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

Garrick was proud of his Abel Drugger, but he was ready to acknowledge the superiority of Weston in that part, whose acting was described by Garrick as the finest he ever saw.105 To this pleasant piece of criticism was added a £20 note, on Weston's benefit night.

And yet, from first to last, did his enemies deny that Garrick was influenced by worthy motives. Walpole describes him, unjustly, as jealous (even after his retirement) of rising young players; and Horace writes, in 1777, "Garrick is dying of yellow jaundice, on the success of Henderson, a young actor from Bath. Enfin donc désormais, there must never be a good player again! As Voltaire and Garrick are the god and goddess of envy, the latter would put a stop to procreation, as the former would annihilate the traces of all antiquity, if there were no other gods but they."

I have quoted what Walpole said of the actor in his first year; – this is what he says of him in his last: "I saw Lear the last time Garrick played it, and as I told him, I was more shocked at the rest of the company than pleased with him, – which I believe was not just what he desired; but to give a greater brilliancy to his own setting, he had selected the very worst performers of his troop; just as Voltaire would wish there were no better poets than Thomson and Akenside." This is not true. Garrick played with Gentleman Smith and Bensley; Yates, Parsons, and Palmer; Mrs. Abington, Mrs. Yates, and, for a few nights, Mrs. Siddons.

Because Garrick never allowed his judgment to be overpowered by his emotions, intense as they were, Johnson thought there was all head and no heart in his acting. While David was once playing Lear, Johnson and Murphy were at the wing, conversing in no subdued tone. As Garrick passed by them, he observed, "You two talk so loud, you destroy my feelings." "Punch has no feelings," growled Asper, contemptuously.

By pen, as well as by word of mouth, did Johnson wound the self-esteem of his friend. Although Boswell asserts that Garrick never forgave the pointed satire which Johnson directed against him, under the pseudonym of Prospero, the records of the actor's life prove the contrary. That it was something he could never entirely forget is true, for the assault was made under circumstances by which its bitterness was much aggravated. Garrick had, just before, manfully exerted himself to render Johnson's "Irene" successful. And on the 15th February 1752, on the morning of the night on which Garrick was to play Tancred, there appeared a paper in the Rambler, from Johnson's pen, in the two personages of which, no one could be mistaken. They are described as coming up to town together to seek a fortune, which had been found by one of them, Prospero, who was "too little polished by thought and conversation to enjoy it with elegance and decency!"

Asper then describes a visit he reluctantly pays to Prospero's house. He is tardily admitted, finds the stairs matted, the best rooms open, that he may catch a glance at their grandeur, while his friend conducts him into a back room, suited for inferior company – where Asper is received with all the insolence of condescension. The chairs and carpets are covered, but the corners are turned up that Asper may admire their beauty and texture. He did "not gratify Prospero's folly with any outcries of admiration, but coldly bade the footman let down the cloth."

The host gives the guest inferior tea, talks of his jeweller and silversmith, boasts of his intimacy with Lord Lofty, alludes to his chariot, and ladies he takes in it to the Park, and exhibits his famous Dresden china, which he "always associates with his chased tea-kettle." "When I had examined them a little," says Asper, "Prospero desired me to set them down, for they who were accustomed only to common dishes seldom handled china with much care." Asper takes credit for much philosophy in not dashing Prospero's "baubles to the ground;" and when the latter begins to affect a preference for the less distinguished position of one with whom he was "once upon the level," Asper quits the house in disgust.

This attack was ungracious and cowardly, on one side, as it was undeserved on the other. I can fancy it disturbed Garrick's performance of Tancred on that night; the Rambler was universally read, and the application could not fail. But it disturbed nothing else. Years later, when Johnson visited Garrick at his Hampton villa, the spirit of Asper was softened in his breast, and he was justified in the well-known remark he made, as he contemplated the beauty and grandeur around him: – "These are the things, Davy, that make death terrible!" It must not be forgotten, however, that Johnson, at last, allowed no one to abuse Davy but himself, and he then always mentioned that "Garrick was the most liberal man of his day."

So great, indeed, was his honesty, too, that Garrick, having entered thoughtlessly into some bargain, carried it out with the remark, that "terms made over our cups must be as strictly observed as if I had agreed to them over tea and toast." His gallantry, also, was indisputable. When Mrs. Yates invited him to her house to discuss a treaty touching "£800 a year, and finding her own clothes," he answered, "I will be as punctual as I ought to be to so fine a woman, and so good an actress."

One of the critical years in the life of Garrick – of whom Chesterfield always strangely asserted, that although he was the best actor the world had ever seen, or could see, he was poor in comedy! – was 1746, when he and Quin first appeared together at Covent Garden in the "Fair Penitent: " the night was that of the 14th of November. "The 'Fair Penitent,'" says Davies, "presented an opportunity to display their several merits, though the balance was as much in favour of Quin as the advocate of virtue is superior in argument106 to the defender of profligacy… The shouts of applause when Horatio and Lothario met on the stage together, in the second act, were so loud and so often repeated before the audience permitted them to speak, that the combatants seemed to be disconcerted. It was observed that Quin changed colour, and Garrick seemed to be embarrassed; and it must be owned that these actors were never less masters of themselves than on the first night of the contest for pre-eminence. Quin was too proud to own his feelings on the occasion; but Mr. Garrick was heard to say, 'Faith, I believe Quin was as much frightened as myself.'"

Davies, who praises Mrs. Cibber in the heroine, states that competent judges decided that Quin found his superior on this occasion. By striving to do too much, he missed the mark at which he aimed. "The character of Horatio is compounded of deliberate courage, warm friendship, and cool contempt of insolence.107 The last Quin had in a superior degree, but could not rise to an equal expression of the other two. The strong emphasis which he stamped on almost every word in a line, robbed the whole of that ease and graceful familiarity which should have accompanied the elocution and action of a man who is calmly chastising a vain and insolent108 boaster. When Lothario gave Horatio the challenge, Quin, instead of accepting it instantaneously, with the determined and unembarrassed brow of superior bravery, made a long pause, and dragged out the words, 'I'll meet thee there!' in such a manner as to make it appear absolutely ludicrous." He paused so long before he spoke, that somebody, it was said, called out from the gallery, "Why don't you tell the gentleman whether you will meet him or no?"

But there is no one who gives us so lively a picture of the principal actors in this piece as Cumberland, who tells us that "Quin presented himself, upon the rising of the curtain, in a green velvet coat embroidered down the seams, an enormous full-bottomed periwig, rolled stockings, and high-heeled, square-toed shoes. With very little variation of cadence, and in a deep full tone, accompanied by a sawing kind of action, which had more of the senate than the stage in it, he rolled out his heroics with an air of dignified indifference that seemed to disdain the plaudits that were showered upon him. Mrs. Cibber, in a key high pitched but sweet withal, sang, or rather recitatived, Rowe's harmonious strain. But when, after long and eager expectation, I first beheld little Garrick, then young and light, and alive in every muscle and every feature, come bounding on the stage, and pointing at the wittol Altamont and the heavy-paced Horatio (heavens! what a transition), it seemed as if a whole century had been swept over in the space of a single scene; old things were done away, and a new order at once brought forward, bright and harmonious, and clearly destined to dispel the barbarisms and bigotry of a tasteless age too long attached to the prejudices of custom, and superstitiously devoted to the illusions of imposing declamation." Foote's imitation of Garrick's dying scene in Lothario was an annoyance to Garrick and a delight to the town, particularly at the concluding words: – "adorns my tale, and che-che-che-che-che-cheers my heart in dy-dy-dy-dying."

Garrick was again superior to Quin, when playing Hastings to his Gloucester in "Jane Shore." Davies describes Quin as "a good commonwealth-man," for taking an inferior character, one which the actor himself used to designate as one of his "whisker-parts,"109 a phrase which shows that he dressed the Duke as absurdly as he did Horatio.

Quin had his turn of triumph when he played Falstaff to Garrick's Hotspur. The former character he kept as his own, as long as he remained on the stage; but after a few nights, Garrick resigned Hotspur, on the ground of indisposition, to careful Havard. The two great actors agreed to appear together as Orestes and Pyrrhus, and Cassius and Brutus; but Garrick did not like the old costume of Greece or Rome, and the agreement never came to anything.

It was long the custom to compare the French actor Lekain with Garrick. The two had little in common, except in their resolution to tread the stage and achieve reputation by it. Lekain was born in 1729, the year in which Baron departed the stage. He was the son of a goldsmith, and had gained wide notice as a maker of delicate surgical instruments, when a passion for the stage led him, as in Garrick's case, to playing frequently in private, especially in Voltaire's little theatre, in the Rue Traversière, now known as the Rue Fontaine Molière. On this stage Lekain exhibited great powers, with defects, which were considered incurable; but he was only twenty years of age, and he could then move, touch, and attract the coldest of audiences. Voice, features, and figure were against him, and yet ladies praised the beauty of all, so cunning was the artist. He played Orosmane, in "Zaire," before Louis XV., and the King was angry to find that the actor could compel him to weep! When Voltaire first heard him, he threw his arms round Lekain, and thanked God for creating a being who could delight Voltaire by uttering bad verses! And yet Voltaire dissuaded him from taking to the stage; but when Voltaire saw in him the hero of his own tragedies, then poet and player lived but for one another, thought themselves France, and that the eyes of the world were upon them. Voltaire addressed Lekain as "Monsieur le Garrick of France, in merit though not in purse!" and as "My very dear and very great support of expiring tragedy!" When he wrote this in 1770, there was a boy seven years old in Paris, who, seventeen years later, began the most splendid career ever run by French actor, – as Seïde, in Voltaire's "Mahomet," – Talma!

Garrick and Lekain equally respected the original text of an author; but the former, more readily than the latter, adopted so-called "emendations." When Marmontel improved the bold phrases of old Rotrou's "Venceslas," Lekain repeated the improvements at rehearsal, but at night he kept to the original passages of the author, and thus created confusion among his fellow-actors, who lost their cues. In this, Garrick deemed him unjustifiable.

Lekain, like Betterton, never departed from the quality of the part he was playing, even when off the stage. Garrick, like Charles Young, would forget Lear, to set a group in the green-room laughing at some good story. Lekain treated his Paris audiences with contempt. He would affect fatigue after playing less than a dozen times in a single winter, and then pass from one country town to another, acting twice a day! He received a salary from Paris while he was acting at Brussels. He could not play a hundred different parts like Garrick, who identified himself with all; but he carried about with him a repertory of eight or nine characters, with half that number of costumes and a turban; and with these parts, painfully learnt and elaborately acted, he enthralled his audiences. Voltaire protests that Lekain's means were as great, and his natural truthfulness of acting as undeniable as Garrick's; "but, oh! sublime Garrick!" exclaims Mercier, "how much more extended are thy means; how different thy truthfulness!"

This truthfulness was the result of anxious care. Garrick spent two whole months in rehearsing and correcting his Benedick, and when he played it, all the gaiety, wit, and spirit seemed spontaneous.

In Fribble, he imitated no less than eleven men of fashion, so that every one recognised them; and in dancing Mrs. Woffington could not excel him. "Garrick," says Mrs. Delaney, "is the genteelest dancer I ever saw."

One of Garrick's distinguishing characteristics was his power of suddenly assuming any passion he was called on to represent. This often occurred during his continental travels, when in the private rooms of his various hosts, – princes, merchants, actors, – he would afford them a taste of his quality; Scrub or Richard, Brute or Macbeth, and identify himself on the instant with that which he assumed to be. Clairon, the famous French actress, almost worshipped him for his good-nature, but more for his talent, particularly on the occasion when, in telling the story of a child falling from a window, out of its father's arms, he threw himself into the attitude, and put on the look of horror, of that distracted father. The company were moved to honest tears, and when the emotion had subsided, Clairon flung her arms round his neck, kissed him heartily, and then, turning to Mrs. Garrick, begged her pardon, for "she positively could not help it!"

Of the French players, Garrick said that Sophie Arnould was the only one who ever touched his heart. To a young Englishman of French descent, subsequently Lord North's famous antagonist, Colonel Barré, whom he met in Paris, he said, on seeing him act in private, that he might earn a thousand a year, if he would adopt playing as a profession.

French ana abound with illustrations of Garrick's marvellous talent, exercised for the mere joke's sake. How he deceived the driver of a coucou into believing his carriage was full of passengers, Garrick having presented himself half a dozen times at the door, each time with a different face; how he and Preville, the French actor, feigned drunkenness on horseback; and how Garrick showed that his rival, drunk everywhere else, was not drunk enough in his legs. But the greatest honour Garrick ever received was in his own country, and at the hands of Parliament. He happened to be sole occupant of the gallery in the Commons, one night of 1777, during a very fierce discussion between two members, one of whom, noticing his presence, moved that the gallery should be cleared. Burke thereupon sprang to his feet, and appealed to the House; was it consistent with becomingness and liberality to disturb the great master of eloquence? one to whom they all owed so much, and from whom he, Burke, had learned many a grace of oratory? In his strain of ardent praise, he was followed by Fox and Townshend, who described the ex-actor as their great preceptor; and ultimately, Garrick was exempted from the general order that strangers leave the House! Senators hailed him as their teacher, and the greatest of French actors called him "Master!"

It was Grimm's conclusion, that he who had not seen Garrick, could not know what acting was. Garrick alone had fulfilled all that Grimm's imagination could conceive an actor should be. The player's great art of identification astounded him. In different parts he did not seem the same man; and Grimm truly observed, that all the changes in Garrick's features arose entirely from inward emotion; – that he never exceeded truth; and that, in passion alone, he found the sources of distinction. "We saw him," he says, "play the dagger scene in 'Macbeth,' in a room, in his ordinary dress, without any stage illusion; and as he followed with his eyes the air-drawn dagger, he became so grand, that the whole assembly broke into a general cry of admiration. Who would believe," he asks, "that this same man, a moment after, counterfeited, with equal perfection, a pastry-cook's boy, who, carrying a tray of tartlets on his head, and gaping about him at the corner of the street, lets his tray fall in the kennel, and at first stupefied by the accident, bursts at last into a fit of crying?" Such was he who fairly frightened Hogarth himself, by assuming the face of the defunct Fielding!

Garrick's assertion, that a man must be a good comic actor to be a great tragedian, gave M. de Carmontelle the idea of a picture, in which he represented Garrick in an imposing tragic attitude, with a comic Garrick standing between the folding-doors, looking with surprise, and laughing at the other. While the ever-restless actor was sitting for this, he amused himself by passing through imperceptible gradations, from extreme joy to extreme sadness, and thence to terror and despair. The actor was running through the scale of the passions.

Grimm approvingly observed, that Garrick's "studio" was in the crowded streets. "He is always there," writes Grimm; and, no doubt, Garrick perfected his great talents by the profound study of nature. Of his personal appearance, the same writer remarks: "His figure is mediocre; rather short than tall; his physiognomy agreeable, and promising wit; and the play of his eyes prodigious. He has much humour, discernment, and correctness of judgment; is naturally monkeyish, imitating all he sees; and he is always graceful!" Such is the account by a member of a society, whose kindness was never forgotten by the English actor. The desire to see him there again was as strong as Mrs. Woffington's, who, being reminded by Sir C. Hanbury Williams, that she had seen Garrick that morning, exclaimed, "but that's an age ago!"110

St. Petersburg caught from Paris the Garrick fever; but the offer of the Czarina Catherine, to give Garrick two thousand guineas for four performances, could not tempt him to the banks of the Neva. Denmark was fain to be content with his counterfeit presentment; and a portrait, painted in London, by order of the King was hung up in the royal palace at Copenhagen.

I have alluded to some things his enemies laid to his charge. They are small matters when they come to be examined; and the more they are examined, the less obnoxious does Garrick seem to censure.

I find more instances of his generosity than of his meanness – more of his fairness of judgment than of his jealousy. He was ever ready to play for the benefit of his distressed brethren. When Macklin lost his engagement under Fleetwood, Garrick offered to allow him £6 per week out of his own salary till he found occupation. He saw, when his own triumph was in its freshness and brilliancy, the bright promise of Barry; and pointed out its great merits, and predicted his future success. To insure that of young Powell, he gave him frequent instruction; and when he brought the soon-forgotten Dexter from Dublin, he not only gave him "first business," and useful directions, but expressed his convictions that, with care and diligence, he would stand in the foremost rank of actors.

The commonest incidents have been tortured to depreciate Garrick's character. When, in 1775, Sheridan's "Duenna" was in the course of its first run of seventy-five nights, the name of the author was extraordinarily popular. At this juncture Garrick did further honour to that name by reviving the "Discovery," by Sheridan's mother, and acting the principal part in it himself.111 The carpers immediately exclaimed, that the mother had been revived in opposition to the son. They did not even take the low ground of the revival being adopted as a source of profit on account of the author's family name.

Even Mrs. Siddons's disparagement of Garrick tells in his favour. She played two or three nights with him, but her first appearances were comparatively failures. Garrick observed some awkward action of the lady's arms, and he gave her good advice how to use them. But Mrs. Siddons, in telling the story, used to say: "He was only afraid that I should overshadow his nose." Years subsequently Walpole remarked this very action of the arms, which Garrick had endeavoured to amend!

To those who object that Garrick was personally vain, it may suffice to point out that he was the first to allude to his own defect of stature. In the prologue to the tragedy of "Hecuba," written and spoken by himself, he mentions the high-soled buskins of the ancient stage; and adds —

"Then rais'd on stilts, our play'rs would stalk and rage,And at three steps stride o'er a modern stage;Each gesture then would boast unusual charms,From lengthen'd legs, stuff'd body, sprawling arms!Your critic eye would then no pigmies see,But buskins make a giant e'en of me."

If he esteemed little of himself personally, he had, on the other hand, the highest estimation of his profession. In this he bears a resemblance to Montfleury, who, being asked, when his marriage articles were preparing, how he wished to be described, answered: that ancestry conferred no talent, and that the most honourable title he desired to be known by, was, that of "Actor to the King."

Garrick was often severe enough with conceited aspirants, who came to offer samples of their quality, to whom he listened while he shaved, and whom he often interrupted by imitative yaw, yaws! But when convinced there was stuff in a young man, Garrick helped him to do his best, without thought of rivalry. It is pleasant thus to contemplate him preparing Wilkinson, in 1759, for his attempt at tragedy, in Bajazet, to the Arpasia of Mrs. Pritchard.112 Garrick heard him recite the character in his own private room; gave him some valuable advice; presided at the making up of his face; and put the finishing strokes of the pencil, to render the young face of one and twenty as nearly like that of the elder Oriental, as might be.

It may be said that this was a cheap sort of generosity, but it was characteristic of kindliness of heart. He could make other and nobler sacrifices; on the last night he ever trod the stage, with a house crammed, with a profusely liberal audience, Garrick made over every guinea of the splendid receipts, not to his own account at his bankers, but to that of the Theatrical Fund. After this, his weaknesses may surely be forgotten. He may have been as restless and ignorant as Macklin has described him; as full of contrasts and as athirst for flattery as the pencil of Goldsmith has painted him; as void of literary ability as Johnson and Walpole asserted him to be; and as foolish as Foote would have us take him for; his poor opinion of Shuter and Mrs. Abington may seem to cast reproach upon his judgment; and his failure to impress Jedediah Buxton, who counted his words rather than attended to his acting, may be accepted as proof that he was a poor player (in Jedediah's eyes); but the closing act of his professional life may be cited in testimony of a noble and unselfish generosity. It was the crowning act in a career marked by many generous deeds, but marred by many crosses, vexations, and anxieties.

Colman, even before he quarrelled with Garrick, assailed him as a "grimace-maker," a "haberdasher of wry faces," a "hypocrite who laughed and cried for hire," and so forth; but Garrick, in return, wrote verses in praise of Colman's translation of Terence; and when these had softened the translator's resentment, Garrick chose the most solemn and most joyous day, Christmas, 1765, to write better verses, in which he states that failing in health, assailed by enemies, treated with ingratitude, and weary of his vocation as he is, that joyous season is made doubly joyous by the restoration of their friendship.