Their Majesties' Servants. Annals of the English Stage (Volume 2 of 3)

And now he crosses Piccadilly, and passes through Albemarle Street, slowly, but cheerfully, with an eye and a salutation for any pretty woman of his acquaintance, and a word for any "good fellow" whose purse he has lightened or who has lightened his, at dice or whist. And so he turns into the adjacent square, and as his servant closes the door, after admitting him, neither of them wots that the master has passed over the threshold for the last time a living man.

In December 1757 I read in contemporary publications that there "died at his house at Berkeley Square, Colley Cibber, Esq., Poet Laureate." The year of his death was as eventful as that of his birth. In its course Byng was shot, and Calmet died; the Duke of Newcastle became Prime Minister, Clive won the battle of Plassy, and the Duke of Cumberland surrendered Hanover and a confederate army to the French by the treaty of Closter-seven. Within Cibber's era the Stuart had gone, Nassau had been, and the House of Brunswick had succeeded. This house was never more unpopular than at the time of Cibber's death, for one of its sons had permanently tarnished his military fame; but great as the public indignation was at the convention of Closter-seven, there was a large fraction of the London population, at least, who ceased to think of it, while Colley Cibber was carried to sleep with kings and heroes in Westminster Abbey. The general conclusion arrived at seems to have been that he was a well-abused man, who would speedily be forgotten.

To this, it may be replied, that in spite of the abuse, often little merited, he was an eminently successful man throughout life; and accomplished a career, achieved (and scattered) a fortune, and built up a fame which will always render him an object of interest.

A little too careless, perhaps; rather too much given to gambling and philandering; somewhat more than might be of the young beau about him, even in his old days, when, however, he was happy and resigned under a burthen of years which few men bear with content or resignation.

At the period of Colley Cibber's death, his daughter-in-law, Mrs. Susanna Cibber, was enchanting the town with her Isabella played to Garrick's Biron; and Barry and Mrs. Bellamy were raising melodious echoes within the walls of Covent Garden. His son, Theophilus Cibber, was hanging about the town without an engagement and in a fine suit of clothes. Colley had once thus seen him, and had saluted him with a contemptuous "I pity you!" "You had better pity my tailor!" said the son, who was then challenging Garrick to play with him the same parts alternately! Then, while the body of the Poet Laureate was being carried to Westminster Abbey, there was, up away in a hut in then desolate Clerkenwell, and starving, Colley's own daughter, Charlotte Charke. Seven and twenty years before she had first come upon the stage, after a stormy girlhood, and something akin to insanity strongly upon her. Her abilities were fair, her opportunities great, but her temper rendered both unavailable. She appears to have had a mania for appearing in male characters on, and in male attire off, the stage. By some terrible offence she forfeited the recognition of her father, who was otherwise of a benevolent disposition; and friendless, she fought a series of battles with the world, and came off in all more and more damaged.

She starved with strollers, failed as a grocer in Long Acre, became bankrupt as a puppet-show proprietor in James Street, Haymarket; re-married, became a widow a second time, was plunged into deeper ruin, thrown into prison for debt, and released only by the subscriptions of the lowest, but not least charitable, sisterhood of Drury Lane. Assuming male attire, she hung about the theatres for casual hire, went on the tramp with itinerants, hungered daily, and was weekly cheated, but yet kept up such an appearance that an heiress fell in love with her, who was reduced to despair when Charlotte Charke revealed her story, and abandoned the place.

Her next post was that of valet to an Irish Lord, forfeiting which, she and her child became sausage-makers, but could not obtain a living; and then Charlotte Charke cried "Coming, coming, sir!" as a waiter at the King's Head Tavern, Mary-le-Bone. Thence she was drawn by an offer to make her manager of a company of strolling players, with whom she enjoyed more appetite than means to appease it. She endured sharp distress, again and again; but was relieved by an uncle, who furnished her with funds, with which she opened a tavern in Drury Lane, where, after a brief career of success, she again became bankrupt. To the regular stage she once more returned, under her brother Theophilus, at the Haymarket; but the Lord Chamberlain closed the house, and Charlotte Charke took to working the wires of Russell's famous puppets in the Great Room, still existing in Brewer Street. There was a gleam of good fortune for her; but it soon faded away, and then for nine wretched years this clever, but most wretched of women, struggled frantically for bare existence, among the most wretched of strollers, with whom she endured unmitigated misery.

And yet Cibber's erring and hapless daughter contrived to reach London, where, in 1755, she published her remarkable autobiography, the details of which make the heart ache, in spite of the small sympathy of the reader for this half-mad creature. On the profits of this book she was enabled to open, as Landlord, a tavern at Islington; but, of course, ruin ensued; and in a hut, amid the cinder heaps and worse refuse in the desolate fields, she found a refuge, and even wrote a novel, on a pair of bellows in her lap, by way of desk! Here she lived, with a squalid handmaiden, a cat, dog, magpie, and monkey. Humbled, disconsolate, abandoned, she readily accepted from a publisher who visited her, £10 for her manuscript. This was at the close of the year 1755, and I do not meet with her again till 1759, two years after her father's death, when she played Marplot, in the "Busy Body," for her own benefit, at the Haymarket, with this advertisement: – "As I am entirely dependent on chance for a subsistence, and desirous of settling into business, I humbly hope the town will favour me on the occasion, which, added to the rest of their indulgences, will be ever gratefully acknowledged by their truly obliged and obedient servant, Charlotte Charke."

She died on the 6th of April 1760. Her father was then sleeping in Westminster Abbey; her brother Theophilus was at the bottom of the Irish Sea, with a shipful of Irish peers, English players, pantomimists, and wire-dancers: and her sister-in-law, Susanna Cibber, was playing Juliet to Garrick's Romeo, and approaching the time when she was to be carried to Westminster also.

Cibber had other daughters besides that audacious Charlotte, who is said to have once given imitations of her father on the stage; to have presented a pistol at, and robbed him on the highway; and to have smacked his face with a pair of soles out of her own basket. Again may it be said, happy are the women who have no histories! Let us part kindly with this poor woman's father – a man who had many virtues, and whose vices were the fashions of his time. Of him, a writer has sarcastically remarked, that he praised only the dead, and was for ever attacking his contemporaries! He who refrained from evil-speaking against those who could no longer defend themselves, and who flung the shafts of his wit and satire only at those who had tongues wherewith to reply, was in that much a true and honest fellow. "Mr. Cibber, I take my leave of you with some respect!" It is none the less for the satire of the "Craftsman," who ordered the players to go into mourning for the defunct manager; the actresses to wear black capuchins, and the men of the company "dirty shirts!"

CHAPTER XIV

ENGLAND AND IRELAND

The season of 1757-58 was the last of the series during which Barry opposed Garrick. At the close of it, Spranger proceeded to Dublin, taking with him, from Drury Lane, versatile Woodward, to retain whom Garrick would not increase his salary.

At Drury, Garrick brought out Home's "Agis," with a cast including himself, Mossop, and Mrs. Cibber; Mrs. Pritchard, and Mrs. Yates! The piece failed notwithstanding.82 Walpole would not praise it, and the angry author would never speak, or even bow to him, afterwards. Gray compared this piece to an antique statue which Home had painted white and red, and dressed in a negligée, made by a York mantua-maker! Other critics found in "Agis," Charles I. treacherously dealt with by the Scots, whereby the author had intended to punish his nation for its bigotry with regard to the drama generally, and "Douglas" in particular. Walpole added that Home was a goose for writing a second tragedy at all, after having succeeded so well with the first. It was unfortunate for this critic that "Agis" was written before "Douglas," though it followed in succession of representation.

Murphy, who had been a student at St. Omer's, a clerk in a city bank, an unsuccessful actor, and a political writer; who, moreover, was refused a call to the bar by the benchers of the Temple and Gray's Inn, on the ground of his having been a player! but who was admitted by the less bigoted benchers of Lincoln's Inn, – feeling his way towards comedy illustrative of character, by farces descriptive of foibles, very humorously satirised the quidnuncs who then abounded, in his "Upholsterer, or What Next?" in which Garrick acted Pamphlet, as carefully as he did Ranger or King Lear.

But Garrick's chief concern was to replace Woodward, and in this he as nearly succeeded as he could expect, by engaging an Irish actor, O'Brien, who, in the early part of 1758-59 made his appearance as Captain Brazen, and, by the graceful way in which he drew his sword, charmed all who were not aware that his father was a fencing-master. He exulted in light comedy and young tragic lovers, for half-a-dozen years, after which he became the hero of a romance in life, and began to be ashamed of his calling.

The great incident of the season was the acting of Antony, by Garrick, to the Cleopatra of Mrs. Yates, but they gained even more laurels as Zamti and Mandane in the "Orphan of China," a tragedy, wherein small matters are handled in a transcendental style. But Mandane lifted Mrs. Yates to an equality with Mrs. Cibber; and Walpole, who spoke of Murphy, sneeringly, as a "writing actor," did him the justice to add that he was "very good company."

Then, Foote played Shylock! Wilkinson delighted everybody by his imitations, save the actors whom he mimicked, and Garrick took the "Pupille" of the Gallo-Irish Fagan, and polished it into the pretty little comedietta, the "Guardian," in which his Heartly showed what a man of genius could make of so small a part. Mozeen, who had left the law for the stage, found a bright opportunity for Miss Barton in his "Heiress;" and Dr. Hill showed the asinine side of his character by describing his farce of the "Rout" as by "a person of honour!" —

"For physic and farces, his equal there scarce is;His farces are physic, his physic a farce is!"

So wrote Garrick of Hill, who was a clever man, but one who lacked tact and judgment, and got buffeted by men who had not a tithe of his zeal and industry. His chief defect lay in his intolerable conceit.

Dodsley's "Cleone," rejected by Garrick, became the distinction of the Covent Garden season of 1758-59. Ross played Sifroy, and Mrs. Bellamy the heroine. As a counter-attraction, Garrick essayed Marplot, in vain. "Cleone" is a romantic tragedy. The time is that of the Saracenic invasion of the south of France, and the story bears close resemblance to the legend of St. Genevieve, where a faithful young wife and mother suffers under unmerited charges of treason to her absent husband and her home. The author extended his drama from three acts to five, at the suggestion of Pope. Dr. Johnson subsequently looked upon it as the noblest effort made since the time of Otway! and Lord Chesterfield contributed advice which shows that stage-French was not of the best quality in those days. "You should instruct the actors," he said, "not to mouth out the oy in the name of Sifroy as though they were crying oysters." "People," writes Gray to Mason, "who depised 'Cleone' in manuscript, went to see it, and confess 'they cried so!'" Dodsley, after some flatness, "piled the agony" skilfully, and Mrs. Bellamy made hearts ache and eyes weep, for many successive glorious and melancholy nights.

The stage lost Mrs. Macklin this year, such an "old woman" as it was not to see again till the period of Mrs. Davenport. In October 1759,83 too, Theophilus Cibber satisfied people that he was not born to be hanged. With Lord Drogheda and his son, Harlequin Mattocks,84 Miss Wilkinson the wire-dancer, and a shipload of frippery, he was crossing the Irish Sea from Parkgate to Dublin, when the vessel was caught in a gale, and went down with all on board. Such was the end of a fair player and a sad rogue. Somewhere off the Scottish coast, whither the ship had been blown, perished Ancient Pistol, and the original George Barnwell. His sire, wife, and sister bore the calamity which had fallen upon him with philosophical equanimity.

On the retirement of Barry from London, Garrick travelled abroad, for a year, to recruit his health.85 All the intervening time, till Barry returned, has the appearance of a season of truce. No great tragic actor arose to seize the wreath of either of the absent tragedians, though the town was seduced from its respective allegiances, for a moment, by the advent and bright promise of young Powell; and Walpole was eager to recognise a greater than Garrick in the aspiring city clerk.

Walpole was accustomed to describe Garrick as a mere machine, in whom the power to express Shakspeare's words with propriety, was absurdly held to be a merit! "On the night of Powell's first appearance, the audience," says Walpole, "not content with clapping, stood up and shouted." Walpole adds, that Powell had been clerk to Sir Robert Ladbroke, and "so clever in business, that his master would have taken him in as a partner; but he had an impulse for the stage. His figure is fine, and voice most sonorous, as they say, but I wait for the rebound of his fame, and till I can get in, but at present all the boxes are taken for a month." Walpole suppresses the fact that Garrick had not only selected Powell as his substitute, in his absence, but had carefully instructed him in the part of Philaster, and thereby helped him to the triumphant position which the younger actor, then twenty-eight years of age, held during the first of his few seasons, from 1763 to 1768, the year of poor Powell's death.

No new tragic poet of eminence now arose, nor did any old one increase his reputation. Home is supposed to have been thinking of the siege of Berwick when, in his "Siege of Aquileia," he pourtrayed our Edward under the figure of Maximin. Brooke's boasted purity of language and sentiment in his "Earl of Essex" was playfully crushed by Johnson. "Who rules o'er freemen should himself be free," was a line cited for its beauty, by Sheridan, the actor. "Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat," was the stupid comment of the lexicographer.

Farce flourished within this period, – supplied by the Rev. Mr. Townley, Garrick, Foote, Colman, and Murphy, the last of whom increased his fame by such comedies as the bustling, and yet monotonously bustling, "All in the Wrong," and the "Way to Keep Him." The authors of this period sought to correct faults and not to laugh at them. This, perhaps, gives a didactic turn to the plays of Murphy and Mrs. Sheridan, which renders them somewhat heavy when compared with the comedies of those who were rather among the wits, than the teachers, of their days. But a new brilliancy, too, was to be found in the later writers. Colman's "Jealous Wife," in which Garrick and Mrs. Pritchard were the Mr. and Mrs. Oakley, and the "Clandestine Marriage," principally Colman's, but in which Garrick had a share, were full of this brilliancy. With the exception of Hoadley's "Suspicious Husband," no modern comedy had such success as these. Every great actor still tries Mr. Oakley, and the noblest of old beaux has been the heritage only of the most finished of our comedians, from King, with whom it originated, down to Farren, with whom it seems to have died.

While the insolence of servants and the weaknesses of masters were satirised in "High Life below Stairs," a piece which George Selwyn was the gladder to see, as he was weary of low life above stairs – the disinterestedness of Irish wooers was asserted in Macklin's "Love à la Mode;" rascality, generally, was pummelled in Foote's "Minor;" novel-reading was proved to be perilous, in "Polly Honeycomb;" sharpers were exposed in Reed's "Register Office;" Platonic love was shown to be not without its dangers, in "The Deuce is in Him," and so on, with other pieces, than which none raised more laughter than the "Mayor of Garratt," in which Weston exhibited, in Jerry Sneak, the type of henpecked husbands, and Foote in Matthew Mug, a portrait of the Duke of Newcastle. Then Whitehead, in his "School for Lovers," wrote a dull play on society to show that society was dull; and Mrs. Sheridan, in the "Discovery," pointed to the absurdity of young married people being unhappy. Opera was making way at both houses, but especially at Covent Garden, where, with a few other novelties of no note, Arne's "Artaxerxes," superbly set, was as superbly sung, by Tenducci, Beard, and Arne's famous pupil, Miss Brent. Bickerstaffe's "Love in a Village" followed, warbled by Beard and Miss Brent, as Hawthorn and Rosetta, and made joyous by Shuter's Justice Woodcock. The same writer's "Maid of the Mill" succeeded, in which Mattocks played Lord Aimworth; Beard, Giles; and Miss Brent, Polly,86 the latter with a joyousness that never dreamed of the coming penury and hunger.

Managers, however, catered drolly for the public. Thus, on the 12th of October 1758, when Mossop acted Richard III., Signor Grimaldi relieved the tragedy, by dancing comic dances between the acts! Garrick, nevertheless, was not idle. During Barry's absence, David added to his original characters, Lovemore, in "The Way to Keep Him," Æmilius ("Siege of Aquileia"); Oakley ("Jealous Wife"), Sir John Dorilant ("School for Lovers"), Farmer ("Farmer's Return"), Alonzo ("Elvira"), and Sir Anthony Branville ("Discovery"). In the last, he exhibited a new style, in a new character. "He seemed utterly to have extinguished his natural talents, assuming a dry, stiff manner, with an immovable face, and thus extracted from his pedantic object (who assumed every passion, without showing a spark of any in his action or features) infinite entertainment." Barry, meanwhile in Ireland, found that Sheridan had had a chequered time of it there. At one period, a course of prosperity; at another, he was the victim of gentlemen, from whose rude wooing he protected his actresses. The wooers called him "scoundrel-player." Sheridan answered that he was "as good a gentleman" as those who called him scoundrel; and, consequently, his life was not safe from these ruffians, who interrupted the performances, but against whom the collegians took side with the player. It was not until some blood was spilt, and the Lord Chief Justice, Ward, had condemned a young savage, named Kelly, to pay £500 fine and suffer three months' imprisonment, that peace was restored. At this trial, Kelly's counsel remarked, he had seen a gentleman-soldier and a gentleman-tailor, but had never seen a gentleman-player. "Sir," said Sheridan, with dignity, "I hope you see one now!"

Sheridan lost money, year after year, by paying excessive salaries to Woodward, the Macklins, and to operatic companies. Macklin and Mossop, together, nearly drove Sheridan mad; he was glad to be rid of both, and to find greater attraction in the beautiful Mrs. Woffington, who used to petition for kisses, once a year, and must have found little difficulty in procuring what she asked for, on her benefit nights.

At that time, nearly one hundred persons in the Lord Lieutenant's household claimed free admission, the government allowing £100 a year, as the price for which it was purchased! But prosperity attended Sheridan's management, nevertheless, till he neglected the stage for claret, toasts, songs, and aristocratic fellowship. Therewith came a quarrel with his public. The latter had encored a speech delivered by Digges, in "Mahomet," which contained a passage applicable, in a hostile sense, to the viceregal court. Sheridan forbade Digges repeating this speech a second time, on the next representation, and Digges declining to do so, when the audience demanded it, the latter, in inconceivable rage, pulled the interior of the house to pieces, destroyed all the properties they could reach, broke up the wooden fittings, and flinging the box-doors upon them, set fire to the whole mass! The building was rescued with difficulty.

After a time it was repaired, and Sheridan let it to Victor and Sowdon, who in the season of 1754-55 engaged Barry and Miss Nossiter; and it is to be remarked that of all the characters he played Macbeth was the most, and Henry V. the least, attractive. Romeo stood midway in profit between those two. Mossop was the hero of the succeeding season, with profit to the management, after which Sheridan resumed the control; but not till he had been compelled to undergo a great humiliation. Fearing for the safety of his house, he consented to make public apology for his previous conduct in the management, and Sheridan was then patronised by the public, till Barry and Woodward, in October 1758, opened a new theatre in Crow Street, and divided the patronage and the passions of the town. At Crow Street, there were Barry, young Mrs. Dancer, whom he afterwards married, Mossop, King, Woodward, and others. At Smock Alley, Mrs. Abington alone was a sufficient counter-attraction. But when Mossop passed over to manage Smock Alley, and the Countess of Brandon patronised him, in return for his permitting her to cheat him at cards, and Mrs. Bellamy joined the same troop, then Barry was put on his mettle; he secured Mrs. Abington and Shuter; and the town became as divided, and as furious and unreasonable, as if they were at issue on some point of religious belief. Mrs. Bellamy was arrested by a partisan of the adverse house, simply that she might be prevented from acting at the other; and the players were so often seduced from their engagements by the respective managers that the performers were sometimes called to go on the stage of one theatre when they were actually dressing at another! If Mossop chose "Othello" for his benefit one night, Barry was sure to have it for his own, on the same or the following evening. In short, the rival managers went on ruining each other. They exerted themselves, however, indefatigably, Barry playing even Macheath, and other operatic characters. He and Mossop, formed extravagant engagements with every great actor, save Garrick, whom they could win over, down to clever dogs, and intelligent monkeys. At the end of a seven years' struggle, Barry found that Dublin could not support two theatres, and leaving Mossop in possession of the field, he returned to London, having ruined himself and Woodward, and lost everything he possessed but his gentle humour, his suavity, his plausibility, and his hopes.

As a sample of Dublin theatrical life, in Barry's time, I cite the following passage from Gilbert's History of Dublin, and therewith close the subject for the present. "Dublin was kept in a state of commotion by the partisans of the rival theatres. As already noticed, the Countess of Brandon, with her adherents, attended constantly at Smock Alley, and would not appear at Crow Street; but Barry's tenderness in making love on the stage, at length brought the majority of the ladies to his house. Of the scenes which commonly occurred during this theatrical rivalry, on nights when some leading lady had bespoken a play, and made an interest for all parts of the house, particularly by pit and gallery tickets among her tradespeople, we have been left the following notice: The lady of the night goes early into the box-room to receive her company. This lady had sent out pit and gallery tickets to all her tradespeople, with the threatenings of the loss of her custom if they did not dispose of them; and the concern she was under, when the time was approaching for the drawing up the curtain, at the sight of a thin pit and galleries, introduced the following entertainment. The lady was ready to faint; and after smelling bottles were applied, she cried out, 'She was ruined and undone! She never would be able to look dear Mr. B. in the face any more, after such a shocking disappointment.' At many of these repeated lamentations, the box-keeper advanced and said: 'I beg your ladyship will not be so disheartened; indeed, your ladyship's pit will mend and your ladyship's galleries, too, will certainly mend, before the play begins!' At which the lady cried, 'Out, you nasty flattering fellow! I tell you I'm undone, ruined, and undone! that's all. But I'll be revenged. I am resolved. I'll pay off – No – I'll turn off all my saucy tradesmen to-morrow morning.'"