EXIT, JAMES QUIN.
The opposition between Garrick and Barry was well sustained during
the season of 1752-53. The former had a forcible second and
substitute in Mossop, and an attractive lady to woo in comedy, or
slay in tragedy, in Miss (or Mrs.) Bellamy; but a more accomplished
still in Mrs. Pritchard. At the Garden, Barry was at his very best
in health and acting, and Mrs. Cibber in the full bloom of her
beauty and powers. It was a pity that such a pair of lovers should
be separated, "for no two persons were so calculated to assist each
other by voice, manner, and real feeling, as they were;" but, as
Wilkinson records, "at the close of this season they separated, never
to meet again on the same stage." Meanwhile, fashion patronised
Garrick and Mrs. Pritchard, rather more lavishly than the rival pair.
Each had their especial triumphs in new pieces. Garrick and Mrs.
Pritchard, in Moore's "Gamester," first played on the 7th February
1753 (Beverley, Garrick; Lewson, Mossop; Stukely, Davies; Mrs.
Beverley, Mrs. Pritchard), and Barry and Mrs. Cibber in Jones's
"Earl of Essex," produced at the Garden, February 21st. Admirable
as Garrick was in Beverley, Mrs. Pritchard carried off the chief
honours, so natural, so terribly real, and so apparently unconscious
of the audience was she in her acting. She was quite "at home" in
this prose tragedy; the severe lesson in which, however, after
terrifying, began to displease hearers, who did not relish the
caustic laid to their darling vice.
Let me also mention here Young's tragedy, the "Brothers," written
thirty years before, previous to his ordination, amended by Lady
Wortley Montagu, and now played in March 1753.
As soon as Young surrendered this piece to the players, for the
benefit of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, he was
immersed in the very thickest of theatrical squabbles, to the
disgrace of his clerical profession. George Anne Bellamy, that
capricious beauty on whom the delighted town showered fortune, who
rode one day in gilded chariots, and the next was lying on the
lowest of the steps at Westminster Bridge, wrapped in misery, and
contemplating suicide; the irresistible Bellamy was then the idol of
the world of fashion, and Young readily acceded to her request that
she might read "The Brothers" to the players. The request rendered
Garrick furious, although it was grounded on the young lady's
personal knowledge of the author. The green-room was in an uproar.
Roscius claimed the principal part for Mrs. Pritchard; and when
George Anne poutingly offered to surrender the character assigned her
by the doctor, Young vehemently opposed it with an emphatic, "No,
no!" Mrs. Bellamy accordingly read the piece, and assumed the liberty
of criticising it. She expressly objected to the line, "I will speak
to you in thunder," as not being in a concatenation with the delicacy
of the fine lady who utters it. The reverend author protested that
it was the most forcible line in the piece; but Mrs. Bellamy thought
it would be more so if it were improved by the introduction of
"lightning" as well as thunder.
The good doctor was something nettled at the lady's wit; and he
declared that "The Brothers" was the best piece he had ever written.
"I am afraid, doctor," rejoined the lady, pertly, "that you will do
with me as the Archbishop of Toledo did with Gil Blas on a similar
occasion. But I cannot help reminding you of a tragedy called the
'Revenge!'" The author took the remark in considerable dudgeon; but
the sparkling young actress, who sincerely esteemed him, exerted
all her powers to smooth the plumes that her wit had ruffled; and
she did this with such effect, that the doctor, after offering to
cancel the line objected to, invited himself to dine with her, and
did so in company with Garrick and rough Quin. "The Brothers" was
acted to thin houses for eight nights, and then quietly shelved. The
author realised £400 by it; to which adding from his private purse
£600 more, he gave the handsome sum of £1000 to the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel. The author was displeased alike with the
town and with the players. The truth is, however, that the fault lay
as much with himself as with either. The play was not original, but
taken without acknowledgment, from various sources. A great portion
is almost literally translated from the French piece, _Persée et
Démétrius_. Many of the speeches are taken piecemeal from Livy.
The contest in the third act is splendidly phrased; but the
_dénouement_ is so confused and incomplete, that Young was obliged
to add an epilogue to explain what was supposed to take place at
and after the fall of the curtain! Garrick substituted a coarse
epilogue which was spoken by sprightly Kitty Clive, who loved to
give coarseness all its point; but it could not save the piece, and
it seriously offended the author. Since then, "The Brothers" has
descended into that oblivion which fittingly enfolds nearly all
the classical tragedies of the last century. It is not without its
beauties; but it does not picture the period it affects to pourtray.
The "sir" and "madam" sound as harshly as the "_citizen Agamemnon_,"
which the French Republic introduced into Racine's plays; and the
epithets are only one degree less absurd than the "_Oui, Milor_,"
which Voltaire's Beersheba addresses to King David.
Barry's Jaffier, played for the first time on the 21st of November
1752, placed him on an equality with Garrick in that character;
but he was not so great in this as in Jones's tragedy, the "Earl
of Essex," which he played on the 21st of February, to Smith's
Southampton, and the Countess of Rutland of Mrs. Cibber. One
sentence in this tragedy, uttered by Barry, seems to have had an
almost incredible effect. When the Earl, pointing to the Countess of
Rutland in a swoon, exclaimed, "Oh, look there!" Barry's attitude and
pathetic expression of voice were such that "all the critics in the
pit burst into tears, and then shook the theatre with repeated and
unbounded applause." The bricklayer poet, whom Chesterfield brought
from Drogheda, only to ultimately die, half-starved, in a garret near
Covent Garden, attributed the success of the piece to his own powers,
whereas it was due to the wonderful acting of Barry and Mrs. Cibber
alone.
With this season James Quin disappeared from the stage. For a year
or two he had not acted. The triumphs of Garrick, followed by those
of Barry, drove from the scene the old player who, for nearly
forty years, belonged to the now bygone school of Betterton, but
particularly of Booth, whose succession he worthily held, rather than
of Garrick. James Quin stands, however, worthily among, if not on a
level with, those actors of two different eras, having something of
each, but yet distinct from either. Such a man deserves a few words
in addition to those I have already written.
The theatrical life of Quin embraces the following dates. James
Quin began his career in Dublin in 1714, and ended it at Bath in
1753. His first character was Abel in the "Committee;" his last,
Hamlet, played at Bath (whither he had retired), not for his own
benefit, but for that of his friend, Ryan.[59] Of doing kindnesses
to friends, James Quin was never weary; and if he _did_ say that
Garrick in Othello looked like the black boy in Hogarth's picture he
was only temporarily jealous of Roscius. Quin was a careless dresser
of his characters; and he had a sharp sarcasm, but not a lasting
ill-feeling, for those who pretended to better taste, and gave it
practical application.
I have already spoken of Quin's early life; his English birth, his
Irish breeding, his disputed legitimacy, and his succession to an
estate, from which he was debarred by the rightful proprietors.
Necessity and some qualifications directed him to the Dublin stage,
where he played under Ashbury, Queen Anne's old master of elocution.
Quin, then about one-and-twenty, gave such promise that Chetwood
the prompter recommended him "to try London," where at Drury Lane,
during three seasons, he played whatever character he was cast for,
and made use of opportunity whenever that character happened to be a
prominent one.
In 1718 Quin passed to Lincoln's Inn Fields, where for four years[60]
he was the great support of that house.[61] I have previously
noticed his misadventure with Bowen the actor, whom he slew in
honest self-defence under great provocation. It was kind-hearted,
but hot-blooded, Quin's hard fate to kill two actors. A subordinate
player named Williams was the Decius to Quin's Cato. Williams, in
delivering the line "Cæsar sends health to Cato," pronounced the
last name so affectedly--something like "Keeto"--that Quin in his
impatience could not help exclaiming, "Would he had sent a better
messenger!" This greatly irritated the little Welsh actor--the more
that he had to repeat the name in nearly every sentence of his scene
with Cato, and Quin did not fail to look so hard at him when he
pronounced the name that the secondary player's irritation was at
the highest when the scene concluded; and Decius turned away, with
the remark--
"When I relate, hereafter,
The tale of this unhappy embassy,
All Rome will be in tears."
That tale, Williams went and told in the green-room, where he waited
for Quin, who came off at the end of two scenes more, after uttering
the word "death." It was what he brought, without meaning it, to the
irascible Welshman, who attacked him on the not unreasonable ground
that Quin had rendered him ridiculous in the eyes of the audience;
and he demanded the satisfaction which gentlemen who wore swords were
in the habit of giving to each other. Quin treated the affair as a
mere joke, but the Welsh actor would not be soothed. After the play,
he lay in wait for the offender in the Covent Garden Piazza, where
much malapert blood was often spilt. There Quin could not refuse to
defend himself, however ill-disposed he was to accept the combat,
and after a few passes, Williams lay lifeless on the flag-stones,
and Quin was arrested by the watch. Ultimately, he was absolved from
blame, and no further harm came of it than the lasting regret of
having shed the blood of a fellow-creature.
At a later period, Quin was well-nigh slaying a more ignoble foe
than Williams, namely, Theophilus Cibber, whose scoundrelly conduct
towards his beautiful and accomplished wife, Quin alluded to, under
a very forcible epithet applied to her husband. Out of this incident
arose a quarrel, and swords were again drawn in the Piazza, where
Quin and Cibber slashed each other across the arm and fingers, till
they were parted by the bystanders.
In 1732, Quin, with the company from the "Fields," established
himself in the new theatre in Covent Garden, whence, after two
seasons, he passed to Drury Lane, where he continued till 1741;
after which, with some intervals, he again enrolled himself at the
"Garden," where he remained till he quietly withdrew, in 1751. Of
his rivalry with Garrick, I have already said something. If he was
vanquished in that contest, he was not humiliated, though I think he
was a little humbled in spirit. His great merit is, nevertheless,
incontestable. His Cato and Brutus were good; he was excellent
in Henry VIII., Volpone, Glo'ster, Apemantus, Ventidius, the Old
Batchelor, and "all the Falstaffs." He was happy only in a few
speeches of Pierre, especially, "I could have hugged the greasy
rogues, they pleased me so!" and his execration of the senate.
His Plain Dealer is commended, and the soliloquies of Zanga are
eulogised. His Macheath and some other operatic parts, he played
and sung extremely well. His failures were Macbeth, Othello,
Richard, Lear, Chamont, and Young Bevil. His continuing to play
these in opposition to Garrick and Barry censures his judgment.
Davies says, he often gave true weight and dignity to sentiment
by a well-regulated tone of voice, judicious elocution, and easy
deportment. The expression of the tender, as well as of the violent,
emotions of the heart was beyond his reach. The plain and the
familiar rather than the striking and the vigorous, became him
whose action was either forced or languid, and whose movements were
ponderous or sluggish. From the retirement of Booth till the coming
of Garrick, Quin can scarcely be said to have had a rival, unless
it were the clever but lazy Delane, whose self-indulgence was not
accompanied by the energy and industry which went with that of Quin.
As Delane fell before Quin, so did Quin fall before the younger
energy, and power, and perseverance, of Garrick. James's prophecy
that the latter, in founding a new religion,--like Whitfield, would
be followed for a time, but that people would all come to church
again, was not fulfilled.
Nevertheless, it produced a very fair epigram:--
"Pope Quin, who damns all churches but his own,
Complains that heresy affects the town.
That Whitfield Garrick now misleads the age,
And taints the sound religion of the stage.
'Schism,' he cries, 'has turn'd the nation's brain!'
'But eyes will open, and to church again!'
Thou great Infallible, forbear to roar,
Thy bulls and errors are rever'd no more.
When doctrines meet with gen'ral approbation,
It is not Heresy, but Reformation."
Quin has left some reputation as a humourist. Biographers give the
name of his tutor in Dublin, but they add that Quin was illiterate, a
character which is hardly established by the best of his _bons mots_.
That he was not well read, even in the literature of that profession,
of which he was so distinguished a member, is certain; but he boasted
that he could read men more readily than books, and it is certain
that his observation was acute, and the application of what he
learned thereby, electrically prompt.
If he was inexorable in enforcing the payment of what was due to him,
he was also nobly generous with the fortune he amassed. Meanness
was not among the faults of Quin. The greatest injury has been done
to his memory by the publication of jests, of a very reprehensible
character, and which were said to be his, merely to quicken their
sale. He lived in coarse times, and his jokes may have been, now and
then, of a coarse quality; but he also said some of the finest things
that ever fell from the lips of an intellectual wit.
Of all Quin's jests, there is nothing finer than two which elicited
the warm approval of Horace Walpole. Bishop Warburton, in company
at Bath, spoke in support of prerogative. Quin said, "Pray, my
Lord, spare me; you are not acquainted with my principles. I am a
republican; and, perhaps, I even think that the execution of Charles
I. might be justified." "Ay!" said Warburton, "by what law?" Quin
replied: "By all the laws he had left them." Walpole saw the sum of
the whole controversy couched in those eight monosyllables; and the
more he examined the sententious truth the finer he found it. The
Bishop thought otherwise, and "would have got off upon judgments."
He bade the player remember that all the regicides came to violent
ends,--a lie, but no matter. "I would not advise your Lordship," said
Quin, "to make use of that inference, for, if I am not mistaken,
that was the case of the twelve apostles." Archbishop Whately could
not have more logically overthrown conclusions which discern God's
anger in individual afflictions.
There is little wonder, then, that Warburton disliked Quin; indeed
there was not much love lost between the two men, who frequently met
as guests in the house of Ralph Allen, of Prior Park, Bath,--the
original of Fielding's Squire Allworthy, and the uncle (Walpole
says the father) of Warburton's wife. The Bishop, seldom courteous
to any man, treated Quin with an offensively patronising air, and
endeavoured to make him feel the distance between them. There was
only a difference in their vocations, for Quin, by birth, was,
perhaps, rather a better gentleman than Warburton. The latter once,
at Allen's house, where the prelate is said to have admonished the
player on his too luxurious way of living (the bishop, however,
loving custard not less than the actor did John Dory), requested
him, as he could not see him on the stage, to recite some passages
from dramatic authors, in presence of a large company then assembled
in the drawing-room. Quin made some little difficulty; but after a
well-simulated hesitation consented, and stood up to deliver passages
from "Venice Preserved;" but in reciting the lines
"Honest men
Are the soft easy cushions on which knaves
Repose and fatten,"
he so pointedly directed his looks, at "honest men" to Allen, and
at "knaves" to Warburton, that the company universally marked the
application, and the bishop never asked for a taste of the actor's
quality again. And yet he is reported to have imitated this very act,
with less warrant for it. When Dr. Terrick had been recently (in
1764) promoted from Peterborough to the see of London, a preferment
coveted by Warburton, the latter preached a sermon at the Chapel
Royal, at which the new Bishop of London was present, amid more
august members of the congregation. Warburton took occasion to say
that a government which conferred the high trusts of the Church
on illiterate and worthless objects betrayed the interests of
religion;--and on saying so, he stared Terrick full in the face.
There was no man for whom Quin had such distaste as this unpleasant
Bishop of Gloucester, who published an edition of _Shakspeare_. When
this was announced, the actor remarked in the green-room of old
Drury, "He had better mind his own Bible, and leave ours to us!" Quin
was undoubtedly open to censure on the score of his epicurism. He is
said to have so loved John Dory as to declare, that for the enjoyment
of it, a man "should have a swallow from here to the antipodes, and
palate all the way!" and we are told that if, on his servant calling
him in the morning, he heard that there was no John Dory in the
market, he would turn round, and lazily remark, "then call me again
to-morrow." But these are tales more or less coloured to illustrate
his way of life. There is one which has more probability in it, which
speaks of another incident at Bath. Lord Chesterfield saw a couple
of chairmen helping a heavy gentleman into a sedan, and he asked his
servant if he knew who that stout gentleman was? "Only Mr. Quin,
my lord, going home, as usual, from the 'Three Tuns.'" "Nay, sir,"
answered my lord, "I think Mr. Quin is taking one of the three home
with him, under his waistcoat!"
His capacity was undoubtedly great, but the over-testing it
occasionally affected his acting. An occasion on which he was playing
Balance, in the "Recruiting Officer," Mrs. Woffington acting Sylvia,
his daughter, affords an instance. In the second scene of the second
act he should have asked his daughter, "Sylvia, how old were you when
your mother _died_?" instead of which he said "_married_." Sylvia
laughed, and being put out of her cue, could only stammer "What,
sir?" "Pshaw!" cried the more confused justice; "I mean, how old
were you when your mother _was born_?" Mrs. Woffington recovered
her self-possession, and taking the proper cue, said, "You mean,
sir, when my mother died. Alas! so young, that I do not remember I
ever had one; and you have been so careful, so indulgent to me, ever
since, that indeed I never wanted one."
In his latest days, his powers of retort never failed him. He was in
that closing season when a fop condoled with him on growing old, and
asked what the actor would give to be as young as _he_ was? "I would
almost be content to be as foolish!" was Quin's reply.
Old Hippisley, who, from a candle-snuffer became a favourite low
comedian, owed much of his power of exciting mirth to a queer
expression in his distorted face, caused by a scar from a severe
burn. Having some intention to put his son on the stage, he asked
Quin's advice as to the preparatory measures. "Hippy," said Quin,
"you had better begin by burning him."
Nobody bore with his sharp sayings more cheerfully than Mrs.
Woffington. We all know his remark, when Margaret, coming off the
stage as Sir Harry Wildair, declared that she believed one half the
house thought she was a man. Less known is his comment when, on
asking her why she had been to Bath, she answered saucily, "Oh, for
mere wantonness!" whereon Quin retorted with, "And have you been
cured of it?"
He was one of the few men who could stand a fall with Foote, and
come off the better man. Foote, who could not endure a joke made
on himself, broke friendship with Quin on account of such offence.
Ultimately, they were reconciled; but even then Foote referred to
the provocation. "Jemmy, you should not have said that I had but one
shirt, and that I lay a-bed while it was washed!" "Sammy," replied
Quin, "I never _could_ have said so, for I never knew that you had a
shirt to wash!"
In the roughest of Quin's jests there was no harm meant, and many of
his jokes manifested the kindliness of his heart. Here is an obscure
actor, Dick Winston, lying,--hungry, weary, and disengaged,--on a
truckle bed, in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden. He had wilfully
forfeited an old engagement, turned itinerant, starved, and had
returned, only to find his old place occupied. He is on his back,
in utter despair, as Mr. Quin enters, followed by a man carrying a
decent suit of clothes; and the great actor hails him with a "Now,
Dick, how is it you are not up and at rehearsal?" Quin had heard of
his distress, got him restored to his employment, and took this way
of announcing it. Winston dressed himself in a state of bewilderment;
a new dress and a new engagement,--but no cash wherewith to obtain a
breakfast!" Mr. Quin," said he, unhesitatingly, "what shall I do for
a little ready money, till Saturday arrives?" "Nay!" replied Quin;
"I have done all I can for you; but as for money, Dick, you must put
your hand in your own pocket." Quin had put a £10 note there!
Again; when Ryan asked, in an emergency, for a loan, the answer from
Quin was, that he had nothing to lend; but he had left Ryan £1000 in
his will, and Ryan might have that, if he were inclined to cheat the
government of the legacy duty!
Frederick, Prince of Wales, was not half such a practically good
patron to Thomson, as James Quin was. When the bard was in distress,
Quin gave him a supper at a tavern, for half of which the poet
expected he would have to pay; but the player designed otherwise.
"Mr. Thomson," said he, "I estimate the pleasure I have had in
perusing your works at £100 at least; and you must allow me to settle
that account, by presenting you with the money." What are the small
or the great faults of this actor of "all the Falstaffs," when we
find his virtues so practical and lively? In return, the minstrel
has repaid the good deed with a guerdon of song. In the _Castle of
Indolence_, he says:
"Here whilom ligg'd th' Aesopus of the age;
But, call'd by Fame, in soul ypricked deep,
A noble pride restored him to the stage,
And roused him like a giant from his sleep.
Even from his slumbers we advantage reap:
With double force th' enlivened scene he wakes,
Yet quits not Nature's bounds. He knows to keep
Each due decorum: now the heart he shakes,
And now with well-urged sense th' enlightened judgment takes."
The actor had a great regard for the poet, and was not only active in
bringing forward his posthumous tragedy, "Coriolanus," in which Quin
played the principal character, in 1749, but spoke the Hon. George
Lyttleton's celebrated prologue with such feeling, that he could not
restrain his tears; and with such effect, that the audience were
moved, it is said, in like manner:--
"He lov'd his friends;--forgave this gushing tear;
Alas! I feel I am no actor here;"
and Quin's eyes glistened, as he went through the noble eulogy of a
poet, whose
"Muse employ'd her heaven-taught lyre,
None but the noblest passions to inspire;
Not one immoral, one corrupted thought,
One line, which, dying, he could wish to blot."
The last night Quin played as an engaged actor, was at Covent Garden,
on the 15th of May 1751; the play was the "Fair Penitent," in which
he acted Horatio to the Lothario of Barry, and the Calista of
Mrs. Cibber. After this he quietly withdrew, without leave-taking,
returning only once or twice to play for the benefit of a friend.
In his later years, his professional income is said to have reached
£1000 a year. He was the first English actor who received £50 a
night, during a part of his career. The characters he created were
in pieces which have died off the stage, save Comus, which he acted
with effective dignity in the season of 1737-8;--a part in which Mr.
Macready distinguished himself, during his memorable management of
Drury Lane.
Quin's social position, after leaving the stage, was one congenial
to a man of his merits, taste, and acquirements. He was a welcome
guest at many noble hearths--from that of ducal Chatsworth to that
of modest Allen's at Prior Park. At the former he and Garrick met.
There had not been a cordial intimacy between the two as actors;
but as private gentlemen they became friends. This better state of
things was owing to the kindly feeling of Quin. The two men were
left alone in a room at Chatsworth, and Quin made the first step
towards a reconciliation by asking a question the most agreeable he
could put--inquiring after Mrs. Garrick's health. In this scene the
two men come before me as distinct as a couple of figures drawn by
Meissonier--quaint in costume, full of character and life, pleasant
to look at and to remember.
Quin was Garrick's guest at Hampton, when he was stricken in 1765
with the illness which ultimately proved fatal. He died, however, in
his own house in Bath. "I could wish," he said the day before, "that
the last tragic scene were over; and I hope I may be enabled to meet
and pass through it with dignity." He passed through it becomingly
on the 21st of January 1766; and Garrick placed the following lines
on the old actor's tomb in the Abbey--a pyramid of Sienna marble,
bearing a medallion portrait of Quin, resting on a sarcophagus, on
which the inscription is engraved, supported by the mask of Thalia
and the dagger of Melpomene.
"That tongue which set the table in a roar,
And charmed the public ear, is heard no more;
Clos'd are those eyes, the harbingers of wit,
Which spake, before the tongue, what Shakspere writ.
Cold is that hand which, living, was stretch'd forth
At friendship's call, to succour modest worth.
Here lies JAMES QUIN. Deign, reader, to be taught,
Whate'er thy strength of body, force of thought,
In nature's happiest mould however cast,
To this complexion thou must come at last."
Kind-hearted people have remarked that Garrick never said so much to,
or of, Quin when he was alive. Perhaps not. He struggled with Quin
for mastery--vanquished him; became his friend, and hung up over his
grave a glowing testimony to his talent and his virtues. This was in
the spirit of old chivalry. What would kind-hearted people have? Was
it not well in Garrick to speak truthfully of one dead whom, when
living, he thus with pleasant satire described as soliloquising at
the tomb of Duke Humphrey at St. Albans--
"A plague on Egypt's art, I say!
Embalm the dead! On senseless clay
Rich wines and spices waste!
Like sturgeon, or like brawn, shall I
Bound in a precious pickle lie,
Which I can never taste?
Let me embalm this flesh of mine
With turtle fat, and Bordeaux wine,
And spoil th' Egyptian trade!
Than Humphry's Duke more happy I,
Embalm'd alive, old Quin shall die
A mummy ready made."
As a tailpiece to this sketch, I cannot, I think, do better than
subjoin Foote's portrait of Quin, which, I will hope, was not
drawn to disparage any of Quin's great survivors, but in all
honesty and sincerity. "Mr. Quin's deportment through the whole
cast of his characters is natural and unaffected, his countenance
expressive without the assistance of grimace, and he is, indeed, in
every circumstance, so much the person he represents, that it is
scarcely possible for any attentive spectator to believe that the
hypocritical, intriguing Maskwell, the suspicious superannuated rake,
the snarling old bachelor, and the jolly, jocose Jack Falstaff are
imitated, but real persons.
"And here I wish I had room and ability to point out the severe
masterly strokes with which Mr. Quin has often entertained my
imagination, and satisfied my judgment, but, under my present
confinement, I can only recommend the man who wants to see a
character perfectly played, to see Mr. Quin in the part of Falstaff;
and if he does not express a desire of spending an evening with that
merry mortal, why, I would not spend one with him, if he would pay my
reckoning."
"With a bottle of claret and a full house," it may well be concluded,
from all concurrent testimony, Quin was, in fat Jack, unapproachable.
In the traditions of the stage, he still remains _the_ Falstaff,
though Henderson was subsequently thought to have equalled him in
many of the points of that character.
Finally, Quin's will is not uninstructive as an illustration of the
actor's character. There is, perhaps, not a friend he had possessed,
or servant who had been faithful to him, who is forgotten in it.
Various are the bequests, from £50 to a cousin practising medicine
in Dublin, to £500 and a share of the residue to a kind-hearted
oilman in the Strand. To one individual he bequeaths his watch, in
accordance with an "imprudent promise" to that effect. James Quin did
not like the man, but he would not break his word! _Requiescat in
pace!_
[Illustration: Mr. King as Lord Ogleby.]
FOOTNOTES:
[59] Quin's last appearance was for Ryan's benefit; but it was at
Covent Garden, and he played Falstaff--19th March 1753.
[60] I think this must be a misprint for fourteen years.
[61] In the second edition Dr. Doran says: "After he passed to
Lincoln's Inn Fields, Rich designed to bring forward the 'Merry Wives
of Windsor,' but no one seemed daring enough to undertake Falstaff.
'I will venture it,' said Quin, 'if no one else can be found.' 'You!'
cried Rich, 'you might as well try Cato after Booth. The character of
Falstaff is quite another character from what you think. It is not a
little snivelling part that any one can do; and there isn't any man
among you that has any idea of the part but myself!' Ultimately Quin
'attempted' the part; his conception of it was admirable, and the
house willingly flung itself into a very storm of hilarious jollity."
[Illustration: OLD THEATRE ROYAL, EDINBURGH.]