years he led a roving picturesque existence, sometimes in affluence and oftener in poverty, trying his hand at gold digging, wood cutting, boat building, sign painting and eventually acting. He returned to England on the death of his father in 1875.
