'_Fine Lady._ I am glad I am come home, for I am weary of this
walking; for God's sake whereabouts does the pleasure of walking lie?
I swear I have often sought it till I was weary; and yet I could ne'er
find it.'
Not all of the plays were performed; though 'The Parson's Wedding'
certainly was, at the King's House, and Luellin told Pepys that it was
'an obscene, loose play.' 'Claracilla,' a 'tragi-comedy,' Pepys himself
went to see on 4th July, 1661; he merely says, however, that when he
first saw it, it was 'well acted.' On a second occasion, when he saw
it performed at the Cockpit, he thought it 'a poor play.' He might, in
my opinion, have said the same of them all; but they were nevertheless
sumptuously printed. King Charles II.'s own copy is in the British
Museum (644, m. 11), and a portrait of the author contemplating the
huge pile of his precious productions is prefixed to the volume. The
original of this portrait was painted by W. Sheppard, and splendidly
engraved by William Faithorne; another portrait (also by Sheppard,
according to Redgrave) is in the possession of Mr. J. Buller East, to
whom it was presented, shortly before her death in 1819, by Frances
Maria Killigrew, the last of her name. There is yet another portrait
of Thomas Killigrew, which represents him, not, as Walpole says in his
'Anecdotes of Painting,' 'in a studious posture,' but stooping, worn
out with his vicious life, with a gibbering monkey at his side, and
clad in a tawdry dressing-gown, on which are represented the portraits
of a host of the wantons of his acquaintance. The lines at the foot of
this rare engraving by Bosse (British Museum, {669. f. 4}/90) are an
even more savage caricature than the picture itself.
Of Tom Killigrew's early fondness for plays, Pepys' story will serve
as an illustration. 'I would not forget,' he writes, 'two passages of
Sir J. Minne's at yesterday's dinner, one being Thomas Killigrew's
way of getting to see plays when he was a boy. He would go to the Red
Bull, and when the man cried to the boys, "Who will go and be a devil,
and he shall see the play for nothing?" then would he go in, and be a
devil upon the stage, and so get to see plays.' Would it be going too
far to say that throughout his connection with the stage he stuck to
his youthful part? He talked, however, much better than he wrote; with
Cowley the case was the reverse; hence Denham's epigram:
'Had Cowley ne'er spoke, Killigrew ne'er writ,
Combined in one they'd make a matchless wit.'
Pepys describes him as 'a merry droll, but a gentleman of great esteem
with the King; he told us many merry stories;' again, that Killigrew
was 'a great favourite with the King on account of his uncommon vein
of humour;' though on one occasion, when the King went to the Tower
of London, to see the Dunkirk money, the conversation of Killigrew
and the others was but 'poor and frothy.' More than once, however,
Tom Killigrew, to his credit, spoke out, and to the point, in a tone
of which we have already heard something; and Pepys himself has thus
chronicled it:
'Mr. Pierce did also tell me as a great truth, as being told it by Mr.
Cowley (Abraham Cowley the poet), and who was by and heard it, that
_Tom Killigrew_ should publickly tel the King that his matters were
coming into a very ill state; but that yet there was a way to help all.
Says he, "There is a good, honest, able man that I could name, that if
your Majesty would employ, and command to see all things well executed,
all things would soon be mended; and this is one Charles Stuart, who
now spends his time in employing his lips about the Court, and hath no
other employment; but if you would give him this employment, he were
the fittest man in the world to perform it."'
On another occasion, when even Charles reproached the 'chartered
libertine' with his many 'idle words,' Killigrew did not shrink from
retorting, with special significance, on the King, that, after all,
'_idle promises_ and _idle patents_' were even worse.
But something should be said of the domestic affairs of the subject
of these observations. He lived, I believe, near that part of the old
Court of Whitehall where Scotland Yard now stands; and, whilst there,
married his first wife, Cecilia, daughter of Sir James Croft--a maid of
honour to Henrietta Maria, and a lady whose portrait by Vandyck is in
her present Majesty's collection.
The weather was rude and boisterous on the wedding-day, which gave rise
to the following lines by Thomas Carew:
'Such should this day be; so the sun should hide
His bashfull face, and let the conquering bride
Without a rivall shine, whilst he forbeares
To mingle his unequall beames with hers;
Or if sometime he glance his squinting eye
Betweene the parting clouds, 'tis but to spye,
Not emulate her glories; so comes drest
In vayles, but as a masquer to the feast.'
I fear their wedded life must have been stormy throughout; the very
first thing we hear of their courtship is a dispute in which they
became engaged; and by-and-by we hear of Madam Killigrew's 'Case,'
which sets forth that she brought her husband a fortune of £10,000,
which Tom, writing from the Hague in 1654[83] (the year in which his
wife died of small-pox), solemnly promised not to waste or otherwise
dispose of. Two houses in Scotland Yard were built with the money, or
part of it. Francis Quarles thus bemoaned the hapless lady's fate:
'Sighes at the contemporary deaths of those incomparable Sisters--the
Countesse of Cleaveland and Mistrisse Cicily Killegreue.' (They appear
to have been buried in the same tomb, and to have died within twice two
days of each other.) The little poem ends thus:
'My pen,
Thou hast transgrest;
Archangels, and not Men
Should sing the story of their Rest:
But we have done, we leave them to the trust
Of heaven's eternall Towre, and kisse their sacred Dust.'
About this time we come across a characteristic little story about Tom
Killigrew in Evelyn's 'Diary.'
Sir Richard Browne, writing from Nantes, 1st November, 1653, to Hyde,
then Chancellor of the Exchequer, says that he has sent to him,
carriage paid, three barrels of canary wine to Mr. Thomas Killigrew's
care. But Hyde does not seem to have got them, at any rate for a very
long time. He heard of the arrival of the consignment at Paris, and
that it was there 'conceaved to be Mr. Killigrew's own wyne'!--very
possibly, it may be feared, from the use to which the consignee was
putting it.
Thomas Killigrew was associated with Dryden, Sir William Davenant,
and others, in obtaining a license (which, by the way, Sir Henry
Herbert, his predecessor in the office of Master of the Revels, vainly
endeavoured to get revoked) for a company of players, and a playhouse
which was called the Theatre Royal, and which was situated somewhere
between Drury Lane and Bridge Street.[84]
In fact, Killigrew was playhouse mad, as may be further seen by this
extract from Pepys, date 1664:
'To King's playhouse: saw Bartholomew Fayre. I chanced to sit by Tom
Killigrew, who tells me that he is setting up a nursery: that is, is
going to build a house in Moorefields, wherein he will have common
plays acted. But four operas it shall have in the year, to act six
weeks at a time, where we shall have the best scenes and machines--the
best musique, and everything as magnificent as is in Christendome, and
to that end hath sent for voices and painters, and other persons from
Italy.'
'It might naturally have been supposed' (observes Genest in his
'History of the Stage') 'that Killigrew, on becoming patentee of the
Theatre Royal, would have brought out some of his own plays; it does
not, however, appear that any of them were ever acted, except "The
Parson's Wedding" and "Claricilla." On the contrary, the silence of
Langbaine and Downes does not amount to a proof that none were acted;
as Langbaine did not frequent the theatres till several years after
the Restoration, and Downes's account of the Theatre Royal is very
imperfect. "The Pilgrim" is a good T. (theatre) play, with judicious
alterations it might have been made fit for representation. "Cicilia"
and "Clarinda," "Thomaso" and "Bellamira's Dream," are, each of them,
rather one play in ten acts, than two distinct plays. When a play is
written in two parts, there ought to be some sort of a conclusion
at the end of the fifth act, but in these plays there is no more
conclusion at the end of the fifth act than at the end of the first;
improprieties occur in numberless plays, but perhaps no author ever
made such strange jumbles as Killigrew has made in "The Princess," and
"Cicilia" and "Clarinda." All his plays are in prose--most of them
are of an enormous and tiresome length--verbosity is his perpetual
fault--there is scarcely a scene in which the dialogue might not be
shortened to advantage.'
But to return to Killigrew's domestic affairs. Tom married a second
time--one Charlotte Van Hess, who is described as first Lady of the
Queen's Privy Chamber in 1662, and as also holding the apparently
delectable appointment of Keeper of Her Majesty's Sweet Coffer. By this
marriage there were three sons--Thomas, Robert, and Charles, of whom
more hereafter.
Tom Killigrew must have been nearly sixty years old when he narrowly
escaped assassination in St. James's Park. He had had an intrigue with
Lady Shrewsbury, but found a dangerous and more successful rival in
the Duke of Buckingham; whereupon the disappointed rake turned upon
the lady a stream of foul and venomous satire. The result was that
one evening, on his return from the Duke of York's, some ruffians,
probably hirelings of the inconstant fair one, set upon Tom's chair,
through which they made no less than three passes with their swords,
one of them wounding him in the arm. The assassins fled, leaving Tom
Killigrew in danger of death, and his man quite dead.[85] This brings
nearly to a close all that needs be said about Thomas Killigrew, who
died thirteen or fourteen years after the foregoing event, on the 19th
March, 1682/3, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Notwithstanding his vices, it may at least be recorded to his credit
that he was faithful to the Stuart cause which he adopted; was never
ambitious, or avaricious; and that it was said of him when he died,
that 'he was bewailed by his friends, and truly wept for by the poor.'
His will is dated on the 15th March, and was proved in the Prerogative
Court on the 19th of the same month by his son Henry, his executor,
and residuary legatee. He left some houses in Scotland Yard, and he
mentions a pension from the King. 'In the will,' says my authority,
'_there is no jest_.' That his pecuniary affairs were not in a very
satisfactory condition would seem to be the case from a statement of
'Secret Money Services Charles II. and James II.,' 'Payd to several
persons for the respective causes, uses and purposes und^r-menc'oned,
as by divers acquittances & a particular accompt signed & allowed in
the like manner on the 14th day of June, 1683, doth appear, several
sumes amounting to £4,743 4½d.--amongst others To James Gray, for
and towards the funeral charges of Tho^s. Killigrew, deceased, £50.'
This supposition would also appear to be confirmed by the following
autograph letter, written when Tom Killigrew must have been about
seventy years old (Harl. MSS. 2, 7005, art. 42):--
'For Mrs. Francesse Frecheville, Thes:
'DEAR MRS. FRECHEUILLE,
'You may imagen your letter was very well come to me for I receved it
att a time when I needed all the kindnes you expresse to me in it and
all the consolation it brought me, for I was halfe dead, but I am of
the opinion that the greatest cordiall in the world, and that which
will bring one allmost from death to life, is the kindnes of a person
for whome one has a great estime, and I am sure you cannot doubt but I
have as much for you as it is possible, since I could never desemble
in my life nor neuer make an expressione that I did not meane sencerly
from my hart, I hope you doe beleeue this and that you will allwayes
continue affectione to me since you can bestow it upon nobody that is
more sencible of it and that will more reioyce in it than my selfe
pardon this most horible scribble and beleeve I am with as much trewth
as tis possible
'Dear Mrs. Frechevill
'Your most affectionate
'humble Servant,
'T. KILLIGREW.
'My Lady Anne is Your humble Servant.'
Of his three sons by his second marriage, Thomas, generally known as
Tom Killigrew the younger, was Gentleman of the Bedchamber to George
II., when Prince of Wales, and was somewhat of a playwright, like his
father. He wrote a piece called 'Chit-Chat' (in which, by the way, the
mercurial Colley Cibber played the principal part--'Alamode, a fop').
It was produced at Drury Lane shortly before the author's death, an
event which took place at Kensington, in July, 1719. This play is said
to have been very successful--was one of 'the four taking plays of the
season'--and on its production the Prince made Killigrew a present of
100 guineas, to which the Princess added another fifty. As far as I can
make out--though the matter is involved in great obscurity--the lady to
whom reference has already been made as the possessor of the elder Tom
Killigrew's portrait, and as dying, the last of her name, in 1819, must
have descended from this branch of the family.
Robert, brother of the foregoing Thomas the younger, was a soldier.
'Militavit annos 24' is recorded on his monument in the north aisle
of the nave of Westminster Abbey;[86] and he had risen to the rank of
Major-General, when he fell on the plains of Almanza, near Chinchilla,
on 25th April, 1707, being then forty-seven years old. This battle was
fought, during the Spanish war of succession, between the Spanish and
French, commanded by the Duke of Berwick (a natural son of James II.),
and the allied English and Dutch forces under the incompetent General
Ruvigny, Earl of Galway; on which occasion the latter were defeated;
the fate of Spain was decided; and the Bourbon line was practically
restored to the Spanish throne, in the person of Philip V.