COLLEY CIBBER.
In the year 1671, the coffee-house politicians, the fine gentlemen,
the scholars, and the gossips generally, were in no lack of
themes for discussion. In Bow Street, the quidnuncs congratulated
themselves, from April to December, at the resolution of the Commons,
whose members had rebuked the Lords for daring to alter an impost
laid on sugar, to the effect that in all aids given to the King by
the Commons, the tax levied might be agreed to, but it could not
be altered by the Lords. Knots of shabby-looking clergymen were
constantly to be seen in Mr. Brent, the mercer's, shop, discussing
the arrangements just made for the sustenance of London incumbents,
burnt out by the Great Fire. Upstairs, in the long-room over Mr.
Brent's shop, the "wits' room" at Wills', the company never wearied
of hearing Major Mohun, the actor, speak of Lord Fairfax who was
just dead. There was much gossip, too, both there and about town,
touching my Lord Manchester, lately deceased, the parliamentary
general who had helped to restore monarchy. If he was the servant of
two masters, some persons thought he had been sufficiently punished
by being the husband of five wives. The critics were more genially
engaged in canvassing the merits of Casaubon, the learned prebendary
of Canterbury, who had recently laid aside his critical acumen with
his mortal coil. The artists were canvassing the merits of a monument
which was that year beginning to rear its head on Fish Street Hill.
The architect was Sir Christopher Wren. A foreign sculptor from
Holstein was, at that moment, preparing designs for the _basso
relievo_ now on the pedestal. This sculptor lived in Southampton
Street, Bloomsbury, where, on the 6th of November 1671, while
arranging the completion of his figures, his lady upstairs,--she
was of a cavalier family, and had the blood of William of Wyckham
in her veins,--presented him with a living figure, the counterfeit
presentment of its father. The child thus born, as it were, with the
London Monument, was named Colley Cibber.
How Colley fared at school, stood his own ground, and was envied
by the dunces he beat, in a double sense,--how he was determined to
succeed in life, and _did_ succeed, and was therefore denounced, as
an ass or a knave, by those who failed, or who hated him for his
success, or who feared the sarcasms which he himself delivered,
without fear,--is known to us all.
The success of Colley Cibber, throughout life, may be ascribed
to three circumstances; the acuteness with which he detected
opportunity, the electric rapidity with which he seized it, and the
marvellous unerring tact by which he turned it to profit. By this
he was distinguished, despite some easy negligence and luxurious
idleness, from his earliest days; and from his first to his last
consequent triumph, he paid for each in the malevolence of those who
envied him his victories and denied his merit.
When a lad at Grantham Free School, he alone accepted the magisterial
proposal to compose a funeral oration, in honour of the dead king,
Charles II. He gained such glory by his achievement that his fellows
sent him to Coventry. For succeeding better than any of them in
writing an ode in honour of the new King, an ode which he modestly
owns to have been as execrable as anything he composed half a century
later, when poet-laureate, they ostracised the bard whom they could
not equal in song. Colley was satisfied with his glory, and treated
his young adversaries with all the mingled good-nature and audacity
with which he subsequently treated his better armed enemy, Mr. Pope.
When he "met the Revolution," in 1688, at Nottingham, failing
to obtain military employment, he gladly availed himself of an
opportunity to wait behind Lady Churchill's chair, as she sat at
table with the Princess Anne. Half a hundred years later he refers
to the friend he acquired by thus performing lacquey to her; and he
happily caps a climax of glorious compliment to the then Duchess of
Marlborough, by flatteringly alluding to something that pleasantly
distinguished her above all the women of her time,--a distinction
which she received not from earthly sovereigns, but "from the Author
of Nature;" that of being "_a great grandmother without grey hairs_."
He failed, indeed, in obtaining a commission, as he did in an attempt
to enter the Church; but for those failures Cibber was, in no wise,
responsible. Had he grasped a pair of colours we should have heard of
him, honourably, in Flanders. Had he received ordination, he would at
least have as well known how to push his way as the reverend Philip
Bisse, who kissed the Countess of Plymouth in the dark, affecting to
take her for a maid of honour, and who thereby gained that lively
widow for a wife, and through her the bishoprics, successively, of
St. Davids and Hereford.
Colley being alike debarred from ascending the pulpit, or leading
to the imminently deadly breach, turned to the sock and buskin,
alternately donning the one or the other, for nothing; but watching
his opportunity, and never failing to take advantage of it. He
gladly, after a term of hungry probation, accepted the little part
of the Chaplain, in the "Orphan;" and when the old comedian Goodman
swore there was the stuff for the making of a good actor in the
young fellow, the tears came into Cibber's eyes; but they were tears
of joy, for he recognised that his good time had commenced, and he
watched opportunity more indefatigably than ever.
Meanwhile he was happy on ten, and fifteen shillings a week, with
food, and raiment, and lodging, under his father's roof, and an
ardent desire that he might one day play lover to Mrs. Bracegirdle.
When the ambitious young fellow had induced his sire to allow him
£20 a year, in addition to the £1 a week which he then gained on the
stage, Colley made love to a young lady off the stage, and married
at the age of twenty-two. He and his wife were as happy as any young
couple that ever took a leap in the dark. This is his own testimony;
but beyond that darkness he looked eagerly, watching still for
opportunity. It came when Congreve's "Double Dealer" was to be played
before Queen Mary. Kynaston had fallen suddenly ill, and who could
learn and play the part of Lord Touchwood in a few hours? Congreve
looks at Cibber, and the young actor looks confidently at Congreve.
He undertakes the task, fired by the thought of promotion, and of
performing before a crowned head. His success was perfect. Congreve
was delighted, and the salary of the ecstatic comedian was raised
some few shillings a week. His young wife danced round him for joy
at this glimpse of Golconda. The company of actors began to dislike
him, after the fashion of his Grantham schoolfellows.
Little recked Colley Cibber what men thought of him, provided only
the thought helped him towards fortune. At a pinch, he supplied
a new prologue, for the opening of a season at Drury Lane, the
prosperity of which was menaced by an opposition from the new
theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The poet begged hard that he might
have the speaking of his own piece, but he was not accounted actor
good enough for that, and thus he lost, not by error of his own, a
particular opportunity. But the master slipped a couple of guineas
into his hand, and declared that he, Colley, "was a very ingenious
young man." Cibber was consoled; he had, at all events, profited by
the opportunity, of making way with his "Master." To be sure, said
Colley, "he knows no difference between Dryden and Durfey;" but that
also made no difference to Colley.
Some weeks subsequently the "Old Batchelor" was suddenly substituted
for the previously announced tragedy of "Hamlet." When all the parts
had been distributed to the principal actors, Cibber, ever vigilant
and ever ready, quietly remarked that they had forgotten one of the
most telling parts in the whole play, Fondlewife. It was Dogget's
great part. In it he was unapproachable. He was not a member of the
company. Who could or would dare to face a public whose sides were
still shaking with laughter at Dogget's irresistible performance
of this character? No one knew the part; midday was at hand; the
curtain must go up by four; the play could _not_ be changed. What
_was_ to be done? Colley, of course, offered himself to do it, and
his offer was treated with contempt;[77] but the managers were
compelled to accept it. Here was a golden chance which had golden
results for Cibber. He played the part at night, in dress, feature,
voice, and action, so like to the incomparable Dogget himself, that
the house was in an uproar of delight and perplexity,--delight at
beholding their favourite, and perplexity as to how it could possibly
be he. For there sat Dogget himself, in the very centre of a forward
row in the pit; a stimulant rather than a stumbling-block to Cibber;
and the astonished witness of the newly-acquired glory of this young
actor, who always seemed ready to undertake anything, and who was
always sure of accomplishing whatever he undertook. "It would be too
rank an affectation," he writes, "if I should not confess that to
see him there, a witness of my reception, was to me as consummate a
triumph as the heart of vanity could be indulged with."
Surely, this persevering fellow merited success; but still were his
playfellows like his schoolfellows. They envied and decried him. If
he solicited a part, he was put by, with the remark that _it was not
in his way_. He wisely replied that any part, naturally written,
should be in the way of every man who pretended to be an actor. The
managers thought otherwise, and left Colley--but not to despair. He
had just discerned another opportunity, and, _more suo_, he clutched
it, worked it to a noble end, and with it achieved a double and a
permanent triumph--triumph as author as well as actor.
For many years there had not been a comedy written but at the expense
of husbands. They were the dupes and dolts of the piece; were
betrayed and dishonoured; cudgelled and contented in their abject
debasement. Audiences had had something too much of this, and Cibber
was the first to perceive it. He himself was not yet sufficiently
enlightened to discover that the majority in all theatrical audiences
were gasping for a general purer air of refinement, and were growing
disgusted with the mire in which such writers as Ravenscroft, and
others with more wit than he, plunged and dragged them. Cibber, at
all events, made the first step out of this slough, by producing his
"Love's Last Shift." It was not readily accepted, but it forced its
way to that consummation, by the testimony borne to its merits by
competent judges. It was played in January 1695.[78] Its grossness
is scarcely inferior to that of comedies most offending in this way,
and which were produced both earlier and later. Nevertheless, it
marks an epoch. There was no comically outraged husband in it. The
style is still that of the old, free, coarse-comedy, in all the other
persons of the drama. The women lack heart and natural affection; the
men are unrefined and uncivil, and both converse too much after the
intolerable mode which was not yet to be driven from the sadly-abused
stage. Sentiment there is, indeed, after a sort; but when it is not
smart and epigrammatic, it is repulsively low and selfish. Amid the
intrigues of the piece, there stands glitteringly prominent the
first of the brilliant series of Cibber's fops, Sir Novelty Fashion.
This character he wrote for his own acting, and his success in it
established him as an actor of the first rank. The interest of the
audience in Sir Novelty does not centre in him as an unprincipled
rake (he is, however, sufficiently unscrupulous), as it is attracted
towards him as a "beau," a man of fashion, who professes to see
nothing tolerable in himself, solely in order to extort praise for
his magnificence from others. He is "ugly, by Gad!" he is a "sloven!"
If he wears hundreds of yards of trimming, it is to encourage the
poor ribband-weavers. If all the eminent tailors in town besiege his
house, it is to petition him for the pattern of his new coat. He is
the first man who was ever called "_beau_," which title he professes
to prefer to "right honourable," for the latter is inherited, while
the former is owing to his surprising mien and unexampled gallantry.
He does not make love to a lady; his court is paid by indicating to
her why she should love _him_. He judges of a man of sense by the
fashion of his peruke; and if he enters a lady's apartment in an
unpowdered periwig, she may rest assured that he has no designs on
her admiration. Sir Novelty is one of those fine gentlemen who go
to both theatres on the same evening; he sits with his back to the
stage, and is assured that he looks like a gentleman; for, is he not
endowed with a "fertile genius for dress?"
Southerne, who had read this play and liked it, was fearful of
Cibber's own part in it. "Young man," said he, "I pronounce thy play
a good one. I will answer for its success, if thou dost not spoil it
by thine own action!" When the play was over, Nell Gwyn's old friend,
Sackville, now Earl of Dorset, Lord Chamberlain, and the "best good
man with the worst-natured muse," declared that "Love's Last Shift"
was the best first play that any author, in his memory, had produced;
and that for a young fellow to show himself such an actor, and such
a writer, in one day, was something extraordinary. Colley, always
modest, but not through vanity, nicely alludes to Dorset's known
good-nature, and sets down the compliment not to his deserts, but
to Dorset's wish to "encourage a young beginner." Cibber himself
pronounced his comedy puerile and frothy.
It is due to Cibber to say that in this piece his own part of Sir
Novelty is never so prominent as to interfere unfairly with the other
personages. The piece itself, gross as it is, had a tendency towards
reforming the stage. Cibber's self-imposed mission in this direction
was consummated when he produced his "Careless Husband." This was
one of two works of Colley which Walpole pronounced to be worthy of
immortality. The other was the "Apology" for his life. The progress
towards purity, made between Cibber's first comedy and the last I
have named above, is nothing less than marvellous. In the "Careless
Husband" he produced a piece at which the most fastidious ladies of
_those_ times might sit, and listen to, unmasked. I say "listen,"
for the comedy is a merely conversational piece, sparkling with wit,
and with fewer lines to shock the purer sense than many an old play
which still retains a place upon the stage. The descriptions here
are as clever as the dialogue is spirited. If evil things come under
notice, they are treated as people of decency would treat them, often
gracefully, never alluringly. The incidents, told rather than acted,
are painted, if I may so speak, with the consummate skill, ease, and
distinctiveness of a most accomplished artist. The finest gentlemen
are less vicious here than they are temporarily foolish; and one
has not been long acquainted with Lady Easy before the discovery is
made that she is the first pure and sensible woman that has been
represented in a comedy since a world of time. There is good honest
love, human weaknesses, and noble triumphs over them, in this piece.
If Mr. Pope sneered at the author as a "dunce," which he was not, Mr.
Pope's neighbour, Horace Walpole, has registered him rightly as a
"gentleman," and traced his great success in describing gentlemen to
the circumstance of his constant and familiar intercourse with that
portion of "society."
In this piece, there is the most perfect of Cibber's beaux, written
for his own acting; and it is to be observed, that as time
progressed and fashion changed, so did he observe the progress, and
in his costume illustrate the change. Lord Foppington is a different
man from Sir Novelty Fashion; my lord _does_ make love to a lady.
With a respectful leer, he stares full in her face, draws up his
breath, and cries, "Gad, you're handsome!" He is married, too, and
has just sufficient regard for his wife to wish himself sun-burnt
if he does not prefer her to his estate. He talks French enough to
cite an _à la_ what d'ye call it; has Horace enough at his memory's
ends to show his breeding, by an apt quotation; and evidences
his gentlemanly feeling, albeit a _fine_-gentlemanly feeling,
on witnessing the happy union of the two wayward lovers,--Lord
Morelove and Lady Betty Modish,--by the very characteristic
exclamation:--"Stap my breath, if ever I was better pleased since my
first entrance into human nature!"
The example of comparative purity, set in this piece, was not
immediately followed; but for that, Cibber is not to blame. The
"Careless Husband" was produced in 1704, and nearly seventy years
elapsed before the period when Garrick positively refused to pollute
the boards of Drury Lane, by reproducing thereon, on Lord Mayors'
Days, one of the most filthy of the filthy plays of Ravenscroft.[79]
The critics of Cibber's time were unreasonable. Because he was
sometimes an adapter, they called him an adapter always; and the
reviewers, sick, sorry, nay maddened at his success, declared of his
most original comedy, that it was "not his own." But they never had
the wit to discover whence he had stolen it.
He took the adverse criticism with philosophy and good-humour,--as
he took most things. By the last, he once saved ten shillings a week
of his salary. Rich announced the intended reduction to him, with
the remark, that even then he would have as much as Goodman ever
had,--whose highest salary was forty shillings a week. "Aye!" said
Cibber, laughing, "and Goodman was forced to go on the highway, to
help him to live!" To save Colley from the same desperate course,
Rich made no reduction in his salary.
We obtain from Croker's _Boswell_, an instance of Cibber's care
in perfecting a piece, and his readiness in adapting passing
incidents to suit his purpose. Mrs. Brett, the divorced Countess
of Macclesfield, and long thought to be the mother of Savage, the
poet, was the second wife of that Colonel Brett, whose opinion as to
what would best please the town was eagerly sought after by authors
and actors. His first wife, a great leader of fashion, had taken
the handsome fellow from the hands of bailiffs, married him, and
ultimately left him a wealthy widower. For the taste and judgment
of the second Mrs. Brett, Cibber had the highest respect; and he
consulted her on every scene of the "Careless Husband," as he wrote
it. At some one of these consultations, he probably heard of the too
great civility of the Colonel to his wife's maid, both of whom Mrs.
Brett once found fast asleep in two chairs. The lady was satisfied
to leave token of her presence, by casting her lace handkerchief
over her husband's neck. Of the otherwise painful incident she never
took any notice; and let us hope that the Colonel profited by the
silent rebuke, as Sir Charles Easy did. However this may be, Cibber
incorporated the incident into his play, where it heightens the
interest of one of the most interesting scenes.
Cibber was essentially a comic actor. His Richard partook very much
of the manner of his Sir Novelty Fashion; and his "A horse! a horse!"
used to excite the hilarity of his audience. He avows, gracefully
enough, that his want of a strong and full voice soon cut short his
hopes of making any figure in tragedy. He adds, with some conceit,
and more affected modesty, "I have been many years since convinced,
that whatever opinion I might have of my own judgment or capacity to
amend the palpable errors that I saw our tragedians most in favour
to commit, yet the auditors who would have been sensible of such
amendments (could I have made them) were so very few, that my best
endeavour would have been but an unavailing labour, or what is yet
worse, might have appeared, both to our actors and to many auditors,
the vain mistake of my own self-conceit; for so strong, so very near
indispensable, is that one article of voice, in the forming of a good
tragedian, that an actor may want any other qualification whatsoever,
and yet will have a better chance for applause than he will ever
have, with all the skill in the world, if his voice is not equal to
it." Colley admirably explains this, by adding, ... "I say, for
_applause_ only; but applause does not always stay for, nor always
follow, intrinsic merit. Applause will frequently open, like a young
hound upon a wrong scent; and the majority of auditors, you know, are
generally composed of babblers, that are profuse of their voices,
before there is anything on foot that calls for them. Not but, I
grant, to lead, _or mislead, the many_, will always stand in some
rank of a necessary merit; yet, when I say a good tragedian, I mean
one, in opinion of whose real merit the best judges would agree."
Cibber is so perfect as a critic, he so thoroughly understands the
office and so intelligibly conveys his opinions, that it were well
if all gentlemen who may hereafter aspire to exercise the critical
art, were compelled to study his _Apology_ as medical students are
to become acquainted with their _Celsus_. No one should be admitted
to practise theatrical criticism who has not got by _heart_ Cibber's
descriptions of Betterton and Mrs. Oldfield; or who fail on their
being examined as to their proficiency in the _Canons of Colley_.
Then, if there be one circumstance more than another for which Cibber
merits our affectionate regard, it is for the kindly nature with
which he tempers justice, and the royal generosity which he displays
in attributing certain alleged excellences in his own acting, to his
careful study of the acting of others. If Cibber played Sparkish and
Sir Courtly Nice with applause, it was entirely owing, so he nobly
avows, to the ideas and impressions he had received from Mountfort's
acting of those characters. Although his Richard was full of defects,
yet he attracted the town by it. He assigns this attraction to the
fact of his attempting to reproduce the style and method of one of
the greatest of Richards,--Sandford.[80]
While praising others he is ever ready to disparage himself; and he
as heartily ridicules his insufficient voice, his meagre person,
and his pallid complexion, as any enemy might have done for him. He
exalts the spirit, ease, and readiness of Vanbrugh, and denounces
the puerility and frothy stage-language of his own earlier dramas,
accepting heartily Congreve's judgment on "Love's Last Shift," which
"had in it a great many things that were like wit, that in reality
were _not_ wit." He courageously pronounces the condemnation of
his "Love in a Riddle," to be the just judgment of an enlightened
audience. In the casting of a play, Colley was contented to take
any part left to him, after the other great men had picked, chosen,
rejected, and settled for themselves; and a couple of subordinate
characters in the "Pilgrim" were as readily undertaken by him and as
carefully acted as his Richard, Sir Francis, or Master Slender.
To his own alteration of Shakspeare's "Richard III.," he alludes
with some diffidence. There is no trace of self-complacency in his
remarks. Colley's adversaries, however, have denounced him for this
act as virulently as if he had committed a great social crime. But
whatever may be said as to our old friend's "mangling of Shakspeare,"
the piece which he so mangled has ever since kept the stage, and it
is Cibber's and not Shakspeare's "Richard" which is acted by many
of our chief players, who have the coolness, at the same time, to
protest that their reverence for Shakspeare's text is a pure homage
rendered to a divine inspiration.
There were actors of Cibber's days who disliked to play villains
like Richard, lest the audience should mistake the counterfeit for
the real character. But if people thought Cibber vicious because he
played a vicious fellow to the life, he took it as a compliment.
His voice was certainly too weak and piping for tragedy, but as
he philosophically remarks, "If the multitude were not in a roar,
to see me in Cardinal Wolsey, I could be sure of them in Alderman
Fondlewife. If they hated me in Iago, in Sir Fopling they took me for
a fine gentleman. If they were silent at Syphax, no Italian Eunuch
was more applauded than I when I sung in Sir Courtly. If the morals
of Æsop were too grave for them, Justice Shallow was as simple and as
merry an old rake as the wisest of our young ones could wish me."
Cibber had a fine perception of the good and the true. That the
"Beggar's Opera" should beat "Cato" by a run of forty nights does
not induce him to believe that any man would be less willing to
be accounted the author of the tragedy than of the opera, the
writer of which, he says with some humour, "I knew to be an honest,
good-natured man, and who, when he had descended to write more like
one in the cause of virtue, had been as unfortunate as others of that
class."
Colley had quite as just a perception of the different value of
fair and unfair criticism. Of theatrical criticism, in the proper
sense of the word, there was, in those days, none. But this lack
of effective criticism was not caused by incapacity for the task
on the part of writers; as may be seen in the admirable critical
sketches in Cibber's "Life." Indeed, the capability existed from a
remote period,--a fact acknowledged by those who have read Sir Thomas
Overbury's finished summary of the character of an "Actor."
In place of criticism, however, there was a system of assault by
the means of unfounded reports. _Mist's Journal_ was foremost in
attacking Cibber and his colleagues, but "they hardly ever hit upon
what was _really_ wrong in us," says Colley, who took these would-be
damaging paragraphs, founded upon hearsay, with perfect indifference.
Wilks and Booth were much more sensitive, and preferred that public
answer should be made; but Cibber, secure, perhaps too secure, he
says, in his contempt for such writers, would not consent to this.
"I know of but one way to silence authors of that stamp," he says,
"which was, to grow insignificant and good for nothing, and then we
should hear no more of them. But while we continued in the prosperity
of pleasing others, and were not conscious of having deserved what
they said of us, why should we gratify the little spleen of our
enemies, by wincing to it, or give them fresh opportunities to dine
upon any reply they might make to our publicly taking notice of them?"
Cibber cared not for _Mist's Journal_ while such a man as Sheffield,
Duke of Buckingham, made a friend of him. To this Duke, a dull Earl
once expressed his opinion that Mr. Cibber was not sufficiently "good
company" for his grace. "He is good enough for me," said the Duke;
"but I can believe that he would not suit _you_." A peer who, at
least, had wit enough to enjoy Quin's society, had the ill-manners
to say, "What a pity it is, Mr. Quin, you are an actor!" "Why," said
ever-ready James, "what would you have me be?--A lord?" Cibber, like
Quin, was proud of his vocation. Colley originated nearly eighty
characters during his career, from 1691 to his retirement in 1733.
Among them are the grand old fops, the crafty or the inane old men,
the dashing soldier, and the impudent lacquey. In tragedy, he was
nearly always wrong. Of middle size, fair complexion, and with a
shrill voice, apt to crack, and therefore to make him ridiculous in
serious parts, he was, of "shape, a little clumsy," says one sketcher
of his character,--while "his shape was finely proportioned," is the
account of a second. Mr. Urban says that when Cibber had to represent
ridiculous humour, there was a mouth in every nerve, and he was
eloquent, though mute. "His attitudes were pointed and exquisite; his
expression was stronger than painting; he was beautifully absorbed
by the character, and demanded and monopolised attention; his very
extravagances were coloured with propriety." That the public highly
appreciated him is clear from the enthusiasm with which they hailed
his occasional returns to the stage, between 1733 and 1745, when
he finally withdrew, after acting Pandulph in his "Papal Tyranny."
His Shallow, in those occasional days, was especially popular.
"His transition from asking the price of ewes, to trite but grave
reflections on mortality, was so natural, and attended by such
an unmeaning roll of his small pigs'-eyes, that perhaps no actor
was ever superior in the conception and execution of such solemn
insignificancy."
The general idea of Cibber has been fixed by the abuse and slander of
Pope. In the dissensions of these two men, Cibber had the advantage
of an adversary who keeps his temper while he sharpens his wit, and
maintains self-respect while courteously crushing his opponent;[81]
but even Pope, who so hated Cibber, could praise the "Careless
Husband;" and a man, lauded by Pope, who detested him; by Walpole,
who despised players; and by Johnson, who approved of his "Apology,"
must have been superior to many of his contemporaries. He wrote the
best comedy of his time, was the only adapter of Shakspeare's plays
whose adaptation survives--to show his superiority, if not over the
original poet, at least over all other adapters; and of all borrowers
from the French, not one reaped such honour and profit as he did by
his "Nonjuror," which also still lives in "The Hypocrite." Of all
English managers, he was the most successful and prosperous--only
to be approached in later days by Garrick. Of all English actors,
he is the only one who was ever promoted to the laureateship, or
elected a member of White's Club. None laughed louder than he did at
the promotion, or at those friends of his to whom it gave unmixed
dissatisfaction. If a sarcasm was launched at him from the stage, on
this account, he was the first to recognise it, by his hilarity, in
the boxes. Further, when necessity compelled him to plead in person
in a suit at the bar, his promptitude, eloquence, and modest bearing,
crowned by success, demonstrated what he might have accomplished,
had he been destined to wear the wig and gown. To sum up all--after
more than forty years of labour, not unmixed by domestic troubles,
he retired, with an ample fortune, to enjoy which he had nearly a
quarter of a century before him. Such a man was sure to be both hated
and envied--though only by a few.
Of Cibber's being elected to White's Club House, Davies sneeringly
remarks:--"And so, I suppose, might any man be who wore good clothes,
and paid his money when he lost it. He fared most sumptuously with
Mr. Arthur (the proprietor) and his wife, and gave a trifle for his
dinner. After he had dined, when the club-room door was opened, and
the laureate was introduced, he was saluted with the loud and joyous
acclamation of, 'Oh, King Coll! come in, King Coll! Welcome, King
Colley!' And this kind of gratulation," adds Davies, "Mr. Victor
thought was very gracious and very honourable!" Considering the time,
about 1733, such a greeting had nothing offensive in it. If there
had been, Cibber was just the man to resent it, at the sore cost of
the offender, whether the latter were Chesterfield or Devonshire,
Cholmondeley or Rockingham, Sir John Cope, Mrs. Oldfield's General
Churchill, or, the last man likely to be so audacious--Bubb
Doddington himself.
Among them all, Colley kept his own to the last. A short time before
that last hour arrived, Horace Walpole hailed him, on his birthday,
with a good morrow, and "I am glad, sir, to see you looking so well."
"Egad, sir," replied the old gentleman--all diamonded, and powdered,
and dandified, "at eighty-four, it's well for a man that he can look
at all." Therein lay one point of Cibber's character,--the making the
best of circumstances.
And now he crosses Piccadilly, and passes through Albemarle Street,
slowly, but cheerfully, with an eye and a salutation for any pretty
woman of his acquaintance, and a word for any "good fellow" whose
purse he has lightened or who has lightened his, at dice or whist.
And so he turns into the adjacent square, and as his servant closes
the door, after admitting him, neither of them wots that the master
has passed over the threshold for the last time a living man.
In December 1757 I read in contemporary publications that there "died
at his house at Berkeley Square, Colley Cibber, Esq., Poet Laureate."
The year of his death was as eventful as that of his birth. In its
course Byng was shot, and Calmet died; the Duke of Newcastle became
Prime Minister, Clive won the battle of Plassy, and the Duke of
Cumberland surrendered Hanover and a confederate army to the French
by the treaty of Closter-seven. Within Cibber's era the Stuart had
gone, Nassau had been, and the House of Brunswick had succeeded.
This house was never more unpopular than at the time of Cibber's
death, for one of its sons had permanently tarnished his military
fame; but great as the public indignation was at the convention of
Closter-seven, there was a large fraction of the London population,
at least, who ceased to think of it, while Colley Cibber was carried
to sleep with kings and heroes in Westminster Abbey. The general
conclusion arrived at seems to have been that he was a well-abused
man, who would speedily be forgotten.
To this, it may be replied, that in spite of the abuse, often little
merited, he was an eminently successful man throughout life; and
accomplished a career, achieved (and scattered) a fortune, and built
up a fame which will always render him an object of interest.
A little too careless, perhaps; rather too much given to gambling
and philandering; somewhat more than might be of the young beau
about him, even in his old days, when, however, he was happy and
resigned under a burthen of years which few men bear with content or
resignation.
At the period of Colley Cibber's death, his daughter-in-law, Mrs.
Susanna Cibber, was enchanting the town with her Isabella played to
Garrick's Biron; and Barry and Mrs. Bellamy were raising melodious
echoes within the walls of Covent Garden. His son, Theophilus Cibber,
was hanging about the town without an engagement and in a fine suit
of clothes. Colley had once thus seen him, and had saluted him with a
contemptuous "I pity you!" "You had better pity my tailor!" said the
son, who was then challenging Garrick to play with him the same parts
alternately! Then, while the body of the Poet Laureate was being
carried to Westminster Abbey, there was, up away in a hut in then
desolate Clerkenwell, and starving, Colley's own daughter, Charlotte
Charke. Seven and twenty years before she had first come upon the
stage, after a stormy girlhood, and something akin to insanity
strongly upon her. Her abilities were fair, her opportunities great,
but her temper rendered both unavailable. She appears to have had a
mania for appearing in male characters on, and in male attire off,
the stage. By some terrible offence she forfeited the recognition
of her father, who was otherwise of a benevolent disposition; and
friendless, she fought a series of battles with the world, and came
off in all more and more damaged.
She starved with strollers, failed as a grocer in Long Acre, became
bankrupt as a puppet-show proprietor in James Street, Haymarket;
re-married, became a widow a second time, was plunged into deeper
ruin, thrown into prison for debt, and released only by the
subscriptions of the lowest, but not least charitable, sisterhood
of Drury Lane. Assuming male attire, she hung about the theatres
for casual hire, went on the tramp with itinerants, hungered daily,
and was weekly cheated, but yet kept up such an appearance that
an heiress fell in love with her, who was reduced to despair when
Charlotte Charke revealed her story, and abandoned the place.
Her next post was that of valet to an Irish Lord, forfeiting which,
she and her child became sausage-makers, but could not obtain a
living; and then Charlotte Charke cried "Coming, coming, sir!" as a
waiter at the King's Head Tavern, Mary-le-Bone. Thence she was drawn
by an offer to make her manager of a company of strolling players,
with whom she enjoyed more appetite than means to appease it. She
endured sharp distress, again and again; but was relieved by an
uncle, who furnished her with funds, with which she opened a tavern
in Drury Lane, where, after a brief career of success, she again
became bankrupt. To the regular stage she once more returned, under
her brother Theophilus, at the Haymarket; but the Lord Chamberlain
closed the house, and Charlotte Charke took to working the wires
of Russell's famous puppets in the Great Room, still existing in
Brewer Street. There was a gleam of good fortune for her; but it soon
faded away, and then for nine wretched years this clever, but most
wretched of women, struggled frantically for bare existence, among
the most wretched of strollers, with whom she endured unmitigated
misery.
And yet Cibber's erring and hapless daughter contrived to reach
London, where, in 1755, she published her remarkable autobiography,
the details of which make the heart ache, in spite of the small
sympathy of the reader for this half-mad creature. On the profits
of this book she was enabled to open, as _Landlord_, a tavern at
Islington; but, of course, ruin ensued; and in a hut, amid the cinder
heaps and worse refuse in the desolate fields, she found a refuge,
and even wrote a novel, on a pair of bellows in her lap, by way of
desk! Here she lived, with a squalid handmaiden, a cat, dog, magpie,
and monkey. Humbled, disconsolate, abandoned, she readily accepted
from a publisher who visited her, £10 for her manuscript. This was
at the close of the year 1755, and I do not meet with her again till
1759, two years after her father's death, when she played Marplot,
in the "Busy Body," for her own benefit, at the Haymarket, with
this advertisement:--"As I am entirely dependent on chance for a
subsistence, and desirous of settling into business, I humbly hope
the town will favour me on the occasion, which, added to the rest
of their indulgences, will be ever gratefully acknowledged by their
truly obliged and obedient servant, Charlotte Charke."
She died on the 6th of April 1760. Her father was then sleeping
in Westminster Abbey; her brother Theophilus was at the bottom of
the Irish Sea, with a shipful of Irish peers, English players,
pantomimists, and wire-dancers: and her sister-in-law, Susanna
Cibber, was playing Juliet to Garrick's Romeo, and approaching the
time when she was to be carried to Westminster also.
Cibber had other daughters besides that audacious Charlotte, who is
said to have once given imitations of her father on the stage; to
have presented a pistol at, and robbed him on the highway; and to
have smacked his face with a pair of soles out of her own basket.
Again may it be said, happy are the women who have no histories! Let
us part kindly with this poor woman's father--a man who had many
virtues, and whose vices were the fashions of his time. Of him, a
writer has sarcastically remarked, that he praised only the dead,
and was for ever attacking his contemporaries! He who refrained from
evil-speaking against those who could no longer defend themselves,
and who flung the shafts of his wit and satire only at those who
had tongues wherewith to reply, was in that much a true and honest
fellow. "Mr. Cibber, I take my leave of you with some respect!" It
is none the less for the satire of the "Craftsman," who ordered the
players to go into mourning for the defunct manager; the actresses to
wear black capuchins, and the men of the company "dirty shirts!"
FOOTNOTES:
[77] Cibber did not offer to do it; he was indeed rather forced into
the part. His own words are:--"I durst not refuse."
[78] January 1695-96; that is, 1696.
[79] "The London Cuckolds" ceased to be an institution on Lord
Mayor's Day within fifty years of this time.
[80] There is every reason to believe that Sandford never played
Richard; and, indeed, the play does not seem to have been produced
once during his career. Cibber says he founded his playing on the
general style of Sandford, trying to act as he thought Sandford would
have done.
[81] Cibber certainly kept his temper, but he can hardly be said to
have been specially courteous, when his most powerful weapon was a
story of Pope's misadventure in a house of ill-fame.
[Illustration: DUBLIN THEATRE ROYAL.]