They say Revenge is sweet. I am fortunate to find it is so. I
have compelled you to be far more a Fool than you made me at the
fête-champêtre of Lady B. & I, having accomplished my aim, am ready to
forgive you now, as you implored me on the occasion of the fête. But
pray build no Hope that I, forgiving you, will once more regard you as
my Suitor. For that cannot ever be. I decided you should show yourself
a Fool before many people. But such Folly does not commend your hand to
mine. Therefore desist your irksome attention &, if need be, begone from
Bath. I have punished you, & would save my eyes the trouble to turn away
from your person. I pray that you regard this epistle as privileged and
private.
E. T. L. 10 of February.
The letter lies before me as I write. It is written throughout in a
firm and very delicate Italian hand. Under the neat initials is drawn,
instead of the ordinary flourish, an arrow, and the absence of any
erasure in a letter of such moment suggests a calm, deliberate character
and, probably, rough copies. I did not, at the time, suffer my fancy to
linger over the tessellated document. I set to elucidating the reference
to the fête-champêtre. As I retraced my footsteps to the little
bookshop, I wondered if I should find any excuse for the cruel
faithlessness of Emma Tylney Long.
The bookseller was greatly excited when I told him I had re-created the
letter. He was very eager to see it. I did not pander to his curiosity.
He even offered to buy the article back at cost price. I asked him if he
had ever heard, in his youth, of any scene that had passed between Miss
Tylney Long and Mr. Coates at some fête-champêtre. The old man thought
for some time, but he could not help me. Where then, I asked him, could
I search old files of local news-papers? He told me that there were
supposed to be many such files mouldering in the archives of the Town
Hall.
I secured access, without difficulty, to these files. A whole day I
spent in searching the copies issued by this and that journal during the
months that Romeo was in Bath. In the yellow pages of these forgotten
prints I came upon many complimentary allusions to Mr. Coates: 'The
visitor welcomed (by all our aristocracy) from distant Ind,' 'the
ubiquitous,' 'the charitable riche.' Of his 'forthcoming impersonation
of Romeo and Juliet' there were constant puffs, quite in the modern
manner. The accounts of his début all showed that Mr. Pryse Gordon's
account of it was fabulous. In one paper there was a bitter attack on
'Mr. Gordon, who was responsible for this insult to Thespian art, the
gentry, and the people, for he first arranged the whole production'--an
extract which makes it clear that this gentleman had a good motive for
his version of the affair.
But I began to despair of ever learning what happened at the
fête-champêtre. There were accounts of 'a grand garden-party, whereto
Lady Belper, on March the twenty-eighth, invited a host of fashionable
persons.' The names of Mr. Coates and of 'Sir James Tylney Long and his
daughter' were duly recorded in the lists. But that was all. I turned at
length to a tiny file, consisting of five copies only, Bladud's Courier.
Therein I found this paragraph, followed by some scurrilities which I
will not quote:
'Mr. C**t*s, who will act Romeo (Wherefore art thou Romeo?) this
coming week for the pleasure of his fashionable circle, incurred the
contemptuous wrath of his Lady Fair at the Fête. It was a sad pity she
entrusted him to hold her purse while she fed the gold-fishes. He was
very proud of the honour till the gold fell from his hand among the
gold-fishes. How appropriate was the misadventure! But Miss Black Eyes,
angry at her loss and her swain's clumsiness, cried: "Jump into the
pond, sir, and find my purse instanter!" Several wags encouraged her,
and the ladies were of the opinion that her adorer should certainly dive
for the treasure. "Alas," the fellow said, "I cannot swim, Miss. But
tell me how many guineas you carried and I will make them good to
yourself." There was a great deal of laughter at this encounter, and the
haughty damsel turned on her heel, nor did shoe vouchsafe another word
to her elderly lover.
'When recreant man Meets lady's wrath, &c. &c.'
So the story of the début was complete! Was ever a lady more inexorable,
more ingenious, in her revenge? One can fancy the poor Antiguan going to
the Baronet's house next day with a bouquet of flowers and passionately
abasing himself, craving her forgiveness. One can fancy the wounded
vanity of the girl, her shame that people had mocked her for the
disobedience of her suitor. Revenge, as her letter shows, became her
one thought. She would strike him through his other love, the love of
Thespis. 'I have compelled you,' she wrote afterwards, in her bitter
triumph, 'to be a greater Fool than you made me.' She, then, it was that
drove him to his public absurdity, she who insisted that he should never
win her unless he sacrificed his dear longing for stage-laurels and
actually pilloried himself upon the stage. The wig, the pantaloons, the
snuff-box, the grin, were all conceived, I fancy, in her pitiless spite.
It is possible that she did but say: 'The more ridiculous you make
yourself, the more hope for you.' But I do not believe that Mr. Coates,
a man of no humour, conceived the means himself. They were surely hers.
It is terrible to think of the ambitious amateur in his bedroom,
secretly practising hideous antics or gazing at his absurd apparel
before a mirror. How loath must he have been to desecrate the lines he
loved so dearly and had longed to declaim in all their beauty and their
resonance! And then, what irony at the daily rehearsal! With how sad a
smile must he have received the compliments of Mr. Dimonds on his
fine performance, knowing how different it would all be 'on the night!
'Nothing could have steeled him to the ordeal but his great love. He
must have wavered, had not the exaltation of his love protected him. But
the jeers of the mob were music in his hearing, his wounds love-symbols.
Then came the girl's cruel contempt of his martyrdom.
Aphrodite, who has care of lovers, did not spare Miss Tylney Long. She
made her love, a few months after, one who married her for her fortune
and broke her heart. In years of misery the wayward girl worked out
the penance of her unpardonable sin, dying, at length, in poverty and
despair. Into the wounds of him who had so truly loved her was poured,
after a space of fourteen years, the balsam of another love. On the 6th
September 1823, at St. George's, Hanover Square, Mr. Coates was married
to Miss Anne Robinson, who was a faithful and devoted wife to him till
he died.
Meanwhile, the rejected Romeo did not long repine. Two months after the
tragedy at Bath, he was at Brighton, mingling with all the fashionable
folk, and giving admirable recitations at routs. He was seen every day
on the Parade, attired in an extravagant manner, very different to that
he had adopted in Bath. A pale-blue surtout, tasselled Hessians, and a
cocked hat were the most obvious items of his costume. He also affected
a very curious tumbril, shaped like a shell and richly gilded. In
this he used to drive around, every afternoon, amid the gapes of the
populace. It is evident that, once having tasted the fruit of notoriety,
he was loath to fall back on simpler fare. He had become a prey to the
love of absurd ostentation. A lively example of dandyism unrestrained
by taste, he parodied in his person the foibles of Mr. Brummell and the
King. His diamonds and his equipage and other follies became the
gossip of every newspaper in England. Nor did a day pass without the
publication of some little rigmarole from his pen. Wherever there was a
vacant theatre--were it in Cheltenham, Birmingham, or any other town--he
would engage it for his productions. One night he would play his
favourite part, Romeo, with reverence and ability. The next, he would
repeat his first travesty in all its hideous harlequinade. Indeed, there
can be little doubt that Mr. Coates, with his vile performances, must
be held responsible for the decline of dramatic art in England and the
invasion of the amateur. The sight of such folly, strutting unabashed,
spoilt the prestige of the theatre. To-day our stage is filled with
tailors'-dummy heroes, with heroines who have real curls and can open
and shut their eyes and, at a pinch, say 'mamma' and 'papa.' We
must blame the Antiguan, I fear, for their existence. It was he--the
rascal--who first spread that scenae sacra fames. Some say that he was
a schemer and impostor, feigning eccentricity for his private ends. They
are quite wrong; Mr. Coates was a very good man. He never made a penny
out of his performances; he even lost many hundred pounds. Moreover, as
his speeches before the curtain and his letters to the papers show,
he took himself quite seriously. Only the insane take themselves quite
seriously.
It was the unkindness of his love that maddened him. But he lived to
be the lightest-hearted of lunatics and caused great amusement for many
years. Whether we think of him in his relation to history or psychology,
dandiacal or dramatic art, he is a salient, pathetic figure. That he is
memorable for his defects, not for his qualities, I know. But Romeo,
in the tragedy of his wild love and frail intellect, in the folly that
stretched the corners of his 'peculiar grin' and shone in his diamonds
and was emblazoned upon his tumbril, is more suggestive than some sages.
He was so fantastic an animal that Oblivion were indeed amiss. If no
more, he was a great Fool. In any case, it would be fun to have seen
him.
London, 1896.