AT THE PLAY AND THE SHOW.
Fifty years ago the Theatre was, far more than at present, the
favourite amusement of the Londoners. It was a passion with them. They
did not go only to laugh and be pleased as we go now; they went as
critics; the pit preserves to this day a reputation, long since lost,
for critical power. A large number of the audience went to every new
performance of a stock piece in order to criticise. After the theatre
they repaired to the Albion or the Cock for supper, and to talk over
the performance. Fifty years ago there were about eighteen theatres,
for a London of two millions.[2]
[2] The following were the London theatres in the year 1837:
Her Majesty’s, formerly the King’s; Drury Lane, Covent
Garden, the ‘Summer House,’ or Haymarket; the Lyceum,
the Prince’s (now St. James’s), the Adelphi, the City of
London (Norton Folgate), the Surrey, Astley’s, the Queen’s
(afterwards the Prince of Wales’s), the Olympic, and the
Strand, the Coburg (originally opened as the Victoria in
1833), Sadler’s Wells, the Royal Pavilion, the Garrick, and
the Clarence (now the King’s Cross).
These theatres were not open all the year round, but it was reckoned
that 20,000 people went every night to the theatre. There are now
thirty theatres at least open nearly the whole year round. I doubt if
there are many more than 20,000 at all of them together on an average
in one night. Yet London has doubled, and the visitors to London have
been multiplied by ten. It is by the visitors that the theatres are
kept up. The people of London have in great measure lost their taste
for the theatres, because they have gone to live in the suburbs. Who,
for instance, that lives in Hampstead and wishes to get up in good time
in the morning can take his wife often to the theatre? It takes an hour
to drive into town, the hour after dinner. The play is over at a little
after eleven; if he takes a cab, the driver is sulky at the thought of
going up the hill and getting back again without another fare; if he
goes and returns in a brougham, it doubles the expense. Formerly, when
everybody lived in town, they could walk. Again, the price of seats
has enormously gone up. Where there were two rows of stalls at the
same price as the dress circle--namely, four shillings--there are now
a dozen at the price of half a guinea. And it is very much more the
fashion to take the best places, so that the dress circle is no longer
the same highly respectable part of the house, while the upper boxes
are now ‘out of it’ altogether, and, as for the pit, no man knoweth
whether there be any pit still.
[Illustration: Jn. B Buckstone
-JOHN BALDWIN BUCKSTONE-]
Besides, there are so many more distractions; a more widely spread
habit of reading, more music, more art, more society, a fuller life.
The theatre was formerly--it is still to many--the only school of
conversation, wit, manners, and sentiment, the chief excitement which
took them out of their daily lives, the most delightful, the most
entrancing manner of spending the evening. If the theatre were the
same to the people of London as it used to be, the average attendance,
counting the visitors, would be not 20,000 but 120,000.
The reason why some of the houses were open for six months only was
that the Lord Chancellor granted a licence for that period only, except
to the patent houses. The Haymarket was a summer house, from April to
October; the Adelphi a winter house, from October to April.
The most fashionable of the houses was Her Majesty’s, where only
Italian Opera was performed. Everybody in society was obliged to have
a box for the season, for which sums were paid varying with the place
in the house and the rank and wealth of the tenant. Thus the old Duke
of Gloucester used to pay three hundred guineas for the season. On
levée days and drawing-rooms the fashionable world went to the Opera
in their Court dresses, feathers, and diamonds, and all--a very moving
spectacle. Those who only took a box in order to keep up appearances,
and because it was necessary for one in society to have a box, used to
sell seats--commonly called bones, because a round numbered bone was
the ticket of admission--to their friends; sometimes they let their
box for a single night, a month, or the whole season, by means of the
agents, so that, except for the honour of it, as the man said when the
bottom of his sedan-chair fell out, one might as well have had none at
all.
The prices of admission to the theatres were very much less than obtain
at the present day. At Drury Lane the boxes and stalls, of which there
were two or three rows only, were 7_s._ each; the pit was 3_s._ 6_d._,
the upper boxes 2_s._, and the gallery 1_s._ At Covent Garden, where
they were great at spectacle, with performing animals, the great Bunn
being lessee, the prices were lower, the boxes being 4_s._, the pit
2_s._, the upper boxes 1_s._ 6_d._, and gallery 1_s._ At the Haymarket
the boxes were 5_s._, the pit 3_s._, and the gallery 1_s._ 6_d._
[Illustration: LISTON AS ‘PAUL PRY’
(From a Drawing by George Cruikshank)]
The actors and actresses were many and good. At the Haymarket they
had Farren, Webster, Buckstone, Mrs. Glover, and Mrs. Humby. At the
Olympic, Elliston, Liston, and Madame Vestris. Helen Faucit made her
first appearance in 1835; Miss Fanny Kemble hers in 1830. Charles
Mathews, Harley, Macready, and Charles Kean were all playing. I hardly
think that in fifty years’ time so good a list will be made of actors
of the present day whose memory has lasted so long as those of 1837.
The salaries of actors and singers varied greatly, of course. Malibran
received 125_l._ a night, Charles Kean 50_l._ a night, Macready
30_l._ a week, Farren 20_l._ a week, and so on, down to the humble
chorister--they then called her a _figurante_--with her 12_s._ or
18_s._ a week.
[Illustration: T N Talfourd
-THOMAS NOON TALFOURD-]
As for the national drama, I suppose it had never before been in so
wretched a state. Talfourd’s play of ‘Ion’ was produced about this
time; but one good play--supposing ‘Ion’ to be a good play--is hardly
enough to redeem the character of the age. There were also tragedies
by Miss Mitford and Miss Baillie--strange that no woman has ever
written even a tolerable play--but these failed to keep the stage. One
Mr. Maturin, now dying out of recollection, also wrote tragedies. The
comedies and farces were written by Planché, Reynolds, Peake, Theodore
Hook, Dibdin, Leman Rede, Poole, Maddison Morton, and Moncrieff. A
really popular writer, we learn with envy and astonishment, would make
as much as 30_l._, or even 40_l._, by a good piece. Think of making
30_l._ or 40_l._ by a good piece at the theatre! Was not that noble
encouragement for the playwrights? Thirty pounds for one piece! It
takes one’s breath away. Would not Mr. Gilbert, Mr. Wills, and Mr.
George Sims be proud and happy men if they could get 30_l._--a whole
lump of 30_l._--for a single piece? We can imagine the tears of joy
running down their cheeks.
[Illustration: Charles Reade
-CHARLES READE-]
The decline of the drama was attributed by Räumer to the entire absence
of any protection for the dramatist. This is no doubt partly true; but
the dramatist was protected, to a certain extent, by the difficulty of
getting copies of his work. Shorthand writers used to try--they still
try--to take down, unseen, the dialogue. Generally, however, they
are detected in the act and desired to withdraw. As a rule, if the
dramatist did not print the plays, he was safe, except from treachery
on the part of the prompter. The low prices paid for dramatic work were
the chief causes of the decline--say, rather, the dreadful decay, dry
rot, and galloping consumption--of the drama fifty years ago. Who, for
instance, would ever expect good fiction to be produced if it was
rewarded at the rate of no more than 30_l._, or even 300_l._, a novel?
Great prizes are incentives for good work. Good craftsmen will no
longer work if the pay is bad; or, if they work at all, they will not
throw their hearts into the work. The great success of Walter Scott
was the cause why Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Charles Reade, and
the many second-rate novelists chose fiction rather than the drama for
their energies. One or two of them, Dickens and Reade, for instance,
were always hankering after the stage. Had dramatists received the
same treatment in England as in France, many of these writers would
have seriously turned their attention to the theatre, and our modern
dramatic literature would have been as rich as our work in fiction. The
stage now offers a great fortune, a far greater fortune, won much more
swiftly than can be got by fiction, to those who succeed.
[Illustration: M. R. Mitford.
-MARY RUSSELL MITFORD-]
As for the pieces actually produced about this period, they were
chiefly adaptations from novels. Thus, we find ‘Esmeralda’ and
‘Quasimodo,’ two plays from Victor Hugo’s ‘Hunchback of Notre Dame;’
‘Lucillo,’ from ‘The Pilgrims of the Rhine,’ by Lytton; Bulwer, indeed,
was continually being dramatised; ‘Paul Clifford’ and ‘Rienzi,’ among
others, making their appearance on the stage. For other plays there
were ‘Zampa’ or ‘The Corsair,’ due to Byron; ‘The Waterman,’ ‘The
Irish Tutor,’ ‘My Poll and my Partner Joe,’ with T. P. Cooke, at the
Surrey Theatre. The comedy of the time is very well illustrated by
Lytton’s ‘Money,’ stagey and unreal. The scenery, dresses, and general
_mise-en-scène_ would now be considered contemptible.
[Illustration: T. P. COOKE IN ‘BLACK-EYED SUSAN’]
Apart from the Italian Opera, music was very well supported. There were
concerts in great numbers: the Philharmonic, the Vocal Society, and
the Royal Academy of Music gave their concerts at the King’s Ancient
Concert Rooms, Hanover Square. Willis’s Rooms were also used for music;
and the Cecilia Society gave its concerts in Moorgate Street.
[Illustration: Yours truly Walter Scott
-SIR WALTER SCOTT-]
There were many other shows, apart from the well-known sights of town.
Madame Tussaud’s Gallery in Baker Street, the Hippodrome at Bayswater,
the Colosseum, the Diorama in Regent’s Park, the Panorama in Leicester
Square--where you could see ‘Peru and the Andes, or the Village
engulfed by the Avalanche’--and the Panorama in Regent Street attracted
the less frivolous and those who came to town for the improvement of
their minds. For Londoners themselves there were the Vauxhall Gardens
first and foremost--the most delightful places of amusement that London
ever possessed except, perhaps, Belsize. Everybody went to Vauxhall;
those who were respectable and those who were not. Far more beautiful
than the electric lights in the Gardens of the ‘Colonies’ were the two
hundred thousand variegated oil lamps, festooned among the trees of
Vauxhall; there was to be found music, singing, acting, and dancing.
Hither came the gallant and golden youth from the West End; here were
seen sober and honest merchants with their wives and daughters; here
were ladies of doubtful reputation and ladies about whose reputation
there could be no doubt; here there were painted arbours where they
brought you the famous Vauxhall ham--‘sliced cobwebs;’ the famous
Vauxhall beef--‘book muslin, pickled and boiled;’ and the famous
Vauxhall punch--Heavens! how the honest folk did drink that punch!
[Illustration: VAUXHALL GARDENS]
I have before me an account of an evening spent at Vauxhall about
this time by an eminent drysalter of the City, his partner, a certain
Tom, and two ladies, the drysalter’s wife and his daughter Lydia; ‘a
laughter-loving lass of eighteen, who dearly loved a bit of gig.’ Do
you know, gentle reader, what is a ‘bit of gig’? This young lady laughs
at everything, and cries, ‘What a bit of gig!’ There was singing, of
course, and after the singing there were fireworks, and after the
fireworks an ascent on the rope. ‘The ascent on the rope, which Lydia
had never before witnessed, was to her particularly interesting. For
the first time during the evening she looked serious, and as the
mingled rays of the moon (then shining gloriously in the dark blue
heavens, attended by her twinkling handmaidens, the stars), which
ever and anon shot down as the rockets mounted upwards, mocking the
mimic pyrotechnia of man, and the flashes of red fire played upon her
beautiful white brow and ripe lips--blushing like a cleft cherry--we
thought for a moment that Tom was a happy blade. While we were gazing
on her fine face, her eye suddenly assumed its wonted levity, and she
exclaimed in a laughing tone--“Now, if the twopenny postman of the
rockets were to mistake one of the directions and deliver it among the
crowd so as to set fire to six or seven muslin dresses, what a bit of
gig it would be!”’
Another delightful place was the Surrey Zoological Gardens, which
occupied fifteen acres, and had a large lake in the middle, very useful
for fireworks and the showing off of the Mount Vesuvius they stuck
up on one side of it. The carnivorous animals were kept in a single
building, under a great glazed cupola, but the elephants, bears,
monkeys, &c., had separate buildings of their own. Flower shows,
balloon ascents, fireworks, and all kinds of exciting things went on at
the Surrey Zoo.
The Art Galleries opened every year, and, besides the National Gallery,
there were the Society of British Artists, the Exhibition of Water
Colours, and the British Institution in Pall Mall. At the Royal Academy
of 1837, Turner exhibited his ‘Juliet,’ Etty a ‘Psyche and Venus,’
Landseer a ‘Scene in Chillingham Park,’ Wilkie the ‘Peep o’ Day Boy’s
Cabin,’ and Roberts the ‘Chapel of Ferdinand and Isabella at Granada.’
There were Billiard Rooms, where a young man from the country who
prided himself upon his play could get very prettily handled. There
were Cigar Divans, but as yet only one or two, for the smoking of
cigars was a comparatively new thing--in fact, one who wrote in the
year 1829 thought it necessary to lay down twelve solemn rules for the
right smoking of a cigar; there were also Gambling Hells, of which more
anon.
Fifty years ago, in short, we amused ourselves very well. We were
fond of shows, and there were plenty of them; we liked an _al fresco_
entertainment, and we could have it; we were not quite so picksome in
the matter of company as we are now, and therefore we endured the loud
vulgarities of the tradesman and his family, and shut our eyes when
certain fashionably dressed ladies passed by showing their happiness by
the loudness of their laughter; we even sat with our daughter in the
very next box to that in which young Lord Tomnoddy was entertaining
these young ladies with cold chicken and pink champagne. It is, we
know, the privilege of rank to disregard morals in public as well as in
private. Then we had supper and a bowl of punch, and so home to bed.
Those who are acquainted with the doings of Corinthian Tom and Bob
Logic are acquainted with the Night Side of London as it was a few
years before 1837. Suffice it to say that it was far darker, far more
vicious, far more dangerous fifty years ago than it is now. Heaven
knows that we have a Night Side still, and a very ugly side it is, but
it is earlier by many hours than it used to be, and it is comparatively
free from gambling-houses, from bullies, blackmailers, and sharks.