KITTY CLIVE, WOODWARD, AND SHUTER.
As Mr. Wilks passes along, to or from rehearsal, there are two young
girls of about sixteen years of age who gaze at him admiringly. Day
after day the graceful actor remarks this more graceful couple, the
name of the brighter of whom is Raftor. If not Irish, she is of Irish
parentage, and of good family. Her father, a native of Kilkenny,
had served King James, and got ruin for his wages. When Catherine
Raftor was born, in 1711, she was born into a poor household, and
received as poor an education as many countesses, her contemporaries;
and here we come upon her, some sixteen years afterwards, watching
_Sir Harry Wildair_ entering or issuing from that gate of Elysium,
the stage-door of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. If she knew but the
"Sesame!" that would give admission to _her_ she would be as happy as
a houri!
She had the potent magic in her voice which won access for her to
the elder Cibber, who awarded the young thing fifteen shillings a
week,[119] and then intrusted to her the little part of Ismenes in
"Mithridates." In such solemn guise commenced the career of the
very queen of hoydens and chambermaids. As for her companion in
the occupation of gazing at Wilks, in the street,--a Miss Johnson,
she was appropriated to himself by Theophilus Cibber, who made of
her his first wife; but she failed to attain the celebrity of Miss
Raftor, who charmed audiences by the magic of her voice, and authors
by the earnestness with which she strove to realise their ideas.
She had achieved a great reputation as a comic actress, when, in
1732,[120] Miss Raftor married Mr. Clive, the brother of Mr. Baron
Clive. In the following year[121] Fielding thus writes a paragraph
of her biography, in his manly dedication to her of the "Intriguing
Chambermaid," in which she played Lettice: "As great a favourite
as you are at present with the audience, you would be much more so
were they acquainted with your private character, could they see
you laying out great part of the profits which arise to you from
entertaining them so well, in the support of an aged father; did they
see you, who can charm them on the stage with personating the foolish
and vicious characters of your sex, acting in real life the part
of the best wife, the best daughter, the best sister, and the best
friend."
"Kitty Clive," however, and her not very courteous husband, could not
keep household together, and they separated. The lady was a little
vivacious, and stood undauntedly persistent for her rights, whether
at home or on the stage--against her husband, or against Mrs. Cibber,
or Edward Shuter, or Garrick himself, who stood in more awe of her
than she of him. She alone dared take a liberty with him, and, by a
witty word well applied, to so incline him to irrepressible laughter
as to render speaking impossible. None other dared so interfere with
Roscius. But it was all done out of good nature, in which Mrs. Clive
was steeped to the lips, and of which she was lavish even to young
actresses who came, in her later days, to dispute the succession to
her parts. To the most formidable and triumphant of these, good Miss
Pope, she gave excellent counsel, warning, and encouragement, for
which "Pope" never ceased to be grateful.
Mrs. Cibber and Mrs. Clive, as Polly and Lucy, in the "Beggar's
Opera," must have exhibited a matchless combination of singing
and acting. Mrs. Clive was as ambitious as Mrs. Cibber, and would
fain have played, like her, leading parts with Garrick. Her most
successful attempt in this way was her Bizarre to his Duretete, in
the "Inconstant." One effect of her careful, earnest, but perfectly
natural and apparently spontaneous acting was to put every other
player on his mettle. That done, Mrs. Clive took care the victory
should not be lost to her for want of pains to gaily secure it. She
was a capital mimic, particularly of the Italian signoras, whom she
did not call by nice names. For a town languishing for the return
of Cuzzoni, she had the most unqualified contempt. She herself was
inimitable; she wrung from Johnson the rarest and most unqualified
praise; and over her audiences she ruled supremely; they felt with
her, smiled with her, sneered with her, giggled, tossed their heads,
and laughed aloud with her. She was the one true Comic Genius, and
none could withstand her.
She had that power of identification which belongs only to the great
intellectual players. She was a born buxom, roguish chambermaid,
fierce virago, chuckling hoyden, brazen romp, stolid country girl,
affected fine lady, and thoroughly natural old woman of whatever
condition in life. From Phillida, in "Love in a Riddle," her first
original character, to Mrs. Winnifred, in the "School for Rakes,"
her last, with forty years of toil and pleasure between them, she
identified herself with all. _But_, in parts like Portia and Zara,
which Mrs. Clive essayed, she fell below their requirements, though
I do not know how the most beautifully expressive voice in the world
could have been "awkwardly dissonant" in the latter part. Her Portia
was too flippant, and in the trial scene it was her custom to mimic
the most celebrated lawyer of the day. The laughter raised thereby
was uncontrollable, but it was as illegitimately awakened as Dogget's
when he played Shylock as a low comedy part.
After forty years' service Mrs. Clive took leave of the stage, April
24, 1769, in Flora, in the "Wonder," and the Fine Lady in "Lethe."
Garrick played Don Felix; King, Lissardo; and Mrs. Barry, Violante;
a grand cast in which, we are told, Mrs. Clive made Flora, in the
estimation of the audience, equal to Felix and Violante. Drury Lane,
had it been capacious enough, would have held twice the number that
gained admittance. From these she took leave, in an epilogue, weak
and in bad taste, written by her friend Walpole, who affected to
despise the writers of such addresses, and, in this case, did not
equal those whom he despised.
[Illustration: (Kitty Clive)]
Mrs. Clive has the reputation of being the authoress of two or
three insignificant farces, produced at her benefits, to exhibit
some peculiar talent of her own. They had no other merit. Such was
her theatrical, let us now accompany her to her private, career.
The last editor of Walpole's Letters states, that to a youth of
folly succeeded an old age of cards. This statement is mostly
gratuitous. Isaac Reed says: "Notwithstanding the temptations to
which a theatre is sometimes apt to expose young persons of the
female sex, and the too great readiness of the public to give way
to unkind suppositions in regard to them, calumny itself has never
seemed to aim the slightest arrow at her fame."
She was quick of temper, especially if David attempted to fine her
for absence from rehearsals; and no wonder, since for one hundred and
eighty nights' performance this charming actress received but £300!
but, as she said, "I have always had good health, and have ever been
above subterfuge." When about to retire she wrote to Garrick, with
some obliviousness as to dates:--"What signifies 52? They had rather
see _the_ Garrick and _the_ Clive at 104 than any of the moderns. The
ancients, you know, have always been admired. I do assure you I am at
present in such health and spirits that, when I recollect I am an old
woman, I am astonished."
In her retirement Mrs. Clive passed many happy years in the house
which Walpole gave up as a home for herself and brother, next to
his own at Strawberry, and which he playfully called "Clive-den."
A green lane, which he cut for her use between the house and the
common, he proposed to call _Drury Lane_. Here, at Cliveden, the
ex-actress gave exquisite little suppers after pleasant little card
parties, at which, in Walpole's phrase, she made miraculous draughts
of fishes. Men and women of "quality" and good character, married
and unmarried--actors, authors, artists, and clergymen--met here;
where the brother of the hostess, a poor ex-actor, ill-favoured and
awkward, told capital stories, and found the company in laughter and
Walpole in flattery.
Of an evening, in summer-time, trim Horace and portly Clive might
be seen walking in the meadows together; or Walpole and a brilliant
company, gossiping, laughing, flirting, philandering, might be noted
on their way across the grass to Strawberry, after a gay time of it
at "_Little_ Strawberry Hill." Not always without mishap, as Walpole
himself has recorded in his narrative of his perilous passing of the
stile with Miss Rich; and not invariably in the very sunniest of
humours, for Miss Pope had seen Horace "gloomy of temper and dryly
sarcastic of speech." The place was, perhaps, at its pleasantest,
when Walpole, Mrs. Clive, and her brother, sat together in the
garden, and conversed playfully of old dramatic glories. _She_ was
so joyous, that Lady Townshend said--her face rose on Strawberry and
made it sultry. And Walpole himself remarked, in 1766, "Strawberry is
in perfection; the verdure has all the bloom of spring; the orange
trees are loaded with blossoms; the gallery is all sun and gold;
and Mrs. Clive all sun and vermillion." When Hounslow powder mills
blew up, Walpole described the terrific power of the explosion, by
remarking, that it "almost shook Mrs. Clive!" Only the death of the
last Earl of Radnor, of the Robartes line, made her _almost_ look
sad. The earl left her £50 as a memorial of his respect; and what
with the heat of the summer of 1757, the unexpected legacy, and
her assumption of respectful grief, she made up one of the drollest
faces imaginable. One of her dear delights was to play quadrille with
George Montagu, from dinner to supper, and then to sing Purcell,
from supper to breakfast time. She left the place, even for short
intervals, with reluctance; but her brilliant face was seen for
a whole day in Palace Yard, where she sat to see the coronation
procession of George III., with her _great_ friends around her--Lady
Hertford, Lady Anne Conway, Lady Hervey, Lady Townshend, Miss Hotham,
Mr. Chute, and also her brother. Her only trials were when the
tax-gatherer ran off, and she was compelled to pay her rates twice;
or when the parish refused to mend her ways, as she said; or her
house was broken into by burglars; or when she was robbed in her own
lane by footpads. "Have you not heard," she wrote to Garrick, in June
1776, "of your poor Pivy? I have been rob'd and murder'd coming from
Kingston. Jimey" (her brother) "and I in a post chey, at half-past
nine, just by Teddington church, was stopt. I only lost a little
silver and my senses; for one of them came into the carriage with a
great horse pistol, to search for my watch, but I had it not with
me." And then Garrick and other actors, with Governor Johnstone and
his wife, met at Little Strawberry at dinner, and laughed over past
perils.
In 1784 she came up to London to see Mrs. Siddons act. Mrs. Clive
was born in the lifetime of Elizabeth Barry, who had acted before
Charles II.; she had seen Mrs. Porter, Mrs. Oldfield, Mrs. Cibber,
Mrs. Pritchard, Mrs. Yates, and Anne Barry; and finally, she saw
Mrs. Siddons. Mrs. Clive listened to the new actress with profound
attention; and on being asked, at the conclusion of the performance,
what she thought of it: "Think!" said the vivacious old lady, in her
ready way; "I think it's all truth and daylight!"
In the December of the following year, the long career of this erst
comic muse came to a close. Walpole tells it briefly, unaffectedly
and well. "It did not much surprise me," he says; "and the manner
comforts me. I had played at cards with her, at Mrs. Gostling's,
three nights before I came to town, and found her extremely confused,
and not knowing what she did; indeed I had seen something of this
sort before, and had found her much broken this autumn. It seems,
that the day after I saw her, she went to General Lister's burial,
and had got cold, and had been ill for two or three days. On the
Wednesday morning she rose to have her bed made; and while sitting on
the bed, with her maid by her, sank down at once, and died without
a pang or a groan." So departed the actress, of whom Johnson said,
that she had more true humour than any other he had ever seen. She
originated nearly fourscore characters; among others, Nell, in the
latter "Devil to Pay;" Lappet ("Miser"); Edging[122] ("Careless
Husband"); half a dozen Kittys; but chief of all, the Kitty of "High
Life Below Stairs;" Muslin ("Way to Keep Him"); and Mrs. Heidelberg,
in the "Clandestine Marriage."
HARRY WOODWARD: to think of him, is to think of Captain Bobadil,--in
which he never had equal,--and of Harlequin, in which he was second
only to Rich. To remember Harry Woodward, is to remember the original
French Cook, in Dodsley's "Sir John Cockle," wherein Woodward turned
to good account the French he had learned at Merchant Tailors'
school. He was also the first Beau in "Lethe;" and his Flash in "Miss
in her Teens," his Jack Meggot in the "Suspicious Husband," his Dick
in the "Apprentice," his Block in the "Reprisal," his Lofty in the
"Good Natured Man," his Captain Ironsides in the "Brothers," and his
Captain Absolute in the "Rivals," were all original and brilliant
creations, in acting which, the best of his many brightly-endowed
successors lacked something possessed by _him_, whose Slender and
Petruchio are described as being perfect pictures of simplicity and
manliness.
Look at him, in his boyhood;--he is a tallow chandler's son, _rien
que ça!_ living close by the Anchor brewery, in Southwark;--Mr.
Child's brewery, whose daughter married with his clerk, Halsey; and
then it was Halsey's brewery; and Halsey's only daughter married
Lord Cobham; and from this pair, the brewery was bought by Halsey's
manager and nephew, Ralph Thrale, on the death of whose son, Henry,
it passed by purchase to his chief clerks, Barclay and Perkins. The
brewery, now, is no more like what it was in Woodward's days than
Drury Lane theatre is like the Curtain, the Fortune, or the Globe. As
Woodward played beneath the Anchor gateway, there was probably little
uneasiness in his mind at the idea of his helping and succeeding his
sire in candle making; but when Woodward became a pupil at Merchant
Tailors', I think it may have been otherwise. How young Woodward was
ever sent thither, I cannot guess; but I conclude that his father,
"the _tallow_ chandler," was not aware, that among the statutes of
the institution there was one which said that, "in the schoole at noe
time of the yere, they shall use tallow candle in noe wise, but wax
candles onely." Perhaps old Woodward supplied them to order.
I think if Woodward had never gone to Merchant Tailors', he never
would have added lustre to the British stage. He was born about the
last year of Queen Anne's reign,[123] and was in Lawrence Pountney
when he was some ten years old. The quick lad became a very good
classical scholar, and in after years, he used to astonish and
gratify the society which he most loved, by the aptness and beauty of
his quotations; not for effect, for Harry Woodward, look you, was as
modest as he was clever.
Well, learning to enjoy Horace, you will say, was no specific
for turning a boy into a player. Perhaps not; but there was
less satisfactory customs then prevailing among the _Mercatores
Scissores_. The masters treated the boys who missed their election to
St. John's, with canary and cake, as if to teach them that drinking
was a solace for disappointment. Then the discipline was lax, and
young Merchant Tailors of the Bench were seduced by the rather older
Merchant Tailors of the Table, to taverns, and to ordinaries, where
gaming was practised, and to the playhouse, where they learned
something new from the Vizard Masks in the pit. Then, there was
young Beckingham, the linen-draper's son, and a Merchant Tailor of
the Table, who wrote a tragedy, "Scipio Africanus," to see which the
whole school occupied a great portion of the Lincoln's Inn Fields'
pit, and sent up applauding shouts for Quin, who acted Scipio, as
well as for their schoolfellow, the author. These practices and the
traditions of others may have influenced a lively and thoughtless
boy, who was proud to play Peachum in the juvenile company, who
acted the "Beggar's Opera," under the elder Rich, at Lincoln's Inn
Fields. I cannot find exactly the date when Woodward commenced as a
professional actor; but he was not more than a mere youth. There was
a boy of his name, at Goodman's Fields, who played pantomime parts
before Harry Woodward appeared there in 1730,--commencing then a
career with Simple, in the "Merry Wives of Windsor," which ended at
Covent Garden, on the 13th of January 1777, with Stephano, in the
"Tempest." On the 10th of April, the then new comedy, "Know your own
Mind," was acted, for his benefit, and on that day week, the lad who
used to play under the gateway of the Anchor brewery,--to trudge, in
all weathers, over old London Bridge, to Merchant Tailors' School,
and who preferred the life of a player to that of a candle-maker,
died; and with him, it was said, as Wildair with Wilks, Captain
Bobadil died too.
Woodward was one of the most careful dressers on the stage; not as
regards chronology, but perfection of suit; of fitness, no one then
made account. Woodward played Mercutio in the full dress of a very
fine gentleman of Woodward's day; it was unexceptionable as costume,
though not fitting in the play. Then, he was one of the few lucky
actors who never seemed to grow old. After nigh upon half a century
of labour, his Fitzpatrick,[124] in "News from Parnassus," was as
young in look and buoyant in manner as the Spruce of his earlier
days. He was also among one of the few judicious and generous actors,
when in the highest favour with the town; at which season, he did not
disdain, when it was needful, to go on as a soldier, to deliver a
message; but then he delivered it like a soldier, and the frequenters
of the joyous rooms under and over the "Piazza," made approving
reference to that "clever little bit of Woodward's, last night."
Woodward always found a defender in Garrick. Foote, who abused
hospitality by mimicking his host, called Woodward a "contemptible
fellow," when he heard that the latter was about to dress Malagene
so as to look like Foote. "He cannot be contemptible," said Garrick,
"since you are afraid of him in the very line in which you yourself
excel." Of course, being naturally a comic actor, Woodward had an
affection for tragedy; but it was not in him to utter a serious line
with due effect. His scamps were perfect in their cool impudence;
his modern fops shone with a brazen impertinence; his fops of an
older time glistened with an elegant rascality; his mock heroes were
stupendously but suspiciously outrageous; his every-day simpletons,
vulgarly stolid; and his Shaksperian light characters brimful and
running over with Shaksperian spirit. Graceful of form, his aspect
was something serious off the stage, but he no sooner passed the wing
than a ripple of funny emotion seemed to roll over his face, and
this, combined with a fine stage-voice, never failed to place him and
his audience in the happiest sympathetic connection. "Bobadil was
his great part, in which he acquired a vast increase of reputation
and gave a striking proof of his genius;" but there were two other
characters in which Woodward could hardly have been inferior, for it
may be gathered from Wilkinson, that in Marplot, he was everything
author or audience could wish, and that in Touchstone, he excelled at
least all his contemporaries, and had no equal in it till Lewis came.
Woodward was at one time a _good man_, in the mercantile view of
the phrase, for he was a rich man. Unfortunately, he was induced by
Spranger Barry to become partner with him in the Dublin Theatre,--in
which venture, Woodward lost all he had saved; and Barry, too, made
shipwreck of his fortune. Garrick passed from the stage to years of
repose and enjoyment. Barry and Woodward could not quit it till,
having had more than enough of labour, Death summoned them to a,
perhaps, not unwelcome rest.
Little is known of the origin of Edward Shuter. Small trust can be
placed in the report that he was the son of a clergyman--not because
he himself was, at one time, only a billiard-marker, or that he
could with difficulty read his parts, and had much perplexity in
even signing his own name; but because Ned himself never boasted of
it. What is certain of him is, that he was an actor entirely of the
Garrick period, commencing his vocation as Catesby, at Richmond, in
1744, and concluding as Falstaff, to the Prince, in "Henry V.,"[125]
of Lewis, played for his own benefit, at Covent Garden, in May 1776.
I suppose Chapman, who directed the theatre at Richmond, was struck
by the rich humour of the billiard-marker; but it was strange that a
low comedian should make his _début_ in so level a part as Catesby.
He was then, however, a mere boy. In June 1746, when he acted Osrick
and third Witch in "Macbeth," Garrick playing Hamlet and the Thane,
he was designated "Master Shuter." Thence, to the night on which he
went home to die, after playing Falstaff, his life was one of intense
professional labour, with much jollification, thoughtlessness,
embarrassment, gay philosophy, hard drinking, and addiction to
religion, as it was expounded by Whitfield.
He played through the entire range of a wide comic repertory, and
among the characters which he originated are Papillion in the
"Liar," Justice Woodcock, Druggett, Abrahamides, Croaker, Old
Hardcastle, and Sir Anthony Absolute. His most daring effort was in
once attempting _Shylock_! There are few comic actors who have had
such command over the muscles of the face as Shuter. He could do what
he liked with them, and vary the laughter as he worked the muscles.
Not that he depended on grimace; this was only the ally of his
humour, and both were impulsive--as the man was by nature; he often
stirred the house with mirth by saying something better than the
author had put down for him. Off, as on the stage, it was Shuter's
characteristic that he pleased everybody--and ruined himself. I never
pass his old lodgings in Denzil Street without thinking kindly of
the eccentric but kind-hearted player. Some laughed at him, perhaps,
for taking to serious ways, without abandoning his old gay paths
of delight; but the former was of his sincerity, the latter of his
weakness. That he should choose to follow Calvinistic Whitfield
rather than Arminian Wesley, does seem singular; but poor Ned felt
that if salvation depended on works, "Pilgarlick," as Whitfield
called him, was lost; whereas faith rescued him, and Shuter could
believe. He did something more; works he added to his faith, though
he made no account of them. Of all the frequenters of Whitfield's
Tabernacle in Tottenham Court Road there was no more liberal
giver than the shattered, trembling, laughing, hoping, fearing,
despairing--in short, much perplexed actor and man, who oscillated
between Covent Garden stage and the Tabernacle pulpit, and meditated
over his pipe and bottle in Drury Lane upon the infinite varieties of
life. And therewith _exit_, Shuter; and enter, Mr. Foote.
[Illustration: Mr. Shuter as Justice Woodcock.]
FOOTNOTES:
[119] There are one or two trifling inaccuracies in this, and the
preceding paragraph, which are scarcely deserving of separate notes;
but which I cannot altogether pass by. Chetwood, from whom all this
information is taken, says that Miss Raftor was only twelve when she
used to watch Wilks. He also states that her mother had a handsome
fortune, so that her household was probably not poor. Her first
salary he gives as twenty shillings.
[120] This is the date always given for Mrs. Clive's marriage, but it
is curious that her name appeared in the bills as Miss Raftor up to
3d October 1733. On the 5th of the same month it is Mrs. Clive.
[121] 1734.
[122] Mrs. Clive was not the original representative of this
character. The comedy was produced in 1704, when Mrs. Lucas played
Edging.
[123] 1717 is generally given as the year of his birth.
[124] Should be Fitzfrolick.
[125] Should be "Henry IV--part 1st."
[Illustration: MR. FOOTE AS MRS. COLE IN "THE MINOR."]