ROBERT WILKS.
In Mr. Secretary Southwell's office, in Dublin, there sits the
young son of one of the Pursuivants of the Lord Lieutenant; he is
not writing a _précis_, he is copying out the parts of a play to be
acted in private. His name is Robert Wilks, and the wise folk of
Rathfarnham, near Dublin, where he was born in 1665, shake their
heads and declare that he will come to no good.
The prophecy seemed fulfilled when the Irish wars between James and
William forced him, an unwilling volunteer, into the army of the
latter. As clerk to the camp he is exempt from military duty; but he
tells a good story, sings a good song, and the officers take him for
a very pretty fellow.
Anon, he is back in the old Dublin office. At all stray leisure
hours he may, however, be seen fraternising with the actors. He most
affects one Richards; he hears Richards repeat his parts, and he
speaks the intervening sentences of the other characters. This he
does with such effect that Richards swears he is made for an actor,
and the young Government clerk, fired by the fame of Betterton, is
eager to leap from the stool, which his father considered the basis
of his fortune, and to don sock and buskin.
His old comrades of the camp were then about to vary the monotony
of life at the Castle, by getting up a play to inaugurate the new
theatre, re-opened, like the Temple of Janus, at the restoration
of peace. Judicious and worthy Ashbury was the only professional
player. Young Wilks had privately acted with him as the Colonel in
the "Spanish Friar." Ashbury now offered to play Iago to his Othello,
and the officers were well pleased to meet again with their old
clerk of the camp. The tragedy was acted accordingly. "How were you
pleased?" asked Richards, who thought Wilks took it as a pastime. "I
was pleased with all but myself," answered the Government clerk, who
was thoroughly in earnest.
Wilks had gone through many months of probation, watched by good
Joseph Ashbury, and honest Richards, when one morning the latter
called on the young actor, with an introductory letter to Betterton
in his hand. Wilks accepted the missive with alacrity, bade farewell
to secretaries and managers, and in a brief space of time was sailing
over the waters, from the Pigeon House to Parkgate.
The meeting of Wilks and Betterton, in the graceful costume of those
days, the young actor travel-worn, a little shabby, anxious, and full
of awe; the elder richly attired, kind in manner, his face bright
with intellect, and his figure heightened by the dignity of a lofty
nature and professional triumph, borne with a lofty modesty, is
another subject for a painter.
Betterton instructed the stranger as to the course he should take,
and, accordingly, one bright May morning of 1690,[7] a handsome young
fellow, with a slight Irish accent, presented himself to Christopher
Rich as a light comedian. He was a native of Dublin county, he said,
had left a promising Government clerkship, to try his fortune on
the Irish stage; and, tempted by the renown of Betterton, had come
to London to see the great actor, and to be engaged, if that were
possible, in the same company.
Christopher Rich was no great judge of acting, but he thought
there was something like promise of excellence in the easy and
gentleman-like young fellow; and he consented to engage him for Drury
Lane, at the encouraging salary of fifteen shillings a week, from
which half a crown was to be deducted for instruction in dancing!
This left Wilks twelve and sixpence clear weekly income; and he had
not long been enjoying it, when he married Miss Knapton, daughter of
the Town Clerk of Southampton. Young couple never began life upon
more modest means; but happiness, hard work, and good fortune came of
it.
For a few years, commencing with 1690,[8] Wilks laboured unnoticed,
at Drury Lane, by all save generous Betterton, who seeing the young
actor struggling for fame, with a small salary, and an increasing
family, recommended him to return to Ashbury, the Dublin manager,
who, at Betterton's word, engaged him at £50 a year,[9] and a
clear benefit. "You will be glad to have got him," said Betterton
to Ashbury. "You will be sorry you have lost him," said he, to
Christopher Rich. _Sorry!_ In three or four years more, Rich was
imploring him to return, and offering him Golconda, as salaries
were then understood. But Wilks was now the darling of the Dublin
people, and, at a later period, so universal was the desire to keep
him amongst them, that the Duke of Ormond, Lord Lieutenant, issued a
warrant to prohibit his leaving the kingdom. But, on the other hand,
£4 per week awaited him in London. It was nearly as high a salary
as Betterton's![10] Wilks, however, caring less for the terms than
for the opportunity of satisfying his inordinate thirst for fame,
contrived to escape, with his wife. With them came a disappointed
actor, soon to be a popular dramatist, Farquhar; who, in the year
1699, after opening the season with his "Love and a Bottle," produced
his "Constant Couple," with Wilks as Sir Harry Wildair. On the
night of Wilks's first appearance, in some lines written for him by
Farquhar, and spoken by the _debutant_, the latter said:--
"Void of offence, though not from censure free,
I left a distant isle, too kind to me;"
and confessing a sort of supremacy in the London over the _Dublin_
stage, he added:--
"There I could please, but there my fame must end,
For hither none must come to boast--but mend."
This the young actor did apace. Applauded as the latter had been the
year before, in old parts, the approbation was as nothing compared
with that lavished on him in this his first original character. From
the first recognition of Vizard down to the "tag" with which the
curtain descends, and including even the absurd and unnatural scene
with Angelica, he kept the audience in a condition of intermittent
ecstasy. The piece established his fame, gave a name to Norris, the
frequently mentioned "Jubilee Dicky," and made the fortune of Rich.
It seems to have been played nearly fifty times in the first season.
In its construction and style it is far in advance of the comedies of
Aphra Behn and Ravenscroft; and yet it is irregular; not moral; as
often flippant as witty; improbable, and not really original. Madam
Fickle is to be traced in it, and the denouement, as far as Lurewell
and Standard are concerned, is borrowed from those of Plautus and
Terence.
Wilks, now the great favourite of the town, justified all Betterton's
prognostications. Like Betterton, he was to the end convinced that
he might become more perfect by study and perseverance. Taking the
extant score of judgments recorded of him, I find that Wilks was
careful, judicious, painstaking in the smallest trifles; in comedy
always brilliant, in tragedy always graceful and natural. For zeal,
Cibber had not known his equal for half a century; careful himself,
he allowed no one else to be negligent; so careful, that he would
recite a thousand lines without missing a single word. The result
of all his labour was seen in an ease, and grace, and gaiety which
seemed perfectly spontaneous. His taste in dress was irreproachable;
grave in his attire on the streets, on the stage he was the glass
of fashion. On the stage, even in his last season, after a career
of forty years, he never lost his buoyancy, or his young graces.
From first to last he was perfection in his peculiar line. "Whatever
he did upon the stage," says an eminent critic, quoted by Genest,
"let it be ever so trifling, whether it consisted in putting on his
gloves, or taking out his watch, lolling on his cane, or taking
snuff, every movement was marked by such an ease of breeding and
manner, everything told so strongly the involuntary motion of a
gentleman, that it was impossible to consider the character he
represented in any other light than that of reality; but what was
still more surprising, that person who could thus delight an
audience, from the gaiety and sprightliness of his character, I met
the next day in a street hobbling to a hackney-coach, seemingly so
enfeebled by age and infirmities that I could scarcely believe him to
be the same man."
The grace and bearing of Wilks were accounted of as natural in a man
whose blood was not of the common tap. "His father, Edward Wilks,
Esq., was descended from Judge Wilks, a very eminent lawyer, and
a gentleman of great honour and probity. During the unhappy scene
of our civil wars he raised a troop of horse, at his own expense,
for the service of his royal master." A brother of the judge was in
Monk's army,[11] with the rank of Colonel, and with more of honest
intention than of commonplace discretion. The civil wars took many
a good actor from the stage, but they also contributed the sons and
daughters of many ancient but impoverished families to the foremost
rank among distinguished players. Some of the daughters of these old
and decayed houses thought it no disparagement to wed with these
players, or to take humble office in the theatre. Wilks's first wife,
Miss Knapton, was the daughter of the Town Clerk of Southampton,
and Steward of the New Forest, posts of trust, and, at one time, of
emolument. The Knaptons had been Yorkshire landholders, the estate
being valued at £2000 a year; and now we find one daughter marrying
Wilks, a second espousing Norris, "Jubilee Dicky," and a third, Anne
Knapton, filling the humble office of dresser at Drury Lane, and
probably not much flattered by the legend on the family arms,
"_Meta coronat opus_."
[Illustration: (Robert Wilks)]
The greatest trouble to Wilks during the period he was in management,
arose from the "ladies" of the company. There was especially Mrs.
Rogers, who, on the retirement of Mrs. Barry and Mrs. Bracegirdle,
played the principal serious parts. It was the whim of this lady to
act none but virtuous characters; her prudery would not admit of her
studying others. In the epilogue to the "Triumphs of Virtue," in
which she played the innocent Bellamira, she pronounced with great
effect the lines, addressed to the ladies, for whose smiles, she said,
"I'll pay this duteous gratitude; I'll do
That which the play has done; I'll copy you.
At your own virtue's shrine my vows I'll pay,
And strive to live the character I play."
In this, however, she did not succeed; but Mrs. Rogers congratulated
herself by considering that her failure saved Wilks's life, who, when
a widower, protested that he should die of despair if she refused to
smile upon him; but, as Cibber remarks, Mrs. Rogers "could never be
reduced to marry."
Her ambition was great, for she not only looked on herself as the
successor of Mrs. Barry and Mrs. Bracegirdle; but when the lively
and graceful Mountfort (Mrs. Verbruggen) died, in giving birth to
an infant, Mrs. Rogers aspired to the succession of her parts also.
Wilks, then in power, preferred Mrs. Oldfield. A public clamour
ensued; but, says Victor, somewhat confusedly, "Mr. Wilks soon
reduced this clamour to demonstration, by an experiment of Mrs.
Oldfield and Mrs. Rogers playing the same part, that of Lady Lurewell
in the "Trip to the Jubilee;" but though obstinacy seldom meets
conviction, yet from this equitable trial the tumults in the house
were soon quelled (by public authority), greatly to the honour of Mr.
Wilks. I am," adds the writer, "from my own knowledge, thoroughly
convinced that Mr. Wilks had no other regard for Mrs. Oldfield but
what arose from the excellency of her performances. Mrs. Rogers'
conduct might be censured by some for the earnestness of her passion
towards Mr. Wilks, but in the polite world the fair sex has always
been privileged from scandal."
As great a tumult ensued when Mrs. Oldfield was cast for Andromache,
a character claimed by her rival, who, being refused by Wilks, "she
raised a posse of profligates, fond of tumult and riot, who made such
a commotion in the house, that the Court hearing of it, sent four of
the royal messengers and a strong guard to suppress all disorder."
Cibber laments having "to dismiss an audience of £150 from a
disturbance spirited up by obscure people, who never gave any better
reason for it than it was their fancy to support the idle complaint
of one rival actress against another in their several pretensions to
the chief part in a new tragedy."
A green-room scene, painted by Colley Cibber, reveals to us something
of the shadowy side of Wilks's character, while that of Booth and
Mrs. Oldfield stand out, as it were, "in the sun." Court and city
in 1725 had demanded the revival of Vanbrugh's "Provoked Wife,"
with alterations, to suit the growing taste for refinement. These
alterations had taken something from the sprightliness of the part
of Constant, which Wilks had been accustomed to play, and Cibber
proposed to give it to Booth, for whom its gravity rendered it
suitable. Wilks, who was eager to play every night, at first looked
grave, then frowned; as Cibber hinted, that if he were to play
in every piece, a sudden indisposition on his part might create
embarrassment, he sullenly stirred the fire; but when the chief
manager suggested that as he had accomplished all he could possibly
aim at in his profession, occasional repose would become him more
than unremitting labour, he took Cibber's counsel and Booth's
acquiescence for satire, and retorted with a warmth of indignation
which included some strong expletives not to be found in the best
poets.
Cibber then accused him of inconsistency, and expressed indifference
whether he accepted or rejected the part which he then held in his
hand, and which Wilks at once threw down on the table whereupon the
angry player sate, with crossed arms, and "knocking his heel upon
the floor, as seeming to threaten most when he said least." Booth,
good-naturedly, struck in with a cheerful comment, to the effect
that, "for his part, he saw no such great matter in acting every day,
for he believed it the wholesomest exercise in the world; it kept the
spirits in motion, and always gave _him_ a good stomach."
At this friendly advance Mrs. Oldfield was seen laughing behind her
fan, while Wilks, after a few hesitating remarks, which showed some
little jealousy of Booth, proposed that Mrs. Oldfield should herself
select which of the two she would have play with her. He would be
glad to be excused if she selected another.
"This throwing the negative upon Mrs. Oldfield," says Cibber, "was
indeed a sure way to save himself; which I could not help taking
notice of, by saying, it was making but an ill compliment to the
company, to suppose there was but one man in it fit to play an
ordinary part with her. Here Mrs. Oldfield got up, and turning me
half round, to come forward, said with her usual frankness, 'Pooh!
you are all a parcel of fools to make such a rout about nothing!'
Rightly judging that the person most out of humour would not be more
displeased at her calling us all by the same name."
Finally, Wilks accepted the part, at Mrs. Oldfield's suggestion,
and all went well. Irascible as he was, yet he was more remarkable
for his zeal and industry, for the carefulness with which he
superintended rehearsals, and for the elaborate pains-concealing
labour, which distinguished him on the public stage. Cibber renders
him full measure of justice in this respect, and generously
confesses: "Had _I_ had half his application I still think I might
have shown myself twice the actor that, in my highest state of
favour, I appear to be."
Cibber, indeed, has painted his colleague Wilks with great
elaboration. From Colley we learn that Wilks excelled Powell, and
that hot-headed Powell challenged him to the duello in consequence.
So painstaking was the young Irishman, that in forty years he was
never once forgetful of a single word in any of his parts. "In some
new comedy he happened to complain of a crabbed speech in his part
which, he said, gave him more trouble to study than all the rest of
it had done." The good-natured author cut the whole of the speech
out; but "Wilks thought it such an indignity to his memory that
anything should be thought too hard for it, that he actually made
himself perfect in that speech, though he knew it was never to be
made use of." Cibber praises his sober character, but hints at his
professional conceit, and somewhat overbearing temper; and he calls
him "bustle master-general of the company." If he was jealous and
impatient, "to be employed on the stage was the delight of his life;"
and of his unwearied zeal, unselfishly exercised for the general
good, Cibber cannot speak too highly. Nothing came amiss to Wilks
that was connected with the stage. He even undertook the office of
writing the bills of performance; but he charged £50 a year for the
trouble.
In the plaintive and tender, this light comedian excelled even
Booth, who used to say that Wilks lacked ear and not voice to make a
great tragedian.[12] Wilks's greatest successes were in his friend
Farquhar's heroes,--Sir Harry Wildair, Mirabel, Captain Plume,
and Archer. He played equally well, but with less opportunity for
distinction, the light gentlemen of Cibber's comedies. In Don Felix,
in Mrs. Centlivre's "Wonder," he almost excelled the reputation he
had gained in Sir Harry. "When Wilks dies," Farquhar once remarked,
"Sir Harry may go to the Jubilee." Of the above characters he was
the original representative, as he was of some fourscore others of
less note,--among them Dumont, in "Jane Shore," for which he may be
said to have been cast by Mrs. Oldfield. "Nay!" she cried to him, in
her pretty way; "if you will not be my husband, I will act Alicia, I
protest." And accordingly, the two most brilliant and gleesome actors
of their day, enacted married tribulation, and kept their wreathed
smiles for the crowd which clustered round them at the wings.
Few men ever loved acting for acting's sake more than Wilks. At the
same time, no one ever warned others against it with more serious
urgency. He had a nephew, who was in fair prospect of such good
fortune as could be built up in an attorney's office. How little
the young fellow merited the fortune, and how ill he understood
the duties and advantages of attorneyship he manifested fully, by
a madness for appearing on the stage. No counsel availed against
his resolution; and, in 1714, Wilks despatched him to Dublin, with
a letter to Ashbury, the manager. "He was bred an attorney," wrote
the uncle, despondingly, "but is unhappily fallen in love with that
fickle mistress, the stage; and no arguments can dissuade him from
it. I have refused to give him any countenance, in hopes that time
and experience might cure him; but since I find him determined to
make an attempt somewhere, no one, I am sure, is able to give him
so just a notion of the business as yourself. If you find my nephew
wants either genius or any other necessary qualification, I beg you
will freely tell him his disabilities; and then it is possible he may
be more easily persuaded to return to his friends and business, which
I am informed he understands perfectly well."
Young Wilks proved as poor an actor as he probably was an attorney;
but his uncle received him at Drury Lane, after a year's novitiate
in Dublin, where he played, at first, better "business" than Quin
himself. But he never advanced a step, and died at the age of thirty,
having never obtained above that number of shillings a week. And for
that, he deserted his vocation as an attorney, in the practice of
which he might have gained, if not earned, at a low estimate, twice
that amount in a single morning.
There was a pious young Duke of Orleans, who, to keep a fair
character, was obliged to assume the fashionable vices of his day.
Wilks, with all his love of home, was a fine gentleman among the fine
gentlemen. His appreciation of matrimony was shown by the haste with
which he espoused the widow Fell, daughter of Charles II.'s great
gun-founder, Browne, in April 1715, after losing his first wife in
the previous year. During the first union, he must have trod the
stage with many a heart-ache, while he was exciting hilarity, for
eleven of his children died early, and the airy player was for ever
in mourning. His stepson, Fell, married the granddaughter of William
Penn, and brought his bride to the altar of St. Paul's, Covent
Garden, not to be married, but christened. Wilks and his wife were
the gossips to the pretty quakeress; and the former, probably, never
looked more imposing than when he pronounced the names of the fair
episcopalian,--_Gulielma Maria_.
Betterton used to rusticate in Berkshire; Booth, at Cowley; Cibber,
at Twickenham; his son, at Brook Green. Wilks, too, had his villa at
Isleworth. He is said to have kept a well-regulated and extremely
cheerful home. He had there seen so much of death that we are told he
was always prepared to meet it with decency. His generosity amounted
almost to prodigality. "Few Irish gentlemen," says his biographer,
"are without indigent relatives." Wilks had many, and they never
appealed to him in vain. He died, after a short illness and four
doctors, in September 1732,[13] leaving his share in the Drury Lane
Patent, and what other property he possessed, to his wife. Throughout
his life, I can only find one symptom of regret at having abandoned
the Irish Secretary's office for the stage. "My successor in
Ireland," he once said to Cibber, "made by his post £50,000."
Exceeding benevolence is finely exhibited in an incident connected
with Farquhar. When the latter was near the end of his gay yet
chequered career in 1707,--death, the glory of his last success, and
the thought of his children pressing hard upon him, he wrote this
laconic, but perfectly intelligible, note to Wilks:--"Dear Bob,--I
have not anything to leave thee, to perpetuate my memory, but two
helpless girls; look upon them, sometimes; and think of him that was,
to the last moment of his life, thine,--GEORGE FARQUHAR." Farquhar's
confidence in his friend was like that of La Fontaine, who, having
lost a home, was met in the street by a friend who invited him to
_his_. "I was going there!" said the simple-minded poet. Wilks did
not disappoint Farquhar's expectations.
Wilks could be as modest as he was generous. After playing, for the
first time, the Ghost to Booth's Hamlet,[14] the latter remarked,
"Why, Bob, I thought you were going to knock me down. When I played
the Ghost to Mr. Betterton's Hamlet, awe-stricken as he seemed, I was
still more so of him."
"Mr. Betterton and Mr. Booth," said Wilks, "noble actors, could
always play as they pleased. I can only play to the best of my
ability."[15] Once only do I find Wilks in close connection with
royalty,--namely, when he took, by command, the manuscript of
"George Barnwell" to St. James's, and read that lively tragedy to
Queen Anne.[16] On some like occasion, King William once presented
Booth with five pounds for his reward, but history does not note
the guerdon with which Wilks retired from the presence of "Great
Anna!"[17]
[Illustration: Mr. Clarke as Antonio.]
FOOTNOTES:
[7] All dates regarding Wilks are difficult to determine; but as his
appearance in Othello, previously referred to, took place at the end
of the Irish Revolution--(Hitchcock says in December 1691)--this
date, 1690, must be wrong. Besides, Rich does not seem to have
obtained a footing in the theatre till March 1691.
[8] See previous note.
[9] Chetwood says sixty pounds.
[10] It was apparently the same salary as Betterton's.
[11] Chetwood says that he commanded a troop in the King's army.
[12] In the 2d edition Dr. Doran adds:--"He was not altogether
original; for the _Tatler_, in 1710, advises him to 'wholly forget
Mr. Betterton, for that he failed in no part of Othello but when he
has him in view.' Thomson says of him, as the hero in Sophonisba,
'Whatever was designed as amiable and engaging in Masinissa, shines
out in Mr. Wilks's action.'"
[13] "5 Oct. 1732. Robert Wilks in the Church on the north side of
the north aisle, under the pews Nos. 9 and 10" (_Reg. Burials, St.
Paul, Covent Garden_).--_Doran MS._
[14] This should be "playing _Hamlet_ to Booth's _Ghost_,"
which makes all speculations whether Booth played Hamlet or not
unnecessary. In point of fact, I do not think he ever did.
[15] Dr. Doran adds, in the 2d edition: "A writer in the _Prompter_,
however, says that Booth would have been too solemn for the lighter
parts of Hamlet, 'if he had ever played the character.' Wilks's
Hamlet was good only in the light and gayer portions, and in the
scene in which at Ophelia's feet, Hamlet watches the king, Wilks's
reading was perfection. In 'I say away!--Go on; I'll follow thee!' he
addressed the whole line to the Ghost with a flourish of his sword;
whereas, the first three words should be spoken to the two friends
who struggle to keep him from following the apparition."
[16] Queen Caroline (2d edition).
[17] Caroline Dorothea (2d edition).
[Illustration: GARRICK'S BIRTHPLACE, HEREFORD.]