Their Majesties' Servants. Annals of the English Stage (Volume 1 of 3)

We are better acquainted with the fate of the last of Scum's fair favourites, the pretty Mrs. Price of Drury Lane. This Ariadne was not disconsolate for her Theseus. She married "Charles, Lord Banbury," who was not Lord Banbury, for the House of Peers denied his claim to the title; and he was not Mrs. Price's husband, as he was already married to a living lady, Mrs. Lester. Of this confusion in social arrangements the world made small account, although the law did pronounce in favour of Mrs. Lester, without troubling itself to punish "my lord." The Judges pronounced for the latter lady, solely on the ground that she had had children, and the actress none.

Joseph Haines! "Joe" with his familiars, "Count Haines" with those who affected great respect, was a rogue in his way, – a merry rogue, a ready wit, and an admirable low comedian, from 1672 to 1701. We first hear of him as a quickwitted lad at a school in St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, whence he was sent, through the liberality of some gentlemen who had remarked his talents, to Queen's College, Oxford. There Haines met with Williamson, the Sir Joseph of after days, distinguished alike for his scholarship, his abilities as a statesman, the important offices he held, and the liberality with which he dispensed the fortune which he honourably acquired.

Williamson chose Haines for a friend, and made him his Latin secretary when Williamson was appointed Secretary of State. If Haines could have kept official and state secrets, his own fortune would now have been founded; but Joe gossiped in joyous companies, and in taverns revealed the mysteries of diplomacy. Williamson parted with his indiscreet "servant," but sent him to recommence fortune-making at Cambridge. Here, again, his waywardness ruined him for a professor. A strolling company at Stourbridge Fair seduced him from the groves of Academus,28 and in a short time this foolish and clever fellow, light of head, of heart, and of principle, was the delight of the Drury Lane audiences, and the favoured guest in the noblest society where mirth, humour, and dashing impudence were welcome.

In 1673, his Sparkish, in the "Country Wife" – his original character – was accepted as the type of the airy gentleman of the day. His acting on, and his jokes off, the stage were the themes in all coteries and coffee-houses. He was a great practical jester, and once engaged a simple-minded clergyman as "Chaplain to the Theatre Royal," and sent him behind the scenes, ringing a bell, and calling the players to prayers! When Romanism was looking up, under James II., Haines had the impudence to announce to the convert Sunderland, – unworthy son of Waller's Sacharissa, – his adoption of the King's religion, being moved thereto by the Virgin, who had appeared to him in a dream, saying, "Joe, arise!" This was too much even for Sunderland, who drily observed that "she would have said 'Joseph,' if only out of respect for her husband!"

The rogue showed the value of a "profession," which gave rise to as many pamphlets as Dryden's, by subsequently recanting, – not in the church, but on the stage; he the while covered with a sheet, holding a taper, and delivering some stupid rhymes, – to the very dullest of which he had the art of giving wonderful expression by his accent, emphasis, modulation, and felicity of application. The audience that could bear this recantation-prologue could easily pardon the speaker, who would have caused even greater errors to have been pardoned, were it only for his wonderful impersonation of Captain Bluff (1693) in Congreve's "Old Bachelor." The self-complaisant way in which he used to utter "Hannibal was a very pretty fellow in his day," was universally imitated, and has made the phrase itself proverbial. His Roger, in "Æsop," was another of his successes, the bright roll of which was crowned by his lively, impudent, irresistible Tom Errand, in Farquhar's "Constant Couple," – that most triumphant comedy of a whole century.

The great fault of Haines lay in the liberties which he took with the business of the stage. He cared less to identify himself with the characters he represented than, through them, to keep up a communication with the spectators. When Hart, then manager, cast Joe for the simple part of a Senator, in "Catiline," in which Hart played the hero, Joe, in disgust at his rôle, spoiled Hart's best point, by sitting behind him, absurdly attired, with pot and pipe in hand, and making grimaces at the grave actor of Catiline; which kept the house in a roar of laughter. Hart could not be provoked to forget his position, and depart from his character; but as soon as he made his exit, he sent Joe his dismissal.

Joe Haines then alternated between the stage and the houses of his patrons. "Vivitur ingenio" – the stage-motto, was also his own, and he seems to have added to his means by acting the jester's part in noble circles. He was, however, no mere "fool." Scholars might respect a "classic," like Haines, and travelling lords gladly hire as a companion, a witty fellow, who knew two or three living languages as familiarly as he did his own. With an English peer he once visited Paris, where Joe is said to have got imprisoned for debt, incurred in the character, assumed by him, of an English lord. After his release, he returned to England, self-invested with the dignity of "Count," a title not respected by a couple of bailiffs, who arrested Joseph, on Holborn Hill, for a little matter of £20.

"Here comes the carriage of my cousin, the Bishop of Ely," said the unblushing knave; "let me speak to him; I am sure he will satisfy you in this matter."

Consent was given, and Haines, putting his head in at the carriage-door, hastily informed the good Simon Patrick that "here were two Romanists inclined to become Protestants, but with yet some scruples of conscience."

"My friends," said the eager prelate to them, "if you will presently come to my house, I will satisfy you in this matter!" The scrupulous gentlemen were well content; but when an explanation ensued, the vexed bishop paid the money out of very shame, and Joe and the bailiffs spread the story. They who remembered how Haines played Lord Plausible, in the "Plain Dealer," were not at all surprised at his deceiving a bishop and a brace of bailiffs.

Sometimes his wit was of a nicer quality. When Jeremy Collier's book against the stage was occupying the public mind, a critic expressed his surprise, seeing that the stage was a mender of morals. "True," answered Joe, "but Collier is a mender of morals, too; and two of a trade, you know, never agree!"

Haines was the best comic actor, in his peculiar line of comedy, during nearly thirty years that he was one of "their majesties' servants." He died at his house in Hart Street, Covent Garden, then a fashionable locality, on the 4th of April 1701, and was buried in the gloomy churchyard of the parish, which has nothing to render it bright but the memory of the poets, artists, and actors whose bodies are there buried in peace.

Let us now consider the men in Davenant's, or the Duke's Company, who acted occasionally in Dorset Gardens, but mostly in Portugal Row, Lincoln's Inn Fields. Of these, the greatest actor was good Thomas Betterton, – and his merits claim a chapter to himself.

CHAPTER V

THOMAS BETTERTON

The diaries, biographies, journals, and traditions of the time will enable us, with some little aid from the imagination, not only to see the actor, but the social aspects amid which he moved. By aid of these, I find that, on a December night, 1661, there is a crowded house at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The play is "Hamlet," with young Mr. Betterton, who has been two years on the stage, in the part of the Dane. The Ophelia is the real object of the young fellow's love, charming Mistress Saunderson. Old ladies and gentlemen, repairing in capacious coaches to this representation, remind one another of the lumbering and crushing of carriages about the old playhouse in the Blackfriars, causing noisy tumults which drew indignant appeals from the Puritan housekeepers, whose privacy was sadly disturbed. But what was the tumult there to the scene on the south side of the "Fields," when "Hamlet," with Betterton, as now, was offered to the public! The Jehus contend for place with the eagerness of ancient Britons in a battle of chariots. And see, the mob about the pit-doors have just caught a bailiff attempting to arrest an honest playgoer. They fasten the official up in a tub, and roll the trembling wretch all "round the square." They finish by hurling him against a carriage, which sweeps from a neighbouring street at full gallop. Down come the horses over the barrelled bailiff, with sounds of hideous ruin; and the young lady lying back in the coach is screaming like mad. This lady is the dishonest daughter of brave, honest, and luckless Viscount Grandison. As yet she is only Mrs. Palmer; next year she will be Countess of Castlemaine.

At length the audience are all safely housed and eager. Indifferent enough, however, they are during the opening scenes. The fine gentlemen laugh loudly and comb their periwigs in the "best rooms." The fops stand erect in the boxes to show how folly looks in clean linen; and the orange nymphs, with their costly entertainment of fruit from Seville, giggle and chatter, as they stand on the benches below with old and young admirers, proud of being recognised in the boxes.

The whole court of Denmark is before them; but not till the words, "'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother," fall from the lips of Betterton, is the general ear charmed, or the general tongue arrested. Then, indeed, the vainest fops and pertest orange girls look round and listen too. The voice is so low, and sad, and sweet; the modulation so tender, the dignity so natural, the grace so consummate, that all yield themselves silently to the delicious enchantment. "It's beyond imagination," whispers Mr. Pepys to his neighbour, who only answers with a long and low drawn "Hush!"

I can never look on Kneller's masterly portrait of this great player, without envying those who had the good fortune to see the original, especially in Hamlet. How grand the head, how lofty the brow, what eloquence and fire in the eyes, how firm the mouth, how manly the sum of all! How is the whole audience subdued almost to tears, at the mingled love and awe which he displays in presence of the spirit of his father! Some idea of Betterton's acting in this scene may be derived from Cibber's description of it, and from that I come to the conclusion, that Betterton fulfilled all that Overbury laid down with regard to what best graced an actor. "Whatsoever is commendable to the grave orator, is most exquisitely perfect in him; for by a full and significant action of body he charms our attention. Sit in a full theatre, and you will think you see so many lines drawn from the circumference of so many ears, while the actor is the centre." This was especially the case with Betterton; and now, as Hamlet's first soliloquy closes, and the charmed but silent audience "feel music's pulse in all their arteries," Mr. Pepys almost too loudly exclaims in his ecstasy, "It's the best acted part ever done by man." And the audience think so, too; there is a hurricane of applause; after which the fine gentlemen renew their prattle with the fine ladies, and the orange girls beset the Sir Foplings, and this universal trifling is felt as a relief after the general emotion.

Meanwhile, a critic objects that young Mr. Betterton is not "original," and intimates that his Hamlet is played by tradition come down through Davenant, who had seen the character acted by Taylor, and had taught the boy to enact the Prince after the fashion set by the man who was said to have been instructed by Shakspeare himself; amid which Mr. Pepys remarks, "I only know that Mr. Betterton is the best actor in the world."

As Sir Thomas Overbury remarked of a great player, his voice was never lower than the prompter's nor higher than the foil and target. But let us be silent, here comes the gentle Ophelia. The audience generally took an interest in this lady, and the royal Dane, for there was not one in the house who was ignorant of the love-passages there had been between them, or of the coming marriage by which they were to receive additional warrant. Mistress Saunderson was a lady worthy of all the homage here implied. There was mind in her acting; and she not only possessed personal beauty, but also the richer beauty of a virtuous life. They were a well-matched couple on and off the stage; and their mutual affection was based on a mutual respect and esteem. People thought of them together, as inseparable, and young ladies wondered how Mr. Betterton could play Mercutio, and leave Mistress Saunderson as Juliet, to be adored by the not ineffective Mr. Harris as Romeo! The whole house, as long as the incomparable pair were on the stage, were in a dream of delight. Their grace, perfection, good looks, the love they had so cunningly simulated, and that which they were known to mutually entertain, formed the theme of all tongues. In its discussion, the retiring audience forgot the disinterring of the regicides, and the number of men killed the other day on Tower Hill, servants of the French and Spanish ambassadors, in a bloody struggle for precedency, which was ultimately won by the Don!

Fifty years after these early triumphs, an aged couple resided in one of the best houses in Russell Street, Covent Garden, – the walls of which were covered with pictures, prints, and drawings, selected with taste and judgment. They were still a handsome pair. The venerable lady, indeed, looks pale and somewhat saddened. The gleam of April sunshine which penetrates the apartment cannot win her from the fire. She is Mrs. Betterton, and ever and anon she looks with a sort of proud sorrow on her aged husband. His fortune, nobly earned, has been diminished by "speculation," but the means whereby he achieved it are his still, and Thomas Betterton, in the latter years of Queen Anne, is the chief glory of the stage, even as he was in the first year of King Charles. The lofty column, however, is a little shaken. It is not a ruin, but is beautiful in its decay. Yet that it should decay at all is a source of so much tender anxiety to the actor's wife, that her senses suffer disturbance, and there may be seen in her features something of the distraught Ophelia of half a century ago.

It is the 13th of April, 1710 – his benefit night; and the tears are in the lady's eyes, and a painful sort of smile on her trembling lips, for Betterton kisses her as he goes forth that afternoon to take leave, as it proved, of the stage for ever. He is in such pain from gout that he can scarcely walk to his carriage, and how is he to enact the noble and fiery Melantius in that ill-named drama of horror, "The Maid's Tragedy"? Hoping for the best, the old player is conveyed to the theatre, built by Sir John Vanbrugh, in the Haymarket, the site of which is now occupied by the "Opera-house." Through the stage-door he is carried in loving arms to his dressing-room. At the end of an hour Wilks is there, and Pinkethman, and Mrs. Barry, all dressed for their parts, and agreeably disappointed to find the Melantius of the night robed, armoured, and be-sworded, with one foot in a buskin and the other in a slipper. To enable him even to wear the latter, he had first thrust his inflamed foot into water; but stout as he seemed, trying his strength to and fro in the room, the hand of Death was at that moment descending on the grandest of English actors.

The house rose to receive him who had delighted themselves, their sires, and their grandsires. The audience were packed "like Norfolk biffins." The edifice itself was only five years old, and when it was a-building, people laughed at the folly which reared a new theatre in the country, instead of in London; – for in 1705 all beyond the rural Haymarket was open field, straight away westward and northward. That such a house could ever be filled was set down as an impossibility; but the achievement was accomplished on this eventful benefit night; when the popular favourite was about to utter his last words, and to belong thenceforward only to the history of the stage he had adorned.

There was a shout which shook him, as Lysippus uttered the words "Noble Melantius," which heralded his coming. Every word which could be applied to himself was marked by a storm of applause, and when Melantius said of Amintor —

"His youth did promise much, and his ripe yearsWill see it all performed,"

a murmuring comment ran round the house, that this had been effected by Betterton himself. Again, when he bids Amintor "hear thy friend, who has more years than thou," there were probably few who did not wish that Betterton were as young as Wilks: but when he subsequently thundered forth the famous passage, "My heart will never fail me," there was a very tempest of excitement, which was carried to its utmost height, in thundering peal on peal of unbridled approbation, as the great Rhodian gazed full on the house, exclaiming —

"My heartAnd limbs are still the same: my will as greatTo do you service!"

No one doubted more than a fractional part of this assertion, and Betterton, acting to the end under a continued fire of "bravoes!" may have thrown more than the original meaning into the phrase —

"That little word was worth all the soundsThat ever I shall hear again!"

Few were the words he was destined ever to hear again; and the subsequent prophecy of his own certain and proximate death, on which the curtain slowly descended, was fulfilled eight and forty hours after they were uttered.

Such was the close of a career which had commenced fifty-one years before! Few other actors of eminence have kept the stage, with the public favour, for so extended a period, with the exception of Cave Underhill, Quin, Macklin, King, and in later times, Bartley and Cooper, most of whom at least accomplished their half century. The record of that career affords many a lesson and valuable suggestion to young actors, but I have to say a word previously of the Bettertons, before the brothers of that name, Thomas and the less known William, assumed the sock and buskin.

Tothill Street, Westminster, is not at present a fine or a fragrant locality. It has a crapulous look and a villainous smell, and petty traders now huddle together where nobles once were largely housed. Thomas Betterton was born here, about the year 1634-5.29 The street was then in its early decline, or one of King Charles's cooks could hardly have had home in it. Nevertheless, there still clung to it a considerable share of dignity. Even at that time there was a Tothill Fields House of Correction, whither vagabonds were sent, who used to earn scraps by scraping trenchers in the tents pitched in Petty France. All else in the immediate neighbourhood retained an air of pristine and very ancient nobility. I therefore take the father of Betterton, cook to King Charles, to have been a very good gentleman, in his way. He was certainly the sire of one, and the circumstance of the apprenticeship of young Thomas to a bookseller was no evidence to the contrary. In those days, it was the custom for greater men than the chefs in the King's kitchen, namely, the bishops in the King's church, to apprentice their younger sons, at least, to trade, or to bequeath sums for that especial purpose. The last instance I can remember of this traditionary custom presents itself in the person, not indeed of a son of a bishop, but of the grandson of an archbishop, namely, of John Sharp, Archbishop of York from 1691 to 1714. He had influence enough with Queen Anne to prevent Swift from obtaining a bishopric. His son was Archdeacon of Northumberland, and of this archdeacon's sons one was Prebendary of Durham, while the other, the celebrated Granville Sharp, the "friend of the Negro," was apprenticed to a linen-draper, on Tower Hill. The early connection of Betterton, therefore, with Rhodes, the Charing Cross bookseller, is not to be accepted as a proof that his sire was not in a "respectable" position in society. That sire had had for his neighbour, only half-a-dozen years before Thomas was born, the well-known Sir Henry Spelman, who had since removed to more cheerful quarters in Barbican. A very few years previously, Sir George Carew resided here, in Caron House, and his manuscripts are not very far from the spot even now. They refer to his experiences as Lord Deputy in Ireland, and are deposited in the library at Lambeth Palace. These great men were neighbours of the elder Betterton, and they had succeeded to men not less remarkable. One of the latter was Arthur, Lord Grey of Wilton, the friend of Spenser, and the Talus of that poet's "Iron Flail." The Greys, indeed, had long kept house in Tothill Street, as had also the Lords Dacre of the South. When Betterton was born here, the locality was still full of the story of Thomas Lord Dacre, who went thence to be hanged at Tyburn, in 1541. He had headed a sort of Chevy-chase expedition into the private park of Sir Nicholas Pelham, in Sussex. In the fray which ensued, a keeper was killed, of which deed my lord took all the responsibility, and, very much to his surprise, was hanged in consequence. The mansion built by his son, the last lord, had not lost its first freshness when the Bettertons resided here, and its name, Stourton House, yet survives in the corrupted form of Strutton Ground.

Thus, the Bettertons undoubtedly resided in a "fashionable" locality, and we may fairly conclude that their title to "respectability" has been so far established. That the street long continued to enjoy a certain dignity is apparent from the fact that, in 1664, when Betterton was rousing the town by his acting, as Bosola, in Webster's "Duchess of Malfy," Sir Henry Herbert established his office of Master of the Revels, in Tothill Street. It was not till the next century that the decline of this street set in. Southern, the dramatist, resided and died there, but it was in rooms over an oilman's shop; and Edmund Burke lived modestly at the east end, before those mysterious thousands were amassed by which he was enabled to establish himself as a country gentleman.

Galt, and the other biographers of Betterton, complain of the paucity of materials for the life of so great an actor. Therein is his life told; or rather Pepys tells it more correctly in an entry in his diary for October 1662, in which he says – "Betterton is a very sober, serious man, and studious, and humble, following of his studies; and is rich already with what he gets and saves." There is the great and modest artist's whole life – earnestness, labour, lack of presumption, and the recompense. At the two ends of his career, two competent judges pronounced him to be the best actor they had ever seen. The two men were Pepys, who was born in the reign of Charles I., and Pope, who died in the reign of George II. This testimony refers to above a century, during which time the stage knew no such player as he. Pope, indeed, notices that old critics used to place Hart on an equality with him; this is, probably, an error for Harris, who had a party at court among the gay people there who were oppressed by the majesty of Betterton.30 Pepys alludes to this partisanship in 1663. "This fellow" (Harris), he remarks, "grew very proud of late, the King and everybody else crying him up so high, and that above Betterton, he being a more aery man, as he is, indeed."

From the day of Betterton's bright youth to that of his old age, the sober seriousness of the "artist," for which Pepys vouches, never left him. With the dress he assumed, for the night, the nature of the man – be it "Hamlet" or "Thersites," "Valentine" or "Sir John Brute," of whom he was to be the representative. In the "green-room," as on the stage, he was, for the time being, subdued or raised to the quality of him whose likeness he had put on. In presence of the audience, he was never tempted by applause to forget his part, or himself. Once only, Pepys registers, with surprise, an incident which took place at the representation of "Mustapha," in 1667. It was "bravely acted," he says, "only both Betterton and Harris could not contain from laughing, in the midst of a most serious part, from the ridiculous mistake of one of the men upon the stage; which I did not like."

Then for his humility, I find the testimony of Pepys sufficiently corroborated. It may have been politic in him, as a young man, to repair to Mr. Cowley's lodgings in town, and ask from that author his particular views with regard to the Colonel Jolly in the "Cutter of Coleman Street," which had been intrusted to the young actor; but the politic humility of 1661 was, in fact, the practised modesty of his life. In the very meridian of his fame, he, and Mrs. Barry also, were as ready to take instruction respecting the characters of Jaffier and Belvidera, from poor battered Otway, as they subsequently were from that very fine gentleman, Mr. Congreve, when they were cast for the hero and heroine of his comedies. Even to bombastic Rowe, who hardly knew his own reasons for language put on the lips of his characters, they listened with deference; and, at another period, "Sir John and Lady Brute" were not undertaken by them till they had conferred with the author, solid Vanbrugh.