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

The sensation which this caused was most painful; and it was not allayed by those pious persons who saw in this sudden death an especial judgment launched by Heaven on the head of a man who exercised an unrighteous calling. To support their theory, they invented the story that Palmer was stricken after uttering the quotation, in the first scene of the third act, "there is another and a better world!" These words suited the inferences they wished to draw. They did not agree with the facts: but it was the old story, "so much the worse for the facts!" The lie yet lives.

Poor Palmer! One cannot help having a kindly feeling for "Plausible Jack." Can you not see him coming up to Sheridan, when reconciliation had followed quarrel, with his head bent blandly forward, his eyes turned up, his hand on his heart, and a phrase after the manner, if not of the very matter, of Joseph Surface, of which he was the original representative? "If you could but see my heart, Mr. Sheridan!" and Sheridan's pleasantly remonstrating remark, "Why, Jack, you forget I wrote it!"

And then he was so modest. "Plausible, am I?" he once asked; "you really rate me too highly. The utmost I ever did in that way was, on once being arrested by a bailiff; when I persuaded the fellow to bail me!"

After many of these actors had commenced their career, and long before some of them concluded it, a great player came, charmed, and departed, leaving a name and a reputation which render him worthy of a chapter to himself. I allude to Henderson.

CHAPTER VI

JOHN HENDERSON

In the bill of the Bath Theatre for October the 6th, 1772, the part of Hamlet is announced to be performed "by a young gentleman." On the 21st of the month,46 we read, "Richard III., by Mr. Courtney, the young gentleman who acted Hamlet." Mr. Courtney repeated those characters, and subsequently played Benedick, Macbeth, Bobadil, Bayes, Don Felix, and Essex; and on the 26th of December, having thus felt his way and become satisfied of his safety, we have "Henry IV.," with "Hotspur by Mr. Henderson."

After being anonymous and pseudonymous, he added, under his last and proper designation, the following characters to those he had previously acted: Fribble, Lear, and Hastings, Alonzo and Alzuma; and Mr. Henderson was an established Bath favourite.

At this time, Henderson was five-and-twenty years of age. Descended from Scottish Presbyterians and English Quakers, with a father who was an Irish factor, Henderson is the sole celebrity of the street in which he was born, in March 1747,47 Goldsmith Street, Cheapside. The father died too soon for his two sons to remember him in after life; but the boys had an excellent mother, who unconsciously trained one of her sons to the stage, by making him familiar with the beauties of Shakspeare.

Having succeeded so far in art as to obtain a prize when he was Fournier's pupil, for a drawing exhibited at the Society of Arts; and having been as reluctant as Spranger Barry to be bound apprentice to a silversmith, Henderson longed to win honour by the sock and buskin. This desire was probably fostered by the sight of Garrick in the shop of Mr. Becket the bookseller, a friend of Henderson's. Garrick seldom went to coffee-houses, and never to taverns, but at Becket's shop he held a little court, and Henderson sighed to be as great as he.

The weakly-voiced lad, with no marked presence, and a consumptive look, could obtain audience or favour from no one; least of all from Roscius. He went up to remote Islington, and, in the long room of an inn there, delivered Garrick's Ode on the Shakspeare Jubilee. After this, and, perhaps, in consequence, Garrick received him, heard him recite, shook his head at a voice which was more woolly than silvery, and, after some counsel, procured for him an engagement at Bath, and at a trifling salary.

For five seasons he was a rising, improving, and then cherished actor at Bath. But his fame did not influence the London managers. At length, exeunt Garrick, Barry, Woodward, and Foote! and Colman, lacking novelty at the Haymarket, invites, somewhat unwillingly, young Henderson from Bath. He appeared at the Little Theatre in 1777, and, in a little more than a month of acting nights, put £4500 into the manager's pocket. He played Shylock, Hamlet, Leon, Falstaff (in "Henry IV.," and in the "Merry Wives,"), Richard III., Don John, and Bayes.48

In this first season he played three of his greatest parts – Shylock, Hamlet, and Falstaff. The first was selected for his début, contrary to his own inclination. Macklin's Shylock was the Shylock of all playgoers; but the difference between it and Henderson's attracted attention and audiences. Old Macklin himself praised his young rival's conception of the part with energetic liberality. "And yet, sir," said Henderson, "I have never had the advantage of seeing you in the character." "It is not necessary to tell me that, sir," said Macklin, with no conceited modesty. "I knew you had not, or you would have played it differently." Garrick also saw Henderson in the part, and remarked that Tubal was very creditably played indeed! It is said that Henderson, after delighting Garrick, when breakfasting with him in 1772, by imitations of Barry, Woodward, Love (whose single character of note was Falstaff), and some others, offended him by a close imitation of Garrick himself. Colman is reported to have been equally offended by an imitation of himself, at his own table, by Henderson, who did not, as Foote would have done, watch his host, and mimic him at other tables. Henderson seems to have been so little willing to offend, that in playing Bayes, he omitted the imitations of contemporary performers, by which all other actors of the parts had been wont to reap rich harvests of applause.

Macklin said of him that the young man had learned a great deal; but what remained for him was to unlearn much of it, in order that he might learn to be an actor. In this oracular manner there was more kindness than Henderson met with from Foote, previous to his first season in London, and of which Genest has compiled this account: —

"Henderson, accompanied by two friends, waited on Foote, and was received with great civility. Foote's imagination was so lively, his conceptions were so rapid as well as so exuberant, that by a torrent of wit, humour, pleasantry, and satire, he kept the company for a considerable time in convulsions of laughter; however, Henderson's friends thought it, at last, time to stop the current of Foote's vivacities, by informing him of the reason of their visit, and Henderson was permitted to begin a speech in 'Hamlet;' but before he could finish it, Foote continually interrupted him by some unlucky joke or droll thought… At the conclusion Henderson was, without interruption, allowed to speak Garrick's prologue on his return from the continent. This being no caricature, but a fair representation of Garrick's manner, did not make any impression on Foote; however, he paid the speaker a compliment on the goodness of his ear – dinner was now announced, and when Henderson took his leave, Foote whispered one of the company, he would not do.

"Henderson once requested Palmer 'not to bring him forward in too many parts;' observing that it must be for the manager's interest, as well as his own credit, to have him studied in the parts he was to appear in: he added, 'to learn words, indeed, is no great labour, and to pour them out no very difficult matter; it is done on our stage almost every night, but with what success I leave you to judge —the generality of performers think it enough to learn the words; and thence all that vile uniformity which disgraces the theatre.'" This was rather proud criticism, as it referred to his early Bath colleagues; but Henderson's standard of propriety would not allow him to speak otherwise.

In his second character in London, Hamlet, he came into more direct contrast with Garrick, whose greatest idolaters found heavy fault in Henderson's young Dane for flinging away his uncle's picture – subsequent to the famous speech in which he compares the portraits of his father and uncle. On a following night he retained the picture in his hand, and the same party ridiculed him, on the ground that if he was right the first night, he must necessarily have been wrong on the second! He was said, too, not to have managed his hat properly on first seeing the Ghost; and similar carpings were made against the new actor, only to hear whose words, "the fair Ophelia!" people went as to the most exquisite music. But what was that to the Garrick faction who pronounced him disqualified, because in the closet scene he did not, in his agitation, upset the chair. "Mr. Garrick, sir, always overthrew the chair."

During his short, but brilliant and honourable career, he originated no new character that may be found in any acting play of the present day. I think he was the first actor who, with Sheridan, gave public readings. They filled Freemason's Hall, and their own pockets, by their talents in this way, and Henderson could as easily excite tears by his pathos, as he could stir laughter by a droll way of reciting Johnny Gilpin, which gave wild impetus to the sale of that picturesque narrative.

His own temperament, however, was naturally grave, derived from that mother whose occasional melancholy was nearly allied to insanity. Yet he was not without humour, or he could not have played Falstaff with a success only inferior to Quin, nor have founded the Shandean Club in Maiden Lane, nor have written so quaint a pastoral love-song as his Damon and Phyllis. In acting Æsop, he delivered the fables with great significance. The chief characteristic of the part lay in its grim splenetic humour, such as he himself showed when he, the high-spirited pupil of Fournier, had to drive his master when he gave drawing-lessons, and to clean the horse and chaise after reaching home again!

He loved praise, honestly owned his love, and worked hard to win public favour. When he was cast for a new character he read the entire play, learned his own part, read the play again, and troubled himself no more about it, although a fortnight might elapse between the last rehearsal and the first performance. Previous to which latter occasion, it was his custom to dine well, and sit at his wine till summoned to rise and go forth. A Garrick-worshipper told him he was wrong.49 Mr. Garrick, on such occasions, shut himself up for the day, and dined lightly. Henderson was the last of the school of Garrick, and once imitated his master in his diet. The result was a cold and vapid performance of Bireno, in the "Law of Lombardy;" and Henderson registered a vow, to be original and dine generously on like occasions, in future.

Henderson was, in every respect a gentleman; his social position was as good as that of any gentleman of his time. In Dublin, as in London, he was a welcome guest in the best society, even in that for which the stage had few attractions. Personally, he had natural obstacles to surmount. He was short, not gracefully moulded, lacked intelligent expression of the eye, and had a voice too weak for rage and not silvery soft enough for love. But he had clear judgment, quick feeling, ready comprehension, and accurate elocution. Cumberland names Shylock, Falstaff, and Sir Giles as his best characters, but there were portions of others in which he could not be excelled; "in the variety of Shakspeare's soliloquies, where more is meant than meets the ear, he had no equal," and this is high praise, for the difficulty of the task is work for a genius.

Never strong, his poor health failed him early, and on the 8th of November 1785 he acted for the last time. The part was Horatius, in the "Roman Father." In less than three weeks, and at the early age of thirty-eight, troops of friends escorted the body of the man they had esteemed to Westminster Abbey, – one more addition to the silent company of the great of all degrees and qualities, from actors to kings. Professionally, Henderson did not die prematurely. Kemble had already been two years at Drury Lane, and the new school of acting was supplanting the old.

Let me add a word of Henderson's brother. He, too, belonged to art, and promised to be a great engraver, but consumption struck him down early. He was residing, for his health, on the sunny side of a house in then fashionable Hampstead, when death came suddenly upon him. Among the company in the same house was the most beautiful and gay of gay women, – Kitty Fisher. But she was true woman too, and hearing of a lonely stranger menaced with death, she went straightway to tend him, and Henderson's brother died in Kitty's arms.

His readings were attended frequently by Mrs. Siddons and John Kemble; his voice was so flexible that his tones conveyed every phase of meaning. Even his way of reading the words, "They order this matter," said I, "better in France," had a world of significance in it, not to be found when uttered by others; and the letter of Mrs. Ford to Falstaff, when he read it on the stage, shook the house with such laughter as was seldom heard, save indeed when he imitated Garrick and Dr. Johnson, the former reciting his ode, and the latter interrupting him by critical objections. I do not wonder that both Munden and John Kemble who, all their lives, had a longing to play Falstaff, abandoned the idea when they remembered Henderson's excellence.

At the period of Henderson's death, his early prophecy had been fulfilled with regard to Mrs. Siddons; – to whose career we will now direct our notice.

CHAPTER VII

SARAH SIDDONS

On the 13th of June 1755,50 when Garrick and Mrs. Cibber, Yates and Mrs. Pritchard, Woodward and Mrs. Clive, were the leaders in the Drury Lane Company, – while Barry and Mrs. Bellamy, Ryan and Mrs. Woffington, were among the "chiefs" of Covent Garden, Sarah Kemble was born, the first of twelve children, at a public-house, in Brecon, in which town, exactly a score of years later, was born her youngest brother, Charles.

By both parents she belonged to the stage. Her mother's maiden name was Ward. This lady's father had been a respectable actor51 under Betterton, and was a strolling manager, when the hairdresser of the company, a handsome fellow, poor, of course, and a Roman Catholic, eloped with and married the manager's daughter. His name was Roger Kemble. He was an actor too; love, at first, had helped to make him a very bad one. Fanny Furnival, of the Canterbury company, drilled him into the worst Captain Plume52 that ever danced over the stage; but Mrs. Roger Kemble, a woman who illustrated the truth that beauty is of every age, used in her latter days to look at the grand old man, and assert that he was the only gentleman-like Falstaff she had ever seen.

Mr. and Mrs. Kemble were "itinerants" when the first child of their marriage was born, – a child who made her début on the London stage long before her father; – the latter playing, and playing very well, the Miller of Mansfield, at the Haymarket, in 1788, for the benefit of the wife of his second son, Stephen. When Roger carried off Miss Ward, her father with difficulty forgave her, – and only on the ground that she had, at all events, obeyed his injunction, – not to marry an actor. "He will never be that," said the old player of the Betterton era. With which remark, his discontent was exhausted.

Her grandsire acted under Betterton and Booth; her parents had played with Quin; – she herself fulfilling a professional career which commenced with Garrick, and ended with her performing Lady Randolph to Mr. Macready's Glenalvon; – when I add to this record that she saw the brilliant but chequered course of Edmund Kean to nearly its close, and witnessed the début of Miss Fanny Kemble, – the whole history of the stage since the Restoration seems resumed therein.

Roger Kemble's itinerant company, as his children were born, received them as members. They played, – Sarah, John, Stephen, Elizabeth, – almost as soon as they could speak. Sarah's first audience compassionately hissed her, as too young to be listened to; but she won their applause by reciting a fable. At thirteen, she played in the great room of the King's Head, Worcester, – among other parts, Ariel, in the "Tempest," her father, mother, sister Elizabeth, and brother John acting in the same piece. For the next four or five years, there was much of itinerant life, till we find her at Wolverhampton, in 1773, acting in a wide range of characters, from Lee's heroines to Rosetta, in "Love in a Village." In the latter case, the young Meadows was a Mr. Siddons, who had acted Hippolito in Dryden's "Tempest," when she played Ariel. In her father's company she was always the first and greatest. She played all that the accomplished daughter of a manager chose to play, among her father's strollers, – and she attracted admirers both before and behind the curtain. The Earl of Coventry53 and sundry squires were among the former. Among the latter was that poor player, an ex-apprentice from Birmingham, named Siddons, between whom and Sarah Kemble there was true love, for which, however, there was lacking parental sanction. The country audiences sympathised with the young people, and applauded the lover, who introduced his sad story into a comic song, on his benefit night. As he left the stage, the stately manageress received him at the wing, and there greeted him with a ringing box of the ears.

This led to the secession of both actors from the company. Mr. Siddons went, – the world before him where to choose; Sarah Kemble, – to the family of Mr. Greatheed, of Guy's Cliff, Warwickshire. "She hired herself," says the Secret History of the Green Room, published in the very zenith of her fame, – "as lady's maid to Mrs. Greatheed, at £10 per annum." "Her station," says Campbell, "was humble, but not servile, and her principal employment was to read to the elder Mr. Greatheed." She probably fulfilled the double duty, – no disparagement at a time when the maids of ladies were often decayed ladies themselves.

Old Roger Kemble is said to have been very unwilling that any of his children should follow that profession, in exercising which he had wandered far, suffered much, and profited sparingly. The unwillingness was natural, but he seems to have put it in practice when too late; – after he had allowed his attractive young people to enjoy some of the perilous delights of the stage. There are bills extant which show that some of them, at least, were playing in his company, when they were of tender years. When Sarah Kemble went to Guy's Cliff, it was with no idea of permanently leaving the stage; and if it be true, as alleged in the series of dramatic biographies, published by Symonds at the beginning of the present century, that Roger Kemble apprenticed his daughter Elizabeth to a mantua-maker in Leominster, and Frances to a milliner in Worcester, he narrowly missed marring their good fortunes. A similar vocation could not keep Anne Oldfield from the stage, and though Elizabeth and Frances Kemble were not actresses of extraordinary merit, they had not to regret that they abandoned the vocations chosen for them by their parents, for that which was followed by their parents themselves.

From Guy's Cliff, Sarah Kemble was ultimately taken by her persevering wooer, to whom her father reluctantly gave her at Trinity Church, Coventry, on the 6th of November 1773. The bride was in her nineteenth year. The married couple continued but for a brief period in the Kemble company. A month after the marriage, the name of "Mrs. Siddons" was, for the first time, in the playbill, at Worcester,54 to Charlotte Rusport, in the "West Indian," and Leonora, in the "Padlock." Shortly after, Roger Kemble saw Mr. and Mrs. Siddons depart for Chamberlain and Crump's company, in Cheltenham. Here Mrs. Siddons at once took her place. Her Belvidera excited universal admiration. Lord Ailesbury, the cousin of the Pretender's wife, the Countess of Albany, mentioned her to Garrick; and Lord Dungarvon's daughter, Miss Boyle, directed her wardrobe, lent her many of her own dresses, and helped to make others for her with her own hands.

The Cheltenham "properties" were of the poorest; but there were some that even the Honourable Miss Boyle could not supply. Thus, for the male disguise of the Widow Brady, Mrs. Siddons found, on the night of performance, that no provision had been made; but we are told that a gentleman in the boxes lent her his coat, while he stood at the side-scenes, with a petticoat over his shoulders, and ready to receive his property when done with!

Garrick, on Lord Ailesbury's report, sent King down to see this actress of promise, and on King's warrant, engaged her for Drury Lane, at £5 per week. Others say that it was on the warrant of Parson Bate, of the Morning Post, who greatly praised her Rosalind.55

Her first appearance was on the 29th of December 1775, as Portia, "by a young lady," to King's Shylock. On January 2d, 1776, she repeated Portia, "by Mrs. Siddons." On the 18th,56 she played Epicœne, but the part was subsequently assigned to another. On the 2d of February she acted Julia, in a new and poor farce, the "Blackamoor washed White," and on the 15th, Emily, in Mrs. Cowley's new comedy, the "Runaway," which part she had to surrender to Mrs. King. She was not more fortunate in Maria, her third original character, in "Love's Metamorphoses;" nor in a subsequent part, that of Mrs. Strictland to Garrick's Ranger, did she excite any further remark save that it was played in a pathetic manner. Her second appearance with Garrick was as Lady Anne to his Richard, which she repeated twice, the last time on June 5, in presence of the royal family. Five nights later, Garrick took his farewell of the stage, and Mrs. Siddons's engagement was at an end.

In Belvidera, for which she had been praised by King, she was not permitted to appear. Bate had commended her Rosalind, but she had to see it played by Miss Younge. Even Miss Hopkins, who became her sister-in-law, had better parts than she; and there was Mrs. Yates keeping Calista and Isabella, and Mrs. King playing Lady Macbeth, and Mrs. Canning (mother of the future statesman) allowed on the benefit of Reddish, whom she married, to play Monimia. Mrs. Siddons concluded that the other actresses who plagued Garrick's life out, hated her, because Garrick was polite and even kind to her. Sheridan alleged, as a reason for not re-engaging her, that Garrick did not recognise in her a first-rate actress (which she was far from being at that time). Woodfall thought her sensible, but too weak for London. "You are all fools!" said buxom Mrs. Abington.

The fragile, timid, faltering actress acquired strength in the country. Henderson, himself rising to excellence, acted with, and spoke well of, her. York pronounced her perfect, and Bath took her with the warrant, and retained her, its most cherished tragic actress, object of public applause and private esteem, till the year 1782. It was here, in truth, that the great actress was perfected, and that amid as many matronly as professional duties. On leaving the Bath stage, she pointed to her children as so many reasons for the step; and therewith went up, with no faint heart, this time to the metropolis. "She is an actress," said Henderson, "who has never had an equal, and will never have a superior." "My good reception in London," writes Mrs. Siddons, "I cannot but partly attribute to the enthusiastic accounts of me which the amiable Duchess of Devonshire had brought thither, and spread before my arrival." Poor Henderson!

With broken voice, the old nervousness, and a world of fears, she rehearsed Isabella, in Southerne's tragedy. When the night of the 10th of October 1782 arrived, she dressed with a desperate tranquillity, and many sighs, and then faced the public, her son Henry, then eight years of age, holding her by the hand, and her father, Roger, looking on with a dismay that was soon converted into delight. Smith played Biron, and Palmer, Villeroy, – but Siddons alone was heeded on that night, in which she gave herself up so thoroughly to the requirements of the part, that her young son, who had often rehearsed with her, was so overcome by the reality of the dying scene, that he burst into tears.57 "I never heard," she writes, "such peals of applause in all my life. I thought they would not have suffered Mr. Packer to end the play."

With the echoes of the shouting audience ringing in her ears, she went home solemnly and silently. "My father, my husband, and myself," she says, "sat down to a frugal, neat supper, in a silence uninterrupted, except by exclamations of gladness from Mr. Siddons." With succeeding nights, the triumph went on increasing. The management gave her Garrick's dressing-room, and gentlemen learned in the law presented her with a purse of a hundred guineas.