The Town Part 31

"He charmed the ladies by the soft melody of his love-complaints, and the n.o.ble ardour of his courts.h.i.+p. There was no pa.s.sion of the tender kind so truly pathetic and forcible in any actor as in Barry, except in Mrs. Cibber, who, indeed, excelled, in the expression of love, grief, tenderness, and jealous rage, all I ever knew. Happy it was for the frequenters of the theatre, when these two genuine children of nature united their efforts to charm an attentive audience. Mrs.

Cibber, indeed, might be styled the daughter or sister of Mr. Garrick, but could be only the mistress or wife of Barry."[270] Our author afterwards calls him the "Mark Antony of the stage," whether his amorous disposition was considered, or his love of expense. He delighted in giving magnificent entertainments, and treated Mr.

Pelham, who once invited himself to sup with him, in a style so princely, that the Minister rebuked him for it; which was not very civil. An actor has surely as much right to do absurd things as a statesman.

Now, as a contrast to this romantic portrait by Davies, take the following from the severer but masterly hand of Churchill:--

"In person taller than the common size, Behold where Barry draws admiring eyes; When lab'ring pa.s.sions in his bosom pent, Convulsive rage, and struggling heave for vent, Spectators, with imagined terrors warm, Anxious expect the bursting of the storm: But, all unfit in such a pile to dwell, His voice comes forth like Echo from her cell; To swell the tempest needful aid denies, And all a-down the stage in feeble murmur dies.

What man, like Barry, with such pains, can err In elocution, action, character?

What man could give, if Barry was not here, Such well-applauded tenderness to Lear?

Who else can speak so very, very fine, That sense may kindly end with every line?

Some dozen lines, before the ghost is there, Behold him for the solemn scene prepare.

See how he frames his eyes, poises each limb, Puts the whole body into proper trim,-- From whence we learn, with no great stretch of art, Five lines hence comes a ghost, and lo! a start.

When he appears most perfect, still we find Something which jars upon and hurts the mind.

Whatever lights upon a part are thrown, We see too plainly they are not his own: No flame from nature ever yet he caught, Nor knew a feeling which he was not taught; He raised his trophies on the base of art, And conn'd his pa.s.sions, as he conn'd his part."[271]

The probability, we fear, is that Barry was one of the old artificial school, who made his way more by person than by genius. Davies, who was a better gossip than critic, though he affected literature, was an actor himself of the mouthing order, if we are to believe Churchill; and his criticisms show him enough inclined to lean favourably to that side.

We have spoken of Quin, who acted much at this house in opposition to Garrick. It was here that he delivered the prologue to the memory of his friend Thomson; and affected the audience by shedding real tears.[272]

Macklin was celebrated in Shylock; and in some other sarcastic parts, particularly that of Sir Archy, in his comedy of "Love-a-la-Mode." We take him to have been one of those actors whose performances are confined to the reflection of their own personal peculiarities. The merits of Shuter, Edwin, Quick, and others who succeeded one another as buffoons, were perhaps a good deal of this sort; but pleasant humours are rare and acceptable. Macklin was a clever satirist in his writing, and embroiled himself, not so cleverly, with a variety of his acquaintances. He foolishly attempted to run down Garrick; and once, in a sudden quarrel, poked out a man's eye with his stick and killed him; for which he narrowly escaped hanging. However, he was sorry for it; and he is spoken of, by the stage historians, as kind in his private relations, and liberal of his purse. A curious specimen of his latter moments we reserve for our mention of the house where he died.

Woodward seems to have been a caricature antic.i.p.ation of Lewis, and was a capital harlequin. But n.o.body in harlequins beat Rich, the manager of this theatre. His pantomimes and spectacles produced a re-action against Garrick, when nothing else could; and Covent Garden ever since has been reckoned the superior house in that kind of merit,--"the wit," as Mr. Ludlow Holt called it, "of goods and chattels." However, a considerable degree of fancy and observation may be developed in pantomime: it is the triumph of animal spirits at Christmas, for the little children; and for the men there is occasionally some excellent satire on the times, reminding one, in its spirit, of what we read of the comic buffoonery of the ancients.

Grimaldi, in his broad and fugitive sketches, often showed himself a shrewder observer than many a comic actor who can repeat only what is set down for him. Covent Garden has, perhaps, been superior also in music, at least since the existence of the two houses together: for Purcell was before its time. Many of Arne's pieces came out here; and the famous Beard, a singer as manly as his name, the delight both of public and private life, was one of the managers.

Among the Covent Garden actors must not be forgotten Cooke, who came out there in Richard III. For some time he was the greatest performer of this and a few other characters. He was a new kind of Macklin, and like him, excelled in Shylock and Sir Archy M'Sarcasm; a confined actor, and a wayward man, but highly impressive in what he could do.

His artful villains have been found fault with for looking too artful and villanous; but men of that stamp are apt to look so. The art of hiding is a considerable one; but habit will betray it after all, and stand foremost in the countenance. They who think otherwise are only too dull to see it. Besides, Cooke had generally to represent bold-faced, aspiring art; and to hug himself in its triumph. This he did with such a gloating countenance, as if villany was pure luxury in him, and with such a soft inward retreating of his voice--a wrapping up of himself, as it were, in velvet--so different from his ordinary rough way, that sometimes one could almost have wished to abuse him.

John Kemble, who, like the whole respectable family of that name, contributed much to maintain the rising character of the profession, may be considered the last popular actor of the declamatory school.

His sister was a far greater performer, a true theatrical genius, especially for the stately and dominant; and had a great effect in raising the character of the profession. The growth of liberal opinion is nowhere more visible than in the different estimation in which actors and actresses are now held, compared with what it was.

Individuals, it is true, always made their way into society by dint of the interest they excited; but still they were upon sufferance.

Anybody could insult an actor, could even beat him, without its being dreamt that he had a right to retaliate; and the most amiable and lady-like actresses were thought unfit for wives, as we have seen in the case of Mrs. Oldfield. Things are now upon a different footing.

Talent is allowed its just pretensions, whether coming from author or performer, and actresses have taken such a step, in ascension, that n.o.bility almost seems to look out for a wife among them, as in a school that will inevitably furnish it with some kind of grace and intellect. The famous Lord Peterborough, who was the first n.o.bleman that married an actress, kept the union concealed as long as he could, and only owned it just before his death. The Duke of Bolton, who married Miss Fenton, the Polly of Gay's opera, had first had several children by her as his mistress; so that this is hardly a case in point; and the marriage of Beard, the singer, with a lady of the Waldegrave family, though he was one of the most excellent of men, was looked upon as such a degradation, that they have contrived to omit the circ.u.mstance in the peerage-books to this day! Martin Folkes's marriage with Mrs. Bradshaw probably made the world consider the case a little more rationally, as he was a clever man; but Lord Derby's marriage with Miss Farren, who was eminently the gentlewoman, as well as of spotless character, seems to have been the first that rendered such unions compatible with public opinion. Lord Craven's with Miss Brunton followed, though at a considerable interval; and since that time, the town are so far from being surprised at the marriages of actresses with people of rank or fas.h.i.+on, that they seem to look for them. Lord Thurlow, not long afterwards, married Miss Bolton; another n.o.ble lord was lately the husband of an eminent singer; and several other favourites of the town, Miss Tree, Miss O'Neill, &c., have become the wives of men of fortune. We remember even a dancer, Miss Searle (but she was of great elegance, and had an air of delicate self-possession), who married into a family of rank.

The whole entertainment of a theatre has been rising in point of accommodation and propriety for the last fifty years. The scenery is better, the music better--we mean the orchestra--and last, not least, the audiences are better. They are better behaved. Garrick put an end to one great nuisance--the occupation, by the audience, of part of the stage. Till his time, people often sat about a stage as at the sides of a room, and the actor had to make his way among them, sometimes with the chance of being insulted; and scuffles took place among themselves. Dr. Johnson, at Lichfield, is said to have pushed a man into the orchestra who had taken possession of his chair. The pit, also, from about Garrick's time, seems to have left to the galleries the vulgarity attributed to it by Pope. There still remains, says he--

---- "to mortify a wit, The many-headed monster of the pit, A senseless, worthless, and unhonoured crowd, Who, to disturb their betters mighty proud, Clattering their sticks before ten lines are spoke, Call for the farce, the bear, or the black-joke."

This would now be hardly a fair description of the galleries; and yet modern audiences are not reckoned to be of quite so high a cast as they used, in point of rank and wealth; so that this is another evidence of the general improvement of manners. Boswell, in an ebullition of vivacity, while sitting one night in the pit by his friend Dr. Blair, gave an extempore imitation of a cow! The house applauded, and he ventured upon some attempts of the same kind which did not succeed. Blair advised him in future to "stick to the cow." No gentleman now-a-days would think of a freak like this. There is one thing, however, in which the pit have much to amend. Their dest.i.tution of gallantry is extraordinary, especially for a body so ready to accept the clap-traps of the stage, in praise of their "manly hearts,"

and their "guardians.h.i.+p of the fair." Nothing is more common than to see women standing at the sides of the pit benches, while no one thinks of offering them a seat. Room even is not made, though it often might be. Nay, we have heard women rebuked for coming without securing a seat, while the reprover complimented himself on his better wisdom, and the hearers laughed. On the other hand, a considerate gentleman one night, who went out to stretch his legs, told a lady in our hearing that she might occupy his seat "till he returned!"

A friend of ours knew a lady who remembered Dr. Johnson in the pit taking snuff out of his waistcoat pocket. He used to go into the green-room to his friend Garrick, till he honestly confessed that the actresses excited too much of his admiration. Garrick did not much like to be seen by him when playing any buffoonery. It is said that the actor once complained to his friend that he talked too loud in the stage box, and interrupted his feelings: upon which the doctor said, "Feelings! Punch has no feelings." It was Johnson's opinion (speaking of a common cant of critics), that an actor who really "took himself"

for Richard III., deserved to be hanged; and it is easy enough to agree with him; except that an actor who did so would be out of his senses. Too great a sensibility seems almost as hurtful to acting as too little. It would soon wear out the performer. There must be a quickness of conception, sufficient to seize the truth of the character, with a coolness of judgment to take all advantages; but as the actor is to represent as well as conceive, and to be the character in his own person, he could not with impunity give way to his emotions in any degree equal to what the spectators suppose. At least, if he did, he would fall into fits, or run his head against the wall. As to the amount of talent requisite to make a great actor, we must not enter upon a discussion which would lead us too far from our main object; but we shall merely express our opinion, that there is a great deal more of it among the community than they are aware.

Goldsmith was a frequenter of the theatre: Fielding and Smollett, Sterne, but particularly Churchill. "His observatory," says Davies, "was generally the first row of the pit, next the orchestra." His "Rosciad," a criticism on the most known performers of the day, made a great sensation among a body of persons who, as they are in the habit of receiving applause to their faces, and in the most victorious manner, may be allowed a greater stock of self-love than most people--a circ.u.mstance which renders an unexacting member of their profession doubly delightful. "The writer," says Davies, "very warmly, as well as justly, celebrated the various and peculiar excellencies of Mrs. Pritchard, Mrs. Cibber, and Clive; but no one has, except Garrick, escaped his satirical lash." Poor Davies is glad to say this, because of the well-known pa.s.sage in which he himself is mentioned:--

"With him came mighty Davies! On my life That Davies hath a very pretty wife."

We will make one more quotation from this poem, because it describes a cla.s.s of actors, who are now extinct, and who carried the artificial school to its height:--

"Mossop, attached to military plan, Still kept his eye fixed on his right-hand man.

Whilst the mouth measures words with seeming skill, The right hand labours, and the left lies still; For he resolved on scripture grounds to go, What the right doth, the left hand shall not know.

With studied impropriety of speech, He soars beyond the hackney critic's reach; To epithets allots emphatic state, Whilst princ.i.p.als, ungraced, like lackeys, wait; In ways first trodden by himself excels, And stands alone in indeclinables; Conjunction, preposition, adverb join, To stamp new vigour on the nervous line: In monosyllables his thunders roll; HE, SHE, IT, and WE, YE, THEY, fright the soul."

Mr. Barrymore (of whom we have no unpleasing recollection) had something of this manner with him; but the extremity of the style is now quite gone out.

The only capital performers we remember, that are now dead and gone, with the exception of two or three already mentioned, were Mrs.

Jordan, a charming cordial actress, on the homely side of the agreeable, with a delightful voice; and Suett, who was the very personification of weak whimsicality, with a laugh like a peal of giggles. Mathews gives him to the life.

We shall conclude this chapter with some delightful play-going recollections of the best theatrical critic now living[273]--the best, indeed, as far as we know, that this country ever saw. He is one who does not respect criticism a jot too much, nor any of the feelings connected with humanity, or the imitation of it, too little. We here have him giving us an account of the impression made upon him by the first sight of a play, and concluding with a good hint to those older children, who, because they have cut their drums open, think nothing remains in life to be pleased with. A child may like a theatre, because he is not thoroughly acquainted with it; but if he become a wise man, he will find reason to like it, because he is.

Life always flows with a certain freshness in these quarters; nor, with all their drawbacks, have we more agreeable impressions from any neighbourhood in London, than what we receive from the district containing the great theatres. It is one of the most social and the least sordid.

"At the north end of Cross Court," says Mr. Lamb, "there yet stands a portal, of some architectural pretensions, though reduced to humble use, serving at present for an entrance to a printing-office. This old door-way, if you are young, reader, you may not know was the identical pit entrance to old Drury--Garrick's Drury--all of it that is left. I never pa.s.s it without shaking some forty years from off my shoulders, recurring to the evening when I pa.s.sed through it to see _my first play_. The afternoon had been wet, and the condition of our going (the elder folks and myself) was, that the rain should cease. With what a beating heart did I watch from the window the puddles, from the stillness of which I was taught to prognosticate the desired cessation. I seem to remember the last spurt, and the glee with which I ran to announce it.

"In those days were pit orders. Beshrew the uncomfortable manager who abolished them!--with one of these we went. I remember the waiting at the door--not that which is left--but between that and an inner door, in shelter. Oh, when shall I be such an expectant again!--with the cry of nonpareils, an indispensable playhouse accompaniment in those days. As near as I can recollect, the fas.h.i.+onable p.r.o.nunciation of the theatrical fruiteresses was, '_chase_ some oranges, _chase_ some nonpareils, _chase_ a bill of the play:' chase _pro_ chuse. But when we got in and I beheld the green curtain that veiled a heaven to my imagination, which was soon to be disclosed--the breathless antic.i.p.ations I endured! I had seen something like it in the plate prefixed to 'Troilus and Cressida,' in Rowe's 'Shakspeare,'--the tent scene with Diomede; and a sight of that plate can always bring back, in a measure, the feeling of that evening. The boxes at that time full of well-dressed women of quality, projected over the pit; and the pilasters, reaching down, were adorned with a glittering substance (I know not what) under gla.s.s (as it seemed), resembling--a homely fancy--but I judged it to be sugar-candy--yet, to my raised imagination, divested of its homelier qualities, it appeared a glorified candy! The orchestra lights at length arose, those 'fair Auroras!' Once the bell sounded. It was to ring out yet once again; and, incapable of the antic.i.p.ation, I reposed my shut eyes in a sort of resignation upon the maternal lap. It rang the second time.

The curtain drew up--I was not past six years old--and the play was 'Artaxerxes!'

"I had dabbled a little in the 'Universal History'-the ancient part of it--and here was the court of Persia. It was being admitted to a sight of the past. I took no proper interest in the action going on, for I understood not its import; but I heard the word Darius, and I was in the midst of Daniel. All feeling was absorbed in vision. Gorgeous vests, gardens, palaces, princes, pa.s.sed before me--I knew not players. I was in Persepolis for the time, and the burning idol of their devotion almost converted me into a wors.h.i.+pper. I was awe-struck, and believed those significations to be something more than elemental fires. It was all enchantment and a dream.

No such pleasure has ever since visited me but in dreams.

Harlequin's invasion followed; where, I remember, the transformation of the magistrates into reverend beldames seemed to me a piece of grave historic justice, and the tailor carrying his own head to be as sober a verity as the legend of St. Denys.

"The next play to which I was taken, was the 'Lady of the Manor,' of which, with the exception of some scenery, very faint traces are left in my memory. It was followed by a pantomime called 'Lun's Ghost'--a satiric touch, I apprehend, upon Rich, not long since dead--but to my apprehension (too sincere for satire) Lun was as remote a piece of antiquity as Lud--the father of a line of harlequins--transmitting his dagger of lath (the wooden sceptre) through countless ages. I saw the primeval Motley come from his silent tomb in a ghastly vest of white patch-work, like the apparition of a dead rainbow. So harlequins (thought I) look when they are dead.

"My third play followed in quick succession. It was 'The Way of the World.' I think I must have sat at it as grave as a judge; for, I remember, the hysteric affectations of good Lady Wishfort affected me like some solemn tragic pa.s.sion. 'Robinson Crusoe' followed, in which Crusoe, Man Friday, and the Parrot were as good and authentic as in the story. The clownery and pantaloonery of these pantomimes have clean pa.s.sed out of my head. I believe I no more laughed at them, than at the same age I should have been disposed to laugh at the grotesque gothic heads (seeming to me then replete with devout meaning) that gape and grin, in stone, around the inside of the old round church (my church) of the Templars.

"I saw these plays in the season of 1781-2, when I was from six to seven years old. After the intervention of six or seven years (for at school all play-going was inhibited) I again entered the doors of a theatre. That old Artaxerxes' evening had never done ringing in my fancy. I expected the same feelings to come again with the same occasion. But we differ from ourselves less at sixty and sixteen, than the latter does from six. In that interval what had I not lost! At the first period I knew nothing, understood nothing, discriminated nothing. I felt all, loved all, wondered all--

'Was nourished I could not tell how.'

I had left the temple a devotee, and was returned a rationalist. The same things were there materially; but the emblem, the reverence was gone! The green curtain was no longer a veil drawn between two worlds, the unfolding of which was to bring back past ages, to present a 'royal ghost,' but a certain quant.i.ty of green baize, which was to separate the audience for a given time from certain of their fellow-men who were to come forward and pretend those parts. The lights--the orchestra lights--came up, a clumsy machinery. The first ring, and the second ring, was now but a trick of the prompter's bell, which had been like the note of the cuckoo, a phantom of a voice, no hand seen or guessed at, which ministered to its warning. The actors were men and women painted. I thought the fault was in them; but it was in myself, and the alteration which those many centuries--of six short twelvemonths--had wrought in me.

Perhaps it was fortunate for me that the play of the evening was but an indifferent comedy, as it gave me time to crop some unreasonable expectations, which might have interfered with the genuine emotions with which I was soon after enabled to enter upon the first appearance, to me, of Mrs. Siddons in Isabella.

Comparison and retrospection soon yielded to the present attraction of the scene; and the theatre became to me, _upon a new stock_, the most delightful of recreations."--ELIA, p. 221.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ENTRANCE DOOR, OLD COVENT GARDEN.]

FOOTNOTES:

[247] P. 160.

[248] Lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Hooker, &c. by Izaac Walton, 1825, p. 22.

[249] Life of Donne, in Chalmers's "British Poets."

[250] For complete particulars of the history of James's daughter and son-in-law, and their gallant adherents, see "Memoirs of Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia," by Miss Benger, and "Collins's Peerage," by Sir Egerton Brydges, vol. v., p. 446. Miss Benger is as romantic as if she had lived in the queen's time, but she is diligent and amusing.

The facts can easily be separated from her colouring.

[251] See Baker's Biographia Dramatica, vol. ii.