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DRURY LANE

VOL. I.




LONDON: PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET




IN AND ABOUT

DRURY LANE

_AND OTHER PAPERS_

REPRINTED FROM THE PAGES OF THE ‘TEMPLE BAR’ MAGAZINE

BY

DR DORAN

AUTHOR OF ‘TABLE TRAITS AND SOMETHING ON THEM’ ‘JACOBITE LONDON’
‘QUEENS OF ENGLAND OF THE HOUSE OF HANOVER’

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOL. I.

[Illustration: Logo FIDE·ET·FIDUCIA RB]

LONDON
RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen
1881

_All rights reserved_




_PREFATORY REMARKS._


The republication of papers which have originally appeared in a
Magazine frequently requires justification.

In the present instance this justification, it is thought, may be found
in the special knowledge which Dr. DORAN had of all matters pertaining
to the stage; in his intimacy with the literature which treats of
manners and customs, English and foreign; and in his memory, which
retained and retailed a great amount of anecdote, told with a sprightly
wit.

These volumes, reprinted with one or two exceptions from the pages of
the ‘Temple Bar’ Magazine, will, it is believed, be found to contain
many good stories, and much information unostentatiously conveyed. It
is hoped, therefore, that the public will endorse the opinion of the
writer of this Preface, and consider that the plea of justification has
been made out.

_G. B._




CONTENTS

OF

THE FIRST VOLUME.

                                            PAGE
IN AND ABOUT DRURY LANE                        1

ABOUT MASTER BETTY                            20

CHARLES YOUNG AND HIS TIMES                   54

WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY                      82

PRIVATE THEATRICALS                          108

THE SMELL OF THE LAMPS                       136

A LINE OF FRENCH ACTRESSES                   159

SOME ECCENTRICITIES OF THE FRENCH STAGE      189

NORTHUMBERLAND HOUSE AND THE PERCYS          216

LEICESTER FIELDS                             238

A HUNDRED YEARS AGO                          285




_IN AND ABOUT DRURY LANE._


In the afternoon of ‘Boxing-day,’ 1865, I had to pass through Drury
Lane, and some of the worst of the ‘slums’ which find vent therein.
There was a general movement in the place, and the effect was not
savoury. There was a going to-and-fro of groups of people, and there
was nothing picturesque in them; assemblings of children, but alas!
nothing lovable in them. It was a universal holiday, yet its aspect was
hideous.

Arrived at the stage-door of Drury Lane Theatre, I found my way on to
the stage itself, where the last rehearsal of the pantomime, to be
played for the first time that evening, was progressing.

The change from the external pandemonium to the hive of humming
industry in which I then stood, was striking and singular. Outside
were blasphemy and drunkenness. Inside, boundless activity, order,
hard work, and cheerful hearts. There was very much to do, but every
man had his especial work assigned him, every girl her allotted
task. An unaccustomed person might have pronounced as mere confusion,
that shifting of scenes, that forming, unforming, and reforming of
groups, that unintelligible dumb show, that collecting, scattering,
and gathering together of ‘young ladies’ in sober-coloured dresses and
business-like faces, who were to be so resplendent in the evening as
fairies, all gold, glitter, lustrous eyes, and virtuous intentions.
There was Mr. Beverley--perhaps the greatest magician there--not only
to see that nothing should mar the beauty he had created, but to take
care that the colours of the costumes should not be in antagonism with
the scenes before which they were to be worn. There was that Michael
Angelo of pantomimic mask inventors, Mr. Keene, anxiously looking to
the expressions of the masks, of which he is the prince of designers.
Then, if you think those graceful and varied figures of the _ballet_
as easy to invent, or to trace, as they seem, and are, at last,
easily performed, you should witness the trouble taken to invent,
and the patience taken to bring to perfection--the figures and the
figurantes--on the part of the artistic ballet-master, Mr. Cormack.
But, responsible for the good result of all, there stands Mr. Roxby,
stern as Rhadamanthus, just as Aristides, inflexible as determination
can make him, and good-natured as a happy child, he is one of the most
efficient of stage-managers, for he is both loved and feared. No
defect escapes his eye, and no well-directed zeal goes without his word
of approval. Messrs. Falconer and Chatterton are meanwhile busy with a
thousand details, but they wisely leave the management of the stage to
their lieutenant-general, who has the honour of Old Drury at heart.

When a spectator takes his seat in front of the curtain, he is hardly
aware that he is about to address himself to an entertainment, for the
production of which nearly nine hundred persons--from the foremost
man down to the charwoman--are constantly employed and liberally
remunerated. Touching this ‘remuneration,’ let me here notice that I
have some doubt as to the story of Quin ever receiving 50_l._ a night.
By the courtesy of Mr. ----, the gentleman at the head of the Drury
Lane treasury, and by the favour of the proprietors, I have looked
through many of the well-kept account-books of bygone years. These,
indeed, do not, at least as far as I have seen, go back to the days of
Quin, but there are traces of the greater actor Garrick, who certainly
never received so rich an _honorarium_. His actual income it is not
easy to ascertain, as his profits as proprietor were mixed up with
his salary as actor. It has often been said that Garrick was never
to be met with in a tavern (always, I suppose, excepting the ‘Turk’s
Head’), but he appears to have drawn refreshment during the Drury Lane
seasons, as there is unfailing entry in his weekly account of ‘the Ben
Jonson’s Head bill,’ the total of which varies between sixteen and
five-and-twenty shillings.

At Drury Lane, John Kemble does not appear to have ever received above
2_l._ a night, exclusive of his salary as a manager. Nor did his
sister’s salary for some years exceed that sum. When Edmund Kean raised
the fallen fortunes of old Drury, he only slowly began to mend his own.
From January 1814, to April 1815, during the time the house was open,
Kean’s salary was 3_l._ 8_s._ 8_d._ nightly. If the theatre was open
every night in the week, that sum was the actor’s nightly stipend,
whether he performed or not. If there were only four performances
weekly, as in Lent, he and all other actors were only paid for those
four nights. Within the period I have named, Elliston received a
higher salary than Kean, namely 5_l._ per night, or 30_l._ per week,
if the house was open for six consecutive nights. The salary of Dowton
and Munden, during the same period, was equal to that of Kean. They
received at the rate of 3_l._ 8_s._ 8_d._ nightly, or 20_l._ weekly, if
there were six performances, irrespective as to their being employed in
them or not. That great actor Bannister, according to these Drury Lane
account-books, at this period received 4_s._ per night less than Kean,
Dowton and Munden; while Jack Johnstone’s salary was only 2_l._ 10_s._
nightly, and that was 6_s._ 8_d._ _less_ than was paid to the handsome,
rather than _good_ player, Rae.

It was not till April 1815, when Kean was turning the tide of Pactolus
into the treasury, that his salary was advanced to 4_l._ 3_s._ 8_d._
per night. This was still below the sum received by Elliston. Kean
had run through the most brilliant part of his career, before his
salary equalled that of Elliston. In 1820, it was raised to 30_l._ per
week if six nights; but Elliston’s stipend at that time had fallen to
20_l._, and at the close of the season that of Kean was further raised
to 40_l._ for every six nights that the house was open. That sum is
occasionally entered in the books as being for ‘seven days’ pay,’ but
the meaning is manifestly ‘for the acting week of six days.’

At this time Mrs. Glover was at the head of the Drury Lane actresses,
and that eminent and great-hearted woman never drew from the Drury Lane
treasury more than 7_l._ 13_s._ 4_d._ weekly. From these details, it
will be seen that the most brilliant actors were not very brilliantly
paid. The humbler yet very useful players were, of course, remunerated
in proportion.

There was a Mr. Marshall who made a successful _début_ on the same
night with Incledon in 1790, in the ‘Poor Soldier,’ the sweet
ballad-singer, as Dermot; Marshall, as Bagatelli. The latter soon
passed to Drury Lane, where he remained till 1820. The highest
salary he ever attained was 10_s._ per night; yet with this, in his
prettily-furnished apartments in Crown Court, where he lived and died,
Mr. Marshall presided, like a gentleman, at a hospitable table, and
in entertaining his friends never exceeded his income. You might have
taken him in the street for one of those enviable old gentlemen who
have very nice balances at their bankers.

The difference between the actor’s salaries of the last century and of
this, is as great in France as in England. One of the greatest French
tragedians, Lekain, earned only a couple of thousand livres, yearly,
from his Paris engagement. When Gabrielli demanded 500 ducats yearly,
for singing in the Imperial Theatre at St. Petersburg, this took the
Czarina’s breath away. ‘I only pay my field-marshals at that rate,’
said Catherine.

‘Very well,’ replied Gabrielli, ‘your Majesty had better make your
field-marshals sing.’

With higher salaries, all other expenses have increased. Take the
mere item of advertisements, including bill-sticking and posters at
railway stations, formerly, the expense of advertising never exceeded
4_l._ per week; now it is never under 100_l._ Of bill-stickers and
board-carriers, upwards of one hundred are generally employed. In
the early part of the last century, the proprietors of a newspaper
thought it a privilege to insert theatrical announcements gratis, and
proprietors of theatres forbade the insertion of their advertisements
in papers not duly authorised!

Dryden was the first dramatic author who wrote a programme of his
piece (‘The Indian Emperor’), and distributed it at the playhouse
door. Barton Booth, the original ‘Cato,’ drew 50_l._ a year for
writing out the daily bills for the printer. In still earlier days,
theatrical announcements were made by sound of drum. The absence of
the names of actors in old play-books, perhaps, arose from a feeling
which animated French actors as late as 1789, when those of Paris
entreated the _maire_ not to compel them to have their names in the
‘Affiche,’ as it might prove detrimental to their interests. Some of
our earliest announcements only name the piece, and state that it
will be acted by ‘all the best members of the company, now in town.’
There was a fashion, which only expired about a score or so of years
ago, as the curtain was descending at the close of the five-act piece,
which was always played first, an actor stepped forward, and when the
curtain separated him from his fellows, he gave out the next evening’s
performance, and retired, bowing, through one of the doors which always
then stood, with brass knockers on them, upon the stage.

The average expenses of Drury Lane Theatre at Christmas-tide, when
there are extra performances, amount to nearly 1,500_l._ per week. The
rent paid is reckoned at 4,500_l._ for two hundred nights of acting,
and only 5_l._ per night for all performances beyond that number.
About 160_l._ must be in the house before the lessees can begin to
reckon on any profit. In old times, the presence of royalty made a
great difference in the receipts. On February 12, 1777,I find from the
books that the ‘Jealous Wife,’ and ‘Neck or Nothing,’ were played. An
entry is added that ‘the king and queen were present,’ and the result
is registered under the form, ‘receipts 245_l._ 9_s._ 6_d._, a hundred
pounds more than the previous night.’

The number of children engaged in a pantomime at Drury Lane generally
exceeds two hundred. The girls are more numerous than the boys. It is
a curious fact that in engaging these children the manager prefers the
quiet and dull to the smart and lively. Your smart lad and girl are
given to ‘larking’ and thinking of their own cleverness. The quiet
and dull are more ‘teachable,’ and can be made to seem lively without
flinging off discipline. These little creatures are thus kept from the
streets; many of them are sons and daughters of persons employed in the
house, and their shilling a night and a good washing tells pleasantly
in many a humble household, to which, on Saturday nights, they
contribute their wages and clean faces. It was for a clever body of
children of this sort that _benefits_ were first established in France
in 1747. In England they date from Elizabeth Barry, on whose behalf the
first was given, by order of James the Second.

Then there are the indispensable, but not easily procured, ‘ladies
of the ballet.’ They number about five dozen; two dozen principals,
the rest in training to become so. Their salary is not so low as is
generally supposed--twenty-five, and occasionally thirty shillings
a week. They are ‘respectable.’ I have seen three or four dozen of
them together in their green-room, where they conducted themselves as
‘properly’ as any number of well-trained young ladies could at the most
fashionable of finishing establishments.

There was a scene in the ‘Sergeant’s Wife’ which was always played with
a terrible power by Miss Kelly; and yet the audience, during the most
exciting portion of the scene, saw only the back of the actress. Miss
Kelly represented the wife, who, footsore and ignorant of her way, had
found rude hospitality and rough sleeping quarters in a wretched hut.
Unable to sleep, something tempts her to look through the interstices
of the planks which divide her room from the adjoining one. While
looking, she is witness of the commission of a murder. Spell-bound, she
gazes on, in terror almost mute, save a few broken words. During this
incident the actress had her back turned to the audience; nevertheless,
she conveyed to the enthralled house an expression of overwhelming
and indescribable horror as faithfully as if they had seen it in her
features or heard it in her voice. Every spectator confessed her
irresistible power, but none could even guess at the secret by which
she exercised it.

The mystery was, in fact, none at all. Miss Kelly’s acting in this
scene was wonderfully impressive, simply because she kept strictly
to nature. She knew that not to the face alone belongs all power of
interpretation of passion or feeling. This knowledge gave to Rich his
marvellous power as Harlequin. In the old days, when harlequinades had
an intelligible plot in which the spectators took interest, it was the
office of Harlequin to guard the glittering lady of his love from the
malice of their respective enemies. There always occurred an incident
in which Columbine was carried off from her despairing lord, and it was
on this occasion that Rich, all power of conveying facial expression
being cut off by his mask, used to move the house to sympathy, and
sometimes, it is said, to tears, by the pathos of his mute and tragic
action. As he gazed up the stage at the forced departure of Columbine
every limb told unmistakably that the poor fellow’s heart was breaking
within him. When she was restored the whole house broke forth into a
thunder of exultation, as if the whole scene had been a reality.

I cannot tell how this was effected, but I _can_ tell a story that is
not unconnected with the terrible pantomime of suffering nature.

Some years ago an unfortunate man, who had made war against society,
and had to suffer death for it in front of the old Debtors’ door,
Newgate, took leave of his wife and daughters not many hours before
execution, in presence of the ‘Reverend Ordinary,’ Mr. Cotton, and a
young officer in the prison, who has since attained to eminence and
corresponding responsibility in the gloomy service to which he is
devoted. The scene of separation was heartrending to all but the doomed
man, who was calm, and even smiled once or twice, in order to cheer, if
he could, the poor creatures whom he had rendered cheerless for ever.
When the ordinary and the prison officer were left alone, the reverend
gentleman remarked--‘Well, H----, what do you think of the way in which
the prisoner went through _that_?’

‘Wonderfully, sir,’ answered H----, ‘considering the circumstances.’

‘Wonderfully!’ replied Mr. Cotton, ‘yes; but not in your sense, my
friend.’

‘In what sense, then, sir?’ asked H----.

‘You said “wonderfully.” I know very well, wherefore--because you saw
him smile; and because he smiled, you thought he did not feel his
condition as his wife and daughters did.’

‘I confess that is the case,’ said the young officer.

‘Ah! H----,’ exclaimed Mr. Cotton, ‘you are new to this sort of thing.
You looked in the man’s face, and thought he was bold. I had my eye on
his back, and I saw that it gave his face the lie. It showed that he
was suffering mortal agony.’

H---- looked inquiringly at the chaplain, who answered the look by
saying, ‘Listen to me, H----. You are young. Some day you will rise to
a post that will require you to sit in the dock, behind the prisoners
who are tried on capital charges. On one of those occasions, you will
see what is common enough--a prisoner who is saucy and defiant, and who
laughs in the judge’s face as he puts on the black cap, and while he
is condemning him. Well, H----, if you want to know what that prisoner
really feels, don’t look at his face--look at his back. All along and
about the spine, you will find it boiling, heaving, surging, like
volcanic matter. Keep your eye upon it, H----; and when you see the
irrepressible emotion in the back suddenly subsiding, open wide your
arms, my boy, for the seemingly saucy fellow is about to tumble into
them, in a dead faint. All the “sauce,” Mr. H----, will be out of him
at once, and perhaps for ever, unless he be exceptionally constituted.’

A little party of visitors was gathered round the narrator of this, the
other day, in that dreadful room where Calcraft keeps his ‘traps and
things.’ I had my hand on the new coil already prepared and in order
for the next criminal who may deserve it; another was looking at Jack
Sheppard’s irons, which were never able to confine him; and others,
with a sort of unwilling gaze at things in a half-open cupboard, which
looked like the furniture of a saddle-room, but which were instruments
of other purposes. We all turned to the speaker, as he ceased, and
inquired if his experience corroborated Mr. Cotton’s description. H----
answered in the affirmative, and he went into particulars to which we
listened with the air of men who were curious yet not sympathizing;
but I felt, at the same time, under the influences of the place, and
of being suddenly told that I was standing where Calcraft stands on
particular occasions, a hot and irrepressible motion adown the back,
which satisfied me that the Cottonian theory had something in it, and
that Miss Kelly, without knowing it, was acting in strict accordance
with nature, when she made her back interpret to an audience all the
anguish she was supposed to feel at the sorry sight on which her face
was turned.

By way of parenthesis, let me add that Mr. Cotton himself was a most
accomplished actor on his own unstable boards. When he grew somewhat
a-weary of his labour--it was a heavy labour when Monday mornings
were hanging mornings, and wretches went to the beam in leashes--when
Mr. Cotton was tired of this, he thought of a good opportunity for
retiring. ‘I have now,’ he said, ‘accompanied just three hundred
and sixty-five poor fellows to the gallows. That’s one for every
day in the year. I may retire after seeing such a round number die
with _cotton in their ears_.’ Whether the reverend gentleman was the
author of this ingenious comparison for getting hanged, or whether he
playfully adopted the phrase which was soon so popularly accepted as a
definition, cannot now be determined.

While on this subject, let me notice that, with the exception of one
Matthew Coppinger, a subaltern player in the Stuart days, no English
actor has ever suffered death on the scaffold. Mat’s offence was not
worse than the mad Prince’s on Gad’s Hill, and it must be confessed
that one or two other gentlemen of the King’s or Duke’s company ‘took
to the road’ of an evening, and perhaps deserved hanging, though the
royal grace saved them. Neither in England nor France has an actor ever
appeared on the scaffold under heavy weight of crime. As for taking
to the highway, baronets’ sons have gone that road on their fathers’
horses; and society construed lightly the offences of highwaymen who
met travellers face to face and set life fairly against life. In
England, Coppinger alone went to Tyburn. In France, I can recall but
two out of the many thousands of actors who have trodden its very
numerous stages,--not including an occasional player who suffered
for political reasons during the French Revolution. One of the two
was Barrières, a Gascon, who, after studying for the church and the
law, turning dramatic poet and mathematician, and finally enlisting
in the army, obtained leave of absence, and profited thereby by
repairing to Paris, and appearing at the Théâtre Français, in 1729, as
Mithridate. His Gascon extravagance and eccentricity caused at first
much amusement, but he speedily established himself as an excellent
general actor, and forgot all about his military leave of absence. Not
so his colonel, who had no difficulty in laying his hand on the Gascon
recruit, who was playing in his own name in Paris, and under authority
of a furlough, the period of which he had probably exceeded--the
document itself he had unfortunately lost. Barrières was tried,
condemned, and shot, in spite of all the endeavours made to save him.

Sixty years later it went as hardly with Bordier, an actor of the
Variétés, of whom I have heard old French players speak with great
regard and admiration. He was on a provincial tour, when he talked
so plainly at _tables d’hôte_ of the misery of the times and the
prospects of the poor, that he was seized and tried at Rouen under a
charge of fomenting insurrection in order to lower the price of corn.
Just before his seizure he had played the principal part (L’Olive)
in ‘Trick against Trick’ (_Ruses contre Ruses_), in which he had to
exclaim gaily: ‘You will see that to settle this affair, I shall
have to be hanged!’ And Bordier _was_ hanged, unjustly, at Rouen. He
suffered with dignity, and a touch of stage humour. He had been used to
play in Pompigny’s ‘Prince turned Sweep’ (_Ramoneur Prince_)--a piece
in which Sloman used to keep the Coburg audience in a roar of delight.
In the course of the piece, standing at the foot of a ladder, and
doubtful as to whether he should ascend or not, he had to say: ‘Shall I
go up or not?’ So, when he came to the foot of the lofty ladder leaning
against the gigantic gallows in the market-place at Rouen, Bordier
turned with a sad smile to the hangman and said: ‘Shall I go up or
not?’ The hangman smiled too, but pointed the way that Bordier should
go; and the wits of Rouen were soon singing of him in the spirit of the
wits of Covent Garden singing of Coppinger:


     Mat did not go dead, like a sluggard to bed,
     But boldly, in his shoes, died of a noose
        That he found under Tyburn tree.


To return to more general statistics, it may be stated that, in busy
times, four dozen persons are engaged in perfecting the wardrobes
of the ladies and gentlemen. Only to attire these and the children,
forty-five dressers are required; and the various _coiffures_ you
behold have busily employed half a dozen hairdressers. If it should
occur to you that you are sitting over or near a gasometer, you may
find confidence in knowing that it is being watched by seventeen
gasmen; and that even the young ladies who glitter and look so happy as
they float in the air in transformation scenes, could not be roasted
alive, provided they are released in time from the iron rods to which
they are bound. These ineffably exquisite nymphs, however, suffer more
or less from the trials they have to undergo for our amusement. Seldom
a night passes without one or two of them fainting; and I remember, on
once assisting several of them to alight, as they neared the ground,
and they were screened from the public gaze, that their hands were
cold and clammy, like clay. The blood had left the surface and rushed
to the heart, and the spangled nymphs who seemed to rule destiny and
the elements, were under a nervous tremor; but, almost as soon as they
had touched the ground, they shook their spangles, laughed their light
laugh, and tripped away in the direction of the stately housekeeper of
Drury, Mrs. Lush, with dignity enough not to care to claim kinship
with her namesake, the judge; for she was once of the household of
Queen Adelaide, and now has the keeping of ‘the national theatre,’ with
nine servants to obey her behests.

To those who would compare the season of 1865-1866 at Drury Lane with
that of 1765-1766, it is only necessary to say that a hundred years ago
Mrs. Pritchard was playing a character of which she was the original
representative in 1761, namely, Mrs. Oakley, in Coleman’s ‘Jealous
Wife,’ a part which has been well played this year by Mrs. Vezin to
the excellent Mr. Oakley of Mr. Phelps. The Drury Lane company, a
hundred years ago, included Garrick, Powell, Holland, King, Palmer,
Parsons, Bensley, Dodd, Yates, Moody, Baddeley, all men of great but
various merit. Among the ladies were Mrs. Cibber, Mrs. Yates, Mrs.
Clive, Mrs. Abington, Mrs. Pritchard, Miss Pope, Mrs. Baddeley, and
some others--a galaxy the like of which, in any one company, could
nowhere be found in these later days. In that season of a hundred
years ago, a new actress, Mrs. Fitzhenry, very nearly gained a seat
upon the tragic throne. In the same season Melpomene lost her noblest
daughter, albeit the last character her name was attached to in the
bills was Lady Brute. I allude to Mrs. Cibber. ‘Mrs. Cibber dead!’ was
Garrick’s cry; ‘then tragedy has died with her.’ Since that season of
a century since, there has been no such Ophelia as hers, the touching
charm of which used to melt a whole house to tears. It was the season
in which Garrick abolished the candles in brass sockets, fixed in
chandeliers, which hung on the stage; in place of which he introduced
the footlights, which were then supplied by oil, and long retained the
significant name of ‘floats.’ In that season, the first benefit was
given for the Drury Lane Theatrical Fund, ‘for the relief of those who,
from infirmities, shall be obliged to retire from the stage.’ On this
occasion Garrick acted _Kitely_, in ‘Every Man in his Humour.’ Lastly,
in that season was produced, for the first time, the ever-lively
comedy, ‘The Clandestine Marriage,’ in which King, as Lord Ogleby, won
such renown that Garrick never ceased to repent of his having declined
the character. After he left the stage he did not seem to be sorry for
the course he had taken. ‘You all think,’ he used to say, ‘that no one
can excel, or even equal King, in Lord Ogleby. It had great merit, but
it was not my Lord Ogleby; and if I could appear again, that is the
only character in which I should care to play.’ And, no doubt, Roscius
would have delighted his audience, though his new reading might not
have induced them to forget the original representation.




_ABOUT MASTER BETTY._


In a valley at the foot of the Slieve Croob mountains, in County
Antrim, there is a pretty village called Ballynahinch. The head of the
river Lagan, which flows by Belfast into the lough, is to be found in
that valley. Near the town is a ‘spa,’ with a couple of wells, and a
delicious air, sufficient in itself to cure all travellers from Dublin
who have narrowly escaped being poisoned by the Liffey, in whose
murderous stinks the metropolitan authorities seem to think the chief
attraction to draw strangers to Dublin is now to be found.

To the flax-cultivating Ballynahinch, in the last quarter of the last
century, a gentleman named Betty brought (after a brief sojourn at
Lisburn) his young English wife and their only child, a boy. This
married couple were of very good blood. The lady was of the Stantons,
of Hopton Court. Mr. Betty’s father was a physician of some celebrity,
at Lisburn, where, and in the neighbourhood, he practised to such good
purpose that he left a handsome fortune to his son. That son invested a
portion of his inheritance in a farm, and in the manufacture of linen
at Ballynahinch. Whence the Bettys originally came it would be hard to
say. A good many Huguenots lie in the churchyard at Lisburn, and the
Bettys may have originally sprung from a kindred source. In the reign
of George the Second there was a Rev. Joseph Betty, who created a great
sensation by a sermon which he preached at Oxford. Whether the Betty of
Oxford was an ancestor of him of Ballynahinch is a question which may
be left to Mr. Forster, the pedigree hunter.

I have said that with his young wife Mr. Betty took to Ireland their
son. Their boy was, and remained, their only child. He was born at
Shrewsbury, which place is also proud of having given birth to famous
Admiral Benbow, also to Orton, the eminent Nonconformist. Master Betty
was English born and Irish bred; half-bred, however; for his English
mother was his nurse, his companion, his friend--in other words, his
true mother. Such an only child used to be called ‘a parlour child,’ to
denote that there was more intercourse between child and parent than
exists in a ‘nursery child,’ to whom the nurse seems his natural guide
and ruler.

The English lady happened to be a lady well endowed as to her mind,
her tastes, and her accomplishments. She was exactly the mother for
such a boy. She was not only excessively fond of reading the best
poets, but of reading passages aloud, or reciting them from memory. Her
audience was her boy. His tastes were in sympathy with his mother’s,
and he was never more delighted than when he sat listening to her
reading or reciting, except when he was reciting passages to her. It
was a peculiar training; it really shaped the boy’s life--and it was
no ill shape which the life took. The father had his share, however,
in clearing the path for the bright, though brief, career. One day the
father, whose intellectual tastes responded to his wife’s, repeated to
his son the speech of Cardinal Wolsey, beginning, ‘Farewell, a long
farewell, to all my greatness.’ In doing this, he suited the action
to the word. Young Betty had never seen this before, and he asked the
meaning of it. ‘It is what is called acting,’ said the father. The boy
thought over it, tried by himself action and motion with elocution, and
he spoke and acted the cardinal’s soliloquy before his mother with an
effect that excited in her the greatest surprise and admiration.

Not the faintest idea of the stage had, at this time, entered the
minds of any of the family. The eager young lad himself was satisfied
with reading plays, learning passages from them, and reciting speeches
from ‘Douglas’ and ‘Zara,’ from ‘Pizarro’ and the ‘Stranger.’ He also
repeated the episodical tales from Thomson’s ‘Seasons.’ Only the above
trace of his learning anything from Shakespeare is to be found, but
he listened to readings from the national poet by one or other of his
parents. This course had its natural results. By degrees the boy took
to rude attempts, from domestic materials, of dress. ‘Properties’ were
created out of anything that could be turned to the purpose; a screen
was adopted for scenery; audiences of ones and twos were pressed by the
stage-struck youth to tarry and see him act; and finally his father,
well qualified, taught him fencing, the son proving an apt pupil, and
becoming a swordsman as perfect and graceful as Edmund Kean himself.

His reputation spread beyond home into distant branches of the family.
Those branches shook with disgust. The parents were warned that if
they did not take care the boy would come to the evil end of being
a play-actor! They were alarmed. The domestic stage was suppressed;
silence reigned where the echoes of the dramatic poets once pleasantly
rang, and the heir of Hopton Court and Hopton Wafers was ignominiously
packed off to school. When I say ‘the heir,’ it is because Master Betty
was so called; but it really seems as if his claim resembled that of
the Irish gentleman who was kept out of his property by the rightful
owner.

There is no record of Master Betty’s school life. We only know that it
did not suppress his taste for dramatic poetry and dramatic action. At
this time, 1802, Mrs. Siddons, who had been acting with her brother,
John Kemble, to empty houses at Drury Lane, left England, in disgust
at the so-called ‘Drury treasury,’ for Ireland. It was the journey
on which she set out with such morbid feelings of despair, as if she
were assured of the trip ending by some catastrophe. It was, in fact,
all triumph, and in the course of her triumphant career she arrived
in Belfast, where, with other parts, she acted Elvira in ‘Pizarro.’
She had not thought much of the part of the camp-follower when she was
first cast for it, and Sheridan was so dilatory that she had to learn
the last portion of the character after the curtain had risen for the
first acting of the piece. But Sarah Siddons was a true artist. She
ever made the best of the very worst materials; she invested Elvira
with dignity, and it became by far the most popular of the characters
of which she was the original representative. Young Betty entered a
theatre for the first time to see Sheridan’s ‘Pizarro’ acted at the
Belfast theatre, and Mrs. Siddons as Elvira. The boy’s tastes were in
the right direction. He had neither eyes, nor ears, nor senses, but for
her. He was, so to speak, ‘stricken’ by her majestic march, her awful
brow, her graceful action, and her incomparable delivery. He drank at
a fresh fountain; he beheld a new guiding light; he went home in a
trance; he now knew what was meant by ‘the stage,’ what acting was,
what appropriate speech meant, what it was to be an actor, and what
a delicious reward there was for an inspired artist in the music of
tumultuous applause. When Master Betty awoke from his dream it was to
announce to his parents that he should certainly die if he were not
allowed to be a play-actor!

He was only eleven years old, and those parents did not wish to lose
him. They at first humoured his bent, and listened smilingly to his
rehearsal of the whole part of Elvira. They had to listen to other
parts, and still had to hear his impressive iteration of his resolution
to die if he were thwarted in his views. At length they yielded. The
father addressed himself to Mr. Atkins, the proprietor and manager of
the Belfast theatre, who consented that the boy should give him a taste
of his quality. When this was done, Atkins was sufficiently struck by
its novelty not to know exactly what to make of it. He called into
council Hough, the prompter, who was warm in his approval. ‘You are my
guardian angel!’ exclaimed the excited boy to the old prompter. Atkins,
with full faith in Hough’s verdict, observed, when the lad had left,
‘I never expected to see another Garrick, but I have seen an infant
Garrick in Master Betty!’

After some preliminary bargaining, Atkins would not go further than
engage the promising ‘infant’ for four nights. The terms were that,
after deducting _twelve pounds_ for the expenses of the house, the
rest was to be divided between the manager and the _débutant_. The
tragedy of ‘Zara’ was accordingly announced for August 16, 1803,
‘Osman (Sultan of Jerusalem) by a Young Gentleman.’ Now, that year
(and several before and after it) was a troubled year, part of a
perilous time, for Ireland. Sedition was abroad, and everybody, true
man or not, was required to be at home early. The manager could not
have got his tragedy and farce ended and his audience dismissed to
their homes within the legal time but for the order which he obtained
from the military commander of the district that (as printed in the
bill), ‘At the request of the manager the drums have been ordered to
beat an hour later at night.’ The performance was further advertised
‘to begin precisely at six o’clock, that the theatre may be closed by
nine.’ The prices were reckoned by the Irish equivalent of English
shillings--‘Boxes, 3_s._ 3_d._; Pit, 2_s._ 2_d._; Gallery, 1_s._ 1_d._’
In return for the military courtesy, if not as a regular manifestation
of loyalty, it was also stated in the bill, ‘GOD SAVE THE KING’ (in
capital letters!) ‘will be played at the end of the second act, and
RULE BRITANNIA at the end of the play.’

Belfast was, as it is, an intellectual town. The audience assembled
were not likely to be carried away by a mere phenomenon. They
listened, became interested, then deeply stirred, and at last
enthusiastic. The next day the whole town was talking of the almost
perfection with which this boy represented the rage, jealousy, and
despair of Osman. In truth, there was something more than cleverness
in this representation. Let anyone, if he can, read Aaron Hill’s
adaptation of Voltaire’s ‘Zaire’ through. He will see of what dry
bones it is made. Those heavy lines, long speeches, dull movement of
dull plot, stirred now and then by a rant or a roar, require a great
deal more than cleverness to make them endurable. No human being could
live out five acts of such stuff if genius did not uphold the stuff
itself. It was exquisite Mrs. Cibber who gave ‘Zara’ life when she made
her _début_ on the stage, when the tragedy was first played in 1736.
Spranger Barry added fresh vigour to that life when he acted Osman in
1751. Garrick’s genius in Lusignan galvanised the dead heap into living
beauty, never more so than in his last performance in 1776; but the
great genius was Mrs. Cibber; neither Mrs. Bellamy, nor Mrs. Barry, nor
Miss Younge, equalled her. Mrs. Siddons, after them, made Zara live
again, and was nearly equal to Mrs. Cibber. Since her time there has
been neither a Zara, nor Lusignan, nor grown-up Osman, of any note;
and nothing short of genius could make the dry bones live. Voltaire’s
‘Zaire’ is as dull as Hill’s, but it has revived, and been played
at the Théâtre Français. But every character is well played, from
Mounet Sully, who acts Orosmane, to Dupont Vernon, in Corasmin. The
accomplished Berton plays Nerestan; and it is a lesson to actors only
to hear Maubant deliver the famous lines beginning with ‘Mon Dieu, j’ai
combattu.’

Mdlle. Sarah Bernhardt is the Zaire, and I can fancy her a French
Cibber. She dies, however, on the stage too much in the horrible
fashion of the ‘Sphinx’; but what attracts French audience is, that
the piece abounds in passages which such audiences may hail in ecstasy
or denounce in disgust. The passages are political, religious, and
cunningly framed free-thinking passages. For these the audience waits,
and signalises their coming by an enthusiasm of delight or an excess of
displeasure.

At Belfast there was only the eleven-years-old Osman to enthral an
audience. The rest were respectable players. It is not to be believed
that such an audience would have been stirred as they were on that
August night had there not been some mind behind the voice of the young
_débutant_. He had never been on a stage before, had only once seen a
play acted, had received only a few hints from the old prompter, yet
he seemed to be the very part he represented. There were many doubters
and disbelievers in Belfast, but they, for the most part, went to
the theatre and were convinced. The three other parts he played were
Douglas, Rolla, and, for his benefit on August 29, Romeo. From that
moment he was ‘renowned,’ and his career certain of success.

While this boy snatched a triumph, there was another eagerly,
painfully, yet hopefully and determinedly, struggling for one. _This_
boy scarcely knew by what name to pass, for his mother was a certain
Nance Carey, and his reputed father was one of two brothers, he did
not know which, named Kean. This boy claimed in after years to be an
illegitimate son of the Duke of Norfolk, and he referred, in a way, to
this claim when he called his first child Howard. For Nance Carey the
boy had no love. There was but one woman who was kind to him in his
childhood, Miss Tidswell, of Drury Lane Theatre, and Edmund Kean used
to say, ‘If she was not my mother, why was she kind to me?’ When I pass
Orange Court, Leicester Square, I look with curiosity at the hole where
he got a month’s schooling.

Born and dragged up, the young life experiences of Edmund Kean were
exactly opposite to those of William Henry West Betty. He had indeed,
because of his childish beauty, been allowed at three years old to
stand or lie as Cupid in one of Noverre’s ballets; and he had, as an
unlucky imp in the witches’ scene of ‘Macbeth,’ been rebuked by the
offended John Kemble. Since then he had rolled or been kicked about
the world. When Master Betty, at the age of eleven, or nearly twelve,
was laying the foundations of his fortune at Belfast, Edmund Kean was
fifteen, and had often laid himself to sleep on the lee side of a
haystack, for want of wherewith to pay for a better lodging. He had
danced and tumbled at fairs, and had sung in taverns; he had tramped
about the country, carrying Nance Carey’s box of _falbalas_ for sale;
he had been over sea and land; he had joined Richardson’s booth
company, and, at Windsor, it is said that George III. had heard him
recite, and had expressed his approbation in the shape of two guineas,
which Miss Carey took from him.

It was for the benefit of a mother so different from Master Betty’s
mother that he recited in private families. It is a matter of history
that by one of these recitations he inspired another boy, two years
older than himself, with a taste for the stage and a determination to
gain thereon an honourable position. This third boy was Charles Young.
His son and biographer has told us, that as Charles was one evening at
Christmas time descending the stairs of his father’s house full dressed
for _dessert_--his father, a London surgeon, lived in rather high
style--he saw a slatternly woman seated on one of the chairs in the
hall, with a boy standing by her side dressed in fantastic garb, with
the blackest and most penetrating eyes he had ever beheld in human
head. His first impression was that the two were strolling gipsies who
had come for medical advice. Charles Young, we are told, ‘was soon
undeceived, for he had no sooner taken his place by his father’s side
than, to his surprise, the master, instead of manifesting displeasure,
smirked and smiled, and, with an air of self-complacent patronage,
desired his butler to bring in the boy. On his entry he was taken by
the hand, patted on the head, and requested to favour the company with
a specimen of his histrionic ability. With a self-possession marvellous
in one so young he stood forth, knitted his brows, hunched up one
shoulder-blade, and with sardonic grin and husky voice spouted forth
Gloster’s opening soliloquy in “Richard the Third.” He then recited
selections from some of our minor British poets, both grave and gay;
danced a hornpipe; sang songs, both comic and pathetic; and, for fully
an hour, displayed such versatility as to elicit vociferous applause
from his auditory and substantial evidence of its sincerity by a shower
of crown pieces and shillings, a napkin having been opened and spread
upon the floor for their reception. The accumulated treasury having
been poured into the gaping pockets of the lad’s trousers, with a smile
of gratified vanity and grateful acknowledgment he withdrew, rejoined
his tatterdemalion friend in the hall, and left the house rejoicing.
The door was no sooner closed than the guests desired to know the name
of the youthful prodigy who had so astonished them. The host replied
that this was not the first time he had had him to amuse his friends;
that he knew nothing of the lad’s history or antecedents, but that his
name was Edmund Kean, and that of the woman who seemed to have charge
of him and was his supposititious mother, Carey.’ This pretty scene,
described by the Rev. Julian Young, had a supplement to it of which he
was not aware. ‘She took all from me,’ was Edmund Kean’s cry when he
used to tell similar incidents of his hard youthful times.

While Edmund was thus struggling, Master Betty had leaped into fame.
Irish managers were ready to fight duels for the possession of him.
When the announcement went forth that Mr. Frederick Jones, of the Crow
Street Theatre, Dublin, was the possessor of the youthful phenomenon
for nine nights, there was a rush of multitudes to secure places, with
twenty times more applicants than places. There was ferocious fighting
for what could be secured, and much spoliation, with peril of life and
damage to limb, and an atmosphere filled with thunder and lightning,
delightful to the Dublin mind.

On November 29, 1803, Master Betty, not in his own name, but simply
as a ‘young gentleman, only twelve years of age,’ made his _début_
in Dublin as Douglas. The play-bill, indeed, did add, ‘his admirable
talents have procured him the deserved appellation of the INFANT
ROSCIUS.’ As there were sensitive people in Dublin who remembered that
Dublin itself was in what would now be called a state of siege, and
that it was unlawful to be out after a certain hour in the evening,
these were won over by this delicious announcement: ‘The public are
respectfully informed that no person coming from the theatre will
be stopped till after eleven o’clock.’ This was the time, too, when
travellers were induced to trust themselves to mail and stagecoaches
by the assurance that the vehicles were made proof against shot. There
was no certainty the travellers would not be fired at, but the comfort
was that if the bullets did not go through the window and kill the
travellers, they could not much injure the vehicle itself!

There was the unheard-of sum of four hundred pounds in that old Crow
Street Theatre on that November night. The university students in the
gallery, who generally made it rattle with their wit, were silent
as soon as the curtain rose. The Dublin audience was by no means an
audience easy to please, or one that would befool itself by passing
mediocrity with the stamp of genius upon it. ‘Douglas,’ too, is a
tragedy that must be attentively listened to, to be enjoyed, and
enjoyment is out of the question if the poetry of the piece be a lost
beauty to the deliverer of the lines. On this night, Dublin ratified
the Belfast verdict. The graceful boy excited the utmost enthusiasm,
and the manager offered him an engagement at an increasing salary,
for any number of years. The offer was wisely declined by Master
Betty’s father, and the ‘Infant Roscius’ went on his bright career.
He played one other part, admirably suited to him in every respect,
Prince Arthur, in ‘King John,’ and he fairly drowned the house in tears
with it. Frederick, in ‘Lovers’ Vows,’ and Romeo, were only a trifle
beyond his age, not at all beyond his grasp, though love-making was the
circumstance which he could the least satisfactorily portray. A boy
sighing like furnace to young beauty must have seemed as ridiculous as
a Juliet of fifty, looking older than the Nurse, and who, one would
think, ought to be ashamed of herself to be out in a balcony at that
time of night, talking nonsense with that young fellow with a feather
in his cap and a sword on his thigh! Dublin wits made fun of Master
Betty’s wooing, and were epigrammatic upon it in the style of Martial,
and saucy actresses seized the same theme to air their saucy wit. These
casters of stones from the roadside could not impede the boy’s triumph.
He produced immense effect, even in Thomson’s dreary ‘Tancred,’ but I
am sorry to find it asserted that he acted Hamlet, after learning the
part in three days. The great Betterton, greatest of the great masters
of their art, used to say that he had acted Hamlet and studied it for
fifty years, and had not got to the bottom of its philosophy even
then. However, the boy’s remarkable gifts made his Hamlet successful.
There was a rare comedian who played with him, Richard Jones, with
a cast in one eye. Accomplished Dick, whose only serious fault was
excess in peppermint lozenges, acted Osric, Count Cassel, and Mercutio,
in three of the pieces in which Master Betty played the principal
characters. What a glorious true comedian was Dick! After delighting a
whole generation with his comedy, Jones retired. He taught clergymen
to read the Lord’s Prayer as if they were in earnest, and to deliver
the messages of the Gospel as if they believed in them; and in this
way Dick Jones did as much for the church as any of the bishops or
archbishops of his time.

It is to be noted here that Master Betty’s first appearance in Dublin
in 1803 was a more triumphant matter than John Kemble’s in 1781. This
was in the older Smock Alley Theatre. The alley was so called from the
Sallys who most did congregate there. He played high comedy as well
as tragedy; but, says Mr. Gilbert, in his ‘History of Dublin,’ ‘his
negligent delivery and heaviness of deportment impeded his progress
until these defects were removed by the instruction of his friend,
Captain Jephson.’ Is not this delicious? Fancy John Kemble being
made an actor by a half-pay captain who had written a tragedy! This
tragedy was called the ‘Count of Narbonne,’ and therein, says Gilbert,
‘Kemble’s reputation was first established.’ It was not on a very firm
basis, for John was engaged only on the modest salary of 5_l._ a week!

Master Betty’s progress through the other parts of Ireland was as
completely successful as at Dublin and Belfast. Mrs. Pero engaged
him for six nights at Cork. His terms here were one-fourth of the
receipts and one clear benefit, that is to say, the whole of the
receipts free of expense. As the receipts rarely exceeded ten pounds,
the prospects were not brilliant. But, with Master Betty, the ‘houses’
reached one hundred pounds. The smaller receipts may have arisen from
a circumstance sufficient to keep an audience away. There was a Cork
tailor hanged for robbery; but, after he was cut down, a Cork actor,
named Glover, succeeded, by friction and other means, in bringing him
to life again! On the same night, and for many nights, the tailor,
drunk and unhanged, _would_ go to the theatre and publicly acknowledge
the service of Mr. Glover in bringing him to life again! And it _is_
said that he was the third tailor who had outlived hanging during ten
years!

There was no ghastly interruption of the performance of the Roscius.
The engagement was extended to nine nights, and the one which followed
at Waterford was equally successful. As he proceeded, Master Betty
studied and extended his _répertoire_. He added to his list Octavian,
and on his benefit nights he played in the farce, on one occasion Don
Carlos in ‘Lovers’ Quarrels,’ on another Captain Flash in ‘Miss in
her Teens.’ Subsequently, in Londonderry, the flood of success still
increasing, the pit could only be entered at box prices. Master Betty
played in Londonderry long before the time when a Mr. MacTaggart,
an old citizen, used to be called upon between the acts to give his
unbiassed critical opinions on the performances. It was the rarest fun
for the house, and the most painful wholesomeness for the actors, Frank
Connor and his father, Villars, Fitzsimons, Cunningham, O’Callaghan,
and clever Miss M’Keevor (with her pretty voice and sparkling one eye),
to hear the stern and salubrious criticism of Mr. MacTaggart, at the
end of which there was a cry for the tune of ‘No Surrender!’ Not to
wound certain susceptibilities, and yet be national, the key-bugle
gentleman, who was half the orchestra, generally played ‘Norah Creena,’
and thus the play proceeded merrily.

Master Betty played Zanga at Londonderry, and he passed thence to
Glasgow, where for fourteen nights he attracted crowded audiences, and
added to his other parts Richard the Third, which he must have learnt
as he sailed from Belfast up the Clyde. Jackson, the manager, went all
but mad with delight and full houses. He wrote an account of his new
treasure in terms more transcendent than ‘the transcendent boy’ himself
could accept. Had Young Roscius been a divinity descended upon earth,
the rhapsody could not have been more highly pitched; but it was fully
endorsed by nine-tenths of the Glasgow people, and when a bold fellow
ventured to write a satirical philippic against the divine idol of
the hour, he was driven out of the city as guilty of something like
sacrilege, profanation, and general unutterable wickedness.

On May 21, 1804, the transcendental Mr. Jackson was walking on the High
Bridge, Edinburgh, when he met an old gentleman of some celebrity, the
Rev. Mr. Home. ‘Sir,’ said Jackson, ‘your play, “Douglas,” is to be
acted to-night with a new and wonderful actor. I hope you will come
down to the house.’ Forty-eight years before (1756) Home had gone
joyously down to the Edinburgh Theatre to see his ‘Douglas’ represented
for the first time. West Digges (not Henry West Betty) was the Norval,
and the house was half full of ministers of the Kirk, who got into a
sea of troubles for presuming to see acted a play written by a fellow
in the ministry.

The Lady Randolph was Mrs. Ward, daughter of a player of the Betterton
period, and mother, I think, of Mrs. Roger Kemble. On that night one
enthusiastic Scotsman was so delighted that at the end of the fourth
act he arose and roared aloud, ‘Where’s Wully Shakespeare noo?’ Home
had also seen Spranger Barry in the hero (he was the original Norval
(Douglas) on the play being first acted in 1757 in London). Home was
an aged man in 1804, and lived in retirement. He did not know his
‘Douglas’ was to be played, nor had he ever heard of Master Betty!
Never heard of him whom Jackson said he had been presented to Earth by
Heaven and Nature! ‘The pleasing movements of his perfect and divine
nature,’ said Jackson, ‘were incorporated in his person previous to
his birth.’ Home could not refuse to go and see this phenomenon. He
stipulated to have his old place at the wing, that is, behind the stage
door, partially opened, so that he could see up the stage. The old man
was entirely overcome. Digges and Barry, he declared, were leather and
prunella compared with this inspired child who acted his Norval as he
the author had conceived it. Home’s enthusiasm was so excited that,
when Master Betty was summoned by the ‘thunders’ of applause and the
‘hurricane’ of approbation to appear before the audience, Home tottered
forward also, tears streaming from his eyes, and rapture beaming on
his venerable countenance. The triumph was complete. The most impartial
critics especially praised the boy’s conception of the poet, and it was
the highest praise they could give. Between June 28 and August 9 he
acted fifteen times, often under the most august patronage that could
be found in Edinburgh. For the first time he played Selim (Achmet) in
‘Barbarossa’ during this engagement, and with such effect as to make
him more the ‘darling’ than ever of duchesses and ladies in general.
Four days after the later date named above, the marvellous boy stood
before a Birmingham audience, whither he had gone covered with kisses
from Scottish beauties, and laden with the approval, counsel, and
blessing of Lords of Session.

Mr. Macready, father of the lately deceased actor, bargained for the
Roscius, and overreached himself. He thought 10_l._ a night too much!
He proposed that he should deduct 60_l._ from each night’s receipts,
and that Master Betty should take half of what remained. The result was
that Roscius got 50_l._ nightly instead of 10_l._ The first four nights
were not overcrowded, but the boy grew on the town, and at last upon
the whole country. Stage-coaches were advertised specially to carry
parties from various distances to the Birmingham Theatre. The highest
receipt was 266_l._ to his Richard. Selim was the next. 261_l._ The
lowest receipt was also to his Richard. On the first night he played
it there was only 80_l._ in the house. He left Birmingham with the
assurance of a local poet that he was Cooke, Kemble, Holman, Garrick,
all in one. Sheffield was delighted to have him at raised prices of
admission. He made his first appearance to deliver a rhymed deprecatory
address, in reference to wide-cast ridicule on his being a mere boy, in
which were these lines:


     When at our Shakespeare’s shrine my swelling heart
     Bursts forth and claims some kindred tear to start,
     Frown not, if I avow that falling tear
     Inspires my soul and bids me persevere.


His Hamlet drew the highest sum at Sheffield, 140_l._; his Selim the
lowest, 60_l._, which was just doubled when he played the same part
for his own benefit. London had caught curiosity, if not enthusiasm,
to see him; the Sheffield hotels became crowded with London families,
and ‘Six-inside coaches to see the Young Roscius’ plied at Doncaster
to carry people from the races. At Liverpool there were riots and
spoliation at the box-office. At Chester wild delight. At Manchester
tickets were put up to lottery. At Stockport he played morning and
evening, and travelled after it all night to play at Leicester, where
he also acted on some occasions twice in one day! and where every lady
who could write occasional verses showered upon him a very deluge of
rhyme.

November had now been reached. In that month John Kemble, who is
supposed to have protested against the dignity of the stage being
lowered by a speaking puppet, wrote a letter to Mr. Betty. In this
letter John said: ‘I could not deny myself the satisfaction I feel in
knowing I shall soon have the happiness of welcoming you and Master
Betty to Covent Garden Theatre. Give me leave to say how heartily
I congratulate the stage on the ornament and support it is, by the
judgment of all the world, to receive from Master Betty’s extraordinary
talents and exertions.’ After this we may dismiss as nonsense the lofty
talk about the Kemble feeling as to the dignity of the stage being
wounded. Mr. Kemble and Mrs. Siddons would not play in the same piece
with Master Betty, as Jones, Charles Young, Miss Smith (Mrs. Bartley),
and others had done in the country, but Mr. Kemble (as manager)
was delighted that the Covent Garden treasury should profit by the
extraordinary talents of a boy whom the Kemble followers continually
depreciated.

On Saturday, December 1, 1804, Master Betty appeared at Covent Garden
in the character of Selim. Soon after mid-day the old theatre--the
one which Rich had built and to which he transferred his company from
Lincoln’s Inn Fields--was beset by a crowd which swelled into a
multitude, not one in ten of whom succeeded in fighting his way into
the house when the doors were opened. Such a struggle--sometimes for
life--had never been known. Even in the house strong men fainted like
delicate girls; an hour passed before the shrieks of the suffering
subsided, and we are even told that ‘the ladies in one or two boxes
were employed almost the whole night in fanning the gentlemen who were
behind them in the pit!’ The only wonder is that the excited multitude,
faint for want of air, irritable by being overcrowded, and fierce in
struggling for space which no victor in the struggle could obtain, ever
was subdued to a condition of calm sufficient to enable them to enjoy
the ‘rare delight’ within reach. However, in the second act Master
Betty appeared--modest, self-possessed, and not at all moved out of
his assumed character by the tempest of welcome which greeted him.
From first to last, he ‘electrified’ the audience. He never failed, we
are told, whenever he aimed at making a point. His attention to the
business of the stage was that of a careful and conscientious veteran.
His acting denoted study. His genius won applause--not his age, and
youthful grace. There was ‘conception,’ rather than ‘instruction’ to
be seen in all he did and said. His undertones could be heard at the
very back of the galleries. The pathos, the joy, the exultation of
a part (once so favourite a part with young actors), enchanted the
audience. That they felt all these things sincerely is proved by the
fact that--as one newspaper critic writes--‘the audience could not
lower their minds to attend to the farce, which was not suffered to be
concluded.’

The theatrical career of his ‘Young Roscius’ period amounted to this.
He played at both houses in London from December 1804 to April 1805, in
a wide range of characters, and supported by some of the first actors
of the day. He then played in every town of importance throughout
England and Scotland. He returned to London for the season 1805-6, and
acted twenty-four nights at each theatre, at fifty guineas a night.
Subsequently he acted in the country; and finally, he took leave of the
stage at Bath in March 1808. Altogether, London possessed him but a few
months. The madness which prevailed about him was ‘midsummer madness,’
though it was but a short fit. That he himself did not go mad is the
great wonder. Princes of the blood called on him, the Lord Chancellor
invited him, nobles had him day after day to dinner, and the King
presented him to the Queen and Princesses in the room behind the Royal
box. Ladies carried him off to the Park as those of Charles II.’s time
did with Kynaston. When he was ill the sympathetic town rushed to read
his bulletins with tremulous eagerness. Portraits of him abounded,
presents were poured in upon him, poets and poetasters deafened the
ear about him, misses patted his beautiful hair and asked ‘locks’ from
him. The future King of France and Navarre, Count d’Artois, afterwards
Charles X., witnessed his performance, in French, of ‘Zaphna,’ at
Lady Percival’s; Gentleman Smith presented him with Garrick relics;
Cambridge University gave ‘Roscius’ as the subject for the Brown Prize
Medal, and the House of Commons adjourned, at the request of Pitt,
in order to witness his ‘Hamlet.’ At the Westminster Latin Play (the
‘Adelphi’ of Terence) he was present in a sort of royal state, and the
Archbishop of York all but publicly blest him. Some carping persons
remarked that the boy was too ignorant to understand a word of the play
that was acted in his presence. When it is remembered how Latin was and
is pronounced at Westminster, it is not too much to say that Terence
(had he been there) would not have understood much more of his own play
than Master Betty did.

The boy reigned triumphantly through his little day, and the
professional critics generally praised to the skies his mental capacity
as well as his bodily endowments. They discovered beauty in both,
and it is to the boy’s credit that their praise did not render him
conceited. He studied new parts, and his attention to business, his
modesty, his boyish spirits in the green room, his docility, and
the respect he paid to older artists, were among the items of the
professional critic’s praise.

Let us pass from the professional critics to the judgment of private
individuals of undoubted ability to form and give one (we have only to
premise that Master Betty played alternately at Covent Garden and Drury
Lane). And first, Lord Henley. Writing to Lord Auckland, on December 7,
1804, he says, ‘I went to see the Young Roscius with an unprejudiced
mind, or rather, perhaps, with the opinion you seem to have formed of
him, and left the theatre in the highest admiration of his wonderful
talents. As I scarcely remember Garrick, I may say (though there be,
doubtless, room for improvement) that I never saw such fine acting,
and yet the poor boy’s voice was that night a good deal affected by a
cold. I would willingly pay a guinea for a place on every night of his
appearing in a new character.’

Even Fox, intent as he was on public business, and absorbed by
questions of magnitude concerning his country, and of importance
touching himself, was caught by the general enthusiasm. There is a
letter of his, dated December 17, 1804, addressed to his ‘Dear Young
One,’ Lord Holland, who was then about thirty years old. The writer
urges his nephew to hasten from Spain to England, on account of the
serious parliamentary struggle likely to occur; adding, ‘there
is always a chance of questions in which the Prince of Wales is
particularly concerned;’ and subjoining the sagacious statesmanlike
remark: ‘It is very desirable that the power, strength, and union of
the Opposition should appear considerable while out of office, in order
that if ever they should come in it may be plain that they have an
existence of their own, and are not the mere creatures of the Crown.’
But Fox breaks suddenly away from subjects of crafty statesmanship,
with this sentence: ‘Everybody here is mad about this Boy Actor, even
Uncle Dick is full of astonishment and admiration. We go to town
to-morrow to see him, and from what I have heard, I own I shall be
disappointed if he is not a prodigy.’

On the same day Fox wrote a letter from St. Anne’s Hill to the Hon.
C. Grey (the Lord Grey of the Reform Bill). It is bristling with
‘politicks,’ but between reference to party battles and remarks
on Burke, the statesman says: ‘Everybody is mad about this Young
Roscius, and we go to town to-morrow to see him. The accounts of him
seem incredible; but the opinion of him is nearly unanimous, and
Fitzpatrick, who went strongly prepossessed against him, was perfectly
astonished and full of admiration.’

We do not find any letter of Fox’s extant to tell us his opinion of
the ‘tenth wonder.’ We can go with him to the play, nevertheless.
‘While young Betty was in all his glory,’ says Samuel Rogers, in his
‘Table Talk,’ ‘I went with Fox and Mrs. Fox, after dining with them in
Arlington Street, to see him act Hamlet; and, during the play scene,
Fox, to my infinite surprise, said, “This is finer than Garrick!”’ Fox
would not have said so if he had not thought so. He did not say as
much to Master Betty, but he best proved his sympathy by sitting with
and reading to him passages from the great dramatists, mingled with
excellent counsel.

Windham, the famous statesman, who as much loved to see a pugilistic
fight as Fox did to throw double sixes, and to whom a stroll in
Leicester Fields was as agreeable as an hour with an Italian poet
was to Fox--Windham hurried through the Fields to Covent Garden. His
diary for the year 1804 is lost; but in that for 1805 we come upon
his opinion of the attractive player, after visits in both years. On
January 31, 1805, there is this entry in his diary;--‘Went, according
to arrangement, with Elliot and Grenville to play; Master Betty in
Frederick’ (‘Lovers’ Vows’). ‘Lord Spencer, who had been shooting
at Osterley, came afterwards. Liked Master B. better than before,
but still inclined to my former opinion; his action certainly very
graceful, except now and then that he is a little tottering on his
legs, and his recitation just, but his countenance not expressive; his
voice neither powerful nor pleasing.’

The criticisms of actors were generally less favourable. Kemble was
‘riveted,’ we are told, by the acting of Master Betty; but he was
contemptuously silent. Mrs. Siddons, according to Campbell, ‘never
concealed her disgust at the popular infatuation.’ At the end of the
play Lord Abercorn came into her box and told her that that boy, Betty,
would eclipse everything which had been called acting, in England. ‘My
Lord,’ she answered, ‘he is a very clever, pretty boy; but nothing
more.’ Mrs. Siddons, however, was meanly jealous of all that stood
between her and the public. When Mrs. Siddons was young, she was
jealous of grand old Mrs. Crawford. When Mrs. Siddons was old, and
had retired, she was jealous of young Miss O’Neill. She querulously
said that the public were fond of setting up new idols in order to
annoy their former favourites. George Frederick Cooke who had played
Glenalvon to Master Betty’s Norval--played it finely too, at his very
best--and could not crush the boy, after whom everybody was repeating
the line he made so famous,


     The blood of Douglas can protect itself!


--Cooke alluded to him in his diary, for 1811, thus: ‘I was visited
by Master Payne, the American Young Roscius; I thought him a polite,
sensible youth, and the reverse of our Young Roscius.’ This was an
ebullition of irritability. Even those who could not praise Roscius
as a tenth wonder, acknowledged his courtesy and were struck by his
good common sense. Boaden, who makes the singular remark that ‘all
the favouritism, and more than the innocence, of former patronesses
was lavished on him,’ also tells us more intelligibly, that Master
Betty ‘never lost the genuine modesty of his carriage; and his temper,
at least, was as steady as his diligence.’ One actor said, ‘Among
clever boys he would have been a Triton among minnows;’ but Mrs.
Inchbald remarked, ‘Had I never seen boys act, I might have thought
him extraordinary.’ ‘Baby-faced child!’ said Campbell. ‘Handsome face!
graceful figure! marvellous power!’ is the testimony of Mrs. Mathews.
The most unbiassed judgment I can find is Miss Seward’s, who wrote thus
of him in 1804, after seeing him as Osman in ‘Zara’: ‘It could not have
been conceived or represented with more grace, sensibility, and fire,
though he is veritably an effeminate boy of thirteen; but his features
are cast in a diminutive mould, particularly his nose and mouth.
This circumstance must at every period of life be injurious to stage
effect; nor do I think his ear for blank verse faultless. Like Cooke,
he never fails to give the passions their whole force, by gesture
and action natural and just; but he does not do equal justice to the
harmony. It is, I think, superfluous to look forward to the mature
fruit of this luxuriant blossom.’ Miss Seward was right; but she was
less correct in her prophecy, ‘He will not live to bear it. Energies
various and violent will blast in no short time the vital powers,
evidently delicate.’ He survived this prophecy just seventy years! One
other opinion of him I cannot forbear adding. It is Elliston’s, and
it is in the very loftiest of Robert William’s manner, who was born a
little more than one hundred years ago! ‘Sir, my opinion of the young
gentleman’s talents will never transpire during my life. I have written
my convictions down. They have been attested by competent witnesses,
and sealed and deposited in the iron safe at my banker’s, to be drawn
forth and opened, with other important documents, at my death. The
world will then know what Mr. Elliston thought of Master Betty!’

The Young Roscius withdrew from the stage and entered Christ’s College,
Cambridge. He there enjoyed quiet study and luxurious seclusion.
Meanwhile that once boy with the flashing eyes, Edmund Kean, had got a
modest post at the Haymarket, where he played Rosencrantz to Mr. Rae’s
Hamlet. He had also struggled his way to Belfast, and had acted Osman
to Mrs. Siddons’ Zara. ‘He plays well, very well,’ said the lady: ‘but
there is too little of him to make a great actor.’ Edmund, too, had
married ‘Mary Chambers,’ at Stroud, and Mr. Beverley had turned the
young couple out of his company, ‘to teach them not to do it again!’
In 1812, ‘Mr. Betty,’ come to man’s estate, returned to the stage, at
Bath. A few months previously Mr. and Mrs. Kean were wandering from
town to town. In rooms, to which the public were invited by written
bills, in Kean’s hand, they recited scenes from plays and sang duets;
and _he_ trilled songs, spoke soliloquies, danced hornpipes, and gave
imitations!--and starved, and hoped--and would by no means despair.

Mr. Betty’s second career lasted from 1812 to 1824, when he made his
last bow at Southampton, as the Earl of Warwick. Within the above
period he acted at Covent Garden, in 1812 and 1813. He proved to be a
highly ‘respectable’ actor; but the phenomenon no longer existed. His
last performance in London was in June 1813, when he played ‘Richard
III.’ and ‘Tristram Fickle’ for his benefit. In the following January
Edmund Kean, three years his senior, took the town by storm in Shylock,
and made his conquest good by his incomparable Richard. The genius of
Mr. Betty left him with his youth. Edmund Kean drowned his genius in
wine and rioting before his manhood was matured. Forty-eight years
have elapsed since he was carried to his grave in Richmond churchyard.
Honoured and regretted, all that was mortal of the once highly-gifted
boy, who lived to be a venerable and much-loved old man, ‘fourscore
years and upwards,’ was borne to his last resting-place in the cemetery
at Highgate. _Requiescat in pace!_




_CHARLES YOUNG AND HIS TIMES._


Charles Mayne Young, one of the last of the school of noble actors,
has found a biographer in his son, the Rev. Julian Young, Rector of
Ilmington. Here we have stage and pulpit in happy and not unusual
propinquity. There was a time when the clergy had the drama entirely
to themselves; they were actors, authors, and managers. The earliest
of them all retired to the monastery of St. Alban, after his theatre
at Dunstable had been burnt down, at the close of a squib-and-rocket
sort of drama on the subject of St. Theresa. At the Reformation the
stage became secularised, the old moralities died out, and the new
men and pieces were denounced as wicked by the ‘unco righteous’ among
their dramatic clerical predecessors. Nevertheless, the oldest comedy
of worldly manners we possess--‘Ralph Roister Doister’--was the work of
the Rev. Dr. Nicholas Udall, in 1540. During the three centuries and
nearly a half which have elapsed since that time, clergymen have ranked
among the best writers for the stage. The two most successful tragedies
of the last century were the Rev. Dr. Young’s ‘Revenge,’ and the Rev.
J. Home’s ‘Douglas.’ In the present century few comedies have made such
a sensation as the Rev. Dr. Croly’s ‘Pride shall have a Fall,’ but
the sensation was temporary, the comedy only illustrating local and
contemporary incidents.

A dozen other ‘Reverends’ might be cited who have more or less adorned
dramatic literature, and there are many instances of dramatic artists
whose sons or less near kinsmen having taken orders in the Church.
When Sutton, in the pulpit of St. Mary Overy, A.D. 1616, denounced
the stage, Nathaniel Field, the eminent actor, published a letter to
the preacher, in which Field said that in the player’s trade there
were corruptions as there were in all others; he implied, as Overbury
implied, that the actor was not to be judged by the dross of the craft,
but by the purer metal. Field anticipated Fielding’s Newgate Chaplain,
who upheld ‘Punch’ on the same ground that the comedian upheld the
stage--that it was nowhere spoken against in Scripture! The year 1616
was the year in which Shakespeare died. It is commonly said that the
players of Shakespeare’s time were of inferior birth and culture,
but Shakespeare himself was of a well-conditioned family, and this
Nathaniel Field who stood up for the honour of the stage against the
censure of the pulpit, had for brother that Rev. Theophilus Field
who was successively Bishop of Llandaff, St. David’s, and Hereford.
Charles Young was not the only actor of his day who gave a son to the
Church. His old stage-manager at Bath, Mr. Charlton, saw not only his
son but his grandsons usefully employed in the more serious vocation.
As for sons of actors at the universities, they have seldom been
wanting, from William Hemming (son of John Hemming, the actor, and
joint-editor with Condell of the folio edition of Shakespeare’s Works),
who took his degree at Oxford in 1628, down to Julian Charles Young,
son of the great tragedian, who took his degree in the same university
two centuries later; or, to be precise, A.D. 1827.

Charles Mayne Young, who owed his second name to the circumstance of
his descent from the regicide who was so called, was born in Fenchurch
Street, in 1777. His father was an able surgeon and a reckless
spendthrift. Before the household fell into ruin, Charles Young had
passed a holiday year, partly at the Court of Copenhagen. He had
seen a boy with flashing eyes play bits from Shakespeare before the
guests at his father’s table--a strolling, fantastically-dressed,
intellectual boy, whose name was Edmund Kean. Further, Charles Young
saw and appreciated, at the age of twelve, Mrs. Siddons as the mother
of Coriolanus. He also passed through Eton and Merchant Taylors’.
When the surgeon’s household was broken up, and Young and his two
brothers took their ill-used mother to their own keeping, they adopted
various courses for her and their own support, and all of them
succeeded. Charles Young, after passing a restless novitiate in a
merchant’s office (the more restless, probably, as he thought of two
personages--the bright, gipsy-looking boy who had acted in his father’s
dining-room, and the Volumnia of Mrs. Siddons, as she triumphed in the
tragedy of Coriolanus), went upon the stage, triumphed in his turn, and
assumed the sole guardianship and support of the mother he loved.

Young’s father was a remarkably detestable person. He never seems to
have forgiven his sons for the affection which they manifested towards
their mother. After the separation of the parents, George Young, the
eldest son, was in a stage-coach going to Hackney; on the road, a
stranger got in, took the only vacant seat, and, on seeing George
Young opposite to him, struck him a violent blow in the face. George
quietly called to the coachman to stop, and without exchanging a word
with the stranger, got out, to the amazement of the other passengers.
But, as he closed the door, he looked in and simply said, ‘Ladies and
gentlemen, that is my father!’ In 1807, when Charles Young made his
first appearance in London, at the Haymarket, as Hamlet, his father sat
ensconced in a corner of the house, and hissed him! Neither the blow
nor the hiss did more than momentarily wound the feelings of the sons.

Before Young came up to London, he had seen some of the sunshine and
some of the bitterness of life. He married the young, beautiful, and
noble woman and actress, Julia Grimani. They had a brief, joyous,
married time of little more than a year, when the birth of a son was
the death of the mother. For the half-century that Young survived her
no blandishment of woman ever led him to be untrue to her memory. To
look with tears on her miniature-portrait, to touch tenderly some
clustered locks of her hair, to murmur some affectionate word of
praise, and, finally, to thank God that he should soon be with her,
showed how young heart-feelings had survived in old heart-memories.

Charles Young adorned the English stage from 1807 to 1832. Because
he acted with the Kembles he is sometimes described as being of the
Kemble school. In a great theatre the leading player is often imitated
throughout the house. There was a time when everybody employed at Drury
Lane seemed a double of Mr. Macready. Charles Young, however, was an
original actor. It took him but five years to show that he was equal
in some characters to John Kemble himself. This was seen in 1812, in
his Cassius to Kemble’s Brutus. On that occasion Terry is said to
have been the Casca--a part which was really played by Fawcett. About
ten years later, Young left the Covent Garden company and 25_l._ a
week, for Drury Lane and 50_l._ a night, to play in the same pieces
with Kean. The salary proved that the manager thought him equal in
attractiveness to Kean; and Kean was, undoubtedly, somewhat afraid of
him. Young’s secession was as great a loss to the company he had been
acting with, as Compton’s has been to the Haymarket company. In both
cases, a perfect artist withdrew from the brotherhood.

Young was fifteen years upon the London stage before he could free
himself from nervousness--nervousness, not merely like that of Mrs.
Siddons, before going on, but when fairly in face of the audience. In
1826, he told Moore, at a dinner of the Anacreontics, that any close
observer of his acting must have been conscious of a great improvement
therein, dating from the previous four years. That is to say, dating
from the time when he first played in the same piece with Edmund Kean.
The encounter with that great master of his art seems to have braced
Young’s nerves. Kean could not extinguish him as he extinguished Booth
when those two acted together in the same play. Edmund, who spoke of
Macready as ‘a player,’ acknowledged Young to be ‘an actor.’ Kean
confessed Young’s superiority in Iago, and he could not bear to think
of playing either that character or Pierre after him. Edmund believed
in the greater merit of his own Othello. Young allowed that Kean had
genius, but he was not enthusiastic in his praise; and Edmund, whose
voice in tender passages was exquisite music, referred to the d----d
musical voice of Young; and in his irritable moments spake of him as
‘that Jesuit!’

The greatest of Young’s original characters was his Rienzi. In Miss
Mitford’s tragedy, Young pronounced ‘Rome’ _Room_. Many old play-goers
can recollect how ill the word fell from his musical lips. John Kemble
would never allow an actor in his company to give other utterance to
the monosyllable. It was a part of the vicious and fantastic utterances
of the Kemble family. Leigh Hunt has furnished a long list of them.
Shakespeare, indeed, has ‘Now it is Rome indeed, and room enough,’ as
Cassius says. But in ‘Henry VI.,’ when Beaufort exclaims, ‘Rome shall
remedy this!’ Warwick replies, ‘_Roam_ thither, then!’ The latter
jingle is far more common than the former. We agree with Genest, ‘Let
the advocates for _Room_ be consistent. If the city is _Room_, the
citizens are certainly _Roomans_.’ They who would have any idea how
John Kemble mutilated the pronunciation of the English language on the
stage, have only to consult the appendix to Leigh Hunt’s ‘Critical
Essays on the Performers of the London Theatres.’ Such pronunciation
seems now more appropriate to burlesque than to Shakespeare.

When the idea was first started of raising a statue in honour of
Kemble, Talma wrote to ‘mon cher Young,’ expressing his wish to be
among the subscribers. ‘In that idea I recognise your countrymen,’
said Talma. ‘I shall be too fortunate here if the priests leave me a
grave in my own garden.’ The Comte de Soligny, or the author who wrote
under that name, justly said in his ‘Letters on England,’ that Young
was unlike any actor on the stage. His ornamental style had neither
model nor imitators. ‘I cannot help thinking,’ writes the Count, ‘what
a sensation Young would have created had he belonged to the French
instead of the English stage. With a voice almost as rich, powerful,
and sonorous as that of Talma--action more free, flowing, graceful, and
various; a more expressive face, and a better person--he would have
been hardly second in favour and attraction to that grandest of living
actors. As it is, he admirably fills up that place on the English stage
which would have been a blank without him.’ This is well and truly
said, and it is applicable to ‘Gentleman Young’ throughout his whole
career--a period during which he played a vast variety of characters,
from Hamlet to Captain Macheath. He was not one of those players who
were always in character. Between the scenes of his most serious parts
he would keep the green-room merry with his stories, and be serious
again as soon as his part required him. Young’s modest farewell to the
stage reminds us of Garrick’s. The latter took place on June 10, 1776.
The play was ‘The Wonder,’ Don Felix by Garrick; with ‘The Waterman.’
The bill is simply headed, ‘The last time of the company’s performing
this season,’ and it concludes with these words: ‘The profits of this
night being appropriated to the benefit of the Theatrical Fund, the
Usual Address upon that Occasion Will be spoken by Mr. Garrick before
the Play.’ The bill is now before us, and not a word in it refers to
the circumstance that it was the last night that Garrick would ever
act, and that he would take final leave after the play. All the world
was supposed to know it. The only intimation that something unusual
was on foot is contained in the words, ‘Ladies are desired to send
their servants a little after 5, to keep places, to prevent confusion.’
Garrick’s farewell speech is stereotyped in all dramatic memories. His
letter to Clutterbuck in the previous January is not so familiar. He
says, ‘I have at last slipt my theatrical shell, and shall be as fine
and free a gentleman as you should wish to see upon the South or North
Parade of Bath. I have sold my moiety of patent, &c., for 35,000_l._,
to Messrs. Dr. Ford, Ewart, Sheridan, and Linley.... I grow somewhat
older, though I never played better in all my life, and am resolved
not to remain upon the stage to be pitied instead of applauded!’
Garrick was sixty years of age when he left the stage. Young was five
years less. In his modest farewell speech, after the curtain had
descended on his Hamlet, he said, ‘It has been asked why I retire
from the stage while still in possession of whatever qualifications
I could ever pretend to unimpaired. I will give you my _motives_,
although I do not know you will accept them as _reasons_--but reason
and feeling are not always cater-cousins. I feel then the toil and
excitement of my calling weigh more heavily upon me than formerly; and,
if my qualifications are unimpaired, so I would have them remain in
your estimate.... I am loth to remain before my patrons until I have
nothing better to present them than tarnished metal.’ Among Young’s
after-enjoyments was that of music. We well remember his always early
presence in the front row of the pit at the old Opera House, and the
friendly greetings that used to be exchanged between him and Mori,
Nicholson, Linley, Dragonetti, and other great instrumentalists, as
they made their appearance in the orchestra.

_Some_ theatrical impulses never abandoned him. During his retirement
at Brighton, he was a constant attendant on the ministry of Mr.
Sortain. ‘Mr. Bernal Osborne told me he was one day shown into
the same pew with my father, whom he knew. He was struck with his
devotional manner during the prayers and by his rapt attention during
the sermon. But he found himself unable to maintain his gravity when,
as the preacher paused to take breath after a long and eloquent
outburst, the habits of the actor’s former life betrayed themselves,
and he uttered in a deep undertone, the old familiar “_Bravo!_”’ As a
sample of his cheerfulness of character, we may quote what Mr. Cole
says of Young, in the life of Charles Kean:--‘Not long before he left
London for his final residence at Brighton, he called, with one of his
grandsons, to see the writer of these pages, who had long enjoyed his
personal friendship, and who happened at the moment to be at dinner
with his family. “Tell them,” he said to the servant, “not to hurry;
but when they are at leisure, there are two little boys waiting to see
them.”’

A quiet humour seems to have been among the characteristics of a life
which generally was marked by unobtrusive simplicity and moral purity.
A man who, when a boy, had been at Eton and Merchant Taylors’ could
not have been ignorant of such a fact as the Punic War, though he may
have forgotten the date. He was once turned to by a lady at table
(she had been discussing history with the guest on her other side),
and she suddenly asked Young to tell her the date of the Second Punic
War. Young frankly replied in one of his most tragic tones; ‘Madam,
I don’t know anything about the Punic War, and what is more, I never
did! My inability to answer your question has wrung from me the same
confession which I once heard made by a Lancashire farmer, with an
air of great pride, when appealed to by a party of his friends in a
commercial room, “I tell you what, in spite of all your bragging, I’ll
wedger (wager) I’m th’ ignorantest man in t’ coompany!”’ There can be
little doubt that many of the stories of mistakes made by actors may be
traced to him. Among them, perhaps, that of the player who, invariably,
for ‘poisoned cup,’ said ‘coisoned pup;’ and who, once pronouncing it
correctly, was hissed for his pains. Thence too perhaps came the tale
of him who, instead of saying,


     How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is,
     To have a thankless child,


exclaimed:


     How sharper than a serpent’s _thanks_ it is,
     To have a _toothless_ child.


Whatever may be the source of such stories, it is certain that Young’s
criticisms of others were always clear and generous. A few words tell
us of Mrs. Siddons’ Rosalind, that ‘it wanted neither playfulness nor
feminine softness; but it was totally without archness, not because
she did not properly conceive it--but how could such a countenance be
arch?’ Some one has said more irreverently of her Rosalind, that it
was like Gog in petticoats! Young looked back to the periods during
which he had what he called ‘the good fortune to act with her, as
the happiest of his own professional recollections.’ When he was a
boy of twelve years of age (1789), he saw Mrs. Siddons in Volumnia
(Coriolanus). Long after, he described her bearing in the triumphal
procession in honour of her son in this wise: ‘She came alone marching
and beating time to the music, rolling from side to side, swelling
with the triumph of her son. Such was the intoxication of joy which
flashed from her eye and lit up her whole face, that the effect was
irresistible. She seemed to me to reap all the glory of that procession
to herself. I could not take my eye from her. Coriolanus’ banner and
pageant, all went for nothing to me, after she had walked to her place.’

We have spoken of the unobtrusive simplicity and the moral purity of
this great actor’s life. Temptations sprang up about him. Young first
appeared on the stage when the old drinking days had not yet come to an
end. His name, however, never occurs among the annals of the fast and
furious revelries. John Kemble belonged to the old school and followed
its practices. He was not indeed fast and furious in his cups. He
was solemnly drunken as became an earnest tragedian. It is somewhere
told of him that he once went to Dicky Peake’s house half-cocked, at
half-past nine P.M.; Sheridan, he said, had appointed to meet him
there, and he would not neglect being in time for the world. Peake sat
him down to wine with Dunn the treasurer: the three got exceedingly
drunk, and all fell asleep, Kemble occupying the carpet. The tragedian
was the first to wake. He arose, opened the window shutters, and
dazzled by the morning sun-light roused his two companions, and
wondered as to the time of day. They soon heard eight strike. ‘Eight!’
exclaimed Kemble; ‘this is too provoking of Sheridan; he is always
late in keeping his appointments; I don’t suppose he will come at all
now. If he _should_, tell him, my dear Dick, how long I waited for
him!’ Therewith, _exit_ John Philip, in a dreamy condition--leaving, at
all events, _some_ incidents out of which imaginative Dunn built this
illustrative story.

Great writers in their own houses, like prophets among their own
people, proverbially lack much of the consideration they find abroad.
Mrs. Douglas Jerrold always wondered what it was people found in her
husband’s jokes to laugh at. It is _said_ that many years had passed
over the head of Burns’s son before the young man knew that his father
was famous as a poet. It is certain that Walter Scott’s eldest son had
arrived at more than manhood before he had the curiosity to read one
of his sire’s novels. He thought little of it when he had read it.
This want of appreciation the son derived from his mother. Once, when
Young was admiring the fashion of the ceiling, in Scott’s drawing-room
at Abbotsford, Lady Scott exclaimed in her droll Guernsey accent, ‘Ah!
Mr. Young, you may look up at the bosses in the ceiling, as long as you
like, but you must not look down at my poor carpet, for I am ashamed
of it. I must get Scott to write some more of his nonsense books and
buy me a new one!’ To those who remember the charm of Young’s musical
voice, Lady Dacre’s lines on his reciting ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ to the other
guests at Abbotsford, will present themselves without any thought of
differing from their conclusion, thus neatly put:--


     And Tam o’ Shanter roaring fou,
     By thee embodied to our view,
     The rustic bard would own sae true,
               He scant could tell
     Wha ’twas the livin’ picture drew,
               Thou or himsel’!


It is a curious fact that Scott, harmonious poet as he was, had no ear
for music, unless it were that of a ballad, and he would repeat that
horribly out of tune. He was, however, in tune with all humanity; as
much so with a king as with the humblest of his subjects. When he went
on board the royal yacht which had arrived near Leith, with George
IV., amid such rain as only falls in Scotland, Scott, in an off-hand,
yet respectful way, told the king that the weather reminded him of
the stormy day of his own arrival in the Western Highlands, weather
which so disgusted the landlord of the inn, who was used to the very
worst, that he apologised for it. ‘Gude guide us! this is just awfu’!
Siccan a downpour, was ever the like! I really beg your pardon! I’m
sure it’s nae faut o’ mine. I canna think how it should happen to rain
this way just as you o’ a’ men i’ the warld should come to see us! It
looks amaist personal! I can only say, for my part, I’m just ashamed
o’ the weather!’ Having thus spoken to the king, Scott added; ‘I do
not know, sire, that I can improve upon the language of the honest
innkeeper. I canna think how it should rain this way, just as your
majesty, of all men in the world, should have condescended to come and
see us. I can only say in the name of my countrymen, I’m just ashamed
o’ the weather!’ It was at Scott’s petition that the royal landing was
deferred till the next day, which brought all the sunshine that was
considered necessary for the occasion.

It is singular to find Charles Mathews, senior, writing of himself;
‘I only perform for one rank of persons. The lower orders hate and
avoid me, and the middle classes cannot comprehend me.’ He used to
get fun enough out of his own man-servant, whose awe and pride at
seeing a titled personage at his master’s house were amply stimulated
by friends of Mathews who visited him under assumed dignities. Charles
Kemble was always announced as the Persian Ambassador, Fawcett as
Sir Francis Burdett, and Young as the Duke of Wellington. One day,
a real Lord--Lord Ranelagh--called and sent in a message expressive
of his desire to see Mathews. Mathews, supposing the visitor was a
fellow-player passing as a peer, sent a reply that he was just then
busy with Lord Vauxhall. When Mr. Julian Young once told Mathews he was
going to Lord Dacres at the Hoo, the actor replied, _Who?_ and thinking
Bob Acres was raised to the peerage, begged to be remembered to Sir
Lucius O’Trigger!

One of the most flattering kindnesses ever paid to the elder Mathews
was when he was once standing among the crowd in a Court of Assize,
where Judge Alan Park was presiding. His lordship sent a note down to
him, requesting him to come and take a seat on the bench. The actor
obeyed, and the judge was courteously attentive to him. Mathews was
subsequently the guest of his old friend Mr. Rolls, at whose house in
Monmouthshire the judge had previously been staying. The player asked
if his lordship had alluded to him. ‘Yes,’ said Rolls, who proceeded to
relate how Judge Park had been startled at seeing in court a fellow who
was in the habit of imitating the voice and manners of the judges on
the stage. Indeed, his imitation of Lord Ellenborough, in ‘Love, Law,
and Physic,’ had well nigh brought the imitator to grief. Park said the
presence of Mathews so troubled him that he invited the mimic to sit
near him, and behaved so kindly that he hoped the actor, out of simple
gratitude, would not include him in his Legal Portraits in comedy or
farce.

Appreciation of the drama is neither strong nor clear in at least one
part of the vicinity of Shakespeare’s native town. After the busy
time of the ‘Tercentenary,’ Mr. Julian Young sent his servants to
the theatre in Stratford. They had never been in a playhouse before.
The piece represented was ‘Othello.’ On the following morning,
wishing to know the effect of the drama on his servants’ minds,
Mr. Julian Young questioned them in their several departments. The
butler was impressed to this effect: ‘Thank you, sir, for the treat.
The performers performed the performance which they had to perform
excellent well--especially the female performers--in the performance.’
The more impulsive coachman, in the harness-room, exclaimed, ‘’Twas
really beautiful, sir; I liked it onaccountable!’ But when he was
asked what the play was about he frankly confessed he didn’t exactly
know; but that it was very pretty, and was upon sweet-hearting! On a
former occasion, when the gardener and his wife had been treated to
the Bristol Theatre, their master, on the next day, asked, ‘Well,
Robert, what did you see last night?’ The bewildered fellow replied,
after a pause, ‘Well, sir, I saw what you sent me to see!’ ‘What was
that?’ ‘Why, the play, in course.’ ‘Was it a tragedy or a comedy?’
‘I don’t know what you mane. I can’t say no more than I have said,
nor no fairer! All I know is there was a precious lot on ’em on the
theayter stage; and there they was, in and out, and out and in again!’
The wife had more definite ideas. She was all for the second piece,
she said, ‘The pantrymine, and what I liked best in it was where the
fool fellar stooped down and grinned at we through his legs!’ Good
creature! after all, her taste was in tune with that of King George
III., who thought Garrick fidgety, and who laughed himself into fits
at the clown who could get a whole bunch of carrots into his mouth,
and apparently swallow them, with supplementary turnips to make them
go down! The gardener’s wife, therefore, need not be ashamed. She is
not half so much called upon to blush as the wife of the treasurer
of Drury Lane Theatre, who was one of a score of professional ladies
and gentlemen dining together some forty years ago. The lady hearing
‘Venice Preserved’ named, made the remark that she believed ‘it was one
of Shakespeare’s plays, was it not?’ We have ourselves a bill of Drury
Lane, not ten years old, in which ‘Othello’ is announced as Bulwer’s
tragedy, &c.; but that, of course, was a misprint. On our showing it in
the green-room, however, not one of the performers saw the error!

Let us now look at some of the other personages who figured in the
bygone period; and first, of kings. Poor old George III. cannot be said
at any time to have been ‘every inch a king.’ He was certainly not, by
nature, a cruel man. Yet he betrayed something akin to cruelty when,
on the night of the Lord George Gordon riots, an officer who had been
actively employed in suppressing the rioters waited on the king to
make his report. George III. hurried forward to meet him, crying out
with screaming iteration, ‘Well! well! well! I hope you peppered them
well! peppered them well! peppered them well!’ There may, however, have
been nothing more in this than there was in Wellington’s injunction
to his officers on the day that London was threatened with a Chartist
revolution, ‘Remember, gentlemen, there must be no little war.’ In such
cases humanity to revolutionists is lack of mercy to the friends of
order.

It is well known that George III. had an insuperable aversion to Dr.
John Willis, who had attended him when the King was labouring under
his early intermitting attacks of insanity. Willis was induced to take
temporary charge of the King, on Pitt’s promise to make him a baronet
and give him a pension of 1,500_l._ a year--pleasant things which
never came to pass. Queen Charlotte hated Willis even more than the
King did. The physician earned that guerdon by putting George III. in
a strait waistcoat whenever he thought the royal violence required it.
The doctor took this step on his own responsibility. The Queen never
forgave him, and the King, as long as he had memory, never forgot it.
In 1811, when the fatal relapse occurred, brought on, Willis thought,
by Pitt’s persistent pressure of the Roman Catholic claims on the
King’s mind, the Chancellor and the Prince of Wales had some difficulty
in inducing the doctor to take charge of the sovereign. When Willis
entered that part of Windsor Castle which was inhabited by the King
he heard the monarch humming a favourite song in his room. A moment
after George III. crossed the threshold on to the landing-place. He
was in Windsor uniform as to his coat, blue, with scarlet cuffs and
collar, a star on the breast. A waistcoat of buff chamois leather,
buskin breeches and top-boots, with the familiar three-cornered hat,
completed the costume. He came forth as a bridegroom from his chamber,
full of hope and joy, like Cymon, ‘whistling as he went for want of
thought,’ and switching his boot with his whip as he went. Suddenly,
as his eye fell on Willis, he reeled back as if he had been shot. He
shrieked out the hated name, called on God, and fell to the ground.
It was long before the unhappy sovereign could be calmed. In his own
room the King wept like a child. Every now and then he broke into
heartrending exclamations of ‘What can I do without doing wrong? They
forget my coronation oath; but I don’t! Oh, my oath! my oath! my
oath!’ The King’s excitement on seeing Willis was partly caused by his
remembering the Queen’s promise that Willis should never be called in
again in case of the King’s illness. Willis on that occasion consented
to stay with the King after a fearful scene had taken place with the
Queen, her doctors, and council. When Mr. Julian Young knew Willis,
from whom he had the above details, the doctor was above eighty years
of age, upright and active. He was still a mighty hunter; and, unless
Mr. Young was misinformed, on the very day before his death he shot
two or three brace of snipes in the morning, and danced at the Lincoln
ball at night. Willis did not reach his hundredth year, as Dr. Routh,
of Magdalen College, Oxford, did. Just before the death of the latter,
Lord Campbell visited and had a long conversation with him. At parting
the centenarian remarked: ‘I hope it will not be many years before we
meet again.’ ‘Did he think,’ said Lord Campbell afterwards, ‘that he
and I were going to live for ever?’

Monarchs, who have to submit to many tyrannies by which monarchs alone
can suffer, must have an especial dread of levees and presentations.
The monotony must be killing; at the very best, irritating. George
IV. had the stately dreariness very much relieved. On one occasion,
when a nervous gentleman was bowing and passing before him, a
lord-in-waiting kindly whispered to him, ‘Kiss hands!’ The nervous
gentleman accordingly moved on to the door, turned round, and there
kissed his hands airily to the King by way of kindly farewell! George
IV. laughed almost as heartily as his brother, King William, did at an
unlucky alderman who was at Court on the only day Mr. Julian Young ever
felt himself constrained to go into the royal presence. The alderman’s
dress-sword got between his legs as he was backing from that presence,
whereby he was tripped up and fell backwards on the floor. King William
cared not a fig for dignity. He remarked with great glee to those
who stood near: ‘By Jove! the fellow has cut a crab!’ and the kingly
laughter was, as it were, poured point blank into the floundering
alderman. This was not encouraging to Mr. Young, who had to follow. As
newly-appointed royal chaplain in Hampton Court Palace Chapel, King
William had expressed a wish to see him at a levee, and obedience was
a duty. The chaplain had been told by Sir Horace Seymour that he had
nothing to do but follow the example of the gentleman who might happen
to be before him. The principal directions to the neophyte were: ‘Bow
very low, and do not turn your back on the King!’ The instant the
chaplain had kissed the King’s hand, however, he turned his back upon
his sovereign, and hurried off. Sir Horace Seymour afterwards consoled
him for this breach of etiquette by stating that a Surrey baronet who
had followed him made a wider breach in court observance. The unlucky
baronet, seeing the royal hand outstretched, instead of reverently
putting his lips to it, caught hold of it and wrung it heartily! The
King, who loved a joke, probably enjoyed levees, the usual monotony of
which was relieved by such screaming-farce incidents as these.

Those royal brothers, sons of George III., were remarkably outspoken.
They were not witty themselves, but they were now and then the cause
of wit in others. It must have been the Duke of Cumberland who (on
listening to Mr. Nightingale’s story of having been run away with when
driving, and that at a critical moment he jumped out of the carriage)
blandly exclaimed: ‘Fool! fool!’ ‘Now,’ said Nightingale, on telling
the incident to Horace Smith, ‘it’s all very well for him to call me
a fool; but I can’t conceive why he should. Can you?’ ‘No,’ rejoined
Horace, ‘I can’t, because he could not suppose you ignorant of the
fact!’

Among the most unhappy lords of themselves who lived in a past
generation, there was not one who might have been so happy, had he
pleased, as the author of ‘Vathek.’ It is very well said of Beckford
that there has seldom existed a man who, inheriting so much, did so
little for his fellow-creatures. There was a grim humour in some of his
actions. In illustration of this we may state that when Beckford was
living in gorgeous seclusion at Fonthill, two gentlemen, who were the
more curious to spy into the glories of the place because strangers
were forbidden, climbed the park walls at dusk, and on alighting within
the prohibited enclosure, found themselves in presence of the lord of
the place. Beckford awed them by his proud condescension. He politely
dragged them through all the splendours of his palace, and then, with
cruel courtesy, made them dine with him. When the night was advanced,
he took his involuntary guests into the park, bidding them adieu with
the remark, that as they had found their way in they might find their
way out. It was as bad as bandaging a man’s eyes on Salisbury Plain,
and bidding him find his way to Bath. At sunrise the weary guests, who
had pursued a fruitless voyage of discovery all night, were guided to a
point of egress, and they never thought of calling on their host again.

Ready wit in women (now passed away); wit, too, combined with courage,
is by no means rare. During the ruro-diabolical reign of ‘Swing,’
that incarnation of ruffianism, in the person of the most hideous
blackguard in the district, with a mob of thieves and murderers at
his back, attacked Fifield, the old family residence of two elderly
maiden ladies, named Penruddock. When the mob were on the point of
resorting to extreme violence, Miss Betty Penruddock expressed her
astonishment to the ugly leader of the band that ‘such a good-looking
man as he should be captain of such an ill-favoured band of robbers.
Never again will I trust to good looks!’ cried the old lady, whose
flattery so touched the vanity of ‘Swing’ that he prevailed on his
followers to desist. ‘Only give us some beer,’ he said, ‘and we won’t
touch a hair of your head!’ ‘You can’t,’ retorted the plucky old lady,
‘for I wear a wig!’ On the other hand, the vanity of young ladies was
once effectually checked at Hampton Court Chapel. A youthful beauty
once fainted, and the handsome Sir Horace Seymour carried her out.
On successive Sundays successive youthful beauties fainted, and the
handsome Sir Horace carried them successively out, till he grew tired
of bearing such sweet burdens. A report that in future all swooning
nymphs would be carried out of the chapel by _the dustman_ cured the
epidemic.

We are much disposed to think that there is at least as much ready wit
and terseness of expression among the humbler classes as among those
who are higher born and better taught. Much has been said of the ladies
of Llangollen, Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Ponsonby. We question if
in all that has been written of those pseudo-recluses, they have been
half so well hit-off as by Mrs. Morris, a lodging-house keeper in the
neighbourhood. ‘I must say, sir, after all,’ observed Mrs. Morris,
‘that they were very charitable and cantankerous. They did a deal of
good, and never forgave an injury!’ There is something of the ring of
Mrs. Poyser in this pithily-rendered judgment. Quite as sharp a passage
turns up in the person of an eccentric toll-keeper, Old Jeffreys, who
was nearly destitute of mental training, and whom Mr. Julian Young
was anxious to draw to church service. The old man was ready for him.
‘Yes, sir, it be a pity, bain’t it? We pike-keepers, and shepherds, and
carters, and monthly nusses has got souls as well as them that goes to
church and chapel. But what can us do? “Why,” I says, says I, to the
last parson as preached to me, “don’t catechism say summat or other
about doing our duty in that state of life in which we be?” So, after
all, when I be taking toll o’ Sundays, I’m not far wrong, am I?’ The
rector proposed to find a paid substitute for him while he attended
church. Jeffreys was ready with his reply. ‘That ’ud never do, sir,’
he said. ‘What! leave my post to a stranger? What would master say
to me if he heard on’t.’ Mr. Julian Young, pointing with pleasure to
a Bible on old Jeffreys’ shelf, expressed a hope that he often read
it. ‘Can’t say as how I do, sir,’ was the candid rejoinder; ‘I allus
gets so poorus over it!’ When the rector alluded to a certain wench
as ‘disreputable,’ Jeffreys protested in the very spirit of chivalry.
‘Don’t do that! Do as I do! I allus praises her. Charity hides a deal
o’ sin, master! ain’t that Scripture? If it are, am I to be lectured at
for sticking up and saying a good word for she? ‘When it was urged that
this light-o’-love queen ought to be married, Samaritan Jeffreys stept
in with his sympathetic balsam. ‘Poor thing!’ he exclaimed, ‘_she ain’t
no turn to it_!’ The apology was worthy of my Uncle Toby!

There are other stories quite worthy of him who invented Uncle Toby;
but, _basta!_ we have been, as it were, metaphorically dining with Mr.
Julian Young--dining so well that we cannot recall to mind half the
anecdotes told at his table in illustration of Charles Young and his
times.




_WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY._


In the year 1793, a gentleman who was a member of the Covent Garden
company, in the department of ‘utilities,’ might be seen, any day
during the season, punctually on his way to the theatre, for rehearsal
or for public performance. At the above date he had been seven years
on the London boards, having first appeared at the ‘Garden’ in 1786,
as Flutter in ‘The Belle’s Stratagem.’ His name was William Macready,
father of _the_ Macready, and his _début_ on the English stage was
owing to the influence of Macklin, whom the young fellow had gratified
by playing Egerton to the veteran’s Sir Pertinax, exactly according
to the elaborate instructions he had patiently received from Macklin
himself at rehearsal.

William Macready had left the vocation of his father in Dublin--that
of an upholsterer--for the uncertain glories of the stage. The father
was a common councilman, and was respectably connected--or, rather,
his richer relatives were respectably connected in having him for
a kinsman. In Ireland there is a beggarly pride which looks down
upon trade as a mean thing. Mr. Macready, the flourishing Dublin
upholsterer, took to that sound mean thing, and found his account in so
doing. His prouder kinsmen may have better respected their blood, but
they had not half so good a book at their banker’s.

The upholsterer’s son took his kinsmen’s view of trade, and deserted it
accordingly. He could hardly, however, have gratified them by turning
player; but he followed the bent of his inclinations, addressed himself
to sock and buskin, toiled in country theatres, was tolerated rather
than patronised in his native city, and, as before said, got a footing
on the Covent Garden stage in 1786.

William Macready’s position there in 1793 was much the same that it was
when he first appeared. Perhaps he had a little improved it, by the
popular farce of which he was the author, ‘The Irishman in London,’
which was first acted at Covent Garden in 1792. In 1793 he was held
good enough to act Cassio to Middleton’s Othello, and was held cheap
enough to be cast for Fag in the ‘Rivals.’ On his benefit night--he was
in a position to share the house with Hull--the two partners played
such walking gentlemen’s characters as Cranmer and Surrey (the latter
by Macready) to the Wolsey and Queen Catharine of Mr. and Mrs. Pope;
but Macready, in the afterpiece, soared to vivacious comedy, and acted
Figaro to the Almaviva of mercurial Lewis. If he ever played an Irish
part, it was only when Jack Johnstone was indisposed--which was not his
custom of an afternoon.

The best of these actors, and others better than the best named above,
received but very moderate salaries. Mr. Macready’s was probably
not more than three or four pounds per week. Upon certainly some
such salary the worthy actor maintained a quiet home in Mary Street,
Tottenham Court (or Hampstead) Road. At the head of the little family
that gathered round the table in Mary Street was one of the best of
mothers; and chief among the children--the one at least who became the
most famous--was William Charles Macready, whom so many still remember
as a foremost actor, and in whom some even recognised a great master of
his art.

Among the earliest remembrances of this eminent player, he has noticed
in his most interesting ‘Reminiscences,’ that ‘the _res angustæ domi_
called into active duty all the economical resources and active
management of a mother’ (whose memory, he says, is enshrined in his
heart’s fondest gratitude) ‘to supply the various wants’ of himself and
an elder sister, who only lived long enough to make him ‘sensible of
her angelic nature.’ Macready was the fifth child of this family, but
his sister, Olivia, was the only one (then born) who lived long enough
for him to remember. She was older than he by a year and a half, and
she survived only till he was just in his sixth year; ‘but she lives,’
he says, ‘like a dim and far-off dream, to my memory, of a spirit of
meekness, love, and truth, interposing itself between my infant will
and the evil it purposed. It is like a vision of an angelic influence
upon a most violent and self-willed disposition.’

It may be added here that Macready had a younger brother, Edward, who
distinguished himself as a gallant officer in the army, and two younger
sisters, Letitia and Ellen, to whom he was an affectionate brother
and friend. Meanwhile Macready passed creditably through a school at
Birmingham, and thence to Rugby. At the latter place, where one of his
kinsmen was a master, the student laid the ground of all the classical
knowledge he possessed, took part in private plays, and was hurt at
the thought that he had any inclination to be a professional actor.
At Rugby, too, he showed, but with some reason, the fiery quality of
his temper. He was unjustly sent up for punishment, and was flogged
accordingly. ‘Returning,’ he says, ‘to my form, smarting with choking
rage and indignation, where I had to encounter the compassion of
some and the envious jeers of others, my passion broke out in the
exclamation, “D----n old Birch! I wish he was in Hell!’”

Macready’s excellent mother, of whom he never speaks without dropping,
as it were, a flower to honour her memory, died before he reached home
from Rugby, so that the world was, for a time, without sun to him, for
the sire was not a very amiable person. The younger Macready resorted
to the best possible cure for sorrow, steady and active work, and
plenty of both. At last, with no very cheerful encouragement from his
father and with doubt and fear on his own part, he, in June 1811, made
his _début_, in Birmingham, in ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ ‘the part of Romeo
by a Young Gentleman, being his first appearance on any stage.’ He,
who was afterwards so very cool and self-possessed, nearly marred all
by what is called ‘stage-fright.’ A mist fell on his eyes; the very
applause, as he came forward, bewildered him; and he describes himself
as being for some time like an automaton, moving in certain defined
limits. ‘I went mechanically,’ he says, ‘through the variations in
which I had drilled myself;’ but he gradually gained courage and power
over himself. The audience stimulated the first and rewarded the second
by their applause. ‘Thenceforward,’ says Macready, ‘I trod on air,
became another being or a happier self, and when the curtain fell and
the intimate friends and performers crowded on the stage to raise up
the _Juliet_ and myself, shaking my hands with fervent congratulations,
a lady asked me, ‘Well, sir, how do you feel now?’ my boyish answer
was without disguise, ‘I feel as if I should like to act it all over
again!’

Between this and his first appearance in London Macready acted in
most of the theatres of every degree in the three kingdoms. Often
this practice was rendered the more valuable by his having to perform
with the most perfect actors and actresses who were starring in the
country. But, whether with them or without, whether with audiences
or with a mere two or three, he did his best. Like Barton Booth, he
would play to a man in the pit. ‘It was always my rule,’ he says,
‘to make the best out of a bad house, and before the most meagre
audiences ever assembled it has been my invariable practice to strive
my best, using the opportunity as a lesson; and I am conscious of
having derived great benefit from the rule. I used to call it acting
to myself.’ Macready had another rule which is worth mentioning. Some
of the old French tragedy queens used to keep themselves all day in
the temper of the characters they were to represent in the evening.
So that, at home or on the boards, they swept to and fro in towering
rage. So, Macready was convinced of the necessity of keeping, on the
day of exhibition, the mind as intent as possible on the subject of
the actor’s portraiture, even to the very moment of his entrance on
the scene. With the observance of this rule, Macready must have made
64 Frith Street, Soho, re-echo with joyous feelings and ebullitions of
fury, to suit the temper of the night, when in 1816 he made his bow
to a London audience as Orestes in the ‘Distressed Mother,’ and when
the curtain rose grasped Abbot almost convulsively by the hand, and
dashed upon the stage, exclaiming as in a transport of the highest
joy, ‘Oh, Pylades! what’s life without a friend?’ The Orestes was a
success; but it was never a favourite character with the public, as
Talma’s was with the French. The career thus begun (at ten, fifteen,
and at last eighteen pounds per week for five years) came to a close
in 1851. Five-and-thirty years out of the fifty-eight Macready had
then reached. We need not trace this progressive career, beginning
with Ambrose Phillips and ending with Shakespeare (‘Macbeth’). During
that career he created that one great character in which no player
could come near him, namely, Virginius, in 1820. Macready, however,
was not the original representative of Virginius. That character in
Knowles’s most successful play was first acted by John Cooper in
Glasgow; but Macready really created the part in London. Further,
Macready did his best to raise the drama, actors, and audiences to a
dignity never before known, and gained nothing but honour by his two
ventures at management. He was the first to put a play upon the stage
with an almost lavish perfection. In this way he was never equalled.
Mr. Charles Kean imitated him in this artist-like proceeding; but
that highly respectable actor and man was as far behind Macready in
magnificence of stage management as he was distant from his own father
in genius.

If Macready, on his _début_ as a boy, was scared, he was deeply moved
when, within a stone’s throw of sixty, he was to act for the last time,
and then go home for ever. This was upwards of thirty years ago, so
rapidly does time fly--the 28th of February, 1851. His emotion was not
in the acting, but in the taking leave of it, and of those who came
to see it for the last time. He says himself of his Macbeth that he
never played it better than on that night. There was a reality, with
a vigour, truth, and dignity, which he thought he had never before
thrown into that favourite character. ‘I rose with the play, and the
last scene was a real climax.’ On his first entrance, indeed, at the
beginning of his part, ‘the thought occurred to me of the presence of
my children, and that for a minute overcame me; but I soon recovered
myself into self-possession.’ Still more deeply moved at the ‘farewell’
to a house bursting into a wild enthusiasm of applause, he ‘faltered
for a moment at the fervent, unbounded expression of attachment from
all before me; but preserved my self-possession.’ Those of his ten
children who had survived and were present on that occasion had
ample reason to be proud of their father. For many years he would not
sanction their being present at his public exhibitions. This was really
to doubt the dignity and usefulness of his art, to feel a false shame,
and to authorise in others that contempt for the ‘playactor’ which,
entertaining it, as he did thoroughly, for many of his fellows, he
neither felt for himself nor for those whom he could recognise as being
great and worthy masters in that art. When his children were allowed
the new delight of witnessing how nobly he could interpret the noblest
of the poets, the homage of their reverential admiration must have been
added to that of their unreserved affection. That he was not popular
at any time with inferior or subordinate players is undoubtedly true.
Such persons thought that only want of luck and opportunity placed them
lower in the scale than Macready. It would be as reasonable for the
house-painters to account in the same way for their not being Vandycks
and Raffaelles.

Sensitive to criticism he was, and yet scarcely believed himself to be
so. He belabours critics pretty roughly; but we observe that theatrical
critics dined with him occasionally, and we mark that he praises the
good sense and discrimination of one of these critics--whose criticism
was very much in the actor’s favour. Vanity he also had, certainly.
We should have come to this conclusion, had we nothing more to justify
the assertion than what we find in his own record. We see his vanity in
the superabundant excess of his modesty; but we think none the worse
of him for it. An artist who is not somewhat vain of his powers has,
probably, no ground for a little wholesome pride. It was in Macready
tempered with that sort of fear that a vain man may feel, lest in the
exercise of his art he should fall in the slightest degree short of
his self-estimation, or of that in which he believed himself to be
held by the public. He never, on entering a town, saw his name on a
bill, without feeling a flutter of the heart, made up of this mingled
fear and pride. So, Mrs. Siddons never went on the stage at any time
without something of the same sensation. We should think little of any
actor or actress who should avow that they ever ‘went on,’ in a great
part, without some hesitation lest the attempt might fall short of what
it was their determination to achieve, and what they felt themselves
qualified to accomplish. Vanity and timidity? All true artists are
conscious of both--ought to possess both; just as they ought to possess
not only impulse but judgment; not only head, but heart; heart to flash
the impulses, head to control them.

Macready carried to the stage his genuine piety. It is, perhaps, a
little too much aired in his ‘Diary,’ but it is not the less to be
believed in. He went by a good old-fashioned rule, to do his duty in
that state of life to which it had pleased God to call him--as the
Catechism teaches, or used to teach, all of us. In his pious fervour,
in his prayers that what he is going to act may be for good, that what
in the management he has undertaken may be to the increase of the
general happiness rather than to that of his banking account; in these
and a score of other instances we are reminded of those French and
Italian saints of the stage who, as they stood at the wing, crossed
themselves at the sound of sacred names in the play; or, who counted
their beads in the green-room; kept their fasts; mortified themselves,
and never missed a mass. Nay, the religious feeling was as spontaneous
in Macready as it was in the Italian actors whom he himself saw, and
who, at the sound of the ‘Angelus’ in the street, stopped the action of
the play, fell on their knees, gently tapped their breasts, and were
imitated in these actions by the sympathising majority of the audience.

We fully endorse the judgment of a critic who has said that with the
worst of tempers Macready had the best of hearts. Some of the tenderest
of his actions are not registered in the volumes of his life, but they
are recorded in grateful bosoms. There were married actresses in his
company, when he managed the ‘Garden,’ and afterwards the ‘Lane,’ whom
he would rate harshly enough for inattention; but there were certain
times when he was prompted to tell them that their proper place, for
a while, was home; and that till they recovered health and strength
their salary would be continued, and then run on as usual. The sternest
moralist will forgive him for knocking down Mr. Bunn, when he remembers
this tender part in the heart of Macready.

Towards women that heart may be said to have been sympathetically
inclined. His early life led him into many temptations; he had, as he
confesses, many loves in his time, real and imaginary; but the first
true and ever-abiding one was that which ended in his marriage with
a young actress, Miss Atkins. The whole story is touchingly told.
We feel the joys and the sorrows of the April time of that love. We
share in the triumph of the lovers; and throughout the record of their
union Macready inspires us with as much respectful affection for that
true wife as in other pages he stirs us to honour the memory of his
mother. He was singularly happy in the women whom it was his good
fortune to know. Early in life, after his mother’s death, he found
wise friends in some of them, whose wisdom ‘kept him straight,’ as the
phrase goes, when crooked but charming ways opened before him. At his
latest in life, the inestimable good of woman’s best companionship was
vouchsafed to him; and further than this it would be impertinent to
speak.

The dignity of the departed actor was his attribute, which in his busy
days atoned for such faults as cannot be erased from his record. How he
supported the dignity of the drama, and, we may say, of its patrons,
may be seen in the registry of the noble dramas he produced, and in his
purification of the audience side of the house. No person born since
his time can have any idea of the horrible uncleanness that presented
itself in the two patent theatres in the days before Macready’s
management commenced. When he found that he was bound by the terms of
his lease to provide accommodation and refreshment for women who had no
charm of womanhood left in them, Macready assigned a dingy garret and a
rush-light or two for that purpose, and the daughters of joy fled from
it, never to return.

It is a strange and repulsive thing to look back at the sarcasm flung
at him by the vile part of the press at that time, for his enabling
honest-minded women to visit a theatre without feeling ashamed at
their being there, in company with those who had no honest-mindedness.
In this, as in many other circumstances, he was worth all the Lord
Chamberlains--silly, intruding, inconsistent, unreasonable beings--that
have ever existed.

The career of the actor--we may say, of the actor and of the private
gentleman--was a long one. Among the great dramatic personages whom
Macready saw in the course of that career, were ‘a glimpse of King
dressed as Lord Ogilvy,’ his original character, ‘and distinguished
for its performance in Garrick’s day;’ Lewis, whose face he never
forgot, but he never saw that restless, ever-smiling actor on the
stage. Macready was struck with the beauty and deportment of Mrs.
Siddons, long before he acted with her; and he was enthralled by Mrs.
Billington, though he could in after years only recall the figure of a
very lusty woman, and the excitement of the audience when the orchestra
struck up the symphony of Arne’s rattling bravura, ‘The Soldier
Tired,’ in the opera of ‘Artaxerxes.’ One of the most remarkable of
these illustrious persons was seen by him at the Birmingham Theatre,
1808. The afterpiece was ‘Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogene,’ a
ballet pantomime. The lady fair was acted by the manager’s wife, Mrs.
Watson--ungainly, tawdry, and as fat as a porpoise, an enormous hill of
flesh. Alonzo the Brave was represented by ‘a little mean-looking man
in a shabby green satin dress ... the only impression I carried away
was that the hero and heroine were the worst in the piece’ (a ballet
of action, without words). Macready adds that he neither knew nor
guessed that ‘under that shabby green satin dress was hidden one of
the most extraordinary theatrical geniuses that have ever illustrated
the dramatic poetry of England!’ In half a dozen years more, what was
Macready’s astonishment to find this little, insignificant Alonzo the
Brave had burst out into the grandly impassioned personator of Othello,
Richard, and Shylock--Edmund Kean!

Macready’s testimony to Kean’s marvellous powers is nearly always
highly favourable. Macready saw the great master act Richard III. at
Drury Lane in his first season, 1814. ‘When,’ he tells us, ‘a little
keenly-visaged man rapidly bustled across the stage, I felt there was
meaning in the alertness of his manner and the quickness of his step.’
The progress of the play increased the admiration of the young actor in
his box, who was studying the other young actor on the stage. He found
mind of no common order in Edmund Kean. ‘In his angry complaining of
Nature’s injustice to his bodily imperfections, as he uttered the line,
“To shrink my arm up like a withered shrub,” Kean remained looking
on the limb for some moments with a sort of bitter discontent, and
then struck it back in angry disgust.’ To his father’s whisper, ‘It’s
very poor,’ the son replied readily, ‘Oh, no! it is no common thing.’
Macready praises the scene with Lady Anne, and that in which Richard
tempts Buckingham to the murder of the young princes. In the latter,
he found Kean’s interpretation ‘consistent with his conception,
proposing their death as a political necessity, and sharply requiring
it as a business to be done.’ Cooke interpreted the scene in another
way. In Cooke’s Richard, ‘the source of the crime was apparent in the
gloomy hesitation with which he gave reluctant utterance to the deed of
blood.’ If Cooke was more effective than Kean on one or two solitary
points, Kean was superior in the general portraiture. As Macready
remarks, Kean ‘hurried you along in his resolute course with a spirit
that brooked no delay. In inflexibility of will and sudden grasp of
expedients he suggested the idea of a feudal Napoleon.’

With respect to the characters enacted by the greatest actor of the
present century, Macready’s testimony of Kean is that in none of Kean’s
personations did he display more masterly elocution than in the third
act of ‘Richard III.’ In Sir Edward Mortimer, Kean was unapproachable,
and Master Betty (whom Macready praises highly) next to him, though
far off. In Sir Edward, Kean ‘subjected his style to the restraint of
the severest taste. Throughout the play the actor held absolute sway
over his hearers; and there is no survivor of those hearers who will
not enjoy a description which enables them to live over again moments
of a bygone delight which the present stage cannot afford. There are,
perhaps, not so few who remember Kean’s Sir Edward Mortimer as of
those who remember his ‘Oroonoko.’ Those who do will endorse all that
Macready says of that masterly representation of the African Prince
in slavery, where Kean, with a calm submission to his fate, still
preserved all his princely demeanour. There was one passage which was
‘never to be forgotten’--the prayer for his Imoinda. After replying
to Blandford, ‘No, there is nothing to be done for me,’ he remained,
says Macready, ‘for a few moments in apparent abstraction; then, with
a concentration of feeling that gave emphasis to every word, clasping
his hands together, in tones most tender, distinct, and melodious,
he poured out, as if from the very depths of his heart, his earnest
supplication:--


     Thou God ador’d, thou ever-glorious Sun!
     If she be yet on earth, send me a beam
     Of thy all-seeing power to light me to her!
     Or if thy sister-goddess has preferr’d
     Her beauty to the skies, to be a star,
     Oh, tell me where she shines, that I may stand
     Whole nights, and gaze upon her!’


We may refer to another passage, in ‘Othello,’ in which the tenderness,
distinctness, and mournful melodiousness of Edmund Kean’s voice used
to affect the whole house to hushed and rapt admiration; namely, the
passage beginning with, ‘Farewell, the plumed troop!’ and ending with,
‘Othello’s occupation’s gone!’ It was like some magic instrument, which
laid all hearts submissive to its irresistible enchantment.

While Macready allows that flashes of genius were rarely wanting in
Kean’s least successful performances, he does not forget to note that
when he played Iago to Kean’s Othello, he observed that the latter was
playing not at all like to his old self. It is to be remembered that
this was in 1832, when Kean was on the brink of the grave, broken in
constitution, and with no power to answer to his will. But Macready
justly recognised the power when it existed, and set the world mad with
a new delight. Others were not so just, nor so generous. ‘Many of the
Kemble school,’ he says, ‘resisted conviction of Kean’s merits, but the
fact that he made me feel was an argument to enrol me with the majority
on the indisputable genius he displayed.’ Some of the Kemble family
were as reluctant to be convinced as many of the Kemble school were,
but we must except the lady whom we all prefer to call ‘Fanny Kemble.’
She, in her ‘Journal,’ speaks without bias, not always accurately, but
still justly and generously. To her, the great master was apparent,
and she truly says that when Kean died there died with him Richard,
Shylock, and Othello.

Before quitting Kean for the Kembles, we must permit ourselves to
extract the account given by Macready of a supper after Richard III.
had been played:--


     We retired to the hotel as soon as the curtain fell, and were soon
     joined by Kean, accompanied, or rather attended, by Pope. I need
     not say with what intense scrutiny I regarded him as we shook
     hands on our mutual introduction. The mild and modest expression
     of his Italian features, and his unassuming manner, which I might
     perhaps justly describe as partaking in some degree of shyness,
     took me by surprise, and I remarked with special interest the
     indifference with which he endured the fulsome flatteries of Pope.
     He was very sparing of words during, and for some time after,
     supper; but about one o’clock, when the glass had circulated
     pretty freely, he became animated, fluent, and communicative. His
     anecdotes were related with a lively sense of the ridiculous; in
     the melodies he sang there was a touching grace, and his powers of
     mimicry were most humorously or happily exerted in an admirable
     imitation of Braham; and in a story of Incledon acting Steady the
     Quaker at Rochester without any rehearsal, where, in singing the
     favourite air, ‘When the lads of the village so merrily, oh!’ he
     heard himself to his dismay and consternation accompanied by a
     single bassoon; the music of his voice, his perplexity at each
     recurring sound of the bassoon, his undertone maledictions on the
     self-satisfied musician, the peculiarity of his habits, all were
     hit off with a humour and an exactness that equalled the best
     display Mathews ever made, and almost convulsed us with laughter.
     It was a memorable evening, the first and last I ever spent in
     private with this extraordinary man.


Macready’s estimation of Kemble and the Kemble school is not at all
highly pitched, save in the case of Mrs. Siddons; but he notes how she
outlived her powers, and returned a few times to the stage when her
figure had enlarged and her genius had diminished. When John Kemble
took leave of the Dublin stage, in 1816, Macready was present; he
records that ‘the house was about half full.’ Kemble acted Othello
(which, at that time, Kean had made his own). ‘A more august presence
could hardly be imagined.’ He was received with hearty applause,
‘but the slight bow with which he acknowledged the compliment spoke
rather dissatisfaction at the occasional vacant spaces before him than
recognition of the respectful feeling manifested by those present. I
must suppose he was out of humour, for, to my exceeding regret, he
literally walked through the part.’ The London audiences, as Kemble’s
career was drawing to a close, were not more sympathetic. At Kemble’s
Cato, ‘The house was moderately filled; there was sitting room in the
pit, and the dress circle was not at all crowded.’ To the dignity
of the representation Macready renders homage of admiration; but he
says that Cato was not in strict Roman attire, and that with only one
effort, the ‘I am satisfied,’ when he heard that Marcius ‘greatly
fell,’ Kemble’s husky voice and laboured articulation could not
enliven the monotony of a tragedy which was felt to be a tax on the
patience of the audience. The want of variety and relief rendered it
uninteresting, and those at least who were not classical antiquaries
found the whole thing uncommonly tedious.

It is unquestionably among the unaccountable things connected with
‘the stage’ that Kemble’s farewell performances in London, 1817, were
as a whole unproductive. Those closing nights, not answering the
manager’s expectations of their attraction, were given for benefits
to those performers who chose to pay the extra price. Macready was
not present on the closing night of all, when Kemble nobly played his
peerless Coriolanus; but he witnessed several other representations,
and he dwells especially on the last performance of ‘Macbeth,’ when
Mrs. Siddons acted the Lady to her brother’s Macbeth. Macready was
disappointed with both. Mrs. Siddons was no longer the enchantress
of old: ‘years had done their work, and those who had seen in her
impersonations the highest glories of her art, now felt regret that
she had been prevailed on to leave her honoured retirement, and force
a comparison between the grandeur of the past and the feeble present.
It was not a performance, but a mere repetition of the poet’s text;
no flash, no sign of her pristine, all-subduing genius.’ Kemble, as
Macbeth, was ‘correct, tame, and ineffective,’ through the first four
acts of the play, which moved heavily on; but he was roused to action
in the fifth act. With action there was pathos; and ‘all at once, he
seemed carried away by the genius of the scene.’ Macready brings the
scene itself before his readers, ending with the words: ‘His shrinking
from Macduff, when the charm on which his life hung was broken, by the
declaration that his antagonist “was not of woman born,” was a masterly
stroke of art. His subsequent defiance was most heroic; and, at his
death, Charles Kemble received him in his arms and laid him gently on
the ground, his physical powers being unequal to further effort.’

Of persons non-dramatic, many pass before the mind’s eye of the reader.
Lord Nelson visited the Birmingham Theatre, and Macready noted his
pale and interesting face, and listened so eagerly to all he uttered
that for months after he used to be called upon to repeat ‘what Lord
Nelson said to your father,’ which was to the effect that the esteem
in which the elder Macready was held by the town made it ‘a pleasure
and a duty’ for Lord Nelson to visit the theatre. With the placid and
mournful-looking Admiral was Lady Hamilton, who laughed loud and long,
clapped her uplifted hands with all her heart, and kicked her heels
against the foot-board of her seat, as some verses were sung in honour
of her and England’s hero.

There was a time when Macklin ceased to belong to the drama, when he
was out of the world, in his old age, and his old Covent Garden house.
One of the most characteristic of incidents is one told of Macklin in
his dotage, when prejudice had survived all sense. Macready’s father
called on the aged actor with lack-lustre eye, who was seated in an
arm-chair, unconscious of anyone being present. Mrs. Macklin drew his
attention to the visitor: ‘My dear, here is Mr. Macready come to see
you.’ ‘Who?’ ‘Mr. Macready, my dear.’ ‘Ah! who is he?’ ‘Mr. Macready,
you know, who went to Dublin, to play for your benefit.’ ‘Ha! my
benefit! what was it? what did he act?’ ‘I acted Egerton, sir,’ replied
Mr. Macready, ‘in your own play.’ ‘Ha! my play! what was it?’ ‘The “Man
of the World,” sir.’ ‘Ha! “Man of the World!” devilish good title! who
wrote it?’ ‘You did, sir.’ ‘Did I? well, what was it about?’ ‘Why, sir,
there was a Scotchman’--‘Ah! damn them!’ Macklin’s hatred of the Scotch
was vigorous after all other feeling was dead within him.

Equally good as a bit of character-painting is the full length of Mrs.
Piozzi, whom William Charles Macready met at Bath, in the house of
Dr. Gibbs. She struck the actor as something like one of Reynolds’s
portraits walking out of its frame: ‘a little old lady dressed _point
devise_ in black satin, with dark glossy ringlets under her neat black
hat, highly rouged, not the end of a ribbon or lace out of its place,’
and entering the room with unfaltering step. She was the idol of the
hour, and Macready, specially introduced to her, was charmed with her
vivacity and good humour. The little old lady read, by request, some
passages from Milton, a task she delighted in, and for doing which
effectively she considered herself well qualified. She chose the
description of the lazar-house, from the 11th Book of ‘Paradise Lost,’
and dwelt with emphatic distinctness on the various ills to which
mortality is exposed. ‘The finger on the dial-plate of the _pendule_
was just approaching the hour of ten, when, with a Cinderella-like
abruptness, she rose and took her leave, evidently as much gratified
by contributing to our entertainment as we were by the opportunity of
making her acquaintance.’ According to Dr. Gibbs, the vivacious old
Cinderella never stayed after ten was about to strike. Circumstances
might indeed prompt the sensitive lady to depart earlier. Mr. Macready
subsequently met the lively little lioness at the Twisses. The company
was mixed, old and young; the conversation was general, or people
talked the young with the young, the old among themselves. Mrs. Piozzi
was not the oracle on whose out-speakings all hearers reverentially
waited. Consequently, ‘long before her accustomed hour,’ Mrs. Piozzi
started up, and coldly wishing Mr. and Mrs. Twiss ‘good night,’ she
left the room. To the general inquiries, by look or word, the hostess
simply remarked, ‘She is very much displeased.’ The really gifted old
lady’s vanity was wounded; lack of homage sent her home in a huff.
Some of the best sketches in the book are of scenes of Macready’s
holiday travel. On one occasion, in a corner of an Italian garden, near
a church, he caught a priest kissing a young girl whom he had just
confessed. Nothing could be merrier or better-humoured than Macready’s
description of this pretty incident. The young Father, or brother, was
quite in order; Rome claims absolute rule over faith--and morals.

We close this chronicle of so many varied hues with reluctance. That
which belongs to the retired life of the actor is fully as interesting
as the detail of the times when he was in harness. Indeed, in the
closing letters addressed to the present Lady Pollock, there are
circumstances of his early career not previously recorded. The record
of the home-life is full of interest, and we sympathise with the old
actor, who, as the fire of temperament died out, appeared purified and
chastened by the process.

Macready, throughout his long life, had no ‘flexibility of spine’ for
men of wealth or title, but he had, if he describes himself truly,
perfect reverence for true genius, wheresoever found. He was oppressed
with his own comparative littleness and his seeming inability to cope
with men better endowed, intellectually, than himself. And yet, we
find him, when he must have felt that he was great, was assured he
was so by his most intimate admirers, and counted amongst them some of
the foremost literary men and critics of the day--we find him, we say,
moodily complaining that he was not sought for by ‘society,’ and not
invited into it. There was no real ground for the complaint. He who
made it was an honour to the society of which he was a part. Every page
of this record, not least so those inscribed with confession of his
faults, will raise him in the esteem of all its readers. He went to his
rest in 1873, and he is fortunate in the friend to whom he confided the
task of writing his life. The work, edited with modesty and judgment,
is a permanent addition to our dramatic literature.




_PRIVATE THEATRICALS._


As in Greece a man suffered no disparagement by being an actor there
was no disposition to do in private what was not forbidden in public.
The whole profession was ennobled when an actor so accomplished as
Aristodemus was honoured with the office of ambassador.

In Rome a man was dishonoured by being a player. Accordingly noble
Roman youths loved to act in private, excusing themselves on the ground
that no professional actor polluted their private stage. Roman youths,
however, had imperial example and noble justification when a Roman
emperor made his first appearance on the public stage, and succeeded,
as a matter of course.

Nero and Louis XIV. were the two sublime monarchs who were most
addicted to private theatricals; but the Roman outdid the Frenchman. We
know that persons of the Senatorial and Equestrian orders, and of both
sexes, played the parts, but we do not know how they liked or disliked
what they dared not decline. One can fancy, however, the figure and
feelings of the Roman knight when he began to practise riding on an
elephant that trotted swiftly along a rope. What strong expletives he
must have muttered to himself!--any one of which, uttered audibly,
would have cost him his head as a fine levied by his imperial manager.
As to Nero’s riding, and racing, and wrestling, and charioteering, as
an amateur, among professionals who always took care to be beaten by
him, these things were nothing compared with his ardour as a private
player, and especially as what would now be called an opera singer.
After all, Nero was more like an amateur actor who plays in public
occasionally than an actor in strictly private theatricals. There is no
doubt of his having been fond of music; he was well instructed in the
art and a skilful proficient. His first great enjoyment after becoming
emperor was in sitting up night after night playing with or listening
to Terpnus the harper. Nero practised the harp as if his livelihood
depended on it; and he went through a discipline of diet, medicine,
exercise, and rest, for the benefit of his voice and its preservation,
such as, it is to be hoped, no vocalist of the present day would submit
himself to. Nero’s first appearance on any stage was made at Naples.
The _débutant_ was not at all nervous, for, though an earthquake made
the house shake while he was singing, he never ceased till he had
finished his song. Had any of the audience fled at the earthquake,
they probably would have been massacred for attending more to the
natural than the imperial phenomenon. But we can fancy that, when some
terrified Drusus got home and his Drusilla asked him about the voice of
the _illustrissimo_ Signor Nerone, Drusus looked at her and answered,
‘Never heard such a shake in all my life!’

What an affable fellow that otherwise terrible personage was! How
gracious he must have seemed as he dined in the theatre and told those
who reverently looked on that by-and-by he would sing clearer and
deeper! Our respect for this august actor is a little diminished by
the fact that he not only invented the _claque_, but taught his hired
applauders how they were to manifest approbation. He divided them
into three classes, constituting several hundreds of individuals. The
_bombi_ had to hum approval, the more noisy _imbrices_ were to shower
applause like heavy rain upon the tiles, and the _testas_ were to
culminate the effect by clapping as if their hands were a couple of
bricks. And, with reputation thus curiously made at Naples, he reached
Rome to find the city mad to hear him. As the army added their sweet
voices of urgency, Nero modestly yielded. He enrolled his name on the
list of public singers, but so far kept his imperial identity as to
have his harp carried for him by the captain of his Prætorian Guard,
and to be half surrounded by friends and followers--the not too
exemplary Colonel Jacks and Lord Toms of that early time.

Just as Bottom the weaver would have played, not only Pyramus, but
Thisbe and the Lion to boot, so Nero had appetite for every part,
and made the most of whatever he had. Suetonius says that, when Nero
sang the story of Niobe, ‘he held it out till the tenth hour of the
day;’ but Suetonius omits to tell us at what hour the imperial actor
first opened his mouth. ‘The Emperor did not scruple,’ says a quaint
translation of Suetonius’s ‘Lives of the Twelve Cæsars,’ ‘done into
English by several hands, A.D. 1692,’ ‘in private Spectacles to Act his
Part among the Common Players, and to accept of a present of a Million
of Sesterces from one of the Prætors. He also sang several tragedies
in disguise, the Visors and Masks of the Heroes and the Gods, as also
of the Heroesses and the Goddesses, being so shap’d as to represent
his own Countenance or the Ladies for whom he had the most Affection.
Among other things he sang “Canace in Travail,” “Orestes killing his
Mother,” “Œdipus struck blind,” and “Hercules raging mad.” At what time
it is reported that a young Soldier, being placed sentinel at the Door,
seeing him drest up and bound, as the Subject of the Play required, ran
in to his Assistance as if the thing had been done in good earnest.’
(Here we have the origin of all those soldiers who have stood at the
wings of French and English stages, and who have interfered with the
action of the play, or even have fainted away in order to flatter some
particular player). Nero certainly had his amateur-actor weaknesses.
He provided beforehand all the bouquets that were to be spontaneously
flung to him, or awarded as prizes in the shape of garlands. French
actresses are said to do the same thing, and this pretty weakness is
satirised in the duet between Hortense, the actress, and Brillant, the
fine gentleman, in the pretty vaudeville of ‘Le Juif’ (by A. Rousseau,
Désaugiers, and Mesnard), brought out at the Porte St.-Martin fifty odd
years ago. Hortense is about to appear at Orleans, and she says, or
sings:


     Je suis l’idole dont on raffole.
     Après demain mon triomphe est certain!


‘Oui,’ rejoins Brillant,


     Oui! de tous les points de la salle,
     Je prédis que sur votre front,
     Trente couronnes tomberont.


And Hortense replies confidentially:


     Elles sont dans ma malle!


This is a custom, therefore, which French actresses derive from no less
a person than Nero. This gentleman, moreover, invariably spoke well of
every other actor to that actor’s face, but never at any other time.
If this custom has survived--which is, of course, hardly possible--he
who practises it can justify himself, if he pleases, by this Neronic
example.

Although it was death to leave the theatre before the imperial amateur
had finished his part, there were some people who could not ‘stand it,’
but who must have handsomely tipped the incorruptible Roman guard to
be allowed to vanish from the scene. There were others who insisted
on being on the point of death, but it is not to be supposed that
they were carried home without being munificently profuse in their
recompense. There was no shamming on the part of the indefatigable
Roman ladies, who, it is said, sometimes added a unit to the audience
and a new member to the roll of Roman citizens, before they could
be got away. And, when a man ran from the theatre, dropped from the
walls of the town, and took to his heels across country, he must have
been even more disgusted with the great amateur than you are, my dear
reader, with, let us say, your favourite worst actor on any stage.
_Exit Nero, histrio et imperator._

Some one has said that the Italians had not the necessary genius for
acting. Ristori has wiped out that reproach. Private theatricals may be
said to have been much followed by them. Plays were acted before popes
just as they used to be (and on Sundays too) before our bishops. It is
on record that the holiest of Holy Fathers have held their sides as
they laughed at the ‘imitations’ of English archbishops given to the
life by English bishops on mission to Rome; and, on the other hand,
there is no comedy so rich as that to be seen and heard in private,
acted by a clever, joyous Irish priest, imitating the voice, matter,
and manner of the street preachers in Italy. Poliziano’s ‘Orfeo,’ which
inaugurated Italian tragedy, was first played in private before Lorenzo
the Magnificent. Italian monks used to act Plautus and Terence, and
the nuns of Venice were once famous for the perfection with which they
acted tragedy in private to select audiences.

Altogether, it seems absurd for anyone to have said that the Italians
had not the genius for acting. Groto, the poet--‘the blind man of
Adria’--played Œdipus, in Palladio’s theatre at Vicenza, in the most
impressive style. Salvator Rosa, the grandest of painters, was the most
laughable of low comedians; and probably no Italian has played Saul
better than Alfieri, who wrote the tragedy which bears that name.

In France, private theatricals may be said to date from the seventeenth
century; but there, as in England, were to be found, long before,
especial ‘troops’ in the service of princes and nobles. We are pleased
to make record of the fact that Richard III., so early as the time
when he was the young Duke of Gloucester, was the first English
prince who maintained his own private company of actors, of whom he
was the appreciating and generous master. No doubt, after listening
to them in the hall of his London mansion, he occasionally gave them
an ‘outing’ on his manor at Notting Hill. We have more respect for
Duke, or King, Richard, as patron of actors, than we have for Louis
XIV. turning amateur player himself, and not only ‘spouting’ verses,
but acting parts, singing in operas, and even dancing in the ballets
of Benserade and the _divertissements_ of Molière. Quite another type
of the amateur actor is to be found in Voltaire. On the famous private
stage of the Duchess of Maine, Voltaire acted (in ‘Rome sauvée’) Cicero
to the Lentulus of the professional actor, Lekain. If we may believe
the illustrious actor himself, nothing could be more truthful, more
pathetic, more Roman, than the poet, in the character of the great
author.

Voltaire prepared at least one comedy for private representation on
the Duchess’s stage, or on that of some other of his noble friends. A
very curious story is connected with this piece. It bore the title of
‘Le Comte de Boursoufle.’ After being acted by amateurs, in various
noble houses, it gave way to other pieces, the manuscript was put by,
and the play was forgotten. Eleven years ago, however, the manuscript
of the comedy, in Voltaire’s handwriting, was discovered, and ‘Le
Comte de Boursoufle’ was produced at the Odéon. M. Jules Janin and all
the French theatrical critics were in a flutter of convulsive delight
at the recovery of this comedy. Some persons there were who asked if
there was any doubt on the matter, or was the piece by any other clever
Frenchman. They were laughed to scorn. The comedy was so full of wit
and satire that it could only be the work of the wittiest and most
satirical of Frenchmen. ‘If it is not Voltaire’s,’ it was asked, ‘whose
could it possibly be?’ This question was answered immediately by the
critics in this country, who pointed out that ‘Le Comte de Boursoufle,’
which Voltaire had prepared for a company of private actors, was
neither more nor less than an exact translation of Sir John Vanbrugh’s
‘Relapse.’

Private theatricals in France became a sort of institution. They
not only formed a part, often a very magnificent part, of the noble
mansions of princes, dukes, marquesses, _et tout ça_, but the theatre
was the most exquisite and luxurious portion of the residences of
the most celebrated and prodigal actresses. Mademoiselle Guimard, to
surpass her contemporaries, possessed two; one in her magnificent house
in the Chaussée d’Antin, the other in her villa at Pantin. The one in
Paris was such a scene of taste, splendour, extravagance, and scandal,
that private boxes, so private that nobody could be seen behind the
gilded gratings, were invented for the use and enjoyment of very great
ladies. These, wishing to be witnesses of what was being acted on and
before the stage, without being supposed to be present themselves, were
admitted by a private door, and after seeing all they came to see, and
much more, perhaps, than they expected, these high and virtuous dames,
wrapped their goodly lace mantles about them, glided down the private
staircase to their carriages, and thought La Guimard was the most
amiable hussey on or off the stage.

Voltaire’s private theatre, at Monrepos, near Lausanne, has been for
ever attached to history by the dignified pen of Gibbon. The great
historian’s chief gratification, when he lived at Lausanne, was in
hearing Voltaire in the Frenchman’s own tragedies on his own stage. The
‘ladies and gentlemen’ of the company were not geniuses, for Gibbon
says of them in his ‘Life,’ that ‘some of them were not destitute of
talents.’ The theatre is described as ‘decent.’ The costumes were
‘provided at the expense of the actors,’ and we may guess how the stage
was stringently managed, when we learn that ‘the author directed the
rehearsals with the zeal and attention of paternal love.’ In his own
tragedies, Voltaire represented Lusignan, Alvarez, Benassur, Euphemon,
&c. ‘His declamation,’ says Gibbon, ‘was fashioned to the pomp and
cadence of the old stage; and he expressed the enthusiasm of poetry
rather than the feelings of nature.’ This sing-song style, by which
diversified dramas, stilted rather than heroic, horribly dull rather
than elevated and stirring, had an effect on Gibbon such as we should
never have expected in him, or in any Englishman, we may say on any
created being with common sense, in any part of the civilised world.
His taste for the French theatre became fortified, and he tells us,
‘that taste has perhaps abated my idolatry for the gigantic genius
of Shakespeare, which is inculcated in our infancy as the first duty
of Englishmen.’ This is wonderful to read, and almost impossible to
believe. We may give more credit to the assertion that ‘the wit and
philosophy of Voltaire, his table and theatre, refined in a visible
degree the manners of Lausanne.’ It is worthy of note that a tragedy
of Voltaire’s is now rarely, if ever, acted. We question if one of
his most popular pieces, ‘Adélaïde Du Guesclin,’ has ever been played
since it was given at the Théâtre Français (spectacle gratis), 1822, on
occasion of the baptism of the Duc de Bordeaux, whom we now better know
as the Comte de Chambord, and who knows himself only as ‘Henry V., Roi
de France et de Navarre.’

One of Voltaire’s favourite stage pupils was an actor named Paulin,
who played a tyrant in the Lausanne company. Voltaire had great hopes
of him, and he especially hoped to make much of him as Polifonte,
in Voltaire’s tragedy ‘Mérope.’ At the rehearsals, Voltaire, as was
customary with him, overwhelmed the performers with his corrections. He
sat up one night, to re-write portions of the character of the tyrant
Polifonte, and at three in the morning he aroused his servant and bade
him carry the new manuscript to Paulin. ‘Sir,’ said the man, ‘at such
an unseasonable hour as this M. Paulin will be fast asleep, and there
will be no getting into his house.’ ‘Go! run!’ exclaimed Voltaire, in
tragic tones. ‘Know that tyrants never sleep!’

Some of the French private theatres of the last century were
singular in their construction. We know that the theatre of Pompey
was so constructed that, by ingenious mechanism, it could form two
amphitheatres side by side or could meet in one extensive circus. On
a smaller scale, the salon of the celebrated dancer D’Auberval could
be instantaneously turned into a private theatre, complete in all its
parts. Perhaps the most perfect, as regards the ability of the actors,
as well as the splendour of the house, audience and stage, were the two
private theatres at Saint-Assise and Bagnolet, of the Duke of Orleans
and Madame de Montesson. None but highly-gifted amateurs trod those
boards. The Duke himself was admirable in peasants and in characters
abounding in sympathies with nature. Madame de Montesson was fond of
playing shepherdesses and young ladies under the pleasures, pains, or
perplexities of love; but, with much talent, the lady was far too stout
for such parts. It might be said of her, as Rachel said of her very fat
sister, whom she saw dressed in the costume of a shepherdess; ‘Bergère!
tu as l’air d’une bergère qui a mangé ses brebis!’

Out of the multitude of French private theatres there issued but one
great actress, by profession, the celebrated Adrienne Lecouvreur; and
_she_ belonged, not to the gorgeous temple of Thespis in the palaces
of nobles, but to a modest stage behind the shop of her father, the
hatter; and latterly, to one of more artistic pretensions in the
courtyard attached to the mansion of a great lawyer whose lady had
heard of Adrienne’s marvellous talent, and, to encourage it, got up
a theatre for her and her equally young comrades, in the _cour_ of
her own mansion. The acting of the hatter’s daughter, especially as
Pauline, in Corneille’s ‘Polyeucte,’ made such a sensation that the
jealous Comédie Française cried ‘_Privilège!_’ and this private theatre
was closed, according to law.

We have less interest in recalling the figure of Madame de Pompadour,
playing and warbling the chief parts in the sparkling little operettas
on the stage of her private theatre at Bellevue, than we have in
recalling the figure of the young Dauphine, Marie-Antoinette, with the
counts of Provence and Artois (afterwards Louis XVIII. and Charles
X.), with their wives, and clever friends, playing comedy especially,
with a grace and perfection which were not always to be found in the
professional actor. But what the old king Louis XV. had encouraged
in the Pompadour he and his rather gloomy daughters discouraged in
Marie-Antoinette. It was not till she was queen, and had profited by
the lessons of the singer Dugazon, that the last royal private theatre
in France commenced its career of short-lived glory, at Choisy and
the Trianon. Louis XVI. never took kindly to these representations.
He went to them occasionally, but he disliked seeing the queen on the
stage. It is even said that he once directed a solitary hiss at her,
as she entered dressed as a peasant. It is further stated that the
royal actress stepped forward, and with a demure smile informed the
house that the dissatisfied individual might have his money returned
by applying at the door. It is a pretty story, but it is quite out
of character with the place and the personages, and it may be safely
assigned to that greatest of story-tellers, Il Signor Ben Trovato.

Adverse critics have said of Marie-Antoinette’s Rosine, that it was
‘_royalement mal jouée_.’ Perhaps they opposed the whole system of
private acting. This amusement had the advocacy of Montaigne, who was
himself a good amateur actor. Of course, the thing may be abused.
It was not exemplary for French bishops to go to hear Collé’s gross
pieces in private. There was more dignity in Louis XIV. and Madame
de Maintenon listening to ‘Esther’ and ‘Athalie,’ acted by the young
ladies of Saint-Cyr; and there was less folly in the princes and nobles
who began the French Revolution by acting the ‘Mariage de Figaro’ in
private, than there was in the Comte d’Artois (afterwards Charles X.)
learning to dance on the tight rope, with a view of giving amateur
performances to his admiring friends.

Mercier, in his ‘Tableau de Paris,’ under the head ‘Théâtre bourgeois,’
states that in the last quarter of the last century there was a perfect
rage for private theatricals in France, and that it extended from the
crown to the humblest citizen. He thought that the practice had its
uses, but its abuses also; and he counselled simple country-townsmen to
leave acting to the amateurs in large cities, where people were not too
nice upon morals; where lovers gave additional fire to Orosmane, and
the timidest young ladies found audacity enough to play Nanine. Mercier
had seen the private theatricals at Chantilly, and he praises the care,
taste, and simple grace which distinguished the acting of the Prince
of Condé and the Duchess of Bourbon. It is very clear that if they had
not been cast for the genteelest comedy in the drama of life, they
would have got on very well in the world as players. So the Duke of
Orleans, at his private theatre at Saint-Assise, pleased Mercier by the
care and completeness of his acting. ‘The Queen of France,’ he adds,
‘has private theatricals, in her own apartments, at Versailles. Not
having had the honour to see her I can say nothing on the subject.’

With these players of lofty social quality, Mercier contrasts the
amateurs in humble society. These were given to act tragedy--or
nothing. He cites, from ‘Le Babillard,’ the case of a shoemaker,
renowned for his skill in gracefully fitting the most gracefully
small feet of the beauties of the day. On Sundays, Crispin drew on
his own legs the buskins which he himself or his journeymen had made;
and he acted, in his own house, the lofty tragedy then in vogue. It
happened once that his manager, with whom he had quarrelled, had to
provide a dagger to be deposited on an altar, for the amateur player’s
suicidal use. Out of spite, the fellow placed there the shoemaker’s
professional cutting-knife. The amateur, in the fury of his acting,
and not perceiving the trick, snatched up the weapon, and gave himself
the happy despatch with the instrument which helped him to live. This
stage business excited roars of laughter, which brought the tragedy to
an end as merrily as if it had been a burlesque. The shoemaker could
find nothing to say, by which he might turn the laughter from himself.
He was not as witty as the English shoemaker’s apprentice whom his
master seized, about this time, on the private stage in Berwick Street,
acting no less a character than Richard III., in a very dilapidated
pair of buskins. As the angry master pointed to them in scorn, the
witty lad sustained his royal quality in his reply: ‘Oh! shoes are
things we kings don’t stand upon!’

In England, private theatricals are to be traced back to an early
date. We go far enough in that direction, however, by referring to
Mary Tudor, the solemn little daughter of Henry VIII., who, with
other children, acted before her royal sire, in Greenwich Palace, to
the intense delight of her father and an admiring court. Henrietta
Maria, Queen of Charles I., is remembered in court and theatrical
annals for the grace with which she played in pretty pastoral French
pieces, assisted by her ladies, on the private stages at Whitehall
and Hampton Court. The private theatricals of the Puritan days were
only those which took place surreptitiously, and at the risk of the
performers being arrested and punished. Holland House, Kensington, was
occasionally the place where the players found refuge and gave a taste
of their quality. The ‘good time’ came again; and that greatest of
actors, Betterton, with his good and clever wife, taught the daughters
of James II. all that was necessary to make those ladies what they both
were, excellent actors on their private stage. So Quin taught the boy
to speak, who afterwards became George III., and who was a very fair
private player, but perhaps not equal with his brothers and sisters,
and some of the young nobility who trod the stage for pastime, and gave
occupation to painters and engravers to reproduce the mimic scene and
the counterfeit presentments of those who figured therein.

It was in the reign of George III., and in the year 1777, that the year
itself was inaugurated on the part of the fashionable amateurs by a
performance of ‘The Provoked Husband.’ Lord Villiers was at the cost
of getting it up, but that was nothing to a man who was the prince of
macaronies, and who, as Walpole remarks, had ‘fashioned away’ all he
possessed. The play, followed by a sort of _pose plastique_, called
‘Pygmalion and the Statue,’ was acted in a barn, expensively fitted
up for the occasion, near Henley. Lord Villiers and Miss Hodges were
Lord and Lady Townley. Walpole says, on hearsay, that ‘it went off
to admiration.’ Mrs. Montagu, also on report, says: ‘I suppose the
merit of this entertainment was, that people were to go many miles
in frost and snow, to see in a barn what would have been every way
better at the theatre in Drury Lane or Covent Garden.’ Walpole speaks
of M. Texier’s Pygmalion as ‘inimitable.’ The Frenchman was at that
time much patronised in town for his ‘readings.’ Miss Hodges acted the
Statue. Mrs. Montagu’s sharp criticism takes this shape: ‘Modern nymphs
are so warm and yielding that less art than that of M. Texier might
have animated the nymph. My niece will never stand to be made love to
before a numerous audience.’ The Lady Townley and Galatea of these gay
doings sacrificed herself, we suppose, to these important duties. ‘Miss
Hodges’ father,’ writes Mrs. Montagu, ‘is lately dead: her mother is
dying. How many indecorums the girl has brought together in one _petite
pièce_!’ The play was not all the entertainment of the night, which was
one of the most inclement of that pitiless winter. ‘There was a ball,’
says the lady letter-writer, ‘prepared after the play, but the barn had
so benumbed the vivacity of the company, and the beaux’ feet were so
cold and the noses of the belles were so blue, many retired to a warm
bed at the inn at Henley, instead of partaking of the dance.’ Walpole
gives play to his fancy over these facts. ‘Considering,’ he says, ‘what
an Iceland night it was, I concluded the company and audience would all
be brought to town in waggons, petrified, and stowed in a statuary’s
yard in Piccadilly.’

We have heard over and over again of such private theatres as
Winterslow, near Salisbury, which was burnt down on the night after
a performance in which Fox and similar spirits had acted with equal
vivacity in tragedy and farce. Other incidents are to be found in
Walpole and similar gossiping chroniclers of the time. None of those
private theatres, however, can match with Wargrave, in Berkshire,
where, in the last century, Lord Barrymore held sway during his brief
and boisterous life. When Lord Barrymore succeeded to the lordship
of himself, that ‘heritage of woe,’ he came before the world with a
splendour so extravagant in its character that the world was aghast
at his recklessness. Wild and audacious as was the character of this
wayward boy’s life, he was in some sort a gentleman in his vices. He
was brave and generous and kindly hearted. Since his time we have had
a line (now extinct, or effete in the infirmity and imbecility of a
surviving member or two) of gentlemen who plunged into blackguardism
as a relief from the burden of life. They would play loosely at cards,
swindle a dear friend at horse-dealing, and half a dozen of them
together would not be afraid to fall upon some helpless creature and
beat him into pulp by way of a ‘lark.’ Lord Barrymore was simply a
‘rake,’ and he injured no man but himself. He came into the hunting
field more like a king of France and Navarre than an English gentleman,
and his negro trumpeters played fantasias in the woods, to the infinite
surprise, no doubt, of the foxes. He kept perpetual open house, and
Mrs. Delpini superintended it for him. What he most prided himself upon
was his taste for the drama, and the way he carried it into effect made
Wargrave brilliant and famous in its little day.

This noble youth began modestly enough. His first private theatre was
in one of his own barns. The first piece played in it was ‘Miss in
her Teens,’ in which he acted Flash; and no one of the illustrious
performers, youth or maiden, was over seventeen years of age. Noble
by birth, as all the amateur Thespians were, this performance was not
given to an exclusively aristocratic audience, but to all the villagers
and the peasantry in the vicinity of the village who cared to come.
All came, and there was a pit of red cloaks and smock frocks, and
ample provision of creature comforts for the whole barn. From this
modest origin sprang the noble theatre which Cox of Covent Garden
Theatre built for the earl at a cost of 60,000_l._ It was a marvellous
edifice. For pantomimic performances it had traps and springs and
other machinery that might satisfy the requirements of Mr. George
Conquest himself, who practised gymnastics, for exercise, when he was
a student at a German university, and who is now the first of gymnastic
performers instead of being the profoundest of philosophers--though
there is no reason why he may not be both.

The Wargrave theatre lacked nothing that could be wanted for its
completeness. The auditorium was splendid. There was a saloon quite as
superb, wherein the audience could sup like kings and the invited could
afterwards dance. Between the acts of performance pages and lackeys,
in scarlet and gold, proffered choice refreshments to the spectators,
who were not likely to be hard upon players under a management of such
unparalleled liberality. The acting company was made up of professional
players--Munden, Delpini, and Moses Kean, among the men, with the
best and prettiest actresses of the Richmond Theatre. Lord Barrymore
and Captain Walthen were the chief amateurs. Low comedy and pantomime
formed the ‘walk’ of my lord, who on one occasion danced a celebrated
_pas Russe_ with Delpini as it was then danced at the opera. Now and
then the noble proprietor would stand disguised as a check-taker, and
promote ‘rows’ with the farmers and their wives, disputing the validity
of their letters of invitation. It was also his fond delight to mingle
with them, in disguise again, as they wended homeward, listening to or
provoking their criticism. He probably heard some unwelcome truths,
for he could not have long escaped detection. Within doors the night’s
pleasures were not at an end with the play. Dancing, gambling, music,
and folly to its utmost limits succeeded; and he, or _she_, was held
in scorn who attempted to go to bed before 5 A.M. Indeed, such persons
were not allowed to sleep if they did withdraw before the appointed
hour. From five o’clock to noon was the Wargrave season for sleep. The
company were consigned to the ‘upper and lower barracks,’ as the two
divisions were called where the single and the married, or those who
might as well have been, were billeted for the night.

Lord Barrymore did not confine himself to acting on a private stage.
In August, 1790, he ‘was so humble as to perform a buffoon dance and
act scaramouch in a pantomime at Richmond for the benefit of Edwin
_junior_, the comedian; and I,’ writes Walpole, ‘like an old fool, but
calling myself a philosopher that loves to study human nature in all
its disguises, went to see the performance!’ Walpole used to call the
earl ‘the strolling player.’ On the above occasion, however, there is
one thing to be remembered: Lord Barrymore, invited to play the fool,
condescended to that degradation in order to serve young Edwin, whose
affection and filial duty towards a sick and helpless mother had won
the noble amateur’s regard.

Lord Barrymore married in 1792, in which year the splendid theatre
at Wargrave was pulled down. In March, 1793, he was, as captain of
militia, escorting some French prisoners through Kent. On his way he
halted at an inn to give them and his own men refreshment; which being
done, he kissed the handsome landlady and departed in his phaeton, his
groom mounting the horse Lord Barrymore had previously ridden. The man
put a loaded gun into the carriage, and Lord Barrymore had not ridden
far when it exploded and killed him on the spot. Thus ended, at the age
of twenty-four years, the career of the young earl, who was the most
indefatigable, if not the most able, amateur actor of his day.

Such examples fired less noble youths, who left their lawful
callings, broke articles and indentures, and set up for themselves by
representing somebody else. Three of our best bygone comedians belong
to this class, and may claim some brief record at our hands.

Oxberry, who was distinguished for the way in which he acted personages
who were less remarkable for their simplicity than for their silliness,
was a pupil of Stubbs, the animal painter, and subsequently was in
the house of Ribeau, the bookseller. The attractions of the private
theatres in Queen Anne Street and Berwick Street were too much for him.
Oxberry’s first appearance was made at the former place, as Hassan,
in the ‘Castle Spectre.’ The well-known players, Mrs. W. West and
John Cooper, acted together as Alonzo and Leonora in ‘The Revenge,’
at a private theatre in Bath, to the horror of their friends and the
general scandalising of the city of which they were natives. The Bath
manager looked on the young pair with a business eye, and the youthful
amateurs were soon enrolled among the professionals. In their first
stages, professionals scarcely reckon above amateurs. They play what
they can, and such comic actors as Wilkinson and Harley are not the
only pair of funny fellows upon record who played the most lofty
tragedy in opposition to each other. Little Knight, as he used to be
called, was, like Long Oxberry, intended for art, but he too took to
private acting, and passed thence to the stage, where he was supreme in
peasants, and particularly rustics, of sheer simplicity of character.
His Sim in ‘Wild Oats’ was an exquisite bit of acting, and this is said
without any disparagement of Mr. D. James, who recently acted the part
at Mr. Belmore’s benefit with a natural truthfulness which reminded
old play-goers of the ‘real old thing.’ If Mr. Knight did not succeed
in pictorial art, he left a son who did--the gentleman who so recently
retired from the secretaryship of the Royal Academy. The two names of
Knight and Harley were, for a long time, pleasant in the ears of the
patrons of the drama. John Pritt Harley was intended for many things,
but amateur acting made a capital comedian of him. His father was a
reputable draper and mercer--and jealous actors used to say that he
sold stays and that his son helped to make them. The truth is that he
was first devoted to surgery, but Harley ‘couldn’t abide it.’ Next he
tried the law, and sat on a stool with the edge of a desk pressing into
him till he could bear it no longer. There was, at the time, a company
of amateurs who performed in the old Lyceum, and there, and at other
private theatres, Harley worked away as joyously as he ever played; and
worked harder still through country theatres, learning how to starve
as well as act, and to fancy that a cup of tea and a penny loaf made a
good dinner--which no man could make upon them. His opportunity came
when, in 1815, Mr. Arnold, who had watched some part of his progress,
brought him out at the Lyceum--his old amateur playing ground--as
Marcelli, in ‘The Devil’s Bridge.’ Harley lived a highly-esteemed actor
and a most respectable bachelor. Some little joking used to be pointed
at him in print, on account of an alleged attachment between him and
Miss Tree, the most graceful of dancers and of columbines. But Miss
Tree was a Mrs. Quin--though she had scarcely seen her husband, since
she was compelled to marry him in her childhood. The nicest pointed
bit of wit was manufactured in a hoaxing announcement of a benefit
to be taken by both parties. The pieces advertised were ‘A Tale of
_Mystery_,’ and a ‘Harley-Quinade.’ The names of the parties could
not have been more ingeniously put together in sport. Harley, though
a mannerist, was an excellent actor to the last. When he was stricken
with apoplexy, while playing Bottom, in the ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream,’
at the Princess’s Theatre, in Charles Kean’s time, he was carried
home, and the last words he uttered were words in his part: ‘I feel an
exposition to sleep coming over me.’ And straightway the unconscious
speaker slept--for aye!

We must not add to the grievances of Ireland by altogether overlooking
Erin’s private theatricals. From the day in 1544, when Bale’s
‘Pammachius’ was acted by amateurs at the market cross of Kilkenny,
to the last recent record of Irish amateur acting, in the ‘Dublin
Evening Mail,’ this amusement has been a favourite one among the ‘West
Britons.’ The practice did not die out at the Union. Kilkenny, Lurgan,
Carton, and Dublin had their private stages. When the amateur actors
played for charity’s sake everybody took private boxes and nobody paid
for them. In 1761, the ‘Beggars’ Opera’ was played at the Duke of
Leinster’s (Carton). Dean Marly played Lockit, and wrote and spoke the
prologue, in which the reverend gentleman thus alluded to himself:


     But when this busy mimic scene is o’er
     All shall resume the worth they had before;
     Lockit himself his knavery shall resign,
     And lose the Gaoler in the dull Divine.


The above was not quite as dignified as Milton’s ‘Arcades,’ played by
the children of the Dowager Countess of Derby, at her house, Harefield
Place; or as ‘Comus,’ acted by the young Egertons before the Earl of
Bridgewater, at Ludlow Castle. Perhaps it was more amusing.

One of our own best amateur actresses was the Princess Mary of
Cambridge (now Duchess of Teck). This excellent lady had once to
commence the piece (a musical piece, written for the occasion by an
amateur) on a private stage in one of the noblest of our country
mansions. An illustrious audience was waiting for the curtain to go up;
but the kindly-hearted princess was thinking of some less illustrious
folks, who were not among that audience and whom she desired to see
there, namely, the servants of the household--as many as could be
spared. They had had much trouble, and she hoped they would be allowed
to share in the amusement. There was some difficulty; but it was only
when she was informed that the servants were really ‘in front,’ that
the ‘Queen of Hearts’ (her part in the piece) answered that she was
ready to begin the play. She never acted better than on this occasion.




_THE SMELL OF THE LAMPS._


As we look at the two volumes of Mr. Planché’s autobiography we
experience a sensation of delight. They remind us of a story told of
Maria Tree, long after she had become Mrs. Bradshaw, and was accustomed
to luxuries unknown in her early and humble life. She was one night
crossing the stage behind the curtain, on a short way to a private
box, when she stopped for a moment, and, as she caught the well-known
incense of the foot-lights, joyously exclaimed, ‘The smell of the
lamps! How I love it!’ Therewith she spoke of the old times, when she
worked hard--that is, ‘played,’ for the support of others as well as
for her own support; and what a happy time it was, and how she wished
it could all come over again! The noble peer who had the honour of
escorting her, looked profoundly edified, smiled good-humouredly,
and then completed his duty as escort. Here we open Mr. Planché’s
book, and catch from it a ‘smell of the lamps.’ Yes, there must have
been--must be--something delicious in it to those who have achieved
success. To old play-goers there is a similar delight in books of
stage reminiscences which include memories of great actors whom those
play-goers have seen in their youth. A few of these still survive to
talk of the old glories and to prove by comparison of ‘cast’ that for
the costly metal of other days we have nothing now but pinchbeck. We
have heard one of the old gentlemen of the _ancien régime_ talk, with
unfeigned emotion, of the way in which ‘The Gamester’ used to be acted
by Mrs. Siddons, John Kemble, Charles Kemble, and George Frederick
Cooke. How ladies sobbed and found it hard to suppress a shriek; how
gentlemen veiled their eyes to hide the impertinent tears, and tried
to look as if nothing were the matter; and, how people who had seen
the dreadful tragedy more than once, and dreaded to witness it again,
were so fascinated that they would stand in the box-passages gazing
through the glass panels of the box doors, beholding the action of the
drama, but sparing themselves the heartbreaking utterances of the chief
personages. Within a few weeks we have heard a veteran play-goer give
imitations of John Kemble in ‘Coriolanus,’ which he last played more
than half a century ago! It had the perfect enunciation which was the
chief merit of the Kemble school; it was dignified; it gave an idea of
a grand actor, and it was a pleasure conferred on the hearers such as
Charles Mathews the elder used to confer on his audiences ‘At Home,’
when he presented them with Tate Wilkinson, and they were delighted to
make acquaintance with the famous man who had so long before got, as
the old Irishwoman said at Billy Fullam’s funeral, his ‘pit order at
last.’

While we wait for a paper-cutter to open the closed pages of Mr.
Planché’s book, we will just remark that those were days when audiences
were differently arranged to what they are now. In the little
summer-house in the Haymarket, when stalls were not yet invented,
the two-shilling gallery was the rendezvous of some of the richest
tradesmen in Pall Mall and the neighbourhood around. At that period,
London tradesmen lived and slept at their places of business. They did
not pass their nights at a country house. London audiences were made up
almost entirely of London people. In the present day, they are largely
made up of visitors from the country. In proportion as travelling
companies of actors of merit increase and continue to represent plays
sometimes better than they are represented in London, country visitors
will cease to go to ‘the play,’ as it is called, in the metropolis, and
will find some other resort where they can shuffle off the mortal coil
of tediousness which holds them bound during their absence from home.

In good old times the pit was the place, not only for the critics, but
for the most eminent men of the day. Indeed, not only eminent men, but
ladies also, whose granddaughters, as they sweep into the stalls, would
think meanly of their grandmothers and grandfathers, and would shudder
at the thought of themselves, being in that vulgar part of the house.
It is an excellent vulgarity that sits there. Nineteen out of twenty,
perhaps ninety out of a hundred, of persons in the pit are the truest
patrons of the drama; they pay for the places; and, generally speaking,
the places are made as uncomfortable as if the occupiers were intruders
of whom the managers would be glad to get rid.

The best proof of the quality of the old pittites is to be found in
the diary of the Right Hon. William Windham (1784-1810). One of the
entries in the first-named year records a breakfast with Sir Joshua
Reynolds, a visit to Miss Kemble, and ‘went in the evening to the pit
with Mrs. Lukin.’ The play was ‘The Gamester.’ A day or two afterwards
the great statesman went with Steevens and Miss Kemble to see ‘Measure
for Measure.’ ‘After the play,’ writes Windham, ‘went with Miss Kemble
to Mrs. Siddons’s dressing-room; met Sheridan there.’ What interest
Windham took in that actress is illustrated in another entry: ‘Feb. 1,
1785. Drove to Mrs. Siddons in order to communicate a hint on a passage
in Lady Macbeth, which she was to act the next night. Not finding her
at home, went to her at the play-house.’ Well might Mrs. Siddons write,
on inviting Windham to tea: ‘I am sure you would like it; and you can’t
be to learn that I am truly sensible of the honour of your society.’

The pits in the London theatres have undergone as great a change,
though a different one, as the pit at the opera, which now only
nominally exists, if it exist at all. It is now an area of stalls;
the old price for admission is doubled, and the entertainment is not
worth an eighth of what charged for it compared with that of the olden
time, when for an eight-and-sixpenny pit ticket you had Grisi, Mario,
Lablache, and Tamburini, with minor vocalists, thorough artists, in
the same opera. What a spectacle was the grand old house! The old
aristocracy had their boxes for the season, as they had their town
and country houses. You got intimate with them by sight; it was a
pleasure to note how the beautiful young daughters of each family
grew in gracefulness. You took respectful part in the marriages. At
each opening season you marked whether the roses bloomed or paled
upon the young cheeks, and you sympathised accordingly. You spoke of
Lord Marlshire’s look with a hearty neighbourly feeling, and you were
glad that Lady Marlshire really seemed only the eldest sister of a
group of beauties who were her daughters. As for the sons of those
great families, they were in full dress, sauntering or gossiping in
that Elysium ill-naturedly called ‘Fops’ Alley’; they were exchanging
recognitions with friends and kinsmen in all parts of the house. If you
heard a distant laugh--loud enough where the laughers were moved to
it--you might be sure it was caused by Lord Alvanley, who was telling
some absurdly jocose story to a group of noble Young Englanders in the
pit passage under the boxes. We have seen the quiet entry of a quiet
man into a private box make quite a stir. Every stranger felt that the
quiet man was a man of mark; he came to snatch a momentary joy, and
then away to affairs of state again; he was the prime minister. Dozens
of opera-goers have recorded their _souvenirs_ of the old glorious days
when the opera, as they say, was an institution, opened only twice a
week: whereas each house is merely an ordinary theatre, with audiences
that are never, two nights running, chiefly made up of the same
_habitués_. They have told what friendly interest used to be aroused
when the Duchess of Kent and her daughter, the Princess Victoria, took
their seats every opera night. We seem again to hear a ringing laugh,
and we know it comes from the sparkling English lady with an Italian
title, the Countess St. Antonio. We seem again to see that marvellously
audacious-looking pair, Lady Blessington and Count D’Orsay, gauging
the house and appearing to differ as to conclusions. The red face of
the Duchess of St. Albans and the almost as ruddy vessel from which
her tea was poured have been described over and over again; and, in
the records of other chroniclers we fancy that once more there come
upon us the voices of two gentlemen who talked so above the singers
that a remonstrant ‘Hush!’ went round the building. The offenders were
the Duke of Gloucester and Sir Robert Wilson. The soldier would draw
out of sight, and the prince would make a sort of apologetic remark in
a voice a little higher than that which had given offence. These are
reminiscences chronicled in the memoirs, diaries, and fugitive articles
of old opera-goers.

Mr. Planché must have been among those ancient lovers of music and
of song, and that he should record his experiences is a thing to be
grateful for, especially as he writes of the battle and joys of life
while he is still in harness and the wreathed bowl is in his hand.
In 1818, he began with burlesque--‘Amoroso, King of Little Britain,’
written for amateurs, and taken by Harley, unknown to the author,
to Drury Lane. In 1872, after fifty-four years of work, Mr. Planché
executed the better portion of ‘Babil and Bijou,’ which, compared
with ‘Amoroso,’ is as the _Great Eastern_ steamer to a walnut-shell.
We heartily welcome all chroniclers of an art that lives only in
the artist, and never survives him in tradition. Our own collection
begins with Downes, and Mr. Planché’s emerald-green volumes will find
room there. Scores of biographies are ‘squeezing’ room for him. Fred
Reynolds’s portrait seems to say, ‘Let Planché come next to me.’ As we
look at those dramatic historians we are struck with their usefulness
as well as their power of entertaining. For example, a paragraph in one
of the most ancient of dramatic chronicles--the ‘Roscius Anglicanus,’
by old Downes, the prompter--is of infinite use to the reputation of
Shakespeare. Dryden, who produced _his_ version of ‘The Tempest’ to
show how Shakespeare _ought_ to have written it, maintained that after
the Restoration our national poet was not much cared for by the people,
and that for a long time two plays of Beaumont and Fletcher were acted
for one of Shakespeare. In Downes’s record the prompter registers
the revival of ‘Hamlet;’ and, without any reference to Dryden, or
knowledge, indeed, of his depreciation of Shakespeare, he states that
the tragedy in question brought more money to the house and more
reputation to the players than any piece by any other author during a
great number of years.

To some nameless chronicler we owe a knowledge of the fact that
Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ was played on board ship, in Shakespeare’s time,
by sailors. Why was this left unnoticed when the royal captain of the
_Galatea_ took the chair at the last Theatrical Fund dinner? But for
the chroniclers we should be ignorant that, just six hundred years
ago, the Chester mysteries and passion-plays were at their highest
point of attraction. Indeed, they could never have been unattractive;
for all those who undertook to witness the performance during about
a month’s season were promised to be relieved from hundreds of years
of the fire of purgatory. What a delicious feeling to the earnest
play-goer, that the more regularly he went to the play on these
occasions, the more pleasantly he would work out his salvation! The
different dramatic scenes were represented by the best actors in the
Chester trading companies. One would like to know on what principle the
distribution of parts was made by the manager. Why should the Tanners
have been chosen to play the ‘Fall of Lucifer’? What virtue was there
in the Blacksmiths, that they should be especially appointed to enact
‘The Purification’? or, in the Butchers, that they should represent
‘The Temptation’? or, in the Bakers, that they should be deemed the
fittest persons to illustrate ‘The Last Supper’? One can understand
the Cooks being selected for ‘The Descent into Hell,’ because they
were accustomed to stand fire; but what of angelical or evangelical
could be found exclusively in the Tailors, that they should be cast for
‘The Ascension’? Were the Skinners, whose mission it was to play ‘The
Resurrection,’ not deemed worthy of going higher? Or, were the Tailors
lighter men, and more likely to rise with alacrity?

We are inclined to think that the idea of plays being naughty things
and players more than naughty persons in the early days is a vulgar
error. Plays must have been highly esteemed by the authorities, or
Manningtree in Essex (and probably many another place) would not have
enjoyed its privilege of holding a fair by tenure of exhibiting a
certain number of stage plays annually.

There was undoubtedly something Aristophanic in many of the early
plays. There was sharp satire, and sensitive ribs which shrank from
the point of it. When the Cambridge University preachers satirised
the Cambridge town morals the burgesses took the matter quietly; but
when the Cambridge University players (students) caricatured the town
manners in 1601, exaggerating their defects on the University stage,
there was much indignation.

The presence of Queen Elizabeth at plays in London, and the acting of
them in the mansions which she honoured by a visit, are proofs of the
dignity of the profession. We have her, in the year last named, at one
of the most popular of London theatres, with a bevy of fair listening
maids of honour about her. This was in her old age. ‘I have just come,’
writes Chamberlain to Charlton, ‘from the Blackfriars, where I saw her
at the play with all her _candida auditrices_.’ At Christmas time,
Carlile writes to Chamberlain, ‘There has been such a small court this
Christmas, that the guard were not troubled to keep doors at the plays
and pastimes.’

And if the name of Elizabeth should have a sweet savour to actors
generally, not less delicious to dramatic memories should be the mayor
of Abingdon, in that queen’s time, who invited so many companies of
players to give a taste of their quality in that town for fee and
reward. If any actor to whom the history of the stage be of interest
should turn up at Abingdon, let him get the name of this play-loving
mayor, and hang it over the fire-place of the best room of the Garrick,
or rather of the club that _will_ be--the social, cosey, comfortable,
professional, not palatial nor swellish, but homelike house, that the
Garrick was in its humbler and happier days.

Now the companies the Mayor had down to Abingdon included the
Queen’s players, the Earl of Leicester’s players, the players of
the Earl of Worcester, of Lord Sussex, of the Earl of Bath, of Lord
Berkely, of Lord Shrewsbury, of Lord Derby, and of Lord Oxford. Is
there no one who can get at the names of these actors, and of the
pieces they played--played for rewards varying from twenty pence to
twenty shillings? Will that thoroughly English actor, one of the few
accomplished comedians of the well-trained times now left to us, be the
more successfully urged to the task, if we remind him that, in 1573,
his professional namesake, Mr. Compton, took his players to Abingdon,
and earned four shillings by the exercise of their talents?

The Elizabethan time was a very lively one. It had its theatrical
cheats and its popular riots. We learn from State records that on the
anniversary of the Queen’s accession, November, 1602, ‘One Verner, of
Lincoln’s Inn, gave out bills of a play on Bankside, to be acted by
persons of account; price of entry, 2_s._ 6_d._ or 1_s._ 6_d._ Having
got most of the money he fled, but was taken and brought before the
Lord Chief Justice, who made a jest of it, and bound him over in 5_l._
to appear at the sessions. The people, seeing themselves deluded,
revenged themselves on the hangings, chairs, walls, &c., and made a
great spoil. There was much good company, and many noblemen.’

The Queen died in March, 1603. There were the usual ‘blacks,’ but the
court and stage were brilliant again by Christmas. Early in January of
the following year people were talking of the gay doings, the brilliant
dresses, the noble dramas, the grand bear-baitings, the levity,
dancing, and the golden play, which had solemnised the Christmas just
ended. Thirteen years later Shakespeare died, and in little more than
half a century small spirits whispered that he was not such a great
spirit himself after all.

In Mr. Planché’s professional autobiography, which makes us as
discursive as the biographer himself, there is a seeming inclination
to overpraise some actors of the present time at the expense of those
whom we must consider their superiors in bygone days. As far as this
may tend to show that there is no actor so good but that his equal may
in time be discovered, we have no difference with the author of these
‘Recollections.’ It is wonderful how speedily audiences recover the
loss of their greatest favourites. Betterton, who restored the stage
soon after Monk had restored the monarchy, was called ‘the glory and
the grief’ of that stage. The glory while he acted and lived in the
memories of those who had seen him act. To the latter his loss was an
abiding grief. For years after Betterton’s decease it was rank heresy
to suppose that he might be equalled. Pope, in expressive, yet not the
happiest of his verses, has alluded to this prejudice. The prejudice,
nevertheless, was unfounded. Betterton remains indeed with the prestige
of being an actor who has not been equalled in many parts, who has been
excelled in none. Old playgoers, who could compare him in his decline
with young Garrick in his vigour, were of different opinions as to
the respective merits of these two great masters of their art. We may
fairly conclude that Garrick’s Hamlet was as ‘great’ as Betterton’s;
that the latter’s Sir John Brute was hardly equal to Garrick’s Abel
Drugger; and that the Beverley of the later actor was as perfect an
original creation as the Jaffier of Betterton.

When Wilks made the ‘Constant Couple, or a Trip to the Jubilee,’ a
success by the spirit and ease with which he played the part of Sir
Harry Wildair, Farquhar, the author of the comedy, said ‘That he made
the part will appear from hence: whenever the stage has the misfortune
to lose him Sir Harry Wildair may go to the Jubilee.’ Nevertheless,
Margaret Woffington achieved a new success for that play by the fire
and joyousness of her acting. When Wilks died, poets sang in rapturous
grief of his politeness, grace, gentility, and ease; and they protested
that a supernatural voice had been heard moaning through the air--


             Farewell, all manly Joy!
     And ah! true British Comedy, adieu!
     Wilks is no more.


Notwithstanding this, British comedy did not die; Garrick’s Ranger was
good compensation for Wilks’s Sir Harry.

When Garrick heard of Mrs. Cibber’s death, in 1766, he exclaimed, ‘Mrs.
Cibber dead! Then tragedy has died with her!’ At that very time a
little girl of twelve years of age was strolling from country theatre
to country theatre, and she was destined to be an actress of higher
quality and renown than even Mrs. Cibber, namely, Sarah Siddons. Mrs.
Pritchard could play Lady Macbeth as grandly as Mrs. Siddons; and Mrs.
Crawford (Spranger Barry’s widow), who laughed at the ‘paw and pause’
of the Kemble school, was a Lady Randolph of such force and pathos
that Sarah feared and hated her. Not many years after Garrick had
pronounced Tragedy and Cibber to have expired together, his own death
was described as having eclipsed the harmless gaiety of nations, and
Melpomene wept with Thalia for their common adopted son, and neither
would be comforted. But as Siddons was compensation for Mrs. Cibber, so
the Kembles, to use an old simile, formed the very fair small change
for Garrick. When Kemble himself departed, his most ardent admirers or
worshippers could not assert that his legitimate successor could not be
found. Edmund Kean had already supplanted him. The romantic had thrust
out the classic; the natural had taken place of the artificial; and
Shakespeare, by flashes of the Kean lightning, proved more attractive
than the stately eloquence of ‘Cato,’ or the measured cadences of
‘Coriolanus.’

Edmund Kean, however, has never had a successor in certain parts. Mrs.
F. Kemble has justly said of him: ‘Kean is gone, and with him are gone
Shylock, Richard, and Othello.’ Mrs. Siddons, at her first coming, did
not dethrone the old popular favourites. After she had withdrawn from
the stage, Miss O’Neill cast her somewhat under the shadow of oblivion;
but when old Lady Lucy Meyrick saw Mrs. Siddons’s Lady Macbeth in her
early triumph, she acknowledged the fine conception of the character,
but the old lady, full of ancient dramatic memories, declared that,
compared with Mrs. Pritchard and Mrs. Cibber, Mrs. Siddons’s grief was
the grief of a cheesemonger’s wife. Miss Hawkins is the authority for
this anecdote, the weak point in which is that in Lady Macbeth the
player is not called upon to exhibit any illustration of grief.

We have said that Kean never had a superior in certain parts. Elliston
considered himself to be superior in one point; and by referring to
some particular shortcoming in other actors Elliston contrived to
establish himself as _facile princeps_ of dramatic geniuses--in his own
opinion. This we gather from Moncrieff, whom Elliston urged to become
his biographer. He would not interfere with Moncrieff’s treatment of
the subject. ‘I will simply call your attention, my dear fellow,’ said
Elliston, ‘to three points, which you _may_ find worthy of notice, when
you draw your parallels of great actors. Garrick could not sing; I
can. Lewis could not act tragedy; I can. Mossop could not play comedy;
I can. Edmund Kean never wrote a drama; I have.’ In the last comparison
Elliston was altogether out. In the cheap edition of ‘Their Majesties’
Servants’ I have inserted a copy of a bill put up by Kean, in 1811, at
York, in the ball-room of the Minster Yard of which city Edmund Kean
and his young wife announced a two nights’ performance of scenes from
plays, imitations, and songs, the whole enacted by the poor strolling
couple. In that bill Mr. Kean is described as ‘late of the Theatres
Royal, Haymarket and Edinburgh, and author of “The Cottage Foundling,
or Robbers of Ancona,” now preparing for immediate representation at
the theatre Lyceum.’ We never heard of this representation having taken
place. Hundreds of French dramas once came into the cheap book market
from the Lyceum, where they had been examined for the purpose of seeing
whether any of them could be made useful in English dresses. Some of
them undoubtedly were. Kean’s manuscript drama may still be lying among
the Arnold miscellanies; if found, we can only hope that the owner will
make over ‘The Cottage Foundling _and_ the Robbers of Ancona’ to the
Dramatic College. The manuscript would be treasured there as long as
the College itself lasts. How long that will be we cannot say; probably
as long as the College serves its present profitable purpose. We could
wish that the _emeriti_ players had a more lively lookout. A view from
its doorway over the heath is as cheerful as that of an empty house to
the actor who looks through the curtain at it on his benefit night!

Edmund Kean’s loss has not been supplied as Mrs. Siddons’s was, to a
certain extent, and to that actress’s great distaste, by Miss O’Neill;
but Drury Lane has flourished with and by its Christmas pantomimes.
Audiences cannot be what they were in Mr. Planché’s younger days. They
examine no coin that is offered to them. They take what glitters as
real currency, and are content. When we were told the other day of
a player at the Gaiety representing Job Thornberry in a moustache,
we asked if the pit did not shave him clean out of the comedy? Job
Thornberry in a moustache! ‘Well,’ was the rejoinder, ‘he only follows
suit. He imitates the example of Mr. Sothern, who played Garrick in a
moustache.’ We were silent, and thought of the days when actors dressed
their characters from portraits, as William Farren did his Frederick
and his Charles XII.

If Mr. Planché’s book had not been as suggestive as it is purely
historical we should not have been so long coming to it. But he records
a fact or makes a reflection, and straightway a reader, who has long
memories of books or men, goes far back into older records in search
of contrasts or of parallels. We come to him now definitely, and do
not again mean to let him go, as far as his dramatic experiences are
concerned. Mr. Planché makes even his birth _theatrical_; he says, ‘I
believe I made my first appearance in Old Burlington Street on the
27th of February, 1796, about the time the farce begins’ (used to
begin?) ‘at the Haymarket, that is, shortly after one o’clock in the
morning.’ The Haymarket season, however, ran at that time only from
June to September. In spite of ourselves, Mr. Planché’s record of his
birth leads us to a subject that is, however, in connection with the
record. We find that Mr. Planché was not only of the Kemble and Kean
periods, since which time the stage has been ‘nothing’ especial, but
that he was born under both. On the night of his birth John Kemble
played Manly in ‘The Plain Dealer,’ with a cast further including Jack
Bannister, the two Palmers, Dodd, Suett, and Mrs. Jordan! Think of the
dolls and puppets and groups of sticks whom people are now asked to
recognise as artists, and who gain more in a night than the greatest
of the above-named players earned in a week. A few nights later
Edmund Kean, if he himself is to be credited rather than theatrical
biographers, made his first appearance on any stage as the ‘Robber’s
Boy’ on the first night the ‘Iron Chest’ was acted--a play in which
the boy was destined to surpass, in Sir Edward Mortimer, the original
representative, John Kemble. At the other house little Knight, the
father of the present secretary of the Royal Academy, made his _début_
in London; and the father of Mr. Macready was playing _utility_ with
a finish that, if he were alive to do it now, would entitle him to a
name on ‘posters’ three feet high, and to the sarcasm of managers, who
readily pay comedians who ‘draw’ and laugh at _them_ and at the public
who are drawn by them. But here is Mr. Planché waiting.

Well! he seems to have been backward in speaking; though he says, as
a proof to the contrary, that he spoke Rolla’s speech to his soldiers
shortly after he had found his own. ‘Pizarro,’ we will observe, was
not produced till 1799, and was not printed _then_. But, on the other
hand, Mr. Planché, like Pope, seems to have lisped in numbers, for at
ten he wrote odes, sonnets, and particularly an address to the Spanish
patriots, which he describes as ‘really terrible to listen to.’ When
he passed into his teens, the serious question of life turned up. He
could not be made to be a watchmaker, the calling of his good father,
a French refugee. Barrister, artist, geometrician, cricketer, were
vocations which were considered and set aside. His tutor in geometry
died before the pupil could discover the quadrature of the circle;
and the other callings not seeming to give him a chance, Mr. Planché
bethought himself that, as he was fond of writing, he was especially
qualified to become a bookseller. It was while he was learning this
_métier_ that his dramatic propensities were further developed. They
had begun early; he had been ‘bribed to take some nasty stuff when an
urchin, on one occasion, by the present of a complete harlequin’s suit,
mask, wand, and all, and on another by that of a miniature theatre
and strong company of pasteboard actors,’ in whose control he enjoyed
what Charles Dickens longed to possess--a theatre given up to him,
with absolute despotic sway, to do what he liked with, house, actors
and pieces, monarch of all he surveyed. Mr. Kent has published this
‘longing’ in his ‘Charles Dickens as a Reader,’ and added one shadow
on Dickens’s character to the many which Mr. Forster has made public,
and which thoughtful biographers ought to have suppressed. We allude
particularly to where Dickens describes his mother as advertising to
receive young ladies as pupils in a boarding school, without having the
means to make preparations for their reception; also his showing-up of
his own father as Micawber; and above all, his recording that he never
had forgiven and never would forgive his mother for wishing him to go
back to his humble work at the blacking-maker’s instead of to school.
The light which thoughtless worshippers place before their favourite
saint often blackens him at least as much as it does him honour.

While under articles with the bookseller Mr. Planché amused himself
as amateur actor at the then well-known private theatres in Berwick
Street, Catherine Street, Wilton Street, and Pancras Street. The
autobiographer says he there ‘murdered many principal personages of
the acting drama in company with several accomplices who have since
risen to deserved distinction upon the public boards.’ He adds, the
probability, had he continued his line of art, of his becoming by
this time ‘a very bad actor, had not “the sisters three and such odd
branches of learning” occasioned me by the merest accident to become
an indifferent dramatist.’ He says jocosely that finding nothing in
Shakespeare or Sheridan worthy of him, he wrote for amateurs the
burlesque entitled ‘Amoroso, King of Little Britain,’ which one of
the company showed to Harley, who at once put it on the stage of
Drury Lane in April 1818. There, night after night, Queen Coquetinda
stabbed Mollidusta, King Amoroso stabbed the Queen, Roastando stabbed
Amoroso, who however stabbed _his_ stabber, the too amorous cook--all
to excellent music and capitally acted, whether in the love-making,
the killing, or the recovery. Drury Lane Theatre is described by Mr.
Planché as being at the time ‘in a state of absolute starvation.’ Yet
it was a season in which Kean led in tragedy and Elliston in comedy,
and David Fisher played Richard and Hamlet as rival to the former, and
little Clara Fisher acted part of Richard the Third in ‘Lilliput.’
Drury Lane had not had so good a company for years; and besides revived
pieces of sterling merit it brought out ‘Rob Roy the Gregarach,’ and
the ‘Falls of Clyde;’ and Kean played Othello and Richard, Hamlet and
Reuben Glenroy, Octavian and Sir Giles, Shylock and Luke, Sir Edward
Mortimer and King John, Oroonoko, Richard Plantagenet (‘Richard Duke of
York’), and Selim (‘Bride of Abydos’); Barabbas (‘Jew of Malta’), Young
Norval, Bertram, and, for his benefit, Alexander the Great, Sylvester
Daggerwood, and Paul in ‘Paul and Virginia.’ Nevertheless the success
of ‘Amoroso’ was the _popular_ feature of that Drury Lane season. It
made Mr. Planché become a dramatist in earnest. ‘At this present date,’
he says, ‘I have put upon the stage, of one description and another,
seventy-six pieces.’




_A LINE OF FRENCH ACTRESSES._


The English stage has not been wanting in an illustrious line of right
royal queens of tragedy. Mrs. Barry is the noble founder, and perhaps
the noblest queen of that brilliant line. Then came Mrs. Cibber, Mrs.
Pritchard, Mrs. Spranger Barry (Mrs. Crawford), Mrs. Siddons (who hated
Mrs. Crawford for not abdicating), and Miss O’Neill, whom Mrs. Siddons
equally disliked for coming after her.

With all these the lovers of dramatic literature are well acquainted.
Of the contemporary line of French tragedy queens very little is known
in this country; nevertheless the dynasty is one of great brilliancy,
and the details are not without much dramatic interest.

In the year 1644, in the city of Rouen, there lived a family named
Desmares, which family was increased in that year by the birth of a
little girl who was christened Marie. Corneille, born in the same city,
was then eight-and-thirty years of age. Rouen is now proud of both
of them--poet and actress. The actress is only known to fame by her
married name. The clever Marie Desmares became the wife of the player,
Champmeslé. Monsieur was to Madame very much what poor Mr. Siddons
was to his illustrious consort. Madame, or Mademoiselle, or _La_
Champmeslé, as she was called indifferently, associated with Corneille
by their common birth-place, was more intimately connected with Racine,
who was her senior by five years. La Champmeslé was in her twenty-fifth
year when she made her _début_ in Paris as Hermione, in Racine’s
masterpiece, ‘Andromaque.’ For a long time Paris could talk of nothing
but the new tragedy and the new actress. The part from which the piece
takes its name was acted by Mdlle. Duparc, whom Racine had carried off
from Molière’s company. The author was very much interested in this
lady, the wife of a M. Duparc. Madame was, when a widow, the mother
of a very posthumous child indeed. The mother died. She was followed
to the grave by a troop of the weeping adorers of her former charms,
‘and,’ says Racine, alluding to himself, ‘the most interested of them
was half dead as he wept.’

The poet was aroused from his grief by a summons from the king, who, in
presence of the sensitive Racine’s bitterest enemy, Louvois, accused
him of having robbed and poisoned his late mistress. The accusation was
founded on information given by the infamous woman, Voisin, who was a
poisoner by passion and profession, and was executed for her devilish
practices. The information was found to be utterly false, and Racine,
absolved, soon found consolation and compensation.

He became the master of La Champmeslé, and taught her how to play the
heroines of the dramas which he wrote expressly for her. She, in her
turn, became the mistress of her tutor. Of his teaching indeed she
stood in little need, except to learn from him his ideas and object, as
author of the play. She was not only sublime, but La Champmeslé was the
first sublime actress that had hitherto appeared on the French stage.
Madame de Sévigné wrote to her daughter:--


     La Champmeslé is something so extraordinary that you have never
     seen anything like it in all your life. One goes to hear the
     actress, and not the play. I went to see ‘Ariadne’ for her sake
     alone. The piece is inspired: the players execrable. But as soon
     as La Champmeslé comes upon the stage a murmur of gladness runs
     throughout the house, and the tears of the audience flow at her
     despair.


The magic of the actress lured Madame de Sévigné’s son, the young
Marquis, from the side of Ninon de l’Enclos. ‘He is nothing but a
pumpkin fricasseed in snow,’ said the perennial beauty. After the young
nobleman thought proper to inform his mother of the interest he took in
La Champmeslé, Madame de Sévigné was so proud that she wrote and spoke
of her son’s mistress as her daughter-in-law! To her own daughter she
wrote as follows of the representation of Racine’s ‘Bajazet,’ in which
La Champmeslé acted Roxane:


     The piece appeared to me fine. My daughter-in-law seemed to me
     the most miraculously good actress I had ever seen; a hundred
     thousand times better than Des Œillets; and I, who am allowed to
     be a very fair player, am not worthy of lighting the candles for
     her to act by. Seen near, she is plain, and I am not astonished
     that my son was ‘choked’ at his first interview with her; but when
     she breaks into verse she is adorable. I wish you could have come
     with us after dinner; you would not have been bored. You would
     probably have shed one little tear, since I let fall a score. You
     would have admired your sister-in-law.


Two months later the mother sent to her daughter a copy of the piece,
and wrote: ‘If I could send you La Champmeslé with it you would admire
it, but without her it loses half its value.’

Racine, as Madame de Sévigné said, wrote pieces for his mistress, and
not for posterity. ‘If ever,’ she remarked, ‘he should become less
young, or cease to be in love, it will be no longer the same thing.’
The interpreter of the poet produced her wonderful effects dressed in
exaggerated court costume, and delivering her _tirades_ in a cadenced,
sing-song, rise-and-fall style, marking the rhymes rather than keeping
to the punctuation. It was the glory of the well-educated _arlequin_
and _columbine_, ‘dans leur Hostel de Bourgogne,’ to act whole scenes
of mock tragedy in the manner of La Champmeslé and her companions. It
was such high-toned burlesque as the gifted Robson’s Medea was to the
Medea of Ristori.

Lovers consumed fortunes to win the smiles they sought from the plain
but attractive actress. Dukes, courtiers, simple gentlemen, flung
themselves and all they had at her feet. La Fontaine wrote verses in
worship of her, when he was not helping her complaisant husband to
write comedies. Boileau, in the most stinging of epigrams, has made the
conjugal immorality immortal, and de Sévigné has made the nobly-endowed
actress live for ever in her letters.

After Racine shut his eyes, as complaisantly as the husband, to the
splendid infidelities of La Champmeslé--when temptation was powerless,
and religion took the place of passionate love--he moralised on the
sins of his former mistress. ‘The poor wretch,’ he wrote contemptuously
to his son, ‘in her last moments, refused to renounce the stage.’
Without such renunciation the Church barred her way to heaven! Racine,
however, was misinformed. La Champmeslé died (1698) like so many of
her gayest fellows, ‘_dans les plus grands sentiments de piété_.’ Her
widowed husband, when the rascal quality died out of him, kept to
drink, and he turned now and then to devotion. One morning, in the year
1708, he went to the church of the Cordeliers, and ordered two masses
for the repose of the souls of his mother and of his wife; and he put
thirty sous into the hand of the _sacristain_ to pay for them. The man
offered him ten sous as change. But M. Champmeslé put the money back:
‘Keep it,’ he said, ‘for a third mass for myself. I will come and hear
it.’ Meanwhile he went and sat at the door of a tavern (_L’Alliance_)
waiting for church time. He chatted gaily with his comrades, promised
to join them at dinner, and as he rose to his feet he put his hand to
his head, uttered a faint shriek, and fell dead to the ground.

As Racine formed La Champmeslé, so did the latter form her niece as her
successor on the stage--Mdlle. Duclos, who reigned supreme; but she was
a less potential queen of the drama than her mistress. Her vehemence
of movement once caused her to make an ignoble fall as she was playing
Camille in ‘Les Horaces.’ Her equally vehement spirit once carried her
out of her part altogether. At the first representation of La Motte’s
‘Inés de Castro’ the sudden appearance of the children caused the pit
to laugh and to utter some feeble jokes. Mdlle. Duclos, who was acting
Inés, was indignant. ‘Brainless pit!’ she exclaimed, ‘you laugh at
the finest incident in the piece!’ French audiences are not tolerant
of impertinence on the stage; but they took this in good part, and
listened with interest to the remainder of the play.

Mdlle. Duclos, like her aunt, chanted or recitatived her parts. The
French had got accustomed to the sing-song cadences of their rhymed
plays, when suddenly a new charm fell upon their delighted ears.
The new charmer was Adrienne Lecouvreur--a hat-maker’s daughter, an
amateur actress, then a strolling player. In 1717 she burst upon Paris,
and in one month she enchanted the city by her acting in Monimia,
Electra, and Bérénice, and had been named one of the king’s company
for the first parts in tragedy and comedy. Adrienne’s magic lay in her
natural simplicity. She spoke as the character she represented might be
expected to speak. This natural style had been suggested by Molière,
and had been attempted by Baron, but unsuccessfully. It was given to
the silver-tongued Adrienne to subdue her audience by this exquisite
simplicity of nature. The play-going world was enthusiastic. Whence did
the new charmer come? She came from long training in the provinces, and
was the glory of many a provincial city before, in 1717, she put her
foot on the stage of the capital, and at the age of twenty-seven began
her brilliant but brief artistic career of thirteen years. Tracing
her early life back, people found her a baby, true child of Paris. In
her little-girlhood she saw ‘Polyeucte’ at the playhouse close by her
father’s house. She immediately got up the tragedy, with other little
actors and actresses. Madame la Présidente La Jay, hearing of the
ability of the troupe and of the excellence of Adrienne as Pauline at
the rehearsals in a grocer’s warehouse, lent the court-yard of her
hotel in the Rue Garancière, where a stage was erected, and the tragedy
acted, in presence of an audience which included members of the noblest
families in France. All Paris was talking of the marvellous skill of
the young company, but especially of Adrienne, when the association
called the ‘Comédie Française,’ which had the exclusive right of acting
the legitimate drama, arose in its spite, screamed ‘Privilege!’ and got
the company suppressed.

The little Adrienne, however, devoted herself to the stage; and when
she came to Paris, after long and earnest experience in the provinces,
her new subjects hailed their new queen--queen of tragedy, that is to
say; for when she took comedy by the hand the muse bore with, rather
than smiled upon her; and, wanting sympathy, Adrienne felt none.
Outside the stage her heart and soul were surrendered to the great
soldier and utterly worthless fellow, Maurice de Saxe. He was the only
man to whom she ever gave her heart; and he had given his to so many
there was little left for her worth the having. What little there was
was coveted by the Princesse de Bouillon. Adrienne died while this
aristocratic rival was flinging herself at the feet of the handsome
Maréchal; and the wrathful popular voice, lamenting the loss of the
dramatic queen, accused the princess of having poisoned the actress.

Adrienne Lecouvreur (whose story has been twice told in French dramas,
and once marvellously illustrated by the genius of Rachel), before she
made her exit from the world, thought of the poor of her district, and
she left them several thousands of francs. The curé of St.-Sulpice was
told of the death and of the legacy. The good man took the money and
refused to allow the body to be buried in consecrated ground. Princes
of the church went to her _petits soupers_, but they would neither say
‘rest her soul’ nor sanction decent rest to her body; and yet charity
had beautified the one, as talent and dignity had marked the other. The
corpse of this exquisite actress (she was only forty when she died)
was carried in a _fiacre_, accompanied by a faithful few, to a timber
yard in the Faubourg St.-Germain; a hired porter dug the shallow grave
of the tragedy queen; and I remember, in my youthful days, a stone
post at the corner of the Rue de Bourgogne and the Rue de Grenelle
which was said to stand over the spot where Monimia had been so
ingloriously buried. It was then a solitary place, significantly named
La Grenouillière.

And when this drama had closed, a valet of Baron, the great tragedian,
looked at an old woman who attended in a box lobby of the Comédie
Française, and they mutually thought of their daughter as the successor
to poor Adrienne Lecouvreur. Their name was Gaussem; but when, a
year after Adrienne’s death, they succeeded in getting the young
girl--eighteen, a flower of youth, beauty, and of simplicity, most
exquisite, even if affected--they changed their name to Gaussin. As
long as she was young, Voltaire intoxicated her with the incense of his
flattery. He admired her Junie, Andromaque, Iphigénie, Bérénice; but he
worshipped her for her perfect acting in parts he had written--Zaïre
(in which there is a ‘bit of business’ with a veil, which Voltaire
stole from the ‘handkerchief’ in ‘Othello,’ the author of which he
pretended to despise)--Zaïre, Alzire; and in other characters Voltaire
swore that she was a miracle of acting. But La Gaussin never equalled
Adrienne. She surpassed Duclos in ‘Inés de Castro:’ she was herself to
be surpassed by younger rivals. At about forty Voltaire spoke of his
once youthful idol as _that old girl_!

La Gaussin had that excellent thing in woman--a sympathetic voice.
Her pathos melted all hearts to the melodious sorrow of her own.
In Bérénice, her pathetic charm had such an effect on one of the
sentinels, who, in those days, were posted at the wings, that he
unconsciously let his musket fall from his arm. Her eyes were as
eloquent as her voice was persuasive. In other respects, Clairon (an
actress) has said of her that La Gaussin had instinct rather than
intelligence, with beauty, dignity, gracefulness, and an invariably
winning manner which nothing could resist. Her great fault, according
to the same authority, was sameness. Clairon added that she played
Zaïre in the same manner as she did Rodogune. It is as if an English
actress were to make no difference between Desdemona and Lady Macbeth.

When La Gaussin had reached the age of forty-seven the French pit did
what the French nation invariably does--smote down the idol which it
had once worshipped. The uncrowned queen married an Italian ballet
dancer, one Tevolaigo, who rendered her miserable, but died two years
before her, in 1767. It is, however, said that Mdlle. La Gaussin was
led to withdraw from the stage out of sincerely religious scruples. A
score of French actresses have done the same thing, and long before
they had reached the _quarantaine_.

There is a good illustration of how unwilling the French audiences
were to lose a word of La Gaussin’s utterances in Cibber’s ‘Apology.’
‘At the tragedy of “Zaïre,”’ he says, ‘while the celebrated Mdlle.
Gossin (_sic_) was delivering a soliloquy, a gentleman was seized with
a sudden fit of coughing, which gave the actress some surprise and
interruption, and, his fit increasing, she was forced to stand silent
so long that it drew the eyes of the uneasy audience upon him; when a
French gentleman, leaning forward to him, asked him if this actress had
given him any particular offence, that he took so public an occasion to
resent it? The English gentleman, in the utmost surprise, assured him
that, so far from it, he was a particular admirer of her performance;
that his malady was his real misfortune, and that if he apprehended any
return of it he would rather quit his seat than disoblige either the
actor or the audience.’ Colley calls this the ‘publick decency’ of the
French theatre.

The Mdlle. Clairon, named above, took up the inheritance which her
predecessor had resigned. Claire Joseph Hippolyte Legris de Latude
were her names; but, out of the first, she made the name by which she
became illustrious. Her life was a long one--1723-1803. She acted from
childhood to middle age; first as sprightly maiden, then in opera,
till Rouen discovered in her a grand _tragédienne_, and sent her up to
Paris, which city ratified the warrant given by the Rouennais. She made
her first appearance as Phèdre, and the Parisians at once worshipped
the new and exquisite idol.

The power that Mdlle. Clairon held over her admirers, the sympathy
that existed between them, is matter of notoriety. She was once acting
Ariane in Thomas Corneille’s tragedy, at Marseilles, to an impassioned
southern audience. In the last scene of the third act, where she is
eager to discover who her rival can be in the heart of Theseus, the
audience took almost as eager a part; and when she had uttered the
lines in which she mentions the names of various beauties, but does not
name, because she does not suspect, her own sister, a young fellow who
was near her murmured, with the tears in his eyes, ‘It is Phædra! it is
Phædra!’--the name of the sister in question. Clairon was one of those
artists who conceal their art by being terribly in earnest. In her days
the pit stood, there were no seats; _parterre_ meant exactly what it
says, ‘on the ground.’ The audience there gathered as near the stage
as they could. Clairon, in some of her most tragic parts, put such
intensity into her acting that as she descended the stage, clothed in
terror or insane with rage, as if she saw no pit before her and would
sweep through it, the audience there actually recoiled, and only as the
great actress drew back did they slowly return to their old positions.

The autobiographical memoirs of Mdlle. Clairon give her rank as author
as well as actress. Her style was declamatory, rather heavy, and marked
by dramatic catchings of the breath which were among the faults that
weaker players imitated. It was the conventional style, not to be
rashly broken through in Paris; she accordingly first tried to do so
at Bordeaux in 1752. ‘I acted,’ she tells us, ‘the part of Agrippina,
and from first to last I played according to my own ideas. This simple,
natural, unconventional style excited much surprise in the beginning;
but, in the very middle of my first scene, I distinctly heard the words
from a person in the pit, “That is really fine!”’ It was an attempt
to change the sing-song style, just as Mdlle. Clairon attempted to
change the monotonous absurdity of the costume worn by actresses;
but she was preceded by earlier reformers, Adrienne Lecouvreur, for
instance. Her inclination for natural acting was doubtless confirmed on
simply hearing Garrick recite passages from English plays in a crowded
French drawing-room. She did not understand a word of English, but she
understood Garrick’s expression, and, in her enthusiasm, Mdlle. Clairon
kissed Roscius, and then gracefully asked pardon of Roscius’s wife for
the liberty she had taken.

It is said that Clairon was one of those actresses who kept themselves
throughout the day in the humour of the character they were to act at
night. It is obvious that this might be embarrassing to her servants
and unpleasant to her friends, family, and visitors. A Lady Macbeth
vein all day long in a house would be too much of a good thing; but
Mdlle. Clairon defended the practice, as others did: ‘How,’ she would
say, ‘could I be exalted, refined, imperial at night, if through the
day I had been subdued to grovelling matters, every-day commonness,
and polite servility?’ There was something in it; and in truth the
superb Clairon, in ordinary life, was just as if she had to act every
night the most sublimely imperious characters. With authors she was
especially arbitrary, and to fling a manuscript part in the face of the
writer, or to box his ears with it, was thought nothing of. Even worse
than that was ‘only pretty Fanny’s way.’

The cause of Mdlle. Clairon’s retirement from the stage was a singular
one. An actor named Dubois had been expelled from membership with the
company of the Théâtre Français, on the ground that his conduct had
brought dishonour on the profession. An order from the King commanded
the restoration of Dubois, till the question could be decided. For
April 15, 1765, the ‘Siege of Calais’ was accordingly announced, with
Dubois in his original character. On that evening, Lekain, Molé, and
Brizard, advertised to play, did not come down to the theatre at all.
Mdlle. Clairon arrived, but immediately went home. There was an awful
tumult in the house, and a general demand that the deserters should be
clapped into prison. The theatre was closed: Lekain, Molé, and Brizard
suffered twenty-four days’ imprisonment, and Mdlle. Clairon was shut
up in Fort L’Évêque. At the re-opening of the theatre Bellecourt
offered a very humble apology in the names of all the company; but
Mdlle. Clairon refused to be included, and she withdrew altogether from
the profession.

On a subsequent evening, when she was receiving friends at her own
house, the question of the propriety of her withdrawal was rather
vivaciously discussed, as it was by the public generally. Some officers
were particularly urgent that she should return, and play in the
especially popular piece the ‘Siege of Calais.’ ‘I fancy, gentlemen,’
she replied, ‘that if an attempt was made to compel you to serve with a
fellow-officer who had disgraced the profession by an act of the utmost
baseness, you would rather withdraw than do so?’ ‘No doubt we should,’
replied one of the officers, ‘but we should not withdraw on a day of
_siege_.’ Clairon laughed, but she did not yield. She retired in 1765,
at the age of forty-two.

Clairon, being great, had many enemies. They shot lies at her as
venomous as poisoned arrows. They identified her as the original of the
shameless heroine in the ‘Histoire de Frétillon.’ With her, however,
love was not sporadic. It was a settled sentiment, and she loved but
one at a time; among others, Marmontel (see his Memoirs), the Margrave
of Anspach, and the comedian Larive. After all, Clairon had a divided
sway. The rival queen was Marie Françoise Dumesnil. The latter was
much longer before the public. The life of Mademoiselle Dumesnil was
also longer, namely, from 1711 to 1803. Her professional career in
Paris reached from 1737, when she appeared as Clytemnestra, to 1776,
when she retired. For eleven years after Clairon’s withdrawal Dumesnil
reigned alone. She was of gentle blood, but poor; she was plain, but
her face had the beauty of intelligence and expression. When Garrick
was asked what he thought of the two great _tragédiennes_, Clairon and
Dumesnil, he replied, ‘Mdlle. Clairon is the most perfect actress I
have seen in France.’ ‘And Mdlle. Dumesnil?’ ‘Oh!’ rejoined Garrick,
‘when I see Mdlle. Dumesnil I see no actress at all. I behold only
Semiramis and Athalie!’--in which characters, however, she for many
years wore the _paniers_ that were in vogue. She is remembered as the
first tragic actress who actually ran on the stage. It was in ‘Mérope,’
when she rushed to save Ægisthe, exclaiming, ‘Hold! he is my son!’ She
reserved herself for the ‘points,’ whether of pathos or passion. The
effect she produced was the result of nature; there was no art, no
study. She exercised great power over her audiences. One night having
delivered her famous fine in Clytemnestra,


     Je maudirais les dieux, s’ils me rendaient le jour,


an old captain standing near her clapped her on the back, with the
rather rough compliment of ‘Va-t-en chienne, à tous les diables!’ Rough
as it was, Dumesnil was delighted with it. On another occasion, Joseph
Chénier, the dramatist, expressed a desire, at her own house, to hear
her recite. It is said that she struck a fearful awe into him, as she
replied, ‘Asséyez-vous, Néron, et prenez votre place!’--for, as she
spoke, she seemed to adopt the popular accusation that Joseph had been
accessory to the guillotining of his brother, the young poet, André
Chénier. Her enemies asserted that Dumesnil was never ‘up to the mark’
unless she had taken wine, and a great deal of it. Marmontel insists
that she caused his ‘Héraclides’ to fail through her having indulged in
excess of wine; but Fleury states that she kept up her strength during
a tragedy by taking chicken broth with a little wine poured into it.

Mademoiselle Dumesnil retired, as we have said, in 1776. The stage was
next not unworthily occupied by Mdlle. Raucourt. But meanwhile there
sprang up two young creatures destined to renew the rivalry which had
existed between Clairon and Dumesnil. While these were growing up the
French Revolution, which crushed all it touched, touched the Comédie
Française, which fell to pieces. It pulled itself together, after a
manner, but it was neither flourishing nor easy under the republic.
The French stage paid its tribute to prison and to scaffold.

When the storm of the Revolution had swept by, that stage became once
more full of talent and beauty. Talma reappeared, and soon after three
actresses set the town mad. There was Mdlle. Georges, a dazzling
beauty of sixteen, a mere child, who had come up from Normandy, and
who knew nothing more of the stage than that richly dressed actors
there represented the sorrows, passion, and heroism of ancient times.
Of those ancient times she knew no more than what she had learned
in Corneille and Racine. But she had no sooner trod the stage, as
Agrippina, than she was at once accepted as a great mistress of her
art. Her beauty, her voice, her smile, her genius and her talent,
caused her to be hailed queen; but not quite unanimously. There was
already a recognised queen of tragedy on the same stage, Mdlle.
Duchesnois. This older queen (originally a dressmaker, next, like Mrs.
Siddons, a lady’s-maid), was as noble an actress as Mdlle. Georges, but
her noble style was not supported by personal beauty. She was, perhaps,
the ugliest woman that had ever held an audience in thrall by force of
her genius and ability alone. While song-writers celebrated the charms
of Mdlle. Georges, portrait-painters, too cruelly faithful, placed the
sublime ugliness of Mdlle. Duchesnois in the shop windows. There she
was to be seen in character, with one of the lines she had to utter in
it, as the epigraph:


     Le roi parut touché de mes faibles attraits.


Even Talleyrand stooped to point a joke at her expense. A certain lady
had no teeth. Mdlle. Duchesnois _had_, but they were not pleasant to
see. ‘If,’ said Talleyrand, alluding to the certain lady, ‘If Madame
---- had teeth, she would be as ugly as Mdlle. Duchesnois.’

Between these two queens of tragedy the company of the Théâtre Français
were as divided in their allegiance as the public themselves. The
Emperor Napoleon and Queen Hortense were admirers of Mdlle. Georges; he
covered her with diamonds, and he is said to have lent her those of his
wife Josephine, who was the friend of Mdlle. Duchesnois. Bourbonites
and Republicans also adopted Mdlle. Duchesnois, who was adopted by
Mdlle. Dumesnil. Talma paid allegiance to the same lady, while Lafon
swore only by Mdlle. Georges, in whose behalf Mdlle. Raucourt once
nearly strangled Duchesnois. In society, every member of that awful
institution was compelled to choose a side and a night. One queen
played on a Monday, the other on a Wednesday; Mdlle. Georges on a
Friday, and Duchesnois again on Sunday; and on the intervening nights
the brilliant muse of comedy, Mdlle. Mars (as the daughter of Monvel,
the actor, always called herself), came and made Paris ecstatic with
her Elmire, her Célimène, and other characters. Of these three supreme
actresses, Mdlle. Mars alone never grew old on the stage, in voice,
figure, movement, action, feature, or expression. I recollect her well
at sixty, creating the part of Mdlle. de Belleisle, a young girl of
sixteen; and Mdlle. Mars that night was sixteen, and no more. It was
only by putting the _binocle_ to the eyes that you might fancy you
saw something older; but the voice! It was the pure, sweet, gentle,
penetrating, delicious voice of her youth--ever youthful. Jules Janin
describes the nights on which the brilliant and graceful Mdlle. Mars
acted as intervals of inexpressible charm, moments of luxurious rest.
Factions were silenced. The two queens of tragedy were forgotten for a
night, and all the homage was for the queen of comedy.

The beauty, youth, and talent of Mdlle. Georges would probably have
secured her seat on an undisputed throne, only for the caprices that
accompany those three inestimable possessions. The youthful muse
suddenly disappeared. She rose again in Russia, whither she had been
tempted by the imperial liberality of Alexander the Czar. She was
queening it there in more queenly fashion than ever; her name glittered
on the walls of Moscow, when the Grand Army of France scattered all
such glories and wrecked its own. A quarter of a million of men
perished in that bloody drama, but the tragedy queen contrived to get
safe and sound over the frontier.

Thenceforth she gleamed like a meteor from nation to nation. Mdlle.
Duchesnois and Mdlle. Mars held the sceptres of tragedy and comedy
between them. They reigned with glory, and when their evening of life
came on they departed with dignity--Duchesnois in 1835. The more
impetuous Mdlle. Georges flashed now here now there, and blinded
spectators by her beauty, as she dazzled them by her talent. The joy of
acting, the ecstasy of being applauded, soon became all she cared for.
One time she was entrancing audiences in the most magnificent theatres;
at another, she was playing with strollers on the most primitive of
stages; but always with the same care. Now, the Parisians hailed the
return of their queen; in a month she was acting Iphigenia to the
Tartars of the Crimea!

When the other once youthful queens of tragedy and comedy were
approaching the sunset glories of their reigns, Mdlle. Georges, in
her mature and majestic beauty too, seized a new sceptre, mounted
a new throne, and reigned supreme in a new kingdom. She became the
queen of drama--not melodrama--of that prose tragedy, which is full of
action, emotion, passion, and strong contrasts. Racine and Corneille
were no longer the fountains at which she quaffed long draughts of
inspiration. New writers hailed her as their muse and interpreter.
She was the original Christine at Fontainebleau, in Dumas’s piece so
named; and Victor Hugo wrote for her his terrible ‘Mary Tudor’ and his
‘Lucretia Borgia.’ It was a delicious terror, a fearful delight, a
painful pleasure, to see this wonderful woman transform herself into
those other women, and seem the awful reality which she was only--but
earnestly, valiantly, artistically--acting. She could be everything by
turns: proud and cruel as Lady Macbeth; tender and gentle as Desdemona.
Mdlle. Georges, however, found a rival queen in drama, as she had
done in tragedy--Madame Allan Dorval, who made weeping a luxury worth
the paying for. Competitors, perhaps, rather than rivals. There was
concurrency, rather than opposition. One of the prettiest incidents
in stage annals occurred on the occasion of these artists being twice
‘called,’ after a representation of ‘Mary Tudor,’ in which Mdlle.
Georges was the Queen and Madame Dorval Lady Jane Grey. After the
two actresses had gracefully acknowledged the ovation of which they
were the objects, Madame Dorval, with exquisite refinement and noble
feeling, kissed the hand of Mdlle. Georges, as if she recognised in her
the still supremely reigning queen. It was a pleasure to see this;
it is a pleasure to remember it; and it is equally a pleasure to make
record of it here.

When all this brilliant talent began to be on the wane, and play-goers
began to fear that all the thrones would be vacant, a curious scene
used to occur nightly in summer time in the Champs Élysées. Before
the seated public, beneath the trees, an oldish woman used to appear,
with a slip of carpet on her arm, a fiddle beneath it, and a tin cup
hanging on her finger. She was closely followed by a slim, pale, dark,
but fiery-eyed girl, whose thoughts seemed to be with some world far
away. When the woman had spread the carpet, had placed the cup at one
corner, and had scraped a few hideous notes on the fiddle, the pale
dark-eyed girl advanced on the carpet and recited passages from Racine
and Corneille. With her beautiful head raised, with slight, rare, but
most graceful action, with voice and emphasis in exact accord with
her words, that pale-faced, inspired girl, enraptured her out-of-door
audience. After a time she was seen no more, and it was concluded that
her own inward fire had utterly consumed her, and she was forgotten.
By-and-by there descended on the deserted temple of tragedy a new
queen--nay, a goddess, bearing the name of Rachel. As the subdued and
charmed public gazed and listened and sent up their incense of praise
and their shout of adulation, memories of the pale-faced girl who
used to recite beneath the stars in the Champs Élysées came upon them.
Some, however, could see no resemblance. Others denied the possibility
of identity between the abject servant of the muse in the open air,
and the glorious, though pale-faced, fiery-eyed queen of tragedy,
occupying a throne which none could dispute with her. When half her
brief, splendid, extravagant, and not blameless reign was over, Mdlle.
Rachel gave a ‘house-warming’ on the occasion of opening her new and
gorgeously-furnished mansion in the Rue Troncin. During the evening the
hostess disappeared, and the _maître d’hôtel_ requested the crowded
company in the great saloon so to arrange themselves as to leave space
enough for Mdlle. Rachel to appear at the upper end of the room, as
she was about to favour the company with the recital of some passages
from Racine and Corneille. Thereupon entered an old woman with strip
of carpet, fiddle, and tin pot, followed by the queen of tragedy, in
the shabbiest of frocks, pale, thoughtful, inspired, and with a sad
smile that was not altogether out of tune with her pale meditations;
and then, the carpet being spread, the fiddle scraped, and the cup
deposited, Rachel trod the carpet as if it were the stage, and recited
two or three passages from the masterpieces of the French masters in
dramatic poetry, and moved her audience according to her will, in
sympathy and delight. When the hurricane of applause had passed,
and while a murmuring of enjoyment seemed as its softer echo, Rachel
stooped, picked up the old tin cup, and, going round with it to collect
gratuities from the company, said, ‘Anciennement, c’était pour maman; à
présent, c’est pour les pauvres.’

The Rachel career was of unsurpassable splendour. Before it declined
in darkness and set in premature painful death, the now old queen of
tragedy, Mdlle. Georges, met the sole heiress of the great inheritance,
Mdlle. Rachel, on the field of the glory of both. Rachel was then at
the best of her powers, at the highest tide of her triumphs. They
appeared in the same piece, Racine’s ‘Iphigénie.’ Mdlle. Georges was
Clytemnestre; Rachel played Ériphile. They stood in presence, like the
old and the young wrestlers, gazing on each other. They each struggled
for the crown from the spectators, till, whether out of compliment,
which is doubtful, or that she was really subdued by the weight, power,
and majestic grandeur of Mdlle. Georges, Ériphile forgot to act, and
seemed to be lost in admiration at the acting of the then very stout,
but still beautiful, mother of the French stage.

The younger rival, however, was the first to leave the arena. She acted
in both hemispheres, led what is called a stormy life, was as eccentric
as she was full of good impulses, and to the last she knew no more of
the personages she acted than what she learned of them from the pieces
in which they were represented. Rachel died utterly exhausted. The wear
and tear of her professional life was aggravated by the want of repose,
the restlessness, and the riot of the tragedy queen at home. She was
royally buried. In the _foyer_ of the Théâtre Français Rachel and Mars,
in marble, represent the Melpomene and Thalia of France. They are both
dead and forgotten by the French public.

For years after Mdlle. Duchesnois had vanished from the scene, Mdlle.
Georges may be said to have languished out her life. One day of snow
and fog, in January 1867, a funeral procession set out from Passy,
traversed the living city of Paris, and entered through the mist the
city of the dead, Père la Chaise. Alexandre Dumas was chief mourner.
‘In that coffin,’ said Jules Janin, ‘lay more sorrows, passions,
poetry, and hopes than in a thousand proud tombs in the cemetery of
Père la Chaise.’ She who had represented and felt and expressed all
these sentiments, emotions, and ideas, was the last survivor of the
line of dramatic queens in France.

That line had its Lady Jane Grey, its queen for an hour; one who was
loved and admired during that time, and whose hard fate was deplored
for full as long a period. About the year 1819-20 there appeared at
the Odéon a Mdlle. Charton. She made her _début_ in a new piece,
‘Lancastre,’ in which she acted Queen Elizabeth. Her youth and beauty,
combined with extraordinary talent, took the public mind prisoner.
Here was a young goddess who would shower delight when the maturer
divinities had gone back to Olympus. The lithographed portrait of
Mdlle. Charton was in all the shops and was eagerly bought. Suddenly
she ceased to act. A jealous lover had flung into that beautiful
and happy face a cup of vitriol, and destroyed beauty, happiness,
and partially the eyesight, for ever. The young actress refused to
prosecute the ruffian, and sat at home suffering and helpless, till she
became ‘absorbed in the population’--that is to say, starved, or very
nearly so. She had one poor female friend who helped just to keep her
alive. In this way the once proud young beauty literally went down life
into old age and increase of anguish. She dragged through the horrible
time of the horrible Commune, and then she died. Her body was carried
to the common pauper grave at Montmartre, and one poor actor who had
occasionally given her what help he could, a M. Dupuis, followed her to
that bourn.

Queens as they were, their advent to such royalty was impeded by every
obstacle that could be thrown in their way. The ‘Society’ of French
actors has been long noted for its cruel illiberality and its mean
jealousy, especially the ‘Society’ that has been established since the
Revolution--or, to speak correctly, during the Revolution which began
in 1789, and which is now in the eighty-fourth year of its progress.
The poor and modest Duchesnois had immense difficulty in being allowed
to appear at all. The other actors would not even speak to her. When
she was ‘called’ by an enthusiastic audience no actor had the gallantry
to offer a hand to lead her forward. A poor player, named Florence, at
length did so, but on later occasions he was compelled to leave her
to ‘go on’ alone. When Mdlle. Rachel, ill-clad and haggard, besought
a well-known _sociétaire_ to aid her in obtaining permission to make
her _début_ on the stage of the Théâtre Français, he told her to get
a basket and go and sell flowers. On the night of her triumph, when
she _did_ appear, and heaps of bouquets were flung at her feet, on her
coming forward after the fall of the curtain, she flung them all into a
basket, slung it from her shoulders, went to the actor who had advised
her to go and vend flowers, and kneeling to him, asked him, half in
smiles and half in tears, if he would not buy a nosegay! It is said
that Mdlle. Mars was jealous of the promise of her sister, Georgina.
Young _débutantes_ are apt to think that the aged queens should abandon
the parts of young princesses, and when the young _débutantes_ have
become old they are amazed at the impertinence of new comers who expect
them to surrender the juvenile characters. The latest successful
_débutante_, Mdlle. Rousseil and M. Mounae Sully, are where they now
are in spite of their fellows who were there before them.




_SOME ECCENTRICITIES OF THE FRENCH STAGE._


The future historian of the French Stage will not want for matter to
add to a history which has already had many illustrators and writers.
Just a year ago, I saw a magnificent funeral pass from the church of
Notre Dame de Lorette. ‘_C’est Lafont, le grand Comédien!_’ was the
comment of the spectators. ‘Poor Glatigny!’ said another, ‘was not thus
buried--like a prince!’ Wondering who Glatigny might be, I, in the
course of that day, took up a French paper in the reading-room of the
Grand Hôtel, in which the name caught my eye, and I found that Glatigny
had been one of the eccentric actors of the French stage. He was
clever, but reckless; he had a bad memory, but when it was in fault, he
could _improvise_--with impudence, but effect.

Glatigny once manifested his improvising powers in a very extraordinary
manner. The story, on the authority of the Paris papers, runs thus:

Passing in front of the Mont-Parnasse Theatre, he saw the name of his
friend Chevilly in the play-bill. Glatigny entered by the stage-door,
and asked to see him. He was told that Chevilly was on the stage, and
could not be spoken to; he was acting in Ponsard’s ‘Charlotte Corday.’
Glatigny, thereupon, and to the indignant astonishment of the manager,
coolly walked forward to the side of Chevilly, as the latter was
repeating the famous lines--


               Non, je ne crois pas, moi,
     Que tout soit terminé quand on n’a plus de roi;
     C’est le commencement.


As Chevilly concluded these words, he stared in inexpressible surprise
at Glatigny, and exclaiming: ‘What, you here!’ shook him cordially by
the hand, as if both were in a private room, and not in the presence of
a very much perplexed audience. The audience did not get out of their
perplexity by finding that Ponsard’s play was altogether forgotten, and
that the two players began talking of their private affairs, walking
up and down the stage the while, as if they had been on the boulevards
or in the gardens of the Tuileries. At length, said Glatigny, ‘I am
afraid, that I perhaps intrude?’ ‘Not at all!’ said Chevilly. ‘I am
sure I do,’ rejoined Glatigny, ‘so farewell. When you have finished,
you will find me at the café, next door.’ The eccentric player had
reached the wing, when he returned, saying: ‘By-the-by, before we
part, shall we sing together a little _couplet de facture_?’ ‘With
all my heart,’ was the reply; and both of them, standing before the
foot-lights, sang a verse from some old vaudeville, on the pleasure of
old friends meeting unexpectedly, and which used to bring the curtain
down with applause.

At this duet, the public entered into the joke--they could not hiss,
for laughing,--and the most joyous uproar reigned amongst them, till
Glatigny retired as if nothing had happened, and Chevilly attempted
seriously to resume his part in ‘Charlotte Corday.’

There was a serious as well as a comic tinge in Glatigny’s experiences.
On one morning in February, 1869, some country folk, returning from the
market at Tarbes, saw a man stretched fast asleep on the steps of the
theatre. It was early dawn, and snow was gently falling. The peasants
shook the sleeper, told him, when half awake, of the danger he was
in by thus exposing himself, and asked him what he was doing there?
‘Well,’ said Glatigny, ‘I am waiting for the manager;’ he turned round
to go to sleep again, and the country folk left him to his fate. Later
in the day, he shook himself, by way of toilet and breakfast, and made
his call upon the manager. ‘My name,’ he said, ‘is Albert Glatigny.
I am a comedian and a poet. At the present moment, I have no money,
but am terribly hungry. Have you any vacancy in your company, leading
tragedian or lamp-cleaner?’ The manager asked him if he was perfect in
the part of Pylades. ‘Thoroughly so!’ was the answer. ‘All the better,’
said the manager; ‘we play “Andromaque,” to-night; my Pylades is ill.
You will replace him. Good morning!’

When the evening came, Glatigny put on the Greek costume, and entered
on the stage, without knowing a single line of his part. That was
nothing. When his turn came, he improvised a little reply to Pyrrhus.
Glatigny now and then had a line too short by a syllable or two, but he
made up for it by putting a syllable or two over measure in the line
that followed. He knew the bearing of the story, and he improvised as
naturally as if he were taking part in a conversation. The audience
was not aware of anything unusual. The manager who, at first, was
ready to tear his hair from his head, wisely let Glatigny take his own
course, and when the play was ended he offered the eccentric fellow an
engagement, at the stupendous salary of sixty francs a month!

Never was there a man who led a more unstable and wandering life. One
day, he would seem fixed in Paris; the week after he was established
in Corsica; and after disappearing from the world that knew him, he
would turn up again at the Café de Suède, with wonderful stories of his
errant experiences. With all his mad ways there was no lack of method
in Glatigny’s mind when he chose to discipline it. French critics
speak with much favour of the grace and sweetness of his verses, and
quote charming lines from his comedy, ‘Le Bois,’ which was successfully
acted at the Odéon. Glatigny had a hard life withal. It was for bread
that he became a strolling player,--that he gave some performances at
the Alcazar, as an improvisatore--and, finally, that he woke up one
fine morning, with republican opinions.

Probably not a few play-goers among us who were in Paris in 1849 will
forget the first representation of ‘Adrienne Lecouvreur,’ in the April
of that year. Among the persons of the drama was the Abbé de Chazeuil,
which was represented by M. Leroux, and well represented; a perfect
_abbé de boudoir_, loving his neighbour’s wife, and projecting a
revolution by denouncing the fashion of wearing patches! M. Leroux,
like Michonnet in the play, was eager to become a _sociétaire_ of
the Théâtre Français, but (like poor Firmin, whose memory was not so
blameless as his style and genius--and who committed suicide, like
Nourrit, by flinging himself out of the window of an upper storey)
Leroux was not a ‘quick study,’ and, year by year, he fell into the
background, and had fewer parts assigned to him. The actor complained.
The answer was that his memory was not to be trusted. He rejoined that
it had never been trustworthy, and yet he had got on, in a certain
sense, without it. The rejoinder was not accepted as satisfactory. The
oblivious player (with all his talent) fell into oblivion. He not only
was not cast for new parts, but many of his old ones that he had really
got by heart were consigned to other members of the company. Leroux
was, before all things, a Parisian, and yet, in disgust, he abandoned
Paris. He wandered through the provinces, found his way to Algiers, and
there, after going deeper and deeper still, did not forget one thing
for which he had been cast in the drama of life--namely, his final exit.

Political feeling has often led to eccentric results on, and in front
of, the French stage. With all the Imperial patronage of the drama,
the public never lost an opportunity of laughing at the vices of the
Imperial _régime_. When Ponsard’s ‘Lucréce’ was revived at the Odéon,
the public were simply bored by Lucretia’s platitudes at home and the
prosings of her husband in the camp. But when Brutus abused the Senate,
and scathing sarcasm was flashed against the extravagance of the
women of the court, and their costume, the pit especially, the house
generally, burst forth into a shout of recognition and derision. It is
to be observed that the acute Emperor himself often led the applause on
passages which bore political allusions, and which denounced tyranny
in supreme lords or in their subordinates. When the Emperor did not
take the initiative, the people did. At the first representation
of Augier’s ‘La Contagion,’ there was a satirical passage against
England. The audience accepted it with laughter; but when the actor
added: ‘After all, the English are our best friends, and are a free
people!’ the phrase was received with a thundering _Bravo!_ from the
famous Pipe-en-bois, who sat, wild and dishevelled, in the middle of
the pit, and whose exclamation aroused tumultuous echoes. At another
passage, ‘There comes a time when baffled truths are affirmed by
thunder-claps!’ the audience tried to encore the phrase. M. Got was too
well-trained an actor to be guilty of obeying, but the house shouted,
‘_Vivent les coups de tonnerre!_’ ‘Thunder-claps for ever!’ and the
passive Cæsar looked cold and unmoved across that turbulent pit.

The French public is cruel to its idols whose powers have passed away.
The French stage is ungrateful to its old patrons who can no longer
confer patronage. When the glorious three days of 1830 had overthrown
the Bourbon Charles X., King of France and Navarre, and put in his
place Louis Philippe, King of the French, and the ‘best of republics,’
the actors at the Odéon inaugurated their first representation under
the ‘Revolution’ by acting Pichat’s tragedy of ‘William Tell’ and
Molière’s ‘Tartuffe.’ All the actors were ignoble enough to associate
themselves with the downfall of a dynasty many kings of which had been
liberal benefactors of the drama. In ‘William Tell’ Ligier stooped to
the anachronism of wearing a tri-coloured rosette on the buffskin tunic
of Tell. In ‘Tartuffe’ all the actors and actresses but one wore the
same sign of idiocy. Tartuffe himself wore the old white ribbon of the
Bourbons, but only that the symbol which once was associated with much
glory might be insulted in its adversity. Dorine, the servant, tore the
white rosette from Tartuffe’s black coat amid a hurricane of applause
from the hot-headed heroes of the barricades, who had by fire, sword,
artillery, and much slaughter, set on the throne the ‘modern Ulysses.’
Eighteen years later, that Ulysses shared the fate of all French
objects of idolatry, and was rudely tumbled down from his high estate.
At the Porte St. Martin, Frederic Lemaître played a chiffonier in one
of the dramas in which he was so popular. In his gutter-raking at
night, after having tossed various objects over his shoulder into his
basket, he drove his crook into some object which he held up for the
whole house to behold. It was a battered kingly crown, and when, with a
scornful chuckle, he flung it among the rags and bones in the basket on
his back, the vast mob of spectators did not hiss him from the stage;
they greeted the unworthy act by repeated salvoes of applause!

Turning from eccentric actors to eccentric pieces, there may be
reckoned among the latter a piece called ‘Venez,’ which was first
produced, a few years ago, at Liége. A chief incident in the piece is
where a pretty actress, seeking an engagement, is required by the young
manager, as a test of her competency, to give to the above word as many
varied intonations as might be possible. One of these proves to be so
exquisitely seductive that the manager offers a permanent engagement
for life, which is duly accepted. From Liége to Compiègne is a long
step, but it brings us to another eccentricity. Nine years ago, at one
of the Imperial revels there, certain of the courtiers and visitors
acted in an apropos piece, named ‘Les Commentaires de César.’ The
Prince Imperial represented the Future, without having the slightest
idea of it. Prosper Mérimée, Academician, poet, and historian, acted
the Past, of which he had often written so picturesquely. In the more
farcical part which followed the prologue, the most prominent personage
was the Princesse de Metternich (wife of the Austrian ambassador), who
played the part of a French cabman out on strike. She tipped forth the
Paris slang, and sang a character song, with an audacity which could
not be surpassed by the boldest of singing actresses at any of the
popular minor theatres. The august audience were convulsed at this
manifestation of high dramatic art--in its way! These fêtes led to much
extravagance in dress, and to much contention thereon between actresses
and managers.

The directors of the Palais Royal Theatre have frequently been at
law with their first ladies. Mdlle. Louisa Ferraris, in 1864, signed
an engagement to play there for three years at a salary beginning at
2,400 francs, and advancing to 3,000 and 3,600 francs, with a forfeit
clause of 12,000 francs. The salary would hardly have sufficed to pay
the lady’s shoemaker. In the course of the engagement the ‘Foire aux
Grotesques’ was put in rehearsal. In the course of this piece Mdlle.
Ferraris had to say to another actress, ‘I was quite right in not
inviting you to my ball, for you could not have come in a new dress,
as you owe your dressmaker 24,000 francs!’ As this actress was really
deeply indebted to that important personage, she begged that this
speech, which seemed a deliberate insult to her, might be altered.
Mdlle. Ferraris, in spite of the authors, who readily changed the
objectionable phrase, continued, however, to repeat the original words.
As she was peremptorily ordered to omit them she flung up her part,
whereupon the directors applied to the law to cancel her engagement
for breach of contract, and to award them 12,000 francs damages.
Mademoiselle repented and offered to resume the part. On this being
declined she entered a cross action to gain the 12,000 francs for
breach of contract on the directors’ side. The Tribunal de Commerce,
after consideration, cancelled the engagement, but condemned Mdlle.
Ferraris to pay 2,000 francs damages and the costs of suit. It is to
the stage, and not to the empress, that inordinate luxury in dress
is to be attributed. Sardou, in ‘La Famille Bénoiton,’ has been
stigmatised as the forerunner of such an exaggerated luxury that no
private purse was sufficient to pay for the toilette of a woman whose
maxim was, _La mode à tout prix_.

Two or three years ago there was an actress at the Palais Royal Theatre
known as Antonia de Savy. Her real name was Antoinette Jathiot. Her
salary was 1,200 francs for the first year, 1,800 francs for the
second: not three-and-sixpence a night in English money. But out of the
three-and-sixpences Mdlle. Antonia was bound to provide herself with
‘linen, shoes, stockings, head-dresses, and all theatrical costumes
requisite for her parts, except foreign costumes totally different
from anything habitually worn in France.’ For any infringement of
these terms Mademoiselle was to pay a fine of 10,000 francs--about
her salary for half-a-dozen years. Circumstances led Antonia to be
wayward, and the management entered on a suit for the cancelling of
the engagement on the ground of her refusing to play a particular
part, and her unpunctuality. Her counsel, M. G. Chaix d’Est Ange,
pleaded that the lady was a minor, that her father had not given his
consent to such an engagement, and that it was an imposition on her
youth and inexperience. The other side replied that Mdlle. Jathiot
had ceased to be a minor since the engagement was signed; that as
to her inexperience, she was a very experienced young lady in the
ways of Parisian life; that the engagement was concluded with her
because she dressed in the most magnificent style, and that it would
be profitable to the theatre as well as to herself to exhibit those
magnificent dresses on the stage; and that as to her respected sire,
he was a humble clerk, living in a garret in the Rue Saint-Lazare,
and had no control whatever over a daughter who lived in the style of
a princess, spent fabulous sums in maintaining it, and had the most
perfect ‘turn-out’ in the way of carriage, horses, and servants in the
French capital. The plaintiffs asked to be relieved from this modest
young lady, and to be awarded damages for her insubordination and
unpunctuality. The Tribunal de Commerce ordered the engagement to be
cancelled, and the defendant to pay 1500 francs damages and the costs
of suit. But the Imperial Court of Appeal took another view of the
case. They refused in any way to sanction such an immoral notion as
that the terms of the contract were not disadvantageous for the minor
because it was known that she got her living in a way that could not
be avowed. They quashed the judgment of the Tribunal de Commerce, and
ordered the managers of the Palais Royal to pay all the costs.

The most singular of all law cases between French actresses and
managers was one the names of the parties to which have slipped
out of my memory. It arose out of the refusal of a young actress,
who had not lost her womanly modesty, to ‘go on’ in the dress
provided for her, which would hardly have afforded her more covering
than a postage-stamp. In the lawsuit which followed this act of
insubordination, the modest young lady was defeated, and was rebuked
by the magistrate for infringing the laws of the stage, of which
the manager was the irresponsible legislator! The actress preferred
the cancelling of her engagement to the degradation of such nightly
exposure as was demanded by the manager and was sanctioned by the
magistrate.

I have said above that the eccentric extravagance of dress--the other
extreme from next to none at all--was not a consequence of an example
set by the empress. But there is something to be said on both sides.
Only two years ago Mdlles. Fargueil, Bernhardt, and Desclées made
public protest against the _pièces aux robes_, in which they were
required to dress like empresses (of fashion) at their own expense.
They traced the ruinous custom to the period when the Imperial Court
was at Compiègne, and when the actresses engaged or ‘invited’ to play
to the august company there were required by the inexorable rule of the
Court to obey the sumptuary laws which regulated costume. Every lady
was invited for three days; each day she was to wear three different
dresses, and no dress was to be worn a second time. Count Bacciochi,
the grand chamberlain, kept a sharp eye on the ladies of the drama.
Histrionic queens and countesses were bound to be attired as genuinely
as the historical dignitaries themselves. The story might be romance,
the outward and visible signs were to be all reality. The awful Grand
Chamberlain once banished an actress from the Court stage at Compiègne
for the crime of wearing mock pearls when she was playing the part of a
duchess!

This evil fashion, insisted on by dreadful Grand Chamberlains, was
adopted by Paris managers, who hoped to attract by dresses--the very
skirt of any one of which would swallow more than a _vicaire’s_ yearly
income--and by a river of diamonds on a fair neck, whatever might
be in the head above it. A young actress who hoped to live by such
salary as her brains alone could bring her, and who would presume to
wear sham jewellery or machine-made lace, was looked upon as a poor
creature who would never have a reputation--that is, such a reputation
as her gorgeously attired sisters, who did not particularly care to
have _any_ but that for which the most of them dressed themselves.
When the empire fell the above-named actresses thought that a certain
republican simplicity might properly take the place of an imperial
magnificence. Or they maintained that if stage-ladies were required to
find stage-dresses that cost twenty times their salary, the cost of
providing such dresses should fall on the stage-proprietors, and not
on the stage-ladies. It is said that the bills Mdlle. Fargueil had to
pay for her dresses in ‘La Famille Bénoiton’ and ‘Patrie’ represented
a sum total which, carefully invested, would have brought her in a
comfortable annuity! This may be a little exaggerated, but the value
of the dresses may be judged of from one fact, namely, that the Ghent
lace which Mdlle. Fargueil wore on her famous blue dress in ‘La Famille
Bénoiton’ was worth very nearly 500_l._

How the attempt to introduce ‘moderation’ into the stage laws of
costume has succeeded, the most of us have seen. It has not succeeded
at all. Certain actresses are proud to occupy that bad preeminence from
which they are able to set the fashion. ‘_Mon chancelier vous dira le
reste!_’

One of the eccentricities of the modern French stage is the way in
which it deals with the most delicate, or, rather, the most indelicate
subjects and people. The indelicate people and subject may indeed be
coarsely represented and outspoken, but they must observe certain
recognised, though undefined rules. There must be an innocent young
lady among the wicked people, and the lady (the _ingénue_) and her
ingenuousness must be respected. One fly may taint a score of carcases
and make a whole pot of ointment stink, but one _ingénue_ keeps a
French piece of nastiness comparatively pure, and the public taste
for the impure is satisfied with this little bit of sentimentality.
The subjects which many French authors have brought on the stage do
not, it is to be hoped, hold a true mirror up to French nature. If
so, concubinage, adultery, and murder reign supreme. The changes have
been rung so often on this triple theme that an anonymous writer
has proposed that the theme should be represented, once for all, in
something of the following form, and that dramatic authors should
then turn to fresh woods and pastures new: ‘Scene.--A Drawing-room;
a married lady is seated, her lover at her feet; the folding-door at
back opens, and discovers husband with a double-barrelled revolver.
He fires and kills married lady and her lover. Husband then advances
and contemplates his victims. After a pause, he exclaims: “A thousand
pardons! I have come to a room on the wrong flat!” Curtain slowly
descends.’ This represents quite as faithfully the iniquities which,
according to the modern French drama, prevail universally in society,
as the dramas of Florian achieve the mission which was assigned to him
of illustrating _les petites vertus de tous les jours_--the little
virtues of everyday life.

The name of Mademoiselle Aimée Desclées reminds me of our Lord
Chamberlain. Extremes meet, in the mind as well as elsewhere! That
actress, who, after many years of hard struggle, floated triumphantly
as La Dame aux Camélias, and after a few years’ progress over sunny
seas slowly sank in sight of port, was discovered and brought out by M.
Dumas _fils_. A year or two ago she came to London with his plays, the
above ‘Dame,’ the ‘Princesse Georges,’ the ‘Visite de Noces,’ and some
others. But they stank in the nostrils of our Lord Chamberlain, and he
would no more allow them to be produced than the Lord Mayor would allow
corrupt meat to be exposed for sale in a City market. Great was the
outcry that arose thereupon, from the French inhabitants, and some of
the ignorant natives of London. The Chamberlain’s prudery and English
delicacy generally were made laughing-stocks. But, gently! Is it known
that the French themselves have raised fiercer outcry against plays
which our Lord Chamberlain has refused to license than ever Jeremy
Collier raised against that disgusting school of English comedy which
Dryden founded, and the filth of which was not compensated for by the
wit, such as it is, of Congreve, or the humour, if it may be so called,
of Wycherly? The _Gaulois_ and the _Figaro_, papers which cannot be
charged with over straitlacedness, have blushed at the adulterous
comedy of France as deeply as the two harlequins at Southwark Fair
blushed at the blasphemy of Lord Sandwich. A French critic, M.
Fournier, referring to the ‘Visite de Noces’ of the younger Dumas,
remarks that ‘the theatre ought not to be a surgical operating theatre,
or a dissecting-room. There are operations,’ he adds, ‘which should
not be performed on the stage, unless, indeed, a placard be posted at
the doors, “Women not admitted!”’ With respect to this suggestion, M.
Hostein, another critic, says: ‘People ask if the “Visite de Noces” be
proper for ladies to see. Men generally reply with an air of modesty,
that no woman who respects herself would go to see it. Capital puff!’
exclaims M. Hostein, ‘they flock to it in crowds!’ Not _all_, however.
Not even all men. Men with a regard for ‘becomingness’ are warned by
indignant French critics. The dramatic critic of the ‘France’ thus
vigorously speaks to the point: ‘We say it with regret, with sadness,
in no other country, no other civilised city, in no other theatre of
Europe, would the new piece of M. Dumas _fils_ be possible, and we
doubt whether there could be found elsewhere than in Paris a public who
would applaud it even by mistake. The “Visite de Noces” has obtained
a striking and decided success; so much the worse for the author and
for us. If our tastes, if our sentiments, if our conscience be so
perjured and perverted that we accept without repugnance and encourage
with our cheers such pictures, we are truly _en décadence_.’ Such is
the judgment of the leading critics. One of them, indeed, tersely
said, ‘the piece will have a success of indignation and money.’ The
public provided both, and the author accepted the latter. The women
who were of his audience and were _not_ indignant were of the same
nature as those who listen to cases in our divorce courts. But the Lord
Chamberlain is fully justified in refusing a licence to play French
pieces which French critics have denounced as degrading to the moral
and the national character. The only fault to be found is in the manner
of the doing it; which in the Chamberlain’s servants takes a rude and
boorish expression. Meanwhile, let us remark that the attention of
the Lord Chamberlain might well be directed to other matters under
his control. If a fire, some night, break out in a crowded theatre
(where, every night, there is imminent peril) he will be asked if he
had officially done all in his power to prevent such a calamity. And
if he were to put restraint on the performances of certain licenced
places of amusement, husseydom might deplore it, but there would be
one danger the less for young men for whose especial degradation these
entertainments seem at present to be permitted. While this matter is
being thought of, a study of that old-fashioned book ‘The Elegant
Letter-Writer,’ would perhaps improve the style of the Chamberlain’s
_subs_, and would not be lost on certain young gentlemen of Oxford.

If not among the eccentricities--at least among the marvels of
modern French-actress life--may be considered the highly dramatic
entertainments given by some of the ladies in their own homes.

Like the historical tallow-chandler, who, after retiring from business,
went down to the old manufactory on melting days, the actor, generally
speaking, never gets altogether out of his profession. Some who retire
give ‘readings,’ or return periodically to the stage, after no end of
‘final farewells’ for positively the last time, and nothing is more
common than to see concert singers (on holiday) at concerts. French
actresses have been especially addicted to keeping to their vocation,
even in their amusements. If they are not at the theatre they have
private theatricals at home; and, if not private theatricals, at least
what comes next to them, or most nearly resembles them.

In the grand old days of the uninterrupted line of French actresses
there was a Mdlle. Duthé, who was first in the second line of
accomplished players. She was of the time of, and often a substitute
for, Mdlle. Clairon. The latter was never off the stage. She was always
acting. When she was released from Fort l’Évêque, where she had been
imprisoned for refusing to act with Dubois, whom she considered as
a disgrace to the profession, Clairon said to a bevy of actresses
in her heroic way, ‘The King may take my life, or my property, but
not my honour!’ ‘No, dear,’ responded the audacious Sophie Arnould,
‘certainly not. Where there is nothing, the King loses his rights!’
Mdlle. Duthé belonged to these always-acting actresses. She is the
first on record who gave a _bal costumé_--a ball to which every guest
was to come in a theatrical or fancy dress. This was bringing amateur
acting into the ball-room. The invitation included the entire company
of the Théâtre Français, every one of whom came in a tragedy suit.
The non-professionals, authors, artists, _abbés_, _noblesse_, and
_gentils-hommes_ also donned character dresses; and ball and supper
constituted a wonderful success. An entertainment similar to the
above was given when Louis Philippe was king, by Mdlle. Georges, the
great _tragédienne_. All who were illustrious in literature, fine
arts, diplomacy, and so forth, elbowed one another in the actress’s
suite of splendid rooms. Théophile Gautier, we are told, figured as
an incroyable, Jules Janin as a Natchez Indian, and Victor Hugo, who
now takes the ‘Radical’ parts, was present _en Palicare_. But the most
striking of what may be called these amateur theatrical balls was
given last April by M. and Mdme. Judic, or rather by the latter, in
the name of both. According to the ‘Paris Journal,’ such things are
easily done--if you are able to do them. If you have an exquisitely
arranged house, though small, you may get three hundred dancers into it
with facility. You have only, if your house is in France, to send for
Belloir, who will clap a glass cover to your court-yard, lay carpets
here, hang tapestry there, place mirrors right and left from floor
to ceiling, and scatter flowers and chandeliers everywhere, and the
thing is done--particularly if you have an account at your bankers’.
Something like this was done on the night of Saturday, April 19, 1873,
when ‘La Rosière d’ici’ invited her guests to come in theatrical
array to her ball, which was to begin at midnight. According to the
descriptions of this spring festival, which were circulated by oral
or printed report, not every one was invited who would fain have been
there. The select company numbered the choicest of the celebrities of
the stage, art, and literature (with few exceptions), and _therefore_
the ‘go’ and the gaiety of the _fête_ never paused for a single instant.


     As for the costumes, says Jehan Valter, they who did not see the
     picturesque, strange, and fantastic composition, have never seen
     anything. Never was coachman so perfect a coachman as Grénier.
     Never was waggoner more waggoner than Grévin. Moreover, there were
     peasants from every quarter of the world, of every colour, and of
     every age. There were stout market porters, incroyables, jockeys,
     brigands, waltzing, schottisching, and mazourkaing; for the dance
     went fast and furious on that memorable evening (or rather,
     Sunday morning). And no wonder, for among the ladies were Madame
     Judic, in the costume of a village bride; with Mesdames Moissier,
     Gabrielle Gautier, Massart, and Gérandon, as the bridesmaids.
     Alice Regnault was a châtelaine of the mediæval period, Hielbron
     and Damain (the latter, the younger of the sister actresses
     of that name, who played so charmingly little conversational
     pieces in English drawing-rooms during the Franco-German war),
     were country lasses; and, among others, were Blanche D’Antigny,
     Debreux, Léontine Spelier, Esther David, Gournay, &c., &c.--in
     short, all the young and pretty actresses of the capital were
     present. At four o’clock in the morning a splendid supper brought
     all the guests together, after which dancing was resumed till
     seven. The festival terminated by the serving of a _soupe à
     l’oignon à la paysanne_; this stirrup-cup of rustic onion soup was
     presented in little bowls, with a wooden spoon in each! The sun
     had been up a very long time before the last of the dancers, loth
     to depart, had entered their carriages on their way home.


Such is the newest form in which theatrical celebrities get up and
enjoy costume-balls after their fashion.

One eccentric matter little understood in this country is co-operation,
or collaboration, in the production of French pieces. There is an old
story of an ambitious gentleman offering M. Scribe many thousand francs
to be permitted to have his name associated with that of M. Scribe
as joint authors of a piece by the former, of which the ambitious
gentleman was to be allowed to write a line, to save his honour. Scribe
wrote in reply that it was against Scripture to yoke together a horse
and an ass. ‘I should like to know,’ asked the gentleman, ‘what right
you have to call me a horse?’ This showed that the gentleman had wit
enough to become a partner in a dramatic manufactory. Indeed, much less
than wit--a mere idea, is sufficient to qualify a junior partner. The
historian of ‘La Collaboration au Théâtre,’ M. Goizot, states that a
young provincial once called on Scribe with a letter of introduction
and a little comedy, in manuscript. Scribe talked with him, promised
to read the piece, and civilly dismissed him. The provincial youth
returned _au pays_, hoped, waited, and despaired; finally, at the
end of a year, he went up to Paris, and again called on M. Scribe.
With difficulty the dramatist recognised him; with more difficulty
could he recollect the manuscript to which his visitor referred, but
after consulting a note-book, he took out a manuscript vaudeville of
his own and proposed to read it to the visitor. It was that of his
popular piece ‘La Chanoinesse.’ The visitor submitted, but he became
delighted as he listened. The reading over, he ventured to refer to his
own manuscript. ‘I have just read it to you,’ said Scribe, ‘with my
additions. Your copy had an idea in it; ideas are to me everything. I
have made use of yours, and you and I are authors of “La Chanoinesse.”’

Collaboration rarely enables us to see the share of each author in the
work. The bouquet we fling to the successful pair is smelt by both. The
lately deceased Mr. P. Lébrun made the reception speech when M. Émile
Angier was admitted to one of the forty seats of the French Academy.
There was a spice of sarcasm in the following words addressed to one
of the two authors of ‘Le Gendre de M. Poirier:’ ‘What is your portion
therein? and are we not welcoming, not only yourself, to the Academy,
but also your _collaborateur_ and friend?’ The fact is that in the
highest class of co-operative work the work itself is founded on a
single thought. The thought is discussed through all its consequences,
till the moment for giving it dramatic action arrives, and then the
pens pursue their allotted work. There is, however, another method. MM.
Legouvé and Prosper Dinaux wrote their drama of ‘Louise de Lignerolles’
in this way. The two authors sat face to face at the same table, and
wrote the first act. The two results were read, compared, and finally,
out of what was considered the best work in the two, a new act was
selected with some new writing in addition. Thus three acts were really
constructed to build up one. This ponderous method is not followed
by many writers. Indeed, how some co-operative dramatists work is
beyond conjecture. A vaudeville in one act sometimes has four authors;
indeed, several of these single-act pieces have been advertised as the
work of a dozen; in one case, according to M. Goizot, of _sixteen_
authors, who probably chatted, laughed, drank, and smoked the piece
into existence at a café; and the piece becoming a reality, the whole
company of revellers were named as the many fathers of that minute
bantling.

Undoubtedly the most marvellous example of dramatic eccentricity
that was ever put upon record is the one which tells us of a regular
performance by professional actors in a public theatre, before an
ordinary audience, who had extraordinary interest in the drama. The
locality was in Paris, in the old theatre of the Porte Saint-Martin.
The piece was the famous melodrama, ‘La Pie Voleuse,’ on which Rossini
founded ‘La Gazza Ladra,’ and which, under the name of ‘The Maid
and the Magpie,’ afforded such a triumph to Miss Kelly as that lady
may remember with pride; for we believe that most accomplished and
most natural of all actresses still survives--or was surviving very
lately--with two colleagues at least of the olden time, Mrs. W. West
and Miss Love. When ‘La Pie Voleuse’ was being acted at the above-named
French theatre, the allied armies had invaded France; a portion of the
invading force had entered Paris. The circumstance now to be related
is best told on French authority. An English writer might almost
be suspected of calumniating the French people by narrating such
an incident, unsupported by reference to the source from which he
derived it. We take it from one of the many dramatic _feuilletons_ of
M. Paul Foucher, an author of several French plays, a critic of French
players and play-writers, and a relative, by marriage, of M. Victor
Hugo. This is what M. Paul Foucher tells us: ‘On the evening of the
second entry of the foreign armies into Paris, the popular melodrama
“La Pie Voleuse,” was being acted at the Porte Saint-Martin. There was
one thousand eight hundred francs in the house, which at that time
was considered a handsome receipt. During the performance the doors
were closed, because the rumbling noise of the cannon, rolling over
the stones, interrupted the interest of the dialogue, and it rendered
impossible the sympathetic attention of the audience.’ Frenchmen there
were who were ashamed of this heartless indifference for the national
tragedy. Villemot was disgusted at this elasticity of the Parisian
spirit, and he added to his rebuke these remarkable words:--‘I take
pleasure in hoping that we may never again be subjected to the same
trial, and that, in any case, we may bear it in a more dignified
fashion.’ How Paris bore it, when the terrible event again occurred,
is too well known to be retold; but the incident of ‘La Pie Voleuse’
is perhaps the most eccentric of the examples of dramatic and popular
eccentricity to be found in the annals of the French stage.




_NORTHUMBERLAND HOUSE AND THE PERCYS._


When Hotspur treads the stage with passionate grace, the spectator
hardly dreams of the fact that the princely original lived, paid taxes,
and was an active man of his parish, in Aldersgate Street. _There_,
however, stood the first Northumberland House. By the ill-fortune of
Percy it fell to the conquering side in the serious conflict in which
Hotspur was engaged; and Henry IV. made a present of it to his queen,
Jane. Thence it got the name of the Queen’s Wardrobe. Subsequently it
was converted into a printing office; and in the course of time, the
first Northumberland House disappeared altogether.

In Fenchurch Street, not now a place wherein to look for nobles, the
great Earls of Northumberland were grandly housed in the time of Henry
VI.; but vulgar citizenship elbowed the earls too closely, and they
ultimately withdrew from the City. The deserted mansion and grounds
were taken possession of by the roysterers. Dice were for ever rattling
in the stately saloons. Winners shouted for joy, and blasphemy was
considered a virtue by the losers. As for the once exquisite gardens,
they were converted into bowling-greens, titanic billiards, at which
sport the gayer City sparks breathed themselves for hours in the summer
time. There was no place of entertainment so fashionably frequented as
this second Northumberland House; but dice and bowls were at length to
be enjoyed in more vulgar places, and ‘the old seat of the Percys was
deserted by fashion.’ On the site of mansion and gardens, houses and
cottages were erected, and the place knew its old glory no more. So
ended the second Northumberland House.

While the above mansions or palaces were the pride of all Londoners
and the envy of many, there stood on the strand of the Thames, at
the bend of the river, near Charing Cross, a hospital and chapel,
whose founder, William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, had dedicated it to
St. Mary, and made it an appanage to the Priory of Roncesvalle, in
Navarre. Hence the hospital on our river strand was known by the name
of ‘St. Mary Rouncivall.’ The estate went the way of such property at
the dissolution of the monasteries; and the first lay proprietor of
the forfeited property was a Sir Thomas Cawarden. It was soon after
acquired by Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, son of the first Earl
of Surrey. Howard, early in the reign of James I., erected on the site
of St. Mary’s Hospital a brick mansion which, under various names,
has developed into that third and present Northumberland House which
is about to fall under pressure of circumstances, the great need of
London, and the argument of half a million of money.

Thus the last nobleman who clung to the Strand, which, on its south
side, was once a line of palaces, has left it for ever. The bishops
were the first to reside on that river-bank outside the City walls.
Nine episcopal palaces were once mirrored in the then clear waters of
the Thames. The lay nobles followed, when they felt themselves as safe
in that fresh and healthy air as the prelates. The chapel of the Savoy
is still a royal chapel, and the memories of time-honoured Lancaster
and of John, the honest King of France, still dignify the place. But
the last nobleman who resided so far from the now recognised quarters
of fashion has left what has been the seat of the Howards and Percys
for nearly three centuries, and the Strand will be able no longer to
boast of a duke. It also recently possessed an English earl; but _he_
was only a modest lodger in Norfolk Street.

When the Duke of Northumberland went from the Strand, there went with
him a shield with very nearly nine hundred quarterings; and among them
are the arms of Henry VII., of the sovereign houses of France, Castile,
Leon, and Scotland, and of the ducal houses of Normandy and Brittany!
_Nunquam minus solus quam cum solus_, might be a fitting motto for
a nobleman who, when he stands before a glass, may see therein, not
only the Duke, but also the Earl of Northumberland, Earl Percy, Earl
of Beverley, Baron Lovaine of Alnwick, Sir Algernon Percy, Bart., two
doctors (LL.D. and D.C.L.), a colonel, several presidents, and the
patron of two-and-twenty livings.

As a man who deals with the merits of a book is little or nothing
concerned with the binding thereof, with the water-marks, or with the
printing, but is altogether concerned with the life that is within,
that is, with the author, his thoughts, and his expression of them,
so, in treating of Northumberland House, we care much less for notices
of the building than of its inhabitants--less for the outward aspect
than for what has been said or done beneath its roof. If we look with
interest at a mere wall which screens from sight the stage of some
glorious or some terrible act, it is not for the sake of the wall or
its builders: our interest is in the drama and its actors. Who cares,
in speaking of Shakespeare and Hamlet, to know the name of the stage
carpenter at the Globe or the Blackfriars? Suffice it to say, that
Lord Howard, who was an amateur architect of some merit, is supposed
to have had a hand in designing the old house in the Strand, and
that Gerard Christmas and Bernard Jansen are said to have been his
‘builders.’ Between that brick house and the present there is as
much sameness as in the legendary knife which, after having had a new
handle, subsequently received in addition a new blade. The old house
occupied three sides of a square. The fourth side, towards the river,
was completed in the middle of the seventeenth century. The portal
retains something of the old work, but so little as to be scarcely
recognisable, except to professional eyes.

From the date of its erection till 1614 it bore the name of Northampton
House. In that year it passed by will from Henry Howard, Lord
Northampton, to his nephew, Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk, from
whom it was called Suffolk House. In 1642, Elizabeth, daughter of
Theophilus, second Earl of Suffolk, married Algernon Percy, tenth Earl
of Northumberland, and the new master gave his name to the old mansion.
The above-named Lord Northampton was the man who has been described as
foolish when young, infamous when old, an encourager, at threescore
years and ten, of his niece, the infamous Countess of Essex; and who,
had he lived a few months longer, would probably have been hanged for
his share, with that niece and others, in the mysterious murder of Sir
Thomas Overbury. Thus, the founder of the house was noble only in name;
his successor and nephew has not left a much more brilliant reputation.
He was connected, with his wife, in frauds upon the King, and was
fined heavily. The heiress of Northumberland, who married his son, came
of a noble but ill-fated race, especially after the thirteenth Baron
Percy was created Earl of Northumberland in 1377. Indeed, the latter
title had been borne by eleven persons before it was given to a Percy,
and by far the greater proportion of the whole of them came to grief.
Of one of them it is stated that he (Alberic) was appointed Earl in
1080, but that, _proving unfit for the dignity_, he was displaced, and
a Norman bishop named in his stead! The idea of turning out from high
estate those who were unworthy or incapable is one that might suggest
many reflections, if it were not _scandalum magnatum_ to make them.

In the chapel at Alnwick Castle there is displayed a genealogical
tree. At the root of the Percy branches is ‘Charlemagne;’ and there
is a sermon in the whole, much more likely to scourge pride than to
stimulate it, if the thing be rightly considered. However this may be,
the Percys find their root in Karloman, the Emperor, through Joscelin
of Louvain, in this way: Agnes de Percy was, in the twelfth century,
the sole heiress of her house. Immensely rich, she had many suitors.
Among these was Joscelin, brother of Godfrey, sovereign Duke of
Brabant, and of Adelicia, Queen Consort of Henry the First of England.
Joscelin held that estate at Petworth which has not since gone out
of the hands of his descendants. This princely suitor of the heiress
Agnes was only accepted by her as husband on condition of his assuming
the Percy name. Joscelin consented; but he added the arms of Brabant
and Louvain to the Percy shield, in order that, if succession to those
titles and possessions should ever be stopped for want of an heir, his
claim might be kept in remembrance. Now, this Joscelin was lineally
descended from ‘Charlemagne,’ and, _therefore_, that greater name lies
at the root of the Percy pedigree, which glitters in gold on the walls
of the ducal chapel in the castle at Alnwick.

Very rarely indeed did the Percys, who were the earlier Earls of
Northumberland, die in their beds. The first of them, Henry, was slain
(1407) in the fight on Bramham Moor. The second, another Henry (whose
father, Hotspur, was killed in the hot affair near Shrewsbury), lies
within St. Alban’s Abbey Church, having poured out his lifeblood in
another Battle of the Roses, fought near that town named after the
saint. The blood of the third Earl helped to colour the roses, which
are said to have grown redder from the gore of the slain on Towton’s
hard-fought field. The forfeited title was transferred, in 1465, to
Lord John Nevill Montagu, great Warwick’s brother; but Montagu soon
lay among the dead in the battle near Barnet. The title was restored
to another Henry Percy, and that unhappy Earl was murdered, in 1489,
at his house, Cucklodge, near Thirsk. In that fifteenth century there
was not a single Earl of Northumberland who died a peaceful and natural
death.

In the succeeding century the first line of Earls, consisting of six
Henry Percys, came to an end in that childless noble whom Anne Boleyn
called ‘the Thriftless Lord.’ He died childless in 1537. He had,
indeed, two brothers, the elder of whom might have succeeded to the
title and estates; but both brothers, Sir Thomas and Sir Ingram, had
taken up arms in the ‘Pilgrimage of Grace.’ Attainder and forfeiture
were the consequences; and in 1551 Northumberland was the title of the
dukedom conferred on John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, who lost the dignity
when his head was struck off at the block, two years later.

Then the old title, Earl of Northumberland, was restored in 1557,
to Thomas, eldest son of that attainted Thomas who had joined the
‘Pilgrimage of Grace.’ Ill-luck still followed these Percys. Thomas
was beheaded--the last of his house who fell by the hands of the
executioner--in 1572. His brother and heir died in the Tower in 1585.

None of these Percys had yet come into the Strand. The brick house
there, which was to be their own through marriage with an heiress, was
built in the lifetime of the Earl, whose father, as just mentioned,
died in the Tower in 1585. The son, too, was long a prisoner in
that gloomy palace and prison. While Lord Northampton was laying the
foundations of the future London house of the Percys in 1605, Henry
Percy, Earl of Northumberland, was being carried into durance. There
was a Percy, kinsman to the Earl, who was mixed up with the Gunpowder
Plot. For no other reason than relationship with the conspiring Percy,
the Earl was shut up in the Tower for life, as his sentence ran, and
he was condemned to pay a fine of thirty thousand pounds. The Earl
ultimately got off with fifteen years’ imprisonment and a fine of
twenty thousand pounds. He was popularly known as the Wizard Earl,
because he was a studious recluse, companying only with grave scholars
(of whom there were three, known as ‘Percy’s Magi’) and finding
relaxation in writing rhymed satires against the Scots.

There was a stone walk in the Tower which, having been paved by the
Earl, was known during many years as ‘My Lord of Northumberland’s
Walk.’ At one end was an iron shield of his arms; and holes in which he
put a peg at every turn he made in his dreary exercise.

One would suppose that the Wizard Earl would have been very grateful to
the man who restored him to liberty. Lord Hayes (Viscount Doncaster)
was the man. He had married Northumberland’s daughter, Lucy. The
marriage had excited the Earl’s anger, as a _low match_, and the proud
captive could not ‘stomach’ a benefit for which he was indebted to a
son-in-law on whom he looked down. This proud Earl died in 1632. Just
ten years after, his son, Algernon Percy, went a-wooing at Suffolk
House, in the Strand. It was then inhabited by Elizabeth, the daughter
and heiress of Theophilus, Earl of Suffolk, who had died two years
previously, in 1640. Algernon Percy and Elizabeth Howard made a merry
and magnificent wedding of it, and from the time they were joined
together the house of the bride has been known by the bridegroom’s
territorial title of Northumberland.

The street close to the house of the Percys, which we now know as
Northumberland Street, was then a road leading down to the Thames, and
called Hartshorn Lane. Its earlier name was Christopher Alley. At the
bottom of the lane the luckless Sir Edmundsbury Godfrey had a stately
house, from which he walked many a time and oft to his great wood wharf
on the river. But the glory of Hartshorn Lane was and is Ben Jonson.
No one can say where rare Ben was born, save that the posthumous child
first saw the light in Westminster. ‘Though,’ says Fuller, ‘I cannot,
with all my industrious inquiry, find him in his cradle, I can fetch
him from his long coats. When a little child he lived in Hartshorn
Lane, Charing Cross, where his mother married a bricklayer for her
second husband.’ Mr. Fowler was a master bricklayer, and did well with
his clever stepson. We can in imagination see that sturdy boy crossing
the Strand to go to his school within the old church of St. Martin
(then still) in the Fields. It is as easy to picture him hastening of a
morning early to Westminster, where Camden was second master, and had
a keen sense of the stuff that was in the scholar from Hartshorn Lane.
Of all the figures that flit about the locality, none attracts our
sympathies so warmly as that of the boy who developed into the second
dramatic poet of England.

Of the countesses and duchesses of this family, the most singular was
the widow of Algernon, the tenth Earl. In her widowhood she removed
from the house in the Strand (where she had given a home not only to
her husband, but to a brother) to one which occupied the site on which
White’s Club now stands. It was called Suffolk House, and the proud
lady thereof maintained a semi-regal state beneath the roof and when
she went abroad. On such an occasion as paying a visit, her footmen
walked bareheaded on either side of her coach, which was followed
by a second, in which her women were seated, like so many ladies in
waiting! Her state solemnity went so far that she never allowed her son
Joscelin’s wife (daughter of an Earl) to be seated in her presence--at
least till she had obtained permission to do so.

Joscelin’s wife was, according to Pepys, ‘a beautiful lady indeed.’
They had but one child, the famous heiress, Elizabeth Percy, who
at four years of age was left to the guardianship of her proud and
wicked old grandmother. Joscelin was dead, and his widow married
Ralph, afterwards Duke of Montague. The old Dowager Countess was a
matchmaker, and she contracted her granddaughter, at the age of twelve,
to Cavendish, Earl of Ogle. Before this couple were of age to live
together, Ogle died. In a year or two after, the old matchmaker engaged
her victim to Mr. Thomas Thynne, of Longleat; but the young lady had no
mind to him. In the Hatton collection of manuscripts there are three
letters addressed by a lady of the Brunswick family to Lord and Lady
Hatton. They are undated, but they contain a curious reference to part
of the present subject, and are thus noticed in the first report of
the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts: ‘Mr. Thinn has proved
his marriage with Lady Ogle, but she will not live with him, for fear
of being “rotten before she is ripe.” Lord Suffolk, since he lost his
wife and daughter, lives with his sister, Northumberland. They have
here strange ambassadors--one from the King of Fez, the other from
Muscovett. All the town has seen the last; he goes to the play, and
stinks so that the ladies are not able to take their muffs from their
noses all the play-time. The lampoons that are made of most of the
town ladies are so nasty that no woman would read them, else she would
have got them for her.’

‘Tom of Ten Thousand,’ as Thynne was called, was murdered (shot dead
in his carriage) in Pall Mall (1682) by Königsmark and accomplices,
two or three of whom suffered death on the scaffold. Immediately
afterwards, the maiden wife of two husbands _really_ married Charles,
the proud Duke of Somerset. In the same year, Banks dedicated to her
(_Illustrious Princess_, he calls her) his ‘Anna Bullen,’ a tragedy.
He says: ‘You have submitted to take a noble partner, as angels have
delighted to converse with men;’ and ‘there is so much of divinity and
wisdom in your choice, that none but the Almighty ever did the like’
(giving Eve to Adam) ‘with the world and Eden for a dower.’ Then, after
more blasphemy, and very free allusions to her condition as a bride,
and fulsomeness beyond conception, he scouts the idea of supposing that
she ever should die. ‘You look,’ he says, ‘as if you had nothing mortal
in you. Your guardian angel scarcely is more a deity than you;’ and so
on, in increase of bombast, crowned by the mock humility of ‘my muse
still has no other ornament than truth.’

The Duke and Duchess of Somerset lived in the house in the Strand,
which continued to be called Northumberland House, as there had long
been a _Somerset_ House a little more to the east. Anthony Henley once
annoyed the above duke and showed his own ill-manners by addressing
a letter ‘to the Duke of Somerset, over against the trunk-shop at
Charing Cross.’ The duchess was hardly more respectful when speaking
of her suburban mansion, Sion House, Brentford. ‘It’s a hobbledehoy
place,’ she said; ‘neither town nor country.’ Of this union came a son,
Algernon Seymour, who in 1748 succeeded his father as Duke of Somerset,
and in 1749 was created Earl of Northumberland, for a particular
reason. He had no sons. His daughter Elizabeth had encouraged the
homage of a handsome young fellow of that day, named Smithson. She was
told Hugh Smithson had spoken in terms of admiration of her beauty, and
she laughingly asked why he did not say as much to herself. Smithson
was the son of ‘an apothecary,’ according to the envious, but, in
truth, the father had been a physician, and earned a baronetcy, and
was of the good old nobility, the landowners, with an estate, still
possessed by the family, at Stanwick, in Yorkshire. Hugh Smithson
married this Elizabeth Percy, and the earldom of Northumberland,
conferred on her father, was to go to her husband, and afterwards to
the eldest male heir of this marriage, failing which the dignity was to
remain with Elizabeth and her heirs male by any other marriage.

It is at this point that the present line of Smithson-Percys begins.
Of the couple who may be called its founders so many severe things
have been said, that we may infer that their exalted fortunes and best
qualities gave umbrage to persons of small minds or strong prejudices.
Walpole’s remark, that in the earl’s lord-lieutenancy in Ireland ‘their
vice-majesties scattered pearls and diamonds about the streets,’ is
good testimony to their royal liberality. Their taste may not have
been unexceptionable, but there was no touch of meanness in it. In
1758 they gave a supper at Northumberland House to Lady Yarmouth,
George II.’s old mistress. The chief ornamental piece on the supper
table represented a grand _chasse_ at Herrenhausen, at which there was
a carriage drawn by six horses, in which was seated an august person
wearing a blue ribbon, with a lady at his side. This was not unaptly
called ‘the apotheosis of concubinage.’ Of the celebrated countess
notices vary. Her delicacy, elegance, and refinement are vouched for
by some; her coarseness and vulgarity are asserted by others. When
Queen Charlotte came to England, Lady Northumberland was made one of
the ladies of the queen’s bed-chamber. Lady Townshend justified it to
people who felt or feigned surprise, by remarking, ‘Surely nothing
could be more proper. The queen does not understand English, and can
anything be more necessary than that she should learn the vulgar
tongue?’ One of the countess’s familiar terms for conviviality was
‘junkitaceous,’ but ladies of equal rank had also little slang words
of their own, called things by the very plainest names, and spelt
_physician_ with an ‘f.’

There is ample testimony on record that the great countess never
hesitated at a jest on the score of its coarseness. The earl was
distinguished rather for his pomposity than vulgarity, though a vulgar
sentiment marked some of both his sayings and doings. For example, when
Lord March visited him at Alnwick Castle, the Earl of Northumberland
received him at the gates with this queer sort of welcome: ‘I believe,
my lord, this is the first time that ever a Douglas and a Percy met
here in friendship.’ The censor who said, ‘Think of this from a
Smithson to a true Douglas,’ had ample ground for the exclamation.
George III. raised the earl and countess to the rank of duke and
duchess in 1766. All the earls of older creation were ruffled and angry
at the advancement; but the honour had its drawback. The King would not
allow the title to descend to an heir by any other wife but the one
then alive, who was the true representative of the Percy line.

The old Northumberland House festivals were right royal things in their
way. There was, on the other hand, many a snug, or unceremonious, or
eccentric party given there. Perhaps the most splendid was that given
in honour of the King of Denmark in 1768. His majesty was fairly
bewildered with the splendour. There was in the court what was called
‘a pantheon,’ illuminated by 4,000 lamps. The King, as he sat down to
supper, at the table to which he had expressly invited twenty guests
out of the hundreds assembled, said to the duke, ‘How did you contrive
to light it all in time?’ ‘I had two hundred lamplighters,’ replied the
duke. ‘That was a stretch,’ wrote candid Mrs. Delany; ‘a dozen could
have done the business;’ which was true.

The duchess, who in early life was, in delicacy of form, like one
of the Graces, became, in her more mature years, fatter than if the
whole three had been rolled into one in her person. With obesity came
‘an exposition to sleep,’ as Bottom has it. At ‘drawing-rooms’ she
no sooner sank on a sofa than she was deep in slumber; but while she
was awake she would make jokes that were laughed at and censured the
next day all over London. Her Grace would sit at a window in Covent
Garden, and be _hail fellow well met_ with every one of a mob of tipsy
and not too cleanly-spoken electors. On these occasions it was said
she ‘signalised herself with intrepidity.’ She could bend, too, with
cleverness to the humours of more hostile mobs; and when the Wilkes
rioters besieged the ducal mansion, she and the duke appeared at a
window, did salutation to their masters, and performed homage to the
demagogue by drinking his health in ale.

Horace Walpole affected to ridicule the ability of the duchess as a
verse writer. At Lady Miller’s at Batheaston some rhyming words were
given out to the company, and anyone who could, was required to add
lines to them so as to make sense with the rhymes furnished for the end
of each line. This sort of dancing in fetters was called _bouts rimés_.
‘On my faith,’ cried Walpole, in 1775, ‘there are _bouts rimés_ on a
buttered muffin by her Grace the Duchess of Northumberland.’ It may be
questioned whether anybody could have surmounted the difficulty more
cleverly than her Grace. For example:


     The pen which I now take and      brandish,
     Has long lain useless in my       standish.
     Know, every maid, from her own    patten
     To her who shines in glossy       satin,
     That could they now prepare an    oglio
     From best receipt of book in      folio,
     Ever so fine, for all their       puffing,
     I should prefer a butter’d        muffin;
     A muffin, Jove himself might      feast on,
     If eaten with Miller, at          Batheaston.


To return to the house itself. There is no doubt that no mansion of
such pretensions and containing such treasures has been so thoroughly
kept from the vulgar eye. There is one exception, however, to this
remark. The Duke (Algernon) who was alive at the period of the first
Exhibition threw open the house in the Strand to the public without
reserve. The public, without being ungrateful, thought it rather a
gloomy residence. Shut in and darkened as it now is by surrounding
buildings--canopied as it now is by clouds of London smoke--it is less
cheerful and airy than the Tower, where the Wizard Earl studied in his
prison room, or counted the turns he made when pacing his prison yard.
The Duke last referred to was in his youth at Algiers under Exmouth,
and in his later years a Lord of the Admiralty. As Lord Prudhoe, he was
a traveller in far-away countries, and he had the faculty of seeing
what he saw, for which many travellers, though they have eyes, are not
qualified. At the pleasant Smithsonian house at Stanwick, when he was
a bachelor, his household was rather remarkable for the plainness of
the female servants. Satirical people used to say the youngest of them
was a grandmother. Others, more charitable or scandalous, asserted
that Lord Prudhoe was looked upon as a father by many in the country
round, who would have been puzzled where else to look for one. It was
his elder brother Hugh (whom Lord Prudhoe succeeded) who represented
England as Ambassador Extraordinary at the coronation of Charles X. at
Rheims. Paris was lost in admiration at the splendour of this embassy,
and never since has the _hôtel_ in the Rue de Bac possessed such a
gathering of royal and noble personages as at the _fêtes_ given there
by the Duke of Northumberland. His sister, Lady Glenlyon, then resided
in a portion of the fine house in the Rue de Bourbon, owned and in part
occupied by the rough but cheery old warrior, the Comte de Lobau. When
that lady was Lady Emily Percy, she was married to the eccentric Lord
James Murray, afterwards Lord Glenlyon. The bridegroom was rather of
an oblivious turn of mind, and it is said that when the wedding morn
arrived, his servant had some difficulty in persuading him that it was
the day on which he had to get up and be married.

There remains only to be remarked, that as the Percy line has been
often represented only by an heiress, there have not been wanting
individuals who boasted of male heirship.

Two years after the death of Joscelin Percy in 1670, who died the
last male heir of the line, leaving an only child, a daughter, who
married the Duke of Somerset, there appeared, supported by the Earl of
Anglesea, a most impudent claimant (as next male heir) in the person
of James Percy, an Irish trunkmaker. This individual professed to
be a descendant of Sir Ingram Percy, who was in the ‘Pilgrimage of
Grace,’ and was brother of the sixth earl. The claim was proved to be
unfounded; but it may have rested on an _illegitimate_ foundation.
As the pretender continued to call himself Earl of Northumberland,
Elizabeth, daughter of Joscelin, ‘took the law’ of him. Ultimately he
was condemned to be taken into the four law courts in Westminster Hall,
with a paper pinned to his breast, bearing these words: ‘The foolish
and impudent pretender to the earldom of Northumberland.’

In the succeeding century, the well-known Dr. Percy, Bishop of Dromore,
believed himself to be the true male representative of the ancient line
of Percy. He built no claims on such belief; but the belief was not
only confirmed by genealogists, it was admitted by the second heiress
Elizabeth, who married Hugh Smithson. Dr. Percy so far asserted his
blood as to let it boil over in wrath against Pennant when the latter
described Alnwick Castle in these disparaging words: ‘At Alnwick
no remains of chivalry are perceptible; no respectable train of
attendants; the furniture and gardens are inconsistent; and nothing,
except the numbers of unindustrious poor at the castle gate, excited
any one idea of its former circumstances.’

‘Duke and Duchess of Charing Cross,’ or ‘their majesties of Middlesex,’
were the mock titles which Horace Walpole flung at the ducal couple of
his day who resided at Northumberland House, London, or at Sion House,
Brentford. Walpole accepted and satirised the hospitality of the London
house, and he almost hated the ducal host and hostess at Sion, because
they seemed to overshadow his mimic feudal state at Strawberry! After
all, neither early nor late circumstance connected with Northumberland
House is confined to memories of the inmates. Ben Jonson comes out upon
us from Hartshorn Lane with more majesty than any of the earls; and
greatness has sprung from neighbouring shops, and has flourished as
gloriously as any of which Percy can boast. Half a century ago, there
was a long low house, a single storey high, the ground floor of which
was a saddler’s shop. It was on the west side of the old Golden Cross,
and nearly opposite Northumberland House. The worthy saddler founded
a noble line. Of four sons, three were distinguished as Sir David,
Sir Frederick, and Sir George. Two of the workmen became Lord Mayors
of London; and an attorney’s clerk, who used to go in at night and
chat with the men, married the granddaughter of a king and became Lord
Chancellor.




_LEICESTER FIELDS._


In the reign of James I. there was an open space of ground north of
what is now called Leicester Square (which by some old persons is
still called Leicester Fields), and which was to the London soldiers
and civilians of that day very much what Wormwood Scrubs is to the
military and their admirers of the present time. Prince Henry exercised
his artillery there, and it continued to be a general military
exercise-ground far into the reign of Charles I. People trooped
joyfully over the lammas land paths to witness the favourite spectacle.
The greatest delight was excited by charges of cavalry against lines
or masses of dummies, through which the gallant warriors and steeds
plunged and battled--thus teaching them not to stop short at an
impediment, but to dash right through it.

In 1631 there were unmistakable signs that this land was going to be
built over, and people were aghast at the pace at which London was
growing. Business-like men were measuring and staking; the report
was that the land had been given to Sydney, Earl of Leicester. Too
soon the builders got possession, and the holiday folk with military
proclivities no longer enjoyed their old ecstasy of accompanying the
soldiery to Paggington’s tune of


     My masters and friends and good people, draw near.


Why Sydney was allowed to establish himself on the lammas land no one
can tell. All that we know is, that Lord Carlisle wrote from Nonsuch,
in August 1631, to Attorney-General Heath, informing him that it was
the king’s pleasure that Mr. Attorney should prepare a licence to the
Earl of Leicester to build upon a piece of ground called Swan Close, in
St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, a house convenient for his habitation.’

The popular idea of Earl of Leicester is Elizabeth’s Robert Dudley.
Well, that earl had a sister, Mary, who married Sir Henry Sydney, of
Penshurst. This couple had a son, whom they called Robert, and whom
King James created at successive periods Baron Sydney, Viscount Lisle,
and Earl of Leicester. And this Earl Robert had a son who, in 1626,
succeeded to the earldom, and to him King Charles, in 1631, gave Swan
Close and some other part of the lammas land, whereon he erected the
once famous Leicester House.

This last Robert was the father of the famous and rather shabby
patriot, Algernon Sydney, also of the handsome Henry. He is still more
famous as having for daughter Dorothy, the ‘Sacharissa’ with whom
Waller pretended to be in love, and he gave his family name to Sydney
Alley. When, some few years later, the Earl of Salisbury (Viscount
Cranbourn) built a house in the neighbourhood, he partly copied the
other earl’s example, and called the road which led to his mansion
Cranbourn Alley.

The lammas land thus given away was land which was open to the poor
after Lammastide. Peter Cunningham quotes two entries from the St.
Martin’s rate-books to this effect: ‘To received of the Honble. Earle
of Leicester for ye Lamas of the ground that adjoins the Military Wall,
3_l._’ The ‘military wall’ was the boundary of the Wormwood Scrubs of
that day. The Earl also had to pay ‘for the lamas of the ground whereon
his house and garden are, and the field that is before his house, near
to Swan Close.’ The field before his house is now Leicester Square,
‘but Swan Close,’ says Peter, ‘is quite unknown.’ Lord Carlisle’s
letter in the State Paper Office states that the house was to be built
‘_upon_ Swan Close.’

It was a palatial mansion, that old Leicester House. It half filled
the northern side of the present square, on the eastern half of that
side. Its noble gardens extended beyond the present Lisle Street. At
first that street reached only to the garden wall of Leicester House.
When the garden itself disappeared the street was lengthened. It was
a street full of ‘quality,’ and foreign ambassadors thought themselves
lodged in a way not to dishonour their masters if they could only
secure a mansion in Lisle Street.

Noble as the mansion was, Robert Sydney Earl of Leicester is the only
earl of his line who lived in it, and his absences were many and of
long continuance. He was a thrifty man, and long before he died, in
1677, he let the house to very responsible tenants. One of these was
Colbert. If the ordinary run of ambassadors were proud to be quartered
in Lisle Street, the proper place for the representative of ‘_L’Etat
c’est moi_,’ and for the leader of civilisation, was the palace in
Leicester Fields; and there France established herself, and there and
in the neighbourhood, in hotels, cafés, restaurants, _charcutiers_,
_commissionnaires_, refugees, and highly-coloured ladies, she has been
ever since.

Colbert probably the more highly approved of the house as it had been
dwelt in already by a queen. On February 7, 1662, the only queen that
ever lived in Drury Lane--the Queen of Bohemia (daughter of James
I.)--removed from Drury House and its pleasant gardens, now occupied by
houses and streets, at the side of the Olympic Theatre, to Leicester
House. Drury House was the residence of Lord Craven, to whom it was
popularly said that the widowed queen had been privately married. Her
occupancy of Leicester House was not a long one, for the queen died
there on the 12th of the same month.

Six years later, in 1668,the French ambassador, Colbert, occupied
Leicester House. Pepys relates how he left a joyous dinner early, on
October 21, to join Lord Brouncker, the president, and other members
of the Royal Society, in paying a formal return visit to Colbert; but
the party had started before Pepys arrived at the Society’s rooms. The
little man hastened after them; but they were ‘gone in’ and ‘up,’ and
Pepys was too late to be admitted. His wife, perhaps, was not sorry,
for he took her to Cow Lane; ‘and there,’ he says, ‘I showed her the
coach which I pitch on, and she is out of herself for joy almost.’

It is easy to guess why the Royal Society honoured themselves by
honouring Colbert. The great Frenchman was something more than a
mere Marquis de Segnelai. Who remembers M. le Marquis? Who does not
know Colbert--the pupil of Mazarin, the astute politician, the sharp
finance-minister, the patron--nay, the pilot--of the arts and sciences
in France? The builder of the French Royal Observatory, and the founder
of the Academies of Painting and Sculpture and of the Sciences in
France, was just the man to pay the first visit to the Royal Society.
Leicester House was nobly tenanted by Colbert, and nobly frequented by
the men of taste and of talent whom he gathered about him beneath its
splendid roof.

The house fell into other hands, and men who were extremely opposite to
philosophers were admitted within its walls _with_ philosophers, who
were expected to admire their handiwork. In October 1672, the grave
Evelyn called at Leicester House to take leave of Lady Sunderland, who
was about to set out for Paris, where Lord Sunderland was the English
ambassador. My lady made Evelyn stay to dinner, and afterwards sent
for Richardson, the famous fire-eater. A few years ago a company of
Orientals, black and white, exhibited certain feats, but they were too
repulsive (generally) to attract. What the members of this company did
was done two hundred years ago in Leicester Square by Richardson alone.
‘He devoured,’ says Evelyn, ‘brimstone on glowing coals before us,
chewing and swallowing them; he melted a large glass and eat it quite
up; then, taking a live coal on his tongue, he put on it a raw oyster,
the coal was blowed on with bellows till it flamed and sparkled in his
mouth, and so remained till the oyster gaped and was quite boiled. Then
he melted pitch and wax with sulphur, which he drank down as it flamed.
I saw it flaming in his mouth a good while. He also took up a thick
piece of iron, such as laundresses use to put in their smoothing-boxes,
when it was fiery hot, held it between his teeth, then in his hands,
and threw it about like a stone; but this I observed, that he cared
not to hold very long. Then he stood on a small pot, and bending his
body, took a glowing iron in his mouth from between his feet, without
touching the pot or ground with his hands; with divers other prodigious
feats.’ Such was the singular sort of entertainment provided by a lady
for a gentleman after dinner in the seventeenth century and beneath the
roof of Leicester House.

Meanwhile Little France increased and flourished in and about the
neighbourhood, and ‘foreigners of distinction’ were to be found airing
their nobility in Leicester Square and the Haymarket--almost country
places both.

Behind Leicester House, and on part of the ground which once formed
Prince Henry Stuart’s military parade ground, there was a riding
academy, kept by Major Foubert. In 1682, among the major’s resident
pupils and boarders, was a handsome dare-devil young fellow, who was
said to be destined for the Church, but who subsequently met his own
destiny in quite another direction. His name was Philip Christopher
Königsmark (Count, by title), and his furious yet graceful riding must
have scared the quieter folks pacing the high road of the fields. He
had with him, or rather _he_ was with an elder brother, Count Charles
John. This elder Count walked Leicester Fields in somewhat strange
company--a German Captain Vratz, Borosky, a Pole, and Lieutenant Stern,
a third foreigner. To what purpose they associated was seen after
that Sunday evening in February 1682, when three mounted men shot Mr.
Thomas Thynne (Tom of Ten Thousand) in his coach, at the bottom of the
Haymarket. Tom died of his wounds. Thynne had been shot because he had
just married the wealthy child-heiress, Lady Ogle. Count Charles John
thought _he_ might obtain the lady if her husband were disposed of.
The necessary disposal of him was made by the three men named above,
after which they repaired to the Counts lodgings and then scattered;
but they were much wanted by the police, and so was the Count; when it
was discovered that he had suddenly disappeared from the neighbourhood
of the ‘Fields,’ and had gone down the river. He was headed, and
taken at Gravesend. The subordinates were also captured. For some
time indeed Vratz could not be netted. One morning, however, an armed
force broke into a Swedish doctor’s house in Leicester Fields, and
soon after they brought out Vratz in custody, to the great delight
of the assembled mob. At the trial, the Count was acquitted. His
younger brother, Philip, swore to an _alibi_, which proved nothing,
and the King influenced the judges! The three hired murderers went to
the gallows, and thought little of it. Vratz excused the deed, on
the ground of murder not having been intended; ‘besides,’ said this
sample of the Leicester Fields foreigner of the seventeenth century,
‘I am a gentleman, and God will deal with me accordingly.’ The two
counts left England, and made their names notorious in Continental
annals. The French riding-master shut up his school behind Leicester
House, and removed to a spot where his name still lives: Foubert’s
Passage, in Regent Street, opposite Conduit Street, is the site of the
academy where that celebrated teacher once instructed young ladies and
gentlemen how to ‘witch the world with noble horsemanship.’

We have spoken of the square being almost in the country. It was not
the only one which was considered in the same light. In 1698 the author
of a book called ‘Mémoires et Observations faites par un Voyageur en
Angleterre,’ printed at the Hague in the above year, thus enumerates
the London squares or _places_: ‘Les places qui sont dans Londres, ou
pour mieux dire, dans les faubourgs, occupent des espaces qui, joints
ensemble, en fourniraient un suffisant pour bâtir une grande ville. Ces
places sont toutes environnées de balustrades, qui empêchant que les
carrosses n’y passant. Les principales sont celles de Lincoln’s Inn
Fields, de Moor Fields, de Southampton ou Blumsbury, de St. James, &c.,
Covent Garden; de Sohoe, ou Place Royale, du Lion rouge (Red Lyon), du
Quarré d’Or (Golden Square), et de Leicester Fields.’

All these are said to be in the _suburbs_. Soho Square was called by
fashionable people, King Square. It was only vulgar folk who used the
prevailing name of Soho.

From early in Queen Anne’s days till late in those of George I., the
representative of the Emperor of Germany resided in Leicester House.
It was said that Jacobites found admittance there, for plotting or
for refuge. It is certain that the imperial residence was never so
tumultuously and joyously surrounded as when Prince Eugene arrived in
Leicester Square, in the above Queen’s reign, on a mission from the
Emperor, to induce England to join with him in carrying on the war.
During his brief stay Leicester Fields was thronged with a cheering
mobility and a bowing nobility and gentry, hastening to ‘put a
distinguished respect’ on Marlborough’s great comrade, who was almost
too modest to support the popular honours put on himself. Bishop Burnet
and the Prince gossiping together at their frequent interviews at
Leicester House have quite a picturesque aspect.

The imperial chaplain there was often as busy as his master. Here is a
sample of one turn of his office:

One evening a man, in apparent hurry, knocked at the door of Leicester
House, the imperial ambassador’s residence. He was bent on being
married, and he accomplished that on which he was bent. This person was
the son of a cavalier squire; he was also a Templar, for a time; but he
hated law and Fleet Street, and he set up as near to being a courtier
as could be expressed by taking lodgings in Scotland Yard, which
was next door to the court then rioting at Whitehall. His name was
Fielding, and his business was to drink wine, make love, and live upon
pensions from female purses. Three kings honoured the rascal: Charles,
James, and William; and one queen did him a good turn. For a long
time Beau Fielding was the handsomest ass on the Mall. Ladies looked
admiringly and languishingly at him, and the cruel beau murmured, ‘Let
them look and die.’ Maidens spoke of him as ‘Adonis!’ and joyous widows
hailed him ‘Handsome as Hercules!’ It was a mystery how he lived; how
he maintained horses, chariot, and a brace of fellows in bright yellow
coats and black sarcenet sashes. They were the Austrian colours; for
Fielding thought he was cousin to the House of Hapsburg.

Supercilious as he was, he had an eye to the widows. His literature was
in Doctors’ Commons, where he studied the various instances of marital
affection manifested by the late husbands of living widows. One day
he rose from the perusal of a will with great apparent satisfaction.
He had just read how Mr. Deleau had left his relict a town house in
Copthall Court, a Surrey mansion at Waddon, and sixty thousand pounds
at her own disposal. The handsome Hercules resolved to add himself to
the other valuables of which widow Deleau could dispose.

Fielding knew nothing whatever of the widow he so ardently coveted;
but he, like love, could find out the way. There was a Mrs. Villars,
who had dressed the widow’s hair, and she undertook, for a valuable
consideration, to bring the pair gradually together. Fielding was
allowed to see the grounds at Waddon. As he passed along, he observed
a lady at a window. He put his hand on the left side of his waistcoat,
and bowed a superlative beau’s superlative bow; and he was at the high
top-gallant of his joy when he saw the graceful lady graciously smile
in return for his homage. This little drama was repeated; and at last
Mrs. Villars induced the lady to yield so very much all at once as to
call with her on Fielding at his lodgings. Three such visits were made,
and ardent love was made also on each occasion. On the third coming of
Hero to Leander, there was a delicious little banquet, stimulating to
generous impulses. The impulses so overcame the lady that she yielded
to the urgent appeals of Mrs. Villars and the wooer, and consented to a
private marriage in her lover’s chambers. The ecstatic Fielding leapt
up from her feet, where he had been kneeling, clapt on his jaunty hat
with a slap, buckled his bodkin sword to his side with a hilarious
snap, swore there was no time like the present, and that he would
himself fetch a priest and be back with him on the very swiftest of the
wings of love.

That was the occasion on which, at a rather late hour, Fielding was
to be seen knocking at the front door of Leicester House. When the
door was opened his first inquiry was after the imperial ambassador’s
chaplain. The beau had, in James II.’s days, turned Papist; and when
Popery had gone out as William came in, he had not thought it worth
while to turn back again, and was nominally a Papist still. When the
Roman Catholic chaplain in Leicester House became aware of what his
visitor required, he readily assented, and the worthy pair might be
seen hastily crossing the square to that bower of love where the bride
was waiting. The chaplain satisfied her scruples as to the genuineness
of his priestly character, and in a twinkling he buckled beau and belle
together in a manner which, as he said, defied all undoing.

‘Undoing?’ exclaimed the lover. ‘I marry my angel with all my heart,
soul, body, and everything else!’--and he put a ring on her finger
bearing the poesy _Tibi soli_--the sun of his life.

In a few days the bubble burst. The lady turned out to be no rich
widow, but a Mrs. Wadsworth, who was given to frolicking, and who
thought this the merriest frolic of her light-o’-love life. Fielding,
who had passed himself off as a count, had not much to say in his own
behalf, and he turned the ‘sun of his life’ out of doors. Whither he
could turn he knew right well. He had long served all the purposes
of the Duchess of Cleveland, the degraded old mistress of Charles
II.; and within three weeks of his being buckled to Mrs. Wadsworth by
the Leicester Square priest he married Duchess Barbara. Soon after
he thrashed Mrs. Wadsworth in the street for claiming him as her
lawful husband, and he beat the Duchess at home for asserting that
Mrs. Wadsworth was right. Old Barbara did more. She put two hundred
pounds into that lady’s hand, to prosecute Fielding for bigamy, and
the Duchess promised her a hundred pounds a year for fifteen years
if she succeeded in getting him convicted. And the handsome Hercules
was convicted accordingly, at the Old Bailey, and was sentenced to be
burnt in the hand; but the rascal produced Queen Anne’s warrant to stay
execution. And so ended the Leicester Square wedding.

As long as the Emperor’s envoy lived in Leicester Fields he was the
leader of fashion. Crowds assembled to see his ‘turn out.’ Sir Francis
Gripe, in the ‘Busy-body,’ tempts Miranda by saying, ‘Thou shalt be
the envy of the Ring, for I will carry thee to Hyde Park, and thy
equipage shall surpass the what-d’ye-call-’em ambassador’s.’

Leicester House was, luckily, to let when the Prince of Wales
quarrelled with his father, George I. In that house the Prince set up
a rival court, against attending which the ‘London Gazette’ thundered
dreadful prohibitions. But St. James’s was dull; Leicester House was
‘jolly’; and the fields were ‘all alive’ with spectators ‘hooraying’
the arrivals. Within, the stately Princess towered among her graceful
maids. With regard to her diminutive husband it was said of his
visitors,


     In his embroidered coat they found him,
     With all his strutting dwarfs around him.


Most celebrated among the Leicester House maids of honour was the
young, bright, silvery-laughing, witty, well-bred girl, who could not
only spell, but could construe Cæsar--the maid of whom Chesterfield
wrote--


     Should the Pope himself go roaming,
     He would follow dear Molly Lepell.


And there rattled that other Mary--Mary Bellenden, laughing at all her
lovers, the little, faithless Prince himself at the head of them. She
would mock him and them with wit of the most audacious sort, and tell
stories to the Princess, at which that august lady would laugh behind
her fan, while the wildest, and not the least beautiful of the maids
would throw back her handsome head, burst into uncontrollable laughter,
and then run across to shock prim Miss Meadows, ‘the prude,’ with the
same galliard story. Perhaps the most frolicksome nights at Leicester
House were when the Princess of Wales was in the card-room, where a
dozen tables were occupied by players, while the Prince, in another
room, gave topazes and amethysts to be raffled for by the maids of
honour, amid fun and laughter, and little astonishment when the prizes
were found to be more or less damaged.

It was a sight for a painter to see these, with other beauties,
leaving Leicester Fields of a morning to hunt with the Prince near
Hampton. Crowds waited to see them return in the evening; and, when
they were fairly housed again and dressed for the evening, lovers
flocked around the young huntresses. Then Mary Bellenden snubbed her
Prince and master, and walked, whispering, with handsome Jack Campbell;
and Molly Lepell blushed and laughed encouragingly at the pleasant
phrases poured into her ear by John, Lord Hervey. There Sophy Bellenden
telegraphed with her fan to Nanty Lowther; and of _their_ love-making
came mischief, sorrow, despair, and death. And there were dark-looking
Lord Lumley and his Orestes, Philip Dormer Stanhope; and dark Lumley
is not stirred to laugh--as the maids of honour do, silently--as
Stanhope follows the Princess to the card-room, imitating her walk
and even her voice. This was the ‘Chesterfield’ who thought himself a
‘gentleman.’ The Princess leans on Lady Cowper’s shoulder and affects
to admire what she really scorns--the rich dress of the beautiful Mary
Wortley Montague. On one of the gay nights in Leicester House, when
the Princess appeared in a dress of Irish silk--a present from ‘the
Irish parson, Swift’--the Prince spoke in such terms of the giver as to
induce Lord Peterborough to remark, ‘Swift has now only to chalk his
pumps and learn to dance on the tightrope, to be yet a bishop.’

The above are a few samples of life in the royal household in Leicester
Square. There, were born, in 1721, the Duke of Cumberland, who was
so unjustly called ‘Butcher’; in 1723, Mary, who married the ‘brute’
Prince of Hesse-Cassel; and in 1724, Louisa, who died--one of the
unhappy English Queens of Denmark.

After the father of these children had become George II., his eldest
son, Frederick, Prince of Wales, established enmity with his sire, and
an opposition court at Leicester House, at Carlton House (which he
occupied at the same time), and at Kew.

Frederick, Prince of Wales, has been the object of heavy censure, and
some of it, no doubt, was well-deserved. But he had good impulses
and good tastes. He loved music, and was no mean instrumentalist. He
manifested his respect for Shakespeare by proposing that the managers
of the two theatres should produce all the great poet’s plays in
chronological order, each play to run for a week. The Prince had some
feeling for art, and was willing to have his judgment regulated by
those competent to subject it to rule.

In June 1749, some tapestry that had belonged to Charles I. was offered
to the Prince for sale. He was then at Carlton House, and he forthwith
sent for Vertue. The engraver obeyed the summons, and on being ushered
into the presence he found a group that might serve for a picture of
_genre_ at any time. The Prince and Princess were at table waiting
for dessert. Their two eldest sons, George and Edward, then handsome
children, stood in waiting, or feigned the service, each with a napkin
on his arm. After they had stood awhile in silence, the Prince said to
them, ‘This is Mr. Vertue. I have many curious works of his, which you
shall see after dinner.’ Carlton House was a store of art treasures.
The Prince, with Luke Schaub in attendance and Vertue accompanying,
went through them all. He spoke much and listened readily, and parted
only to have another art-conference in the following month.

The illustrious couple were then seated in a pavilion, in Carlton House
garden. The Prince showed both knowledge and curiosity with respect to
art; and the party adjourned to Leicester House (Leicester Square),
where Mr. Vertue was shown all the masterpieces, with great affability
on the part of Frederick and his consort. The royal couple soon after
exhibited themselves to the admiring people, through whom they were
carried in two chairs over Leicester Fields back to Carlton House.
Thence the party repaired to Kew, and the engraver, after examining the
pictures, dined at the palace, ‘though,’ he says, ‘being entertained
there at dinner was not customary to any person that came from London.’

During the tenancy of Frederick, Prince of Wales, Leicester House
was the scene of political intrigues and of ordinary private life
occurrences: Carlton House was more for state and entertainment.
Leicester House and Savile House, which had been added to the former,
had their joyous scenes also. The story of the private theatricals
carried on in either mansion has been often told. The actors were, for
the most part, the Prince’s children. He who was afterwards George III.
was among the best of the players, but he had a good master. After his
first public address as king, Quin, proud of his pupil, exclaimed,
‘I taught the boy to speak.’ Some contemporary letter-writers could
scarcely find lofty phrases enough wherewith to praise these little
amateurs. Bubb Doddington, who served the Prince of Wales and lost
his money at play to him (‘I’ve nicked Bubb!’ was the cry of the
royal gambler, when he rose from the Leicester House card-tables with
Bubb’s money in his pocket), Bubb, I say, was not so impressed by the
acting of these boys and girls. He rather endured than enjoyed it.
On January 11, 1750, all that he records in his diary is, ‘Went to
Leicester House to see “Jane Grey” acted by the Prince’s children.’
In the following May, Prince Frederick William was born in Leicester
House, ‘the midwife on the bed with the Princess, and Dr. Wilmot
standing by,’ and a group of ladies at a short distance. The time was
half an hour after midnight. ‘Then the Prince, the ladies, and some of
us,’ says Doddington, ‘sat down to breakfast in the next room--then
went to prayers, downstairs.’ In June the christening took place, in
Leicester House, the Bishop of Oxford officiating. ‘Nobody of either
sex was admitted into the room but the actual servants’ (that is, the
ladies and gentlemen of the household) ‘except Chief Justice Willes
and Sir Luke Schaub.’ Very curious were some of the holiday rejoicings
on this occasion. For example, here is a ‘setting out’ from Leicester
House to make a day of it, on June 28: ‘Lady Middlesex’ (the Prince’s
favourite), ‘Lord Bathurst, Mr. Breton, and I’ (writes Bubb) ‘waited
on their Royal Highnesses to Spitalfields, to see the manufactory of
silk, and to Mr. Carr’s shop, in the morning. In the afternoon the same
company, with Lady Torrington in waiting, went in private coaches to
Norwood Forest, to see a settlement of Gipsies. We returned and went
to Bettesworth, the conjurer, in hackney coaches.... Not finding him
we went in search of the little Dutchman, but were disappointed; and
concluded the particularities of this day by supping with Mrs. Cannon,
the Princess’s midwife.’ Such was the condescension of royalty and
royalty’s servants in the last century!

In March, of the following year, Bubb Doddington went to Leicester
House. The Prince told him he ‘had catched cold’ and ‘had been
blooded.’ It was the beginning of the end. Alternately a little better
and much worse, and then greatly improved, &c., till the night of the
20th. ‘For half an hour before he was very cheerful, asked to see some
of his friends, ate some bread-and-butter and drank coffee.’ He was
‘suffocated’ in a fit of coughing; ‘the breaking of an abscess in his
side destroyed him. His physicians, Wilmot and Lee, knew nothing of his
distemper.... Their ignorance, or their knowledge, of his disorder,
renders them equally inexcusable for not calling in other assistance.’
How meanly this prince was buried, how shabbily everyone, officially
in attendance, was treated, are well known. The only rag of state
ceremony allowed this poor Royal Highness was, that his body went in
one conveyance and his bowels in another--which was a compliment, no
doubt, but hardly one to be thankful for.

The widowed Princess remained in occupation of the mansion in which her
husband had died. One of the pleasantest domestic pictures of Leicester
House is given by Bubb Doddington, under date November 17, 1753:--


     The Princess sent for me to attend her between eight and nine
     o’clock. I went to Leicester House, expecting a small company and
     a little musick, but found nobody but her Royal Highness. She made
     me draw a stool and sit by the fireside. Soon after came in the
     Prince of Wales and Prince Edward, and then the Lady Augusta, all
     in an undress, and took their stools and sat round the fire with
     us. We continued talking of familiar occurrences till between ten
     and eleven, with the ease and unreservedness and unconstraint,
     as if one had dropped into a sister’s house that had a family,
     to pass the evening. It is much to be wished that the Princes
     conversed familiarly with more people of a certain knowledge of
     the world.


The Princess, however, did not want for worldly knowledge. About this
time the Princess Dowager of Wales was sitting pensive and melancholy,
in a room in Leicester House, while the two Princes were playing about
her. Edward then said aloud to George, ‘Brother, when we are men, you
shall marry, and I will keep a mistress.’ ‘Be quiet, Eddy,’ said his
elder brother, ‘we shall have anger presently for your nonsense. There
must be no mistresses at all.’ Their mother thereon bade them, somewhat
sharply, learn their nouns and pronouns. ‘Can you tell me,’ she asked
Prince Edward, ‘what a pronoun is?’ ‘Of course I can,’ replied the
ingenuous youth; ‘a pronoun is to a noun what a mistress is to a
wife--a substitute and a representative.’

The Princess of Wales continued to maintain a sober and dignified
court at Leicester House, and at Carlton House also. She was by no
means forgotten. Young and old rendered her full respect. One of the
most singular processions crossed the Fields in January 1756. Its
object was to pay the homage of a first visit to the court of the
Dowager Princess of Wales at Leicester House--the visitors being a
newly-married young couple, the Hon. Mr. Spencer and the ex-Miss Poyntz
(later Earl and Countess of Spencer). The whole party were contained in
two carriages and a ‘sedan chair.’ Inside the first were Earl Cowper
and the bridegroom. Hanging on from behind were three footmen in state
liveries. In the second carriage were the mother and sister of the
bride, with similar human adornments on the outside as with the first
carriage. Last, and alone, of course, as became her state, in a new
sedan, came the bride, in white and silver, as fine as brocade and
trimming could make it. The chair itself was lined with white satin,
was preceded by a black page, and was followed by three gorgeous
lackeys. Nothing ever was more brilliant than the hundred thousand
pounds’ worth of diamonds worn by the bride except her own tears in
her beautiful eyes when she first saw them and the begging letter of
the lover which accompanied them. As he handed her from the chair,
the bridegroom seemed scarcely less be-diamonded than the bride. His
shoe-buckles alone had those precious stones in them to the value of
thirty thousand pounds. They were decidedly a brilliant pair. Public
homage never failed to be paid to the Princess. In June 1763, Mrs.
Harris writes to her son (afterwards first Lord Malmesbury) at Oxford:
I was yesterday at Leicester House, where there were more people than
I thought had been in town.’ In 1766 Leicester House was occupied by
William Henry, Duke of Cumberland, the last royal resident of that
historical mansion, which was ultimately demolished in the year 1806.

But there were as remarkable inhabitants of other houses as of
Leicester House. In 1733 there came into the square a man about whom
the world more concerns itself than it does about William Henry, and
that man is William Hogarth.

There is no one whom we more readily or more completely identify with
Leicester Square than Hogarth. He was born in the Old Bailey in 1697,
close to old Leicester House, which, in Pennant’s days, was turned
into a coach factory. His father was a schoolmaster, who is, perhaps,
to be recognised in the following curious advertisement of the reign
of Queen Anne; ‘At Hogarth’s Coffee House, in St. John’s Gate, the
midway between Smithfield Bars and Clerkenwell, there will meet daily
some learned gentlemen who speak Latin readily, where any gentleman
that is either skilled in the language, or desirous to perfect himself
in speaking thereof, will be welcome. The Master of the House, in the
absence of others, being always ready to entertain gentlemen in that
language.’ It was in the above Queen’s reign that Hogarth went, bundle
in hand, hope in his heart, and a good deal of sense and nonsense
in his head, to Cranbourne Alley, Leicester Fields, where he was
’prentice bound to Ellis Gamble, the silver-plate engraver. There,
among other and nobler works, Hogarth engraved the metal die for the
first newspaper stamp (‘one halfpenny’) ever known in England. It was
in Little Cranbourne Alley that Hogarth first set up for himself for
a brief time, and left his sisters (it is supposed) to succeed him
there as keepers of a ‘frock shop.’ Hogarth studied in the street, as
Garrick did, and there was no lack of masks and faces in the little
France and royal England of the Leicester Fields vicinity. Much as
Sir James Thornhill disliked his daughter’s marriage with Hogarth, he
helped the young couple to set up house on the east side of Leicester
Fields. Thornhill did not, at first, account his son-in-law a painter.
‘They say he can’t paint,’ said Mrs. Hogarth once. ‘It’s a lie. Look
at that!’ as she pointed to one of his great works. Another day, as
Garrick was leaving the house in the Fields, Ben Ives, Hogarth’s
servant, asked him to step into the parlour. Ben showed David a head
of Diana, done in chalks. The player and Hogarth’s man knew the model.
‘There, Mr. Garrick!’ exclaimed Ives, ‘there’s a head! and yet they
say my master can’t paint a portrait.’ Garrick thought Hogarth had not
succeeded in painting the player’s, whereupon the limner dashed a brush
across the face and turned it against the wall. It never left Leicester
Square till widow Hogarth gave it to widow Garrick.

It was towards the close of Hogarth’s career that James Barry, from
Cork--destined to make his mark in art--caught sight of a bustling,
active, stout little man, dressed in a sky-blue coat, in Cranbourne
Alley, and recognising in him the Hogarth whom he almost worshipped,
followed him down the east side of the square towards Hogarth’s house.
The latter, however, the owner did not enter, for a fight between two
boys was going on at the corner of Castle Street, and Hogarth, who,
like the statesman Windham, loved to see such encounters, whether the
combatants were boys or men, had joined in the fray. When Barry came up
Hogarth was acting ‘second’ to one of the young pugilists, patting him
on the back, and giving such questionable aid in heightening the fray
as he could furnish in such a phrase as, ‘Damn him if I would take it
of him! At him again!’ There is another version, which says that it was
Nollekens who pointed out to Northcote the little man in the sky-blue
coat, with the remark, ‘Look! that’s Hogarth?’

Hogarth seems to have been one of the first to set his face against
the fashion of giving vails to servants by forbidding his own to take
them from guests. In those days, not only guests but those who came
to a house to spend money, were expected to help to pay the wages of
the servants for the performance of a duty which they owed to their
master. It was otherwise with Hogarth in Leicester Square. ‘When I sat
to Hogarth’ (Cole’s MSS. collections, quoted in Cunningham’s ‘London’)
‘the custom of giving vails to servants was not discontinued. On
taking leave of the painter at the door I offered the servant a small
gratuity, but the man very politely refused it, telling me it would
be as much as the loss of his place if his master knew it. This was so
uncommon, and so liberal in a man of Hogarth’s profession at that time
of day, that it much struck me, as nothing of the kind had happened to
me before.’

Leicester Square will ever be connected with Hogarth at the _Golden
Head_. It was not, at his going there, in a flourishing condition,
but it improved. In the year 1735, in Seymour’s ‘Survey,’ Leicester
Fields are described as ‘a very handsome open square, railed about
and gravelled within. The buildings are very good and well inhabited,
and frequented by the gentry. The north and west rows of buildings,
which are in St. Anne’s parish, are the best (and may be said to be so
still), especially the north, where is Leicester House, the seat of the
Earl of Leicester; being a large building with a fair court before it
for the reception of coaches, and a fine garden behind it; the south
and east sides being in the parish of St. Martin’s.’

Next to this house is another large house, built by Portman Seymour,
Esq., which ‘being laid into Leicester House, was inhabited by their
present Majesties’ (George II. and Queen Caroline) ‘when Prince and
Princess of Wales.’ It was then that it was called ‘the pouting place
of princes.’ Lisle Street is then described as coming out of Prince’s
Street, and runs up to Leicester Garden wall. Both Lisle and Leicester
Streets are ‘large and well-built, and inhabited by gentry.’

In 1737 the ‘Country Journal, or Craftsman,’ for April 16, contained
the following acceptable announcement: ‘Leicester Fields is going to be
fitted up in a very elegant manner, a new wall and rails to be erected
all round, and a basin in the middle, after the manner of Lincoln’s Inn
Fields, and to be done by a voluntary subscription of the inhabitants.’

It was to Hogarth’s house Walpole went, in 1761, to see Hogarth’s
picture of Fox. Hogarth said he had promised Fox, if he would only sit
as the painter liked, ‘to make as good a picture as Vandyck or Rubens
could.’ Walpole was silent. ‘Why, now,’ said the painter, ‘you think
this very vain. Why should not a man tell the truth?’ Walpole thought
him mad, but Hogarth was sincere. When, after ridiculing the opinions
of Freke, the anatomist, some one said, ‘But Freke holds you for as
good a portrait-painter as Vandyck,’ ‘There he’s right!’ cried Hogarth.
‘And so, by G----, I am--give me my time, and let me choose my subject.’

If one great object of art be to afford pleasure, Hogarth has attained
it, for he has pleased successive generations. If one great end of art
be to afford instruction, Hogarth has shown himself well qualified,
for he has reached that end; he taught his contemporaries, and he
continues teaching, and will continue to teach, through his works. But
is the instruction worth having? Is the pleasure legitimate, wholesome,
healthy pleasure? Without disparagement to a genius for all that was
great in him and his productions, the reply to these questions may
sometimes be in the negative. The impulses of the painter were not
invariably of noble origin. It is said that the first undoubted sign
he gave of having a master-hand arose from his poor landlady asking
him for a miserable sum which he owed her for rent. In his wrath he
drew her portrait _in caricatura_. Men saw that it was clever, but
vindictive.

There is no foundation for the story which asserts of George II.
that he professed no love for poetry or painting. This king has been
pilloried and pelted, so to speak, with the public contempt for having
an independent, and not unjustifiable, opinion of the celebrated
picture, the ‘March to Finchley.’ Hogarth had the impertinence to ask
permission that he might dedicate the work to the King, and the latter
observed, with some reason, that the fellow deserved to be picketed
for his insolence. When this picture was presented as worthy of royal
patronage, rebellion was afoot and active in the north (1745). The
Guards were sent thither, and Hogarth’s work describes them setting
out on their first stage to Finchley. The whole description or
representation is a gross caricature of the brave men (though they
may have sworn as terribly then as they did in Flanders) whose task
was to save the kingdom from a great impending calamity. All that is
noble is kept out of sight, all that is degrading to the subject,
with some slight exceptions, is forced on the view and memory of the
spectator. It has been urged by way of apology for this clever but
censurable work, that it was not painted at the moment of great popular
excitement, but subsequently. This is nothing to the purpose. What
is to the purpose is, that Hogarth represented British soldiers as a
drunken, skulking, thieving, cowardly horde of ruffians, who must be,
to employ an oft-used phrase, more terrible to their friends than their
enemies. The painter may have been as good a Whig as the King himself,
but he manifested bad taste in asking George II. to show favour to such
a subject; and he exhibited worse taste still in dedicating it to the
king of Prussia, as a patron of the arts. Hogarth was not disloyal,
perhaps, as Wilkes charged him with being, for issuing the print of
this picture, but it is a work that, however far removed from the
political element now, could not have afforded much gratification to
the loyal when it was first exhibited.

Hogarth died in Leicester Square in 1764, and was buried at Chiswick.
There was an artist on the opposite side of the square who saw the
funeral from his window, and who had higher views of art than Hogarth.

Towards the close of Hogarth’s career Joshua Reynolds took possession
of a house on the west side of Leicester Square. In the year in which
George III. ascended the throne (1760) Reynolds set up his famous chair
of state for his patrons in this historical square.

It has been said that Reynolds, in the days of his progressive triumphs
in Leicester Square, thought continually of the glory of his being one
day placed by the side of Vandyck and Rubens, and that he entertained
no envious idea of being better than Hogarth, Gainsborough, and his old
master, Hudson. Reynolds, nevertheless, served all three in much the
same way that Dryden served Shakespeare; namely, he disparaged quite as
extensively as he praised them. Hogarth, on the east side of Leicester
Square, felt no local accession of honour when Reynolds set up his
easel on the western side. The new comer was social; the old settler
‘kept himself to himself,’ as the wise saw has it. ‘Study the works of
the great masters for ever,’ was, we are told, the utterance of Sir
Oracle on the west side. From the east came Hogarth’s utterance, in the
assertion, ‘There is only one school, and Nature is the mistress of
it.’ For Reynolds’s judgment Hogarth had a certain contempt. ‘The most
ignorant people about painting,’ he said to Walpole, ‘are the painters
themselves. There’s Reynolds, who certainly has genius; why, but
t’other day, he offered a hundred pounds for a picture that I would not
hang in my cellar.’ Hogarth undoubtedly qualified his sense with some
nonsense: ‘Talk of sense, and study, and all that; why, it is owing to
the good sense of the English that they have not painted better.’

It was at one of Reynolds’s suppers in the square that an incident took
place which aroused the wit-power of Johnson. The rather plain sister
of the artist had been called upon by the company, after supper, as
the custom was, to give a toast. She hesitated, and was accordingly
required, again according to custom, to give the ugliest man she knew.
In a moment the name of Oliver Goldsmith dropped from her lips, and
immediately a sympathising lady on the opposite side of the table rose
and shook hands with Miss Reynolds across the table. Johnson had heard
the expression, and had also marked the pantomimic performance of
sympathy, and he capped both by a remark which set the table in a roar,
and which was to an effect which cut smartly in three ways. ‘Thus,’
said he, ‘the ancients, on the commencements of their friendships,
used to sacrifice a beast betwixt them.’ The affair ends prettily. A
few days after the ‘Traveller’ was published Johnson read it aloud
from beginning to end to delighted hearers, of whom Miss Reynolds was
one. As Johnson closed the book she emphatically remarked, ‘Well, I
never more shall think Dr. Goldsmith ugly.’ Miss Reynolds, however,
did not get over her idea. Her brother painted the portrait of the
new poet, in the Octagon Room in the Square; the mezzotinto engraving
of it was speedily all over the town. Miss Reynolds (who, it has been
said, used herself to paint portraits with such exact imitation of her
brother’s defects and avoidance of his beauties, that everybody but
himself laughed at them) thought it marvellous that so much dignity
could have been given to the poet’s face and yet so strong a likeness
be conveyed; for ‘Dr. Goldsmith’s cast of countenance,’ she proceeds to
inform us, ‘and indeed his whole figure from head to foot, impressed
every one at first sight with the idea of his being a low mechanic;
particularly, I believe, a journeyman tailor.’ This belief was
founded on what Goldsmith had himself once said. Coming ruffled into
Reynolds’s drawing-room, Goldsmith angrily referred to an insult which
his sensitive nature fancied had been put upon him at a neighbouring
coffee-house, by ‘a fellow who,’ said Goldsmith, ‘took me, I believe,
for a tailor.’ The company laughed more or less demonstratively, and
rather confirmed than dispelled the supposition.

Poor Goldsmith’s weaknesses were a good deal played upon by that not
too polite company. One afternoon, Burke and a young Irish officer,
O’Moore, were crossing the square to Reynolds’s house to dinner. They
passed a group who were gaping at, and making admiring remarks upon,
some samples of beautiful foreign husseydom, who were looking out of
the windows of one of the hotels. Goldsmith was at the skirt of the
group, looking on. Burke said to O’Moore, as they passed him unseen,
‘Look at Goldsmith; by-and-by, at Reynolds’s you will see what I make
of this.’ At the dinner, Burke treated Goldsmith with such coolness,
that Oliver at last asked for an explanation. Burke readily replied
that his manner was owing to the monstrous indiscretion on Goldsmith’s
part, in the square, of which Burke and Mr. O’Moore had been the
witnesses. Poor Goldsmith asked in what way he had been so indiscreet?

‘Why,’ answered Burke, ‘did you not exclaim, on looking up at those
women, what stupid beasts the crowd must be for staring with such
admiration at those _painted Jezebels_, while a man of your talent
passed by unnoticed?’--‘Surely, my dear friend,’ cried Goldsmith,
horror-struck, ‘I did not say so!’--‘If you had not said so,’ retorted
Burke, ‘how should I have known it?’--‘That’s true,’ answered
Goldsmith, with great humility; ‘I am very sorry; it was very foolish!
I do recollect that something of the kind passed through my mind, but
I did not think I had uttered it.’

It is a pity that Sir Joshua never records the names of his own guests;
but his parties were so much swelled by invitations given on the spur
of the moment, that it would have been impossible for him to set down
beforehand more than the nucleus of his scrambling and unceremonious,
but most enjoyable, dinners. Whether the famous Leicester Square
dinners deserved to be called enjoyable, is a question which anyone
may decide for himself, after reading the accounts given of them at
a period when the supervision of Reynolds’s sister, Frances, could
no longer be given to them. The table, made to hold seven or eight,
was often made to hold twice the number. When the guests were at last
packed, the deficiency of knives, forks, plates, and glasses made
itself felt. Everyone called, as he wanted, for bread, wine, or beer,
and lustily, or there was little chance of being served.

There had once, Courtenay says, been sets of decanters and glasses
provided to furnish the table and enable the guests to help themselves.
These had gone the way of all glass, and had not been replaced; but
though the dinner might be careless and inelegant, and the servants
awkward and too few, Courtenay admits that their shortcomings only
enhanced the singular pleasure of the entertainment. The wine, cookery,
and dishes were but little attended to; nor was the fish or venison
ever talked of or recommended. Amidst the convivial, animated bustle
of his guests, Sir Joshua sat perfectly composed; protected partly by
his deafness, partly by his equanimity; always attentive, by help of
his trumpet, to what was said, never minding what was eaten or drunk,
but leaving everyone to scramble for himself. Peers, temporal and
spiritual, statesmen, physicians, lawyers, actors, men of letters,
painters, musicians, made up the motley group, ‘and played their
parts,’ says Courtenay, ‘without dissonance or discord.’ Dinner was
served precisely at five, whether all the company had arrived or
not. Sir Joshua never kept many guests waiting for one, whatever
his rank or consequence. ‘His friends and intimate acquaintance,’
concludes Courtenay, ‘will ever love his memory, and will ever regret
those social hours and the cheerfulness of that irregular, convivial
table, which no one has attempted to revive or imitate, or was indeed
qualified to supply.’

Reynolds had a room in which his copyists, his pupils, and his
drapery-men worked. Among them was one of the cleverest and most
unfortunate of artists. Seldom is the name of Peter Toms now heard, but
he once sat in Hudson’s studio with young Reynolds, and in the studio
of Sir Joshua, as the better artist’s obedient humble servant; that
is to say, he painted his employer’s draperies, and probably a good
deal more, for Toms was a very fair portrait-painter. Peter worked
too for various other great artists, and a purchaser of any picture
of that time cannot be certain whether much of it is not from Toms’s
imitative hand. Peter’s lack of original power did not keep him out of
the Royal Academy, though in his day he was but a second-class artist.
He belonged, too, to the Herald’s Office, as the painters of the Tudor
period often did, and after filling in the canvasses of his masters in
England, he went to Ireland on his own account and in reliance on the
patronage of the Lord-Lieutenant, the Duke of Northumberland. Toms,
however, found that the Irish refused to submit their physiognomies to
his limning, and he waited for them to change their opinion of him in
vain. Finally, he lost heart and hope. His vocation was gone; but in
the London garret within which he took refuge he seems to have given
himself a chance for life or death. Pencil in one hand and razor in
the other, he made an effort to paint a picture, and apparently failed
in accomplishing it, for he swept the razor across his throat, and was
found the next morning stark dead by the side of the work which seems
to have smitten him with despair.

Reynolds saw the ceremony of proclaiming George III. king in front of
Savile House, where the monarch had resided while he was Prince of
Wales. Into his own house came and went, for years, all the lofty
virtues, vices, and rich nothingnesses of Reynolds’s time, to be
painted. From his window he looked with pride on his gaudy carriage
(the Seasons, limned on the panels, were by his own drapery man,
Catton), in which he used to send his sister out for a daily drive.
From the same window he saw Savile House gutted by the ‘No Popery’
rioters of 1780; fire has since swept all that was left of Page’s
house on the north side of the Square; and in 1787 Reynolds looked
on a newcomer to the Fields, Lawrence, afterwards Sir Thomas, who
set up his easel against Sir Joshua’s, but who was not then strong
enough to make such pretence. Some of the most characteristic groups
of those days were to be seen clustered round the itinerant quack
doctors--fellows who lied with a power that Orton, Luie, and even the
‘coachers’ of Luie, might envy. Leicester Square, in Reynolds’s days
alone, would furnish matter for two or three volumes. We have only
space to say further of Sir Joshua, that he died here in 1792, lay in
state in Somerset House, and that as the funeral procession was on its
way to St. Paul’s (with its first part in the Cathedral before the last
part was clear of Somerset House) one of the occupants in one of the
many mourning coaches said to a companion, ‘There is now, sir, a fine
opening for a portrait-painter.’

While Reynolds was ‘glorifying’ the Fields, that is to say, about
the year 1783, John Hunter, the great anatomist, enthroned science in
Leicester Square. His house, nearly opposite Reynolds’s, was next door
to that once occupied by Hogarth, on the east side, but north of the
painter’s dwelling. Hunter was then fifty-five years old. Like his
eminent brother, William, John Hunter had a very respectable amount of
self-appreciation, quite justifiably.

The governing body of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital had failed, through
ignorance or favouritism, to recognise his ability and to reward his
assiduity. But John Hunter was of too noble a spirit to be daunted or
even depressed; and St. George’s Hospital honoured itself by bestowing
on him the modest office of house-surgeon. It was thirty years after
this that John Hunter settled himself in Leicester Square. There he
spent three thousand pounds in the erection of a building in the
rear of his house for the reception of a collection in comparative
anatomy. Before this was completed he spent upon it many thousands
of pounds,--it is said ninety thousand guineas! With him to work was
to live. Dr. Garthshore entered the museum in the Square early one
morning, and found Hunter already busily occupied. ‘Why, John,’ said
the physician, ‘you are always at work!’ ‘I am,’ replied the surgeon;
‘and when I am dead you will not meet very soon with another John
Hunter!’ He accused his great brother William of claiming the merit of
surgical discoveries which John had made; and when a friend, talking
to him, at his door in the Square, on his ‘Treatise on the Teeth,’
remarked that it would be answered by medical men simply to make their
names known, Hunter rather unhandsomely observed: ‘Aye, we have all
of us vermin that live upon us.’ Lavater took correct measure of the
famous surgeon when he remarked, on seeing the portrait of Hunter:
‘That is the portrait of a man who thinks for himself!’

After John Hunter’s death his collection was purchased by Government
for fifteen thousand pounds. It was removed from Leicester Square
to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, to the College of Surgeons, where it still
forms a chief portion of the anatomical and pathological museum in
that institution. The site of the Hunterian Museum in Leicester Square
has been swallowed up by the Alhambra, where less profitable study of
comparative anatomy may now be made by all who are interested in such
pursuit. A similar destiny followed the other Hunterian Museum--that
established by William Hunter, in Great Windmill Street, at the top
of the Haymarket, where he built an amphitheatre and museum, with
a spacious dwelling-house attached. In the dwelling-house Joanna
Baillie passed some of her holiday and early days in London. She came
from her native Scottish heath, and the only open moor like unto it
where she could snatch a semblance of fresh air was the neighbouring
inclosure of Leicester Square! William Hunter left his gigantic and
valuable collection to his nephew, Dr. Baillie, for thirty years, to
pass then to the University of Glasgow, where William himself had
studied divinity, before the results of freedom of thought (both the
Hunters _would_ think for themselves) induced him to turn to the study
of medicine. The Hunterian Museum in Windmill Street, after serving
various purposes, became known as the Argyll Rooms, where human anatomy
(it is believed) was liberally exhibited under magisterial license and
the supervision of a severely moral police.

Leicester Square has been remarkable for its exhibitions. Richardson,
the fire-eater, exhibited privately at Leicester House in 1672. A
century later there was a public exhibition on that spot of quite
another quality. The proprietor was Sir Ashton Lever, a Lancashire
gentleman, educated at Oxford. As a country squire he formed and
possessed the most extensive and beautiful aviary in the kingdom.
Therewith, Sir Ashton collected animals and curiosities from
all quarters of the world. This was the nucleus of the ‘museum’
subsequently brought to Leicester Fields. Among the curiosities was a
striking likeness of George III. ‘cut in cannel coal;’ also Indian-ink
drawings and portraits; baskets of flowers cut in paper, and wonderful
for their accuracy; costumes of all ages and nations, and a collection
of warlike weapons which disgusted a timid beholder, who describes them
in the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ (May 1773) as ‘desperate, diabolical
instruments of destruction, invented, no doubt, by the devil himself.’
Soon after this, this wonderful collection was exhibited in Leicester
House. There was a burst of wonder, as Pennant calls it, for a little
while after the opening; but the ill-cultivated world soon grew
indifferent to being instructed; and Sir Ashton got permission, with
some difficulty, from Parliament, to dispose of the whole collection by
lottery. Sir William Hamilton, Baron Dimsdale, and Mr. Pennant stated
to the Committee of the House of Commons that they had never seen a
collection of such inestimable value. ‘Sir Ashton Lever’s lottery
tickets,’ says an advertisement of January 28, 1785, ‘are now on sale
at Leicester House every day (Sundays excepted), from Nine in the
morning till Six in the evening, at One Guinea each; and as each ticket
will admit four persons, either together or separately, to view the
Museum, no one will hereafter be admitted but by the Lottery Tickets,
excepting those who have already annual admission.’ It is added that
the whole was to be disposed of owing ‘to the very large sum expended
in making it, and not from the deficiency of the daily receipts (as is
generally imagined), which have annually increased; the average amount
for the last three years being 1833_l._ per annum.’ It sounds odd that
a ‘concern’ is got rid of because it was yearly growing more profitable!

Thirty-six thousand guinea-tickets were offered for sale. Only eight
thousand were sold. Of these Mr. Parkinson purchased two, and with
one of those two acquired the whole collection, against the other
purchasers and the twenty-two thousand chances held by Sir Ashton.
Mr. Parkinson built an edifice for his valuable prize in Blackfriars
Road, and for years, one of the things to be done was ‘to go to the
Rotunda.’ In 1806, the famous museum was dispersed by auction. The
Surrey Institution next occupied the premises, which subsequently
became public drinking-rooms and meeting place for tippling patriots,
who would fain destroy the Constitution of England as well as their own.

But ‘man or woman, good my lord,’ let whosoever may be named in
connection with Leicester Square, there is one who must not be omitted,
namely, Miss Linwood. Penelope worked at her needle to no valuable
purpose. Miss Linwood was more like Arachne in her work, and something
better in her fortune. The dyer’s daughter of Colophon chose for her
subjects the various loves of Jupiter with various ladies whom poets
and painters have immortalised; and grew so proud of her work that,
for challenging Minerva to do better, the goddess changed her into a
spider. The Birmingham lady plied her needle from the time she could
hold one till the time her ancient hand lost its cunning. At thirteen
she worked pictures in worsted better than some artists could paint
them. No needlework, ancient or modern, ever equalled (if experts
may be trusted) the work of this lady, who found time to do as much
as if she had not to fulfil, as she did faithfully, the duties of a
boarding-school mistress. King, Queen, Court, and ‘Quality’ generally
visited Savile House, Leicester Fields, where Miss Linwood’s works were
exhibited, and were profitable to the exhibitor to the very last. They
were, for the most part, copies of great pictures by great masters,
modern as well as ancient. Among them was a Carlo Dolci, valued at
three thousand guineas. Miss Linwood, in her later days, retired
to Leicester, but she used to come up annually to look at her own
Exhibition. It had been open about half a century when the lady, in her
ninetieth year, caught cold on her journey, and died of it at Leicester
in 1844. She left her Carlo Dolci to Queen Victoria. Her other works,
sold by auction, barely realised a thousand pounds; but the art of
selling art by auction was not then discovered.

In 1788, a middle-aged Irishman from county Meath, named Robert
Barker, got admission to Reynolds, to show him a half-circle view
from the Calton Hill, near Edinburgh, which Barker had painted in
water-colours on the spot. The poor but accomplished artist had been
unsuccessful as a portrait-painter in Dublin and Edinburgh. But he
had studied perspective closely, an idea had struck him, and he came
with it to Reynolds. The latter admired, but thought it impracticable.
The Irishman thought otherwise. Barker exhibited circular views
from nature, in London and also in the provinces, with indifferent
success. At last, in 1793, on part of the old site of Leicester House,
a building arose which was called the Panorama, and in which was
exhibited a view of the Russian fleet at Spithead. The spectator was
on board a ship in the midst of the scene and the view was all around
him. King George and Queen Charlotte led the fashionable world to
this most original exhibition. For many years there was a succession
of magnificent views of foreign capitals, tracts of country, ancient
cities, polar regions, battles, &c., exhibited; and ‘Have you been to
the new panorama?’ was as naturally a spring question as ‘Have you been
to the Academy?’ or the Opera? The exhibition of the ‘Stern Realities
of Waterloo’ alone realised a little fortune, and ‘Pandemonium,’
painted by Mr. Henry Selous, was one of the latest of the great
successes.

At the north-east corner of Leicester Square, the Barkers, father and
son, achieved what is called ‘a handsome competency.’ At the death of
the latter, Robert Burford succeeded him, and, for a time, did well;
but ‘Fashion’ wanted a new sensation. The panoramas in Leicester Square
and the Strand, admirable as they were, ceased to draw the public;
and courteous, lady-like, little Miss Burford, the proprietress, was
compelled to withdraw, utterly shipwrecked. She used to receive her
visitors like a true lady welcoming thorough ladies and gentlemen. The
end was sad indeed, for the last heard of this aged gentlewoman was
that she was enduring life by needle-work, rarely got and scantily
paid, in a lodging, the modest rent of which, duly paid, kept her short
of necessary food. An attempt was made to obtain her election to the
‘United Kingdom Beneficent Association,’ but with what result we are
unable to record.

Shadows of old Leicester Square figures come up in crowds, demanding
recognition. They must be allowed to pass--to make a ‘march past,’ as
it were; as they glide by we take note of Mirabeau and Marat, Holcroft,
Opie, Edmund Kean, and Mulready, with countless others, to indite the
roll of whose names only would alone require a volume.




_A HUNDRED YEARS AGO._


Perusing records that are a century old is something better than
listening to a centenarian, even if his memory could go back so far.
The records are as fresh as first impressions, and they bring before us
men and things as they were, not as after-historians supposed them to
be.

The story which 1773 has left of itself is full of variety and of
interest. Fashion fluttered the propriety of Scotland when the old
Dowager Countess of Fife gave the first masquerade that ever took place
in that country, at Duff House. In England, people and papers could
talk or write of nothing so frequently as masquerades. ‘One hears so
much of them,’ remarked that lively old lady, Mrs. Delany, ‘that I
suppose the only method not to be tired of them is to frequent them.’
Old-fashioned loyalty in England was still more shocked when the Lord
Mayor of London declined to go to St. Paul’s on the 30th of January to
profess himself sad and sorry at the martyrdom of Charles I. In the
minds of certain religious people there was satisfaction felt at the
course taken by the University of Oxford, which refused to modify
the Thirty-nine Articles, as more liberal Cambridge had done. Indeed,
such Liberalism as that of the latter, prepared ultra-serious people
for awful consequences; and when they heard that Moelfammo, an extinct
volcano in Flintshire, had resumed business, and was beginning to pelt
the air with red-hot stones, they naturally thought that the end of
a wicked world was at hand. They took courage again when the Commons
refused to dispense with subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles, by
a vote of 150 to 64. But no sooner was joy descending on the one hand
than terror advanced on the other. Quid-nuncs asked whither the world
was driving, when the London livery proclaimed the reasonableness of
annual parliaments. Common-sense people also were perplexed at the
famous parliamentary resolution that Lord Clive had wrongfully taken to
himself above a quarter of a million of money, and had rendered signal
services to his country!

Again, a hundred years ago our ancestors were as glad to hear that
Bruce had got safely back into Egypt from his attempt to reach the Nile
sources, as we were to know that Livingstone was alive and well and in
search of those still undiscovered head-waters. A century ago, too,
crowds of well-wishers bade God speed to the gallant Captain Phipps,
as he sailed from the Nore on his way to that North-west Passage
which he did not find, and which, at the close of a hundred years, is
as impracticable as ever. And, though history may or may not repeat
itself, events of to-day at least remind us of those a hundred years
old. The Protestant Emperor William, in politely squeezing the Jesuits
out of his dominions, only modestly follows the example of Pope Clement
XIV., who, in 1773, let loose a bull for the entire suppression of
the order in every part of the world. Let us not forget too, that if
orthodox ruffians burnt Priestley’s house over his head, and would have
smashed all power of thought out of that head itself, the Royal Society
conferred on the great philosopher who was the brutally treated pioneer
of modern science, the Copley Medal, for his admirable treatise on
different kinds of air.

But there was a little incident of the year 1773, which has had more
stupendous consequences than any other with which England has been
connected. England, through some of her statesmen, asserted her right
to tax her colonists, without asking their consent or allowing them to
be represented in the home legislature. In illustration of such right
and her determination to maintain it, England sent out certain ships
with cargoes of tea, on which a small duty was imposed, to be paid by
the colonists. The latter declined to have the wholesome herb at such
terms, but England forced it upon them. Three ships, so freighted,
entered Boston Harbour. They were boarded by a mob disguised as Mohawk
Indians, who tossed the tea into the river and then quietly dispersed.
A similar cargo was safely landed at New York, but it was under the
guns of a convoying man-of-war. When landed it could not be disposed
of, except by keeping it under lock-and-key, with a strong guard over
it, to preserve it from the patriots who scorned the cups that cheer,
if they were unduly taxed for the luxury. That was the little seed out
of which has grown that Union whose President now is more absolute
and despotic than poor George III. ever was or cared to be; little
seed, which is losing its first wholesomeness, and, if we may trust
transatlantic papers, is grown to a baleful tree, corrupt to the core
and corrupting all around it. Such at least is the American view--the
view of good and patriotic Americans, who would fain work sound reform
in this condition of things at the end of an eventful century, when
John Bull is made to feel, by Geneva and San Juan, that he will never
have any chance of having the best argument in an arbitration case,
where he is opposed by a system which looks on sharpness as a virtue,
and holds that nothing succeeds like success.

Let us get back from this subject to the English court of a century
since. A new year’s day at court was in the last century a gala day,
which made London tradesmen rejoice. There were some extraordinary
figures at that of 1773, at St. James’s, but no one looked so much
out of ordinary fashion as Lord Villiers. His coat was of pale purple
velvet turned up with lemon colour, ‘and embroidered all over’ (says
Mrs. Delany) ‘with SSes of pearl as big as peas, and in all the spaces
little medallions in beaten gold--_real solid_! in various figures of
Cupids _and the like_!’

The court troubles of the year were not insignificant; but the good
people below stairs had their share of them. If the King continued to
be vexed at the marriages of his brothers Gloucester and Cumberland
with English ladies, the King’s servants had sorrows of their own.
The newspapers stated that ‘the wages of his Majesty’s servants were
miserably in arrear; that their families were consequently distressed,
and that there was great clamour for payment.’ The court was never more
bitterly satirised than in some lines put in circulation (as Colley
Cibber’s) soon after Lord Chesterfield’s death, to whom they were
generally ascribed. They were written before the decease of Frederick,
Prince of Wales. The laureate was made to say--


     Colley Cibber, right or wrong,
       Must celebrate this day,
     And tune once more his tuneless song
       And strum the venal lay.

     Heav’n spread through all the family
       That broad, illustrious glare,
     That shines so flat in every eye
       And makes them all so stare!

     Heav’n send the Prince of royal race
       A little coach and horse,
     A little meaning in his face,
       And money in his purse.

     And, as I have a son like yours,
       May he Parnassus rule.
     So shall the crown and laurel too
       Descend from fool to fool.


Satire was, indeed, quite as rough in prose as it was sharp in song.
One of the boldest paragraphs ever penned by paragraph writers of the
time appeared in the ‘Public Advertiser’ in the summer of 1773. A
statue of the King had been erected in Berkeley Square. The discovery
was soon made that the King himself had paid for it. Accordingly, the
‘Public Advertiser’ audaciously informed him that he had paid for his
statue, because he well knew that none would ever be spontaneously
erected in his honour by posterity. The ‘Advertiser’ further advised
George III. to build his own mausoleum for the same reason.

And what were ‘the quality’ about in 1773? There was Lord Hertford
exclaiming, ‘By Jove!’ because he objected to swearing. Ladies
were dancing ‘Cossack’ dances, and gentlemen figured at balls in
black coats, red waistcoats, and red sashes, or quadrilled with
nymphs in white satin--themselves radiant in brown silk coat, with
cherry-coloured waistcoat and breeches. Beaux who could not dance took
to cards, and the Duke of Northumberland lost two thousand pounds at
quince before half a dancing night had come to an end. There was Sir
John Dalrymple winning money more disastrously than the duke lost it.
He was a man who inveighed against corruption, and who took bribes from
brewers. Costume balls were in favour at court, Chesterfield was making
jokes to the very door of his coffin; and he was not the only patron
of the arts who bought a Claude Lorraine painted within the preceding
half-year. The macaronies, having left off gaming--they had lost all
their money--astonished the town by their new dresses and the size
of their nosegays. Poor George III. could not look admiringly at the
beautiful Miss Linley at an oratorio, without being accused of ogling
her. It was at one of the King’s balls that Mrs. Hobart figured, ‘all
gauze and spangles, like a spangle pudding.’ This was the expensive
year when noblemen are said to have made romances instead of giving
balls. The interiors of their mansions were transformed, walls were
cast down, new rooms were built, the decorations were superb (three
hundred pounds was the sum asked only for the loan of mirrors for a
single night), and not only were the dancers in the most gorgeous of
historical or fancy costumes, but the musicians wore scarlet robes,
and looked like Venetian senators on the stage. It was at one of these
balls that Harry Conway was so astonished at the agility of Mrs.
Hobart’s bulk that he said he was sure she must be hollow.

She would not have been more effeminate than some of our young
legislators in the Commons, who, one night in May, ‘because the House
was very hot, and the young members thought it would melt their rouge
and wither their nosegays,’ as Walpole says, all of a sudden voted
against their own previously formed opinions. India and Lord Clive were
the subjects, and the letter-writer remarks that the Commons ‘being so
fickle, Lord Clive has reason to hope that after they have voted his
head off they will vote it on again the day after he has lost it.’

When there were members in the Commons who rouged like pert girls or
old women, and carried nosegays as huge as a lady mayoress’s at a City
ball, we are not surprised to hear of macaronies in Kensington Gardens.
There they ran races on every Sunday evening, ‘to the high amusement
and contempt of the mob,’ says Walpole. The mob had to look at the
runners from outside the gardens. ‘They will be ambitious of being
fashionable, and will run races too.’ Neither mob nor macaronies had
the swiftness of foot or the lasting powers of some of the running
footmen attached to noble houses. Dukes would run matches of their
footmen from London to York, and a fellow has been known to die rather
than that ‘his grace’ who owned him should lose the match. Talking of
‘graces,’ an incident is told by Walpole of the cost of a bed for a
night’s sleep for a duchess, which may well excite a little wonder now.
The king and court were at Portsmouth to review the fleet. The town
held so many more visitors than it could accommodate that the richest
of course secured the accommodation. ‘The Duchess of Northumberland
gives forty guineas for a bed, and must take her chambermaid into
it.’ Walpole, who is writing to the Countess of Ossory, adds: ‘I did
not think she would pay so dear for _such_ company.’ The people who
were unable to pay ran recklessly into debt, and no more thought of
the sufferings of those to whom they owed the money than that modern
rascalry in clean linen, who compound with their creditors and scarcely
think of paying their ‘composition.’ A great deal of nonsense has been
talked about the virtues of Charles James Fox, who had none but such as
may be found in easy temper and self-indulgence. He was now in debt to
the tune of a hundred thousand pounds. But so once was Julius Cæsar,
with whom Walpole satirically compared him. He let his securities, his
bondsmen, pay the money which they had warranted would be forthcoming
from him, ‘while he, as like Brutus as Cæsar, is indifferent about such
paltry counters.’ When one sees the vulgar people who by some means or
other, and generally by any means, accumulate fortunes the sum total
of which would once have seemed fabulous, and when we see fortunes
of old aristocratic families squandered away among the villains of
the most villainous ‘turf,’ there is nothing strange in what we read
in a letter of a hundred years ago, namely: ‘What is England now? A
sink of Indian wealth! filled by nabobs and emptied by macaronies; a
country over-run by horse-races.’ So London at the end of July now is
not unlike to London of 1773; but we could not match the latter with
such a street picture as the following: ‘There is scarce a soul in
London but macaronies lolling out of windows at Almack’s, like carpets
to be dusted.’ With the more modern parts of material London Walpole
was ill satisfied. _We_ look upon Adam’s work with some complacency,
but Walpole exclaims, ‘What are the Adelphi buildings?’ and he
replies, ‘Warehouses laced down the seams, like a soldier’s trull in a
regimental old coat!’ Mason could not bear the building brothers. ‘Was
there ever such a brace,’ he asks, ‘of self-puffing Scotch coxcombs?’
The coxcombical vein was, nevertheless, rather the fashionable one.
Fancy a nobleman’s postillions in white jackets trimmed with muslin,
and clean ones every other day! In such guise were Lord Egmont’s
postillions to be seen.

The chronicle of fashion is dazzling with the record of the doings of
the celebrated Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu. At her house in Hill Street,
Berkeley Square, were held the assemblies which were scornfully called
‘blue-stocking’ by those who were not invited, or who affected not to
care for them if they _were_. Mrs. Delany, who certainly had a great
regard for this ‘lady of the last century,’ has a sly hit at Mrs.
Montagu in a letter of May 1773. ‘If,’ she writes, ‘I had paper and
time, I could entertain you with Mrs. Montagu’s room of Cupidons, which
was opened with an assembly for all the foreigners, the literati, and
the macaronies of the present age. Many and sly are the observations
how such a _genius_, at her age and so circumstanced, could think
of painting the walls of her dressing-room with bowers of roses and
jessamine, entirely inhabited by little Cupids in all their little
wanton ways. It is astonishing, unless she looks upon herself as the
wife of old Vulcan, and mother to all those little Loves!’ This is a
sister woman’s testimony of a friend! The _genius_ of Mrs. Montagu was
of a higher class than that of dull but good Mrs. Delany. The _age_ of
the same lady was a little over fifty, when she might fittingly queen
it, as she did, in her splendid mansion in Hill Street, the scene of
the glories of her best days. The ‘circumstances’ and the ‘Vulcan’ were
allusions to her being the wife of a noble owner of collieries and a
celebrated mathematician, who suffered from continued ill-health, and
who considerately went to bed at _five_ o’clock P.M. daily!

The great subject of the year, after all, was the duping of Charles
Fox, by the impostor who called herself the Hon. Mrs. Grieve. She
had been transported, and after her return had set up as ‘a sensible
woman,’ giving advice to fools, ‘for a consideration.’ A silly Quaker
brought her before Justice Fielding for having defrauded him. He
had paid her money, for which she had undertaken to get him a place
under government; but she had kept the money, and had not procured
for him the coveted place. Her impudent defence was that the Quaker’s
immorality stood in the way of otherwise certain success. The
Honourable lady’s dupes believed in her, because they saw the style
in which she lived, and often beheld her descend from her chariot
and enter the houses of ministers and other great personages; but it
came out that she only spoke to the porters or to other servants, who
entertained her idle questions, for a gratuity, while Mrs. Grieve’s
carriage, and various dupes, waited for her in the street. When these
dupes, however, saw Charles Fox’s chariot at Mrs. Grieve’s door,
and that gentleman himself entering the house--not issuing therefrom
till a considerable period had elapsed--they were confirmed in their
credulity. But the clever hussey was deluding the popular tribune in
the house, and keeping his chariot at her door, to further delude the
idiots who were taken in by it. The patriot was in a rather common
condition of patriots; he was over head and ears in debt. The lady
had undertaken to procure for him the hand of a West Indian heiress,
a Miss Phipps, with 80,000_l._, a sum that might soften the hearts of
his creditors for a while. The young lady (whom ‘the Hon.’ never saw)
was described as a little capricious. She could not abide dark men, and
the swart democratic leader powdered his eyebrows that he might look
fairer in the eyes of the lady of his hopes. An interview between them
was always on the point of happening, but was always being deferred.
Miss Phipps was ill, was coy, was not ‘i’ the vein’; finally she had
the smallpox, which was as imaginary as the other grounds of excuse.
Meanwhile Mrs. Grieve lent the impecunious legislator money, 300_l._
or thereabouts. She was well paid, not by Fox, of course, but by the
more vulgar dupes who came to false conclusions when they beheld his
carriage, day after day, at the Hon. Mrs. Grieve’s door. The late
Lord Holland expressed his belief that the loan from Mrs. Grieve was
a foolish and improbable story. ‘I have heard Fox say,’ Lord Holland
remarks in the ‘Memorials and Correspondence of Fox,’ edited by Lord
John (afterwards Earl) Russell, ‘she never got or asked any money from
him.’ She probably knew very well that Fox had none to lend. That he
should have accepted any from such a woman is disgraceful enough: but
there may be exaggeration in the matter.

Fox--it is due to him to note the fact here--had yet hardly begun
seriously and earnestly his career as a public man. At the close of
1773 he was sowing his wild oats. He ended the year with the study of
two widely different dramatic parts, which he was to act on a private
stage. Those parts were Lothario, in ‘The Fair Penitent,’ and Sir
Harry’s servant, in ‘High Life below Stairs.’ The stage on which the
two pieces were acted, by men scarcely inferior to Fox himself in rank
and ability, was at Winterslow House, near Salisbury, the seat of the
Hon. Stephen Fox. The night of representation closed the Christmas
holidays of 1773-4. It was Saturday, January 8, 1774. Fox played the
gallant gay Lothario brilliantly; the livery servant in the kitchen,
aping his master’s manners, was acted with abundant low humour, free
from vulgarity. But, whether there was incautious management during the
piece, or incautious revelry after it, the fine old house was burned
to the ground before the morning. It was then that Fox turned more than
before to public business; but without giving up any of his private
enjoyments, except those he did not care for.

The duels of this year which gave rise to the most gossip were, first,
that between Lord Bellamont and Lord Townshend, and next the one
between Messrs. Temple and Whately. The two lords fought (after some
shifting on Townshend’s side) on a quarrel arising from a refusal of
Lord Townshend, in Dublin, to receive Bellamont. The offended lord was
badly shot in the stomach, and a wit (so called) penned this epigram on
the luckier adversary:--


     Says Bell’mont to Townshend, ‘You turned on your heel,
       And that gave your honour a check.’
     ‘’Tis my way,’ replied Townshend. ‘To the world I appeal,
       If I didn’t the same at Quebec.’


Townshend, at Quebec, had succeeded to the command after Monckton was
wounded, and he declined to renew the conflict with De Bougainville.
The duel between Temple and Whately arose out of extraordinary
circumstances. There were in the British Foreign Office letters from
English and also from American officials in the transatlantic colony,
which advised coercion on the part of our government as the proper
course to be pursued for the successful administration of that colony.
Benjamin Franklin was then in England, and hearing of these letters,
had a strong desire to procure them, in order to publish them in
America, to the confusion of the writers. The papers were the property
of the British Government, from whom it is hardly too much to say that
they must have been stolen. At all events, an agent of Franklin’s,
named Hugh Williamson, is described as having got them for Franklin
‘by an ingenious device,’ which seems to be a very euphemistic phrase.
The letters had been originally addressed to Whately, secretary to
the Treasury, who, in 1773, was dead. The ingenious device by which
they were abstracted was reported to have been made with the knowledge
of Temple, who had been lieutenant-governor of New Hampshire. The
excitement caused by their publication led to a duel between Temple
and a brother of Whately, in whose hands the letters had never been,
and poor Whately was dangerously wounded, to save the honour of the
ex-lieutenant-governor. The publication of these letters was as
unjustifiable as the ingenious device by which they were conveyed from
their rightful owners. It caused as painful a sensation as any one of
the many painful incidents in the Geneva Arbitration affair, namely,
when--it being a point of honour that neither party should publish a
statement of their case till a judgment had been pronounced--the case
made out by the United States counsel was to be bought, before the
tribunal was opened, as easily as if it had been a ‘last dying speech
and confession!’

In literature Andrew Stewart’s promised ‘Letters to Lord Mansfield’
excited universal curiosity. In that work Stewart treated the chief
justice as those Chinese executioners do their patients whose skin they
politely and tenderly brush away with wire brushes till nothing is left
of the victim but a skeleton. It was a luxury to Walpole to see a Scot
dissect a Scot. ‘They know each other’s sore places better than we
do.’ The work, however, was not published. Referring to Macpherson’s
‘Ossian,’ Walpole remarked, ‘The Scotch seem to be proving that they
are really descended from the Irish.’ On the other hand, the ‘Heroic
Epistle to Sir William Chambers’ was being relished by satirical minds,
and men were attributing it to Anstey and Soame Jenyns, and to Temple,
Luttrell, and Horace Walpole, and pronouncing it wittier than the
‘Dunciad,’ and did not know that it was Mason’s, and that it would not
outlive Pope. Sir William Chambers found consolation in the fact that
the satire, instead of damaging the volume it condemned, increased the
sale of the book by full three hundred volumes. Walpole, of course,
knew from the first that Mason was the author; he worked hard in
promoting its circulation, and gloried in its success. ‘Whenever I was
asked,’ he writes, ‘have you read “Sir John Dalrymple?” I replied,
“Have _you_ read the ‘Heroic Epistle’?” The _Elephant_ and _Ass_ have
become constellations, and ‘_He has stolen the Earl of Denbigh’s
handkerchief_,’ is the proverb in fashion. It is something surprising
to find, at a time when authors are supposed to have been ill paid,
Dr. Hawkesworth receiving, for putting together the narrative of Mr.
Banks’s voyage, one thousand pounds in advance from the traveller,
and six thousand from the publishers, Strahan & Co. It really seems
incredible, but this is stated to have been the fact.

Then, the drama of 1773! There was Home’s ‘Alonzo,’ which, said
Walpole, ‘seems to be the story of David and Goliath, worse told than
it would have been if Sternhold and Hopkins had put it to music!’
But the town really awoke to a new sensation when Goldsmith’s ‘She
Stoops to Conquer’ was produced on the stage, beginning a course in
which it runs as freshly now as ever. Yet the hyper-fine people of a
hundred years ago thought it rather vulgar. This was as absurd as the
then existing prejudice in France, that it was vulgar and altogether
wrong for a nobleman to write a book, or rather, to publish one!
There is nothing more curious than Walpole’s drawing-room criticism
of this exquisite and natural comedy. He calls it ‘the lowest of all
farces.’ He condemns the execution of the subject, rather than the
‘very vulgar’ subject itself. He could see in it neither moral nor
edification. He allows that the situations are well managed, and make
one laugh, in spite of the alleged grossness of the dialogue, the
forced witticisms, and improbability of the whole plan and conduct.
But, he adds, ‘what disgusts one most is, that though the characters
are very low, and aim at low humour, not one of them says a sentence
that is natural, or that marks any character at all. It is set up in
opposition to sentimental comedy, and is as bad as the worst of them.’
Walpole’s supercilious censure reminds one of the company and of the
dancing bear, alluded to in the scene over which Tony Lumpkin presides
at the village alehouse. ‘I loves to hear the squire’ (Lumpkin) ‘sing,’
says one fellow, ‘bekase he never gives us anything that’s low!’ To
which expression of good taste, an equally _nice_ fellow responds;
‘Oh, damn anything that’s low! I can’t bear it!’ Whereupon, the
philosophical Mister Muggins very truly remarks: ‘The genteel thing
is the genteel thing at any time, if so be that a gentleman bees in a
concatenation accordingly.’ The humour culminates in the rejoinder of
the bear-ward: ‘I like the maxim of it, Master Muggins. What though I’m
obligated to dance a bear? A man may be a gentleman for all that. May
this be my poison if my bear ever dances but to the very genteelest of
tunes--“Water parted,” or the minuet in “Ariadne”.’ All this is low,
in one sense, but it is far more full of humour than of vulgarity. The
comedy of nature killed the sentimental comedies, which, for the most
part, were as good (or as bad) as sermons. They strutted or staggered
with sentiments on stilts, and were duller than tables of uninteresting
statistics.

Garrick, who would have nothing to do with Goldsmith’s comedy except
giving it a prologue, was ‘in shadow’ this year. He improved ‘Hamlet,’
by leaving out the gravediggers; and he swamped the theatre with the
‘Portsmouth Review.’ He went so far as to rewrite ‘The Fair Quaker of
Deal,’ to the tune of ‘Portsmouth and King George for ever!’ not to
mention a preface, in which the Earl of Sandwich, by name, is preferred
to Drake, Blake, and all the admirals that ever existed! If Walpole’s
criticisms are not always just, they are occasionally admirable for
terseness and correctness alike. London, in 1773, was in raptures with
the singing of Cecilia Davies. Walpole quaintly said that he did not
love the perfection of what anybody can do, and he wished ‘she had
less top to her voice and more bottom.’ How good too is his sketch of
a male singer, who ‘sprains his mouth with smiling on himself!’ But to
return to Garrick, and an illustration of social manners a century ago,
we must not omit to mention that, at a private party--at Beauclerk’s,
Garrick played the ‘short-armed orator’ with Goldsmith! The latter
sat in Garrick’s lap, concealing him, but with Garrick’s arms advanced
under Goldsmith’s shoulders; the arms of the latter being held behind
his back. Goldsmith then spoke a speech from ‘Cato,’ while Garrick’s
shortened arms supplied the action. The effect, of course, was
ridiculous enough to excite laughter, as the action was often in absurd
diversity from the utterance.

In the present newspaper record of births a man’s wife is no longer
called his ‘lady;’ a hundred years ago there was plentiful variety
of epithet. ‘The Princess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, spouse to the
Prince of that name, of a Princess,’ is one form. ‘Earl Tyrconnel’s
lady of a child,’ is another. ‘Wife’ was seldom used. One birth is
announced in the following words: ‘The Duchess of Chartres, at Paris,
of a Prince who has the title of Duke of Valois.’ Duke of Valois? ay,
and subsequently Duke of Chartres, Duke of Orléans, finally, Louis
Philippe, King of the French!

The chronicle of the marriages of the year seems to have been loosely
kept, unless indeed parties announced themselves by being married twice
over. There is, for example, a double chronicling of the marriage
of the following personages: ‘July 31st. The Right Hon. the Lady
Amelia D’Arcy, daughter of the Earl of Holdernesse, to the Marquis of
Carmarthen, son of his Grace the Duke of Leeds. Lady Amelia having
thus married my Lord in July, we find, four months later, my Lord
marrying Lady Amelia. ‘Nov. 29th. The Marquis of Carmarthen to Lady
Amelia D’Arcy, daughter of the Earl of Holdernesse.’ This union, with
its double chronology, was one of several which was followed by great
scandal, and dissolved under circumstances of great disgrace. But the
utmost scandal and disgrace attended the breaking up of the married
life of Lord and Lady Carmarthen. This dismal domestic romance is told
in contemporary pamphlets with a dramatic completeness of detail which
is absolutely startling. Those who are fond of such details may consult
these liberal authorities: we will only add that the above Lady Amelia
D’Arcy, Marchioness of Carmarthen, became the wife of Captain Byron;
the daughter of that marriage was Augusta, now better known to us as
Mrs. Leigh. Captain Byron’s second wife was Miss Gordon, of Gight,
and the son of that marriage was the poet Byron. How the names of the
half-brother and half-sister have been cruelly conjoined, there is here
no necessity of narrating. Let us turn to smaller people. Thus, we
read of a curious way of endowing a bride, in the following marriage
announcement: ‘April 13th. Rev. Mr. Morgan, Rector of Alphamstow, York,
to Miss Tindall, daughter of Mr. Tindall, late rector, who resigned in
favour of his son-in-law.’ In the same month, we meet with a better
known couple--‘Mr. Sheridan, of the Temple, to the celebrated Miss
Linley, of Bath.’

The deaths of the year included, of course, men of very opposite
qualities. The man of finest quality who went the inevitable way was he
whom some call the _good_, and some the _great_ Lord Lyttelton. When a
man’s designation rests on two such distinctions, we may take it for
granted that he was not a common-place man. And yet how little remains
of him in the public memory. His literary works are fossils; but, like
fossils, they are not without considerable value. Good as he was, there
are not a few people who jumble together his and his son’s identity.
The latter was unworthy of his sire. He was a disreputable person
altogether.

Lord Chesterfield was another of the individuals of note whose glass
ran out during this year. He was always protesting that he cared
nothing for death. Such persistence of protest generally arises from
a feeling contrary to that which is made the subject of protest. This
lord (as we have said) jested to the very door of his tomb. That must
have reminded his friends during those Tyburn days, how convicts on
their way up Holborn Hill to the gallows used to veil their terror
by cutting jokes with the crowd. It was the very Chesterfield of
highwaymen, who, going up the Hill in the fatal cart, and observing
the mob to be hastening onwards, cried out, ‘It’s no use your being
in such a hurry; there’ll be no fun till I get there!’ This was the
Chesterfield style, and its spirit also. But behind it all was the
feeling and conviction of Marmontel’s philosopher, who having railed
through a long holiday excursion, till he was thoroughly tired, was of
opinion, as he tucked himself up in a featherbed at night, that life
and luxury were, after all, rather pretty things.

Chesterfield was, nevertheless, much more of a man than his fellow
peer who crossed the Stygian ferry in the same year, namely, the
Duke of Kingston. The duke had been one of the handsomest men of his
time, and, like a good many handsome men, was a considerable fool. He
allowed himself, at all events, to be made the fool, and to become
the slave, of the famous Miss Chudleigh--as audacious as she was
beautiful. The lady, whom the law took it into its head to look upon
as _not_ the duke’s duchess--that is, not his wife--was resigned to
her great loss by the feeling of her great gain. She was familiar
with her lord’s last will and testament, and went into hysterics to
conceal her satisfaction. She saw his grace out of the world with
infinite ceremony. To be sure, it was nothing else. The physicians whom
she called together in consultation _consulted_, no doubt, and then
whispered to their lady friends, while holding their delicate pulses,
‘Mere ceremony, upon my honour!’ The widow kept the display of grief
up to the last. When she brought the ducal corpse up from Bath to
London, she rested often by the way. If she could have carried out her
caprices, she would have had as many crosses to mark the ducal stations
of death as were erected to commemorate the passing of Queen Eleanor.
As this could not be, the widow took to screaming at every turn of
the road, and at night was carried into her inn kicking her heels and
screaming at the top of her voice.

Among the other deaths of the year 1773, the following are noteworthy.
At Vienna, of a broken heart, from the miseries of his country, the
brave Prince Poniatowski, brother to the King of Poland, and a general
in the Austrian service, in which he had been greatly distinguished
during the last war. The partition of Poland was then only a year old,
and the echoes of the assertions of the lying Czar, Emperor, and King,
that they never intended to lay a finger on that ancient kingdom,
had hardly died out of the hearing of the astounded world. England
is always trusting the words of Czars and their Khiva protestations,
always learning and never coming to the knowledge of the truth. A name
less known than Poniatowski may be cited for the singularity attached
to it. ‘Hale Hartson, Esq., the author of the “Countess of Salisbury”
and other ingenious pieces--a young gentleman of fine parts, and
who, though very young, had made the tour of Europe three times.’ An
indication of what a fashionable quarter Soho, with its neighbourhood,
was in 1773, is furnished by the following announcement: ‘Suddenly,
at her house in Lisle Street, Leicester Fields, Lady Sophia Thomas,
sister of the late Earl of Albemarle, and aunt of the present.’ Foreign
ambassadors then dwelt in Lisle Street. Even dukes had their houses
in the same district; and baronets lived and died in Red Lion Square
and in Cornhill. Among those baronets an eccentric individual turned
up now and then. In the obituary is the name of Sir Robert Price, of
whom it is added that ‘he left his fortune to seven old bachelors in
indigent circumstances.’ The death of one individual is very curtly
recorded; all the virtues under heaven would have been assigned to her,
had she not belonged to a vanquished party. In that case she would have
been a high and mighty princess; as it was, we only read, ‘Lately,
Lady Annabella Stuart, a relation of the late royal family, aged
ninety-one years, at St.-Omer.’ A few of us are better acquainted with
the poet, John Cunningham, whose decease is thus quaintly chronicled:
‘At Newcastle, the ingenious Mr. John Cunningham. A man little known,
but that will be always much admired for his plaintive, tender, and
natural pastoral poetry.’ Some of the departed personages seem to have
held strange appointments. Thus we find Alexander, Earl of Galloway,
described as ‘one of the lords of police;’ and Willes, Bishop of Bath
and Wells, who died in Hill Street when Mrs. Montague and her blue
stockings were in their greatest brilliancy, is described as ‘joint
Decypherer (with his son, Edward Willes, Esq.) to the king.’ We
believe that the duty of decypherer consisted in reading letters that
were opened, on suspicion, in their passage through the post-office.
Occasionally a little page of family history is opened to us in a few
words, as, for instance, in the account of Sir Robert Ladbroke, a rich
City knight, whose name is attached to streets, roads, groves, and
terraces in Notting Hill. After narrating his disposal of his wealth
among his children and charities, the chronicler states that ‘To his
son George, who sailed a short time since to the West Indies, he has
bequeathed three guineas a week during life, to be paid only to his own
receipt.’ One would like to know if this all but disinherited young
fellow took heart of grace, and, after all, made his way creditably in
the world. Such sons often succeed in life better than their brothers.
Look around you _now_. See the sons born to inherit the colossal
fortune which their father has built up. What brainless asses the most
of them become! Had they been born to little instead of to over-much,
their wits would perhaps have been equal to their wants, and they
would have been as good men as their fathers.

It was a son of misfortune, who, on a July night of 1773, entered the
_King’s Head_ at Enfield, weary, hungry, penniless, and wearing the
garb of a clergyman. He was taken in, poor guest as he was, and in
the hospitable inn he died within a few days. It was then discovered
that he was the Rev. Samuel Bickley. In his pockets were found three
manuscript sermons, and an extraordinary petition to the Archbishop of
Canterbury, dated the previous February. The prayer of the petition
was to this effect: ‘Your petitioner, therefore, most humbly prays,
that if an audience from your Grace should be deemed too great a
favour, you will at least grant him some relief, though it be only a
temporary one, in our deplorable necessity and distress; and,’ said the
petitioner with a simplicity or an impudence which may have accounted
for his condition, ‘let your Grace’s charity cover the multitude of
his sins.’ He then continues: ‘There never yet was anyone in England
doomed to starve; but I am nearly, if not altogether so; denied to
exercise the sacred functions wherein I was educated, driven from the
doors of the rich laymen to the clergy for relief; by the clergy,
denied; so that I may justly take up the speech of the Gospel Prodigal,
and say: ‘How many hired servants of my father have bread enough and
to spare, while I perish with hunger!’ Here was, possibly, an heir of
great expectations, who, scholar as he was, had come to grief, while,
only a little while before him, there died a fortunate impostor, as
appears from this record: ‘Mr. Colvill, in Old Street, aged 83. He was
much resorted to as a fortune-teller, by which he acquired upwards of
4,000_l._;’ at the same time, a man in London was quintupling that sum
by the invention and sale of peppermint lozenges.

Let us look into the newspapers for January 1773, that our readers may
compare the events of that month with January 1873, a hundred years
later. We find the laureate Whitehead’s official New Year Ode sung at
court to Boyce’s music, while king, queen, courtiers and guests yawned
at the vocal dulness, and were glad when it was all over. We enter a
church and listen to a clergyman preaching a sermon; on the following
day we see the reverend gentleman drilling with other recruits
belonging to a regiment of the Guards, into which he had enlisted.
The vice of gambling was ruining hundreds in London, the suburbs of
which were infested by highwaymen, who made a very pretty living of
it--staking only their lives. We go to the fashionable noon-day walk in
the Temple Gardens, and encounter an eccentric promenader who is thus
described: ‘He wore an old black waistcoat which was quite threadbare,
breeches of the same colour and complexion; a black stocking on one
leg, a whitish one on the other; a little hat with a large gold button
and loop, and a tail, or rather club, as thick as a lusty man’s arm,
powdered almost an inch thick, and under the club a quantity of hair
resembling a horse’s tail. In this dress he walked and mixed with
the company there for a considerable time, and occasioned no little
diversion.’ The style of head-decoration then patronised by the ladies
was quite as nasty and offensive as that which was in vogue about
ten years ago. It was ridiculed in the popular pantomime ‘Harlequin
Sorcerer.’ Columbine was to be seen in her dressing-room attended by
her lover, a macaroni, and a hairdresser. On her head was a very high
tower of hair, to get at which was impossible for the _friseur_ till
Harlequin’s wand caused a ladder to rise, on the top rung of which
the _coiffeur_ was raised to the top surface of Columbine’s chignon;
having dressed which they all set off for the Pantheon. While pantomime
was thus triumphant at Covent Garden there was something like cavalry
battles close to London; that is to say, engagements between mounted
smugglers and troops of Scots Greys. The village Tooting in this
month was a scene of a fight, in which both parties shot and cut down
antagonists with as much alacrity as if they were foreign invaders,
where blood, and a good deal of it, was lavishly spilt. Sussex was a
favourite battle-field; a vast quantity of tea and brandy, and other
contraband, was drunk in Middlesex and neighbouring counties where
there was sympathy for smugglers, who set their lives on a venture and
enabled people to purchase articles duty free.

At this time the union of Ireland with the other portions of the
British kingdom was being actively agitated. The project was that each
of the thirty-two Irish counties should send one representative to the
British Parliament. Forty-eight Irish Peers were to be transferred to
the English Upper House. One very remarkable feature in the supposed
government project was, that Ireland should retain the shadow of a
parliament, to be called ‘The Great Council of the Nation.’ The Great
Council was to consist of members sent by the Irish boroughs, each
borough to send one representative, ‘their power not to apply further
than the interior policy of the kingdom.’ The courts of law were to
remain undisturbed. It will be remembered that something like the above
council is now asked for by those who advocate Home Rule; but as some
of those advocates only wish to have the council as the means to a
further end, the Irish professional patriot now, as ever, stands in the
way to the real improvement and the permanent prosperity of that part
of the kingdom.

In many other respects the incidents of to-day are like the echoes of
the events a hundred years old. We find human nature much the same, but
a trifle coarser in expression. The struggle to live, then as now, took
the guise of the struggle of a beaten army, retreating over a narrow
and dangerous bridge, where each thought only of himself, and the
stronger trampled down the weaker or pushed him over into the raging
flood. With all this, blessed charity was not altogether wanting. Then,
as in the present day, charity appeared on the track of the struggle,
and helped many a fainting heart to achieve a success, the idea of
which they had given up in despair.


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