The Theatrical Quarters.
THE THEATRES.--THE POOR MAN'S SUNDAY.--GROUPS FOR HOGARTH.--DR.
KEIF AND MR. BAXTER AT THE OLYMPIC.--TRAGEDY AND COMEDY IN
ENGLAND.--MR. AND MRS. KEELEY.--MR. WIGAN.--MR. KEAN AND THE
BRIMLEYS.--METHODISM.--A PENNY THEATRE.--THE PANTOMIMES.--THE
BALLET.--THE STAGE IN ENGLAND AND
GERMANY.--MATERIALISM.--DRURY-LANE AT 11·45 P.M.--MERRY OLD
ENGLAND.--DRURY-LANE AT 1 A.M.
The space between Oxford-street and the Strand, the chief thoroughfares
of Eastern and Western London, is occupied by a quarter of the town
which, in many of its parts, we would not recommend for the residence of
strangers who desire respect and consideration from their London
acquaintances. On the other hand, nothing can be more interesting to a
curious traveller than a careful examination of this quarter. We say a
_careful examination_; for the mere walking through it on the occasion
of a visit to the theatres is not enough to exhaust this mine of strange
and curious sights. Of course, every stranger walks through this
quarter, for in it are the most ancient and renowned among the theatres
of London, namely, Covent-garden and Drury-lane.
Old and venerable houses are they, with blackened columns and sooty
walls, and surrounded with the questionable traffic of an equivocal
neighbourhood. A theatre in prudish London has not much good fame to
lose; these two have never at any time stood amidst the fragrance of
gardens or parks, or the splendours of a court. The flight to the west
has not been caused by them. But, strange to say, the modern smaller
theatres, too, are to be found in the outskirts of this half-genteel
region. The Lyceum, the Strand theatre, and the Adelphi, are in the
Strand. Most dingy and dirty-looking are the streets which surround the
Olympic. The Princess' theatre, elated with the occasional visits of
royalty, has sought an asylum in Oxford-street; and the half-classic
Sadler's Wells has gone far out to the north, into staid methodistical,
and humble Islington. But Her Majesty's Theatre, the favourite of the
greatest in the land, raises its colonnade in the immediate vicinity of
Leicester-square, the modern Alsatia of young France! Are we not, in the
vicinity of the Haymarket, before and after midnight, exposed to the
blandishments of those fair, frail creatures, that have nothing in
common with the Muses, Graces, and Fays, but their state of celibacy? In
short, is not the Venus vulgaris notorious for its predilection for a
half-fashionable neighbourhood! When, therefore, you date your letters
from Long-acre, and when, on receiving such a letter, the face of John
Thingumbob, Esq., experiences a perceptible elongation, and his manner
of speaking to you afterwards suggests to you the idea that he has been
_iced_, then believe, O stranger, that our respectable friend, John
Thingumbob, Esq., doubts not the safety of your own virtue, but the
stability of your finances.
In Drury-lane itself, the painted cheek is less frequently met with than
in the Haymarket; the deadly sins which revel in this classic
neighbourhood do not use paint, and scorn to employ the blandishments of
seduction. Their names are Poverty, Drink, and Dirt.
In the Strand, just opposite to majestic Somerset-House, and half-hidden
by the railings of the church-yard, which encroaches upon the natural
dimensions of the street, there is a narrow passage, which turns up into
Drury-lane. That lane, though of unequal breadth, is always narrow, and
numberless are the blind alleys, courts, and passages on either side.
The first and second floors of the high and narrow houses, shelter
evidently a class of small tradesmen and mechanics, who in other
countries would pass as "respectable," while here they work for the
merest necessaries of life, and, like their customers, live from hand to
mouth. A few of them are usurers, preying
[Illustration: THE GIN PALACE.
p. 267.]
upon poverty, coining gold from its vices and morbid longings. As for
the garrets of those houses, we would not for the world answer for the
comfort of their inhabitants. All the lower floors are let out as shops,
in which are displayed dingy dresses and articles of female ornament,
coarse eatables, cheap and nasty literature, shockingly illustrated;
thick-soled shoes, old clothes, awful cigars--all at very low prices.
But the gin-palaces are the lions of Drury-lane; they stand in
conspicuous positions, at the corners and crossings of the various
intersecting streets. They may be seen from afar, and are lighthouses
which guide the thirsty "sweater" on the road to ruin. For they are
resplendent with plate glass and gilt cornices, and a variety of
many-coloured inscriptions. One of the windows displays the portrait of
the "NORFOLK GIANT," who acts as barman to this particular house; the
walls of another establishment inform you, in green letters, that here
they sell "THE ONLY REAL BRANDY IN LONDON," and a set of scarlet letters
announces to the world, that in this house they sell "THE FAMOUS CORDIAL
MEDICATED GIN, WHICH IS SO STRONGLY RECOMMENDED BY THE FACULTY." Cream
Gin, Honey Gin, Sparkling Ale, Genuine Porter, and other words
calculated utterly to confound a tee-totaller, are painted up in
conspicuous characters, even so that they cover the door-posts. It is a
remarkable fact, that the houses which are most splendid from without,
appear most dismal and comfortless from within. The landlord is locked
up behind his "bar," a snug place enough, with painted casks and a fire
and an arm-chair; but the guests stand in front of the bar in a narrow
dirty place, exposed to the draught of the door, which is continually
opening and shutting. Now and then an old barrel, flung in a corner,
serves as a seat. But nevertheless the "palace" is always crowded with
guests, who, standing, staggering, crouching, or lying down, groaning,
and cursing, drink and forget.
On sober working-days, and in tolerable weather, there is nothing to
strike the uninitiated in Drury-lane. Many a capital of a small German
country is worse paved and lighted. Nor is misery so conspicuous and
staring in this quarter as in Spitalfields, St. Giles', Saffron-hill,
and other "back-slums" of London. But at certain bestial periods, misery
oozes out of all its pores like Mississipi mud. Saturday and Monday
nights, and Sunday after Church-time, those are the times in which
Drury-lane appears in full characteristic glory. A Sunday-afternoon in
Drury-lane is enough to make the cheerfullest splenetic. For to the poor
labourer the Lord's day is a day of penance or dissipation. The
cotton-frock and fustian-jacket are scared away from the churches and
the parks by their respectful awe of rich toilettes and splendid
liveries. For the poor man of England is ashamed of his rags; he has no
idea of arranging them into a graceful _draperie_ in the manner of the
Spanish or Italian Lazarone, who devoutly believes that begging is an
honest trade. Even the lowest among the low in England are proud enough
to avoid the society of a higher _caste_, though that superiority
consist but in half a degree. They consort with persons of their own
stamp, among whom they may walk with their heads erect. Church and park
have moreover no charm for the blunted senses of the overworked and
under-fed artizan. He is too weak and fatigued to think of an excursion
into the country. Steamers, omnibuses, or the rail, are too expensive.
His church, his park, his club, his theatre, his place of refuge from
the smell of the sewers that infect his dwelling--his sole place of
relaxation--is the gin-palace.
To provide against the Sunday, he takes a supply of fire-water on
Saturday evening when he has received his week's wages, for with the
stroke of twelve the sabbath shuts the door of all public-houses, and on
Sunday-morning the beer or brandy paradise must not open before one
o'clock in the afternoon, to be closed again from three to five. Hence
that unsacred stillness which weighs down upon Drury-lane on
Sunday-mornings. The majority of the inhabitants sleep away their
intoxication or _ennui_. Old time-worn maudlinness reigns supreme in the
few faces which peer from the half-opened street-doors; maudlinness
pervades the half-sleepy groups which surround the public-house at noon
to be ready for its opening; chronic maudlinness pervades the
atmosphere. And if a stray ray of light break through the clouds, it
falls upon the frowsy loungers and the dim window-panes in a strange
manner, as though it had no business there.
It is Saturday-night, and the orgies of Drury-lane have commenced.
"That's the way thou shouldst look," says Dr. Keif, hurrying forward to
the divan in the Strand; "that's the way thou shouldst look, thou _Citta
Dolente_, to awe us with thy charms. Oh for a Dutch painter of the old
school to turn this scene into a _Höllenbreughel_."
A dense fog, with a deep red colouring, from the reflection of
numberless gas-jets, and the pavement flooded with mud; a fitful
illumination according to the strength of the gas, which flares forth in
long jets from the butchers' shops, while the less illumined parts are
lost in gloomy twilight. If your nerves are delicate, you had better not
pass too close by the gin-shops, for as the door opens--and those doors
are always opening--you are overwhelmed with the pestilential fumes of
gin. The pavements are crowded. Slatternly servants with baskets hurry
to the butchers and grocers, and the haunters of the coffee-houses of
Drury-lane elbow their way through the very midst of the population--the
_sweepings_ of humanity. A wicked word this, but the only one fit for
these forms of woe and livid faces, in which hunger contends with
thirst, and vice with disease.
What subjects for Hogarth on the narrow space of a couple of
flag-stones! How ravenous the craving which flashes from the eyes of
that grey-haired woman, as she drags a slight, yellow-haired
girl--perhaps her own child--to the gin-shop! The little girl follows in
a dumb wooden way; but her small slight hand is shut with an anxious
grasp, as though she feared to lose her weekly earnings--the wages,
perhaps, of hard work, or still harder beggary. She stumbles at the
threshold, and almost falls over a couple of children that are crouching
on the ground, shivering with cold, and waiting for their father within.
The father comes, staggering and kicking the air, with manifest danger
to his equilibrium, and cursing awfully. The kick was meant for his
wife, a thin woman, with hollow yellow cheeks, whose long serpent-like
curls are covered with an old silk bonnet, while her stockingless feet
are contained in large slippers. She counts five copper pence in her
bony hand, looks at her drunken husband, and at the fatal door, and at
the costermonger's cart in the middle of the street; and she counts her
pence, and recounts them, and cannot come to the end of them, though
they are but five. The large oysters in the dirty cart, too, excite her
appetite. Which is it to be? the public-house or a lot of oysters?
"Penny a lot, oysters!" shouts the man, as he moves his cart forward. A
dozen greedy eyes watch his movements.
Similar groups are met with at every step. At the door of almost every
gin-shop you see drunken women, many of them with children in their
arms; and wherever you go, amidst the confused noise and murmur of many
voices, you hear distinctly the most awful oaths. It is not at all
necessary to quote those oaths. Let it suffice, that one of them,
beginning with a B, startled Dr. Keif's ears a hundred times at least in
his walk through Drury-lane.
"Adventure number one!" said Mr. Baxter, to whom our friend communicated
the result of his observations.
The fact is, Dr. Keif and Mr. Baxter are seated in the pit of the
Olympic Theatre, which is small enough to enable even a short-sighted
person to make the public in the boxes and the galleries the subject of
a physiognomical study. The "Caucasian population" of Mr. Disraeli's
novels may be seen in large numbers enjoying their sabbath. The pit and
the upper gallery are filled with sentimental cooks and housemaids,
intermixed with a sprinkling of females, to whom we do but justice if we
describe them as _lorettes_ in a small way. They enjoy the patronage of
a select assembly of beardless shopmen and attorneys' clerks, who treat
them to ginger-beer, soda-water, lemonade, and oranges. The curtain has
just fallen.
"How do you like it?" asks Mr. Baxter.
"Why I think we have seen enough."
"Wait one moment, I want to look at some one I know. Am I to understand
that you didn't like the piece?" said Mr. Baxter.
"On the contrary; I like it very much. There's nothing like a piece of
tragical clap-trap in your English theatres."
"Ay!--well!--just so! But then the piece was 'done' from the French."
"The natural source of the modern British drama. But never mind the
piece; it's the _acting_ which amuses me. Mrs. Lackaday telling young
Ronsay of her boding dream, and Ronsay pitching into her with a
declaration of love--you must confess that the scene would have done
credit to the most wooden marionettes."
"Yes, indeed! That scene was capital!"
"Was'nt it! The fellow stood there, like a big gun, until his turn came,
and then he went off! He turned his eyes upwards, that you might have
seen the whites at the distance of a mile; and he sparred with his
hands, as if preparing for a set-to with the moon; and all of a sudden
he stood stock still again, exactly like a gun, and the audience was
fairly enraptured! And did it not strike you, that the two people had
the same modulation and declamation, as a married couple of forty years'
standing, whose features have acquired the same expression, and whose
limbs have fallen into the same mode of movement? At times I am inclined
to believe, that the tragic actors, male and female, have been ground
their trade to the tune of one and the same patent barrel-organ. Their
pathos is set to music. They all delight in the same pause between the
article, the adjective, and the substantive; they all make endless
stops, and utter the word which follows with a kind of explosion. I
presume these poor fellows try to imitate Macready."
"That is to say," remarked Mr. Baxter, "they caricature him."
"But do you know whom Macready caricatures or imitates? I have read a
good deal about Garrick, Kemble, and Mrs. Siddons, and I ought to swear
by them, as you all do; but still I cannot help suspecting that, even in
the golden period of English tragedy, 'all was not gold that glittered.'
There is no originality. There is too much respect for antiquated
traditions among the craft."
"Certainly there is a good deal of tradition about it. But our actors
are not at liberty to depart from those ancient ways; and the slightest
deviation would raise a storm against the unfortunate innovator. The
taste of the public demands--"
"Indeed! and how does it happen that the period of the Garricks,
Kembles, and Siddons did not create and lead you to a better taste? Has
England gone back in education and refinement? Why it is just the
reverse. The art of tragic acting must formerly have been subject to
the same vices as in our days. What you say about the taste of the
public is a very lame excuse. I am of opinion that your English public
might be trained to a better taste; they are not fond of criticising;
their feelings are not used up, and they are eminently grateful. Their
taste is unrefined, but they are inclined to respect grace and dignity.
Look at Madame Celeste. She carries everything before her by the grace
of her untraditional movements."
"But then she is a pretty French woman," said Mr. Baxter, laughing, "and
pretty women, you know, will carry every thing before them. But now come
before the curtain is up, for Mr. Ronsay will certainly deafen us this
time."
"Good evening, Mr. Brimley," whispered Mr. Baxter, as we went out,
touching the shoulders of a young man who sat in the darkest corner of
the pit with his hat slouched over his face, his great-coat buttoned up
to his chin, and a large shawl tied round his neck, as though he were
occupying the box-seat of an omnibus instead of a pit-seat in a hot and
crowded theatre. The young man jumped up, blushed over and over, seized
Mr. Baxter's hands, and talked to him very earnestly, and, as it
appeared, imploringly.
"Adventure No. 2," said Mr. Baxter, when the two friends had gained the
street. "That tall young fellow with the red whiskers is a Mr. Brimley;
he is twenty-five years of age; he manages his father's business in the
city; he is likely to have £200,000 or £300,000 of his own, and he
trembles like a school-boy lest his papa should hear of his secret
escapades."
"What escapades are those? if it is a fair question."
"Perfectly fair. His great crime is, that this evening, for the first
time in his life, he has gone to the theatre."
"Impossible!"
"But fact. I know Peter Brimley, Esq., and Mrs. Brimley, and the whole
family. A set of more honest, respectable people does not exist between
the Thames and the Clyde; but if they were to understand that Mr.
Ebenezer Brimley, their son, had crossed the threshold of frivolity, and
placed himself on a seat of ungodly vanity, there would be more
lamenting and howling among the uncles and aunts of Brimley House than
there would be over a bankruptcy of the firm of Brimley and Co. These
people are Methodists, and yet Ebenezer the Bold has taken the first
step. Since stolen water is more sweet and intoxicating than brandy
honestly purchased, I am afraid Ebenezer will drink the poisonous cup to
the dregs. Some of these fine days we shall hear of his having gone off
with Mrs. Lackaday. Poor fellow! he has not the least idea that she is
on the wrong side of forty, and he is evidently much taken with her
painted beauties. Never mind, I will be silent as to the past, because I
have promised him. He wont sleep this night, I tell you, that little boy
of twenty-five, for fear lest some incautious word of mine might betray
the secret."
"Then it would appear that M. _Enfin_ is not, after all, so very wrong,"
said Dr. Keif.
"Nor is he; but your Frenchman cannot see farther than the tip of his
nose. The Puritans and low church people form a powerful faction in
England; but the round-heads, though great nuisances, are wanted so long
as there are cavaliers. And now let us enter this temple of art."
We pass through a low door, and enter a kind of ante-chamber, where we
pay a penny each. A buffet with soda-water, lemonade, apples, and cakes,
is surrounded by a crowd of thinly-clad factory girls, and a youthful
cavalier with a paper cap is shooting at a target with a cross-bow, and
after each shot he throws a farthing on the buffet. Passing through the
ante-chamber and a narrow corridor, we enter the pit of the
penny-theatre, a place capable of holding fifty persons. There are also
galleries--a dozen of wooden benches rise in amphitheatrical fashion up
to the ceiling; and, strange to say, the gentlemen sit on one side and
the ladies on the other. This separation of the sexes is owing to a
great refinement of feeling. The gentlemen, chiefly labourers and
apprentices, luxuriate during the representation in the aroma of their
"pickwicks," a weed of which we can assure the reader that it is not to
be found in the Havanna; but they are gallant enough to keep the only
window in the house wide open.
Just as we enter we see the director, a small curly-headed man, with a
red punch face, ascending the stage by means of a ladder. He makes two
low bows, one for the ladies and one for the gentlemen, and delivers
himself of a grand oration, to excuse some small deficiences in his
institution. At every third word he is interrupted by the cheers and
remarks of the audience.
"Ladies and gentlemen," says he. "I am sorry I cannot produce a _prima
donna_ to-night. Jenny Lind has sent me a message by my own submarine
telegraph, asking for an extension of her leave. You would not surely
shorten the honeymoon of the nightingale. Why, to do that would be as
bad as cruelty to animals. Madame Sontag tells me, quite in confidence,
that she is falling off, and that, although her voice is good enough for
Yankee ears, she wants the courage to make her appearance before the
refined public of No. 17, Broad-street, London. Mdlle. Wagner was at my
service, cheap as any stale mackerel; but could I insult you by
producing her? Would not every note have reminded you of the fact, that
she values nothing in England but its copper pence. Besides, the terms
of friendship which subsist between myself and Mr. Lumley--there are
considerations--I hope you'll understand me, ladies and gentlemen!"
"Question! question!"
"Maybe you are astonished that these boards are uncarpeted, and that no
painted curtain displays its glories to your eyes!"