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DRURY LANE
VOL. I.
LONDON: PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET
IN AND ABOUT
DRURY LANE
_AND OTHER PAPERS_
REPRINTED FROM THE PAGES OF THE ‘TEMPLE BAR’ MAGAZINE
BY
DR DORAN
AUTHOR OF ‘TABLE TRAITS AND SOMETHING ON THEM’ ‘JACOBITE LONDON’
‘QUEENS OF ENGLAND OF THE HOUSE OF HANOVER’
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I.
[Illustration: Logo FIDE·ET·FIDUCIA RB]
LONDON
RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen
1881
_All rights reserved_
_PREFATORY REMARKS._
The republication of papers which have originally appeared in a
Magazine frequently requires justification.
In the present instance this justification, it is thought, may be found
in the special knowledge which Dr. DORAN had of all matters pertaining
to the stage; in his intimacy with the literature which treats of
manners and customs, English and foreign; and in his memory, which
retained and retailed a great amount of anecdote, told with a sprightly
wit.
These volumes, reprinted with one or two exceptions from the pages of
the ‘Temple Bar’ Magazine, will, it is believed, be found to contain
many good stories, and much information unostentatiously conveyed. It
is hoped, therefore, that the public will endorse the opinion of the
writer of this Preface, and consider that the plea of justification has
been made out.
_G. B._
CONTENTS
OF
THE FIRST VOLUME.
PAGE
IN AND ABOUT DRURY LANE 1
ABOUT MASTER BETTY 20
CHARLES YOUNG AND HIS TIMES 54
WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY 82
PRIVATE THEATRICALS 108
THE SMELL OF THE LAMPS 136
A LINE OF FRENCH ACTRESSES 159
SOME ECCENTRICITIES OF THE FRENCH STAGE 189
NORTHUMBERLAND HOUSE AND THE PERCYS 216
LEICESTER FIELDS 238
A HUNDRED YEARS AGO 285
_IN AND ABOUT DRURY LANE._
In the afternoon of ‘Boxing-day,’ 1865, I had to pass through Drury
Lane, and some of the worst of the ‘slums’ which find vent therein.
There was a general movement in the place, and the effect was not
savoury. There was a going to-and-fro of groups of people, and there
was nothing picturesque in them; assemblings of children, but alas!
nothing lovable in them. It was a universal holiday, yet its aspect was
hideous.
Arrived at the stage-door of Drury Lane Theatre, I found my way on to
the stage itself, where the last rehearsal of the pantomime, to be
played for the first time that evening, was progressing.
The change from the external pandemonium to the hive of humming
industry in which I then stood, was striking and singular. Outside
were blasphemy and drunkenness. Inside, boundless activity, order,
hard work, and cheerful hearts. There was very much to do, but every
man had his especial work assigned him, every girl her allotted
task. An unaccustomed person might have pronounced as mere confusion,
that shifting of scenes, that forming, unforming, and reforming of
groups, that unintelligible dumb show, that collecting, scattering,
and gathering together of ‘young ladies’ in sober-coloured dresses and
business-like faces, who were to be so resplendent in the evening as
fairies, all gold, glitter, lustrous eyes, and virtuous intentions.
There was Mr. Beverley--perhaps the greatest magician there--not only
to see that nothing should mar the beauty he had created, but to take
care that the colours of the costumes should not be in antagonism with
the scenes before which they were to be worn. There was that Michael
Angelo of pantomimic mask inventors, Mr. Keene, anxiously looking to
the expressions of the masks, of which he is the prince of designers.
Then, if you think those graceful and varied figures of the _ballet_
as easy to invent, or to trace, as they seem, and are, at last,
easily performed, you should witness the trouble taken to invent,
and the patience taken to bring to perfection--the figures and the
figurantes--on the part of the artistic ballet-master, Mr. Cormack.
But, responsible for the good result of all, there stands Mr. Roxby,
stern as Rhadamanthus, just as Aristides, inflexible as determination
can make him, and good-natured as a happy child, he is one of the most
efficient of stage-managers, for he is both loved and feared. No
defect escapes his eye, and no well-directed zeal goes without his word
of approval. Messrs. Falconer and Chatterton are meanwhile busy with a
thousand details, but they wisely leave the management of the stage to
their lieutenant-general, who has the honour of Old Drury at heart.
When a spectator takes his seat in front of the curtain, he is hardly
aware that he is about to address himself to an entertainment, for the
production of which nearly nine hundred persons--from the foremost
man down to the charwoman--are constantly employed and liberally
remunerated. Touching this ‘remuneration,’ let me here notice that I
have some doubt as to the story of Quin ever receiving 50_l._ a night.
By the courtesy of Mr. ----, the gentleman at the head of the Drury
Lane treasury, and by the favour of the proprietors, I have looked
through many of the well-kept account-books of bygone years. These,
indeed, do not, at least as far as I have seen, go back to the days of
Quin, but there are traces of the greater actor Garrick, who certainly
never received so rich an _honorarium_. His actual income it is not
easy to ascertain, as his profits as proprietor were mixed up with
his salary as actor. It has often been said that Garrick was never
to be met with in a tavern (always, I suppose, excepting the ‘Turk’s
Head’), but he appears to have drawn refreshment during the Drury Lane
seasons, as there is unfailing entry in his weekly account of ‘the Ben
Jonson’s Head bill,’ the total of which varies between sixteen and
five-and-twenty shillings.
At Drury Lane, John Kemble does not appear to have ever received above
2_l._ a night, exclusive of his salary as a manager. Nor did his
sister’s salary for some years exceed that sum. When Edmund Kean raised
the fallen fortunes of old Drury, he only slowly began to mend his own.
From January 1814, to April 1815, during the time the house was open,
Kean’s salary was 3_l._ 8_s._ 8_d._ nightly. If the theatre was open
every night in the week, that sum was the actor’s nightly stipend,
whether he performed or not. If there were only four performances
weekly, as in Lent, he and all other actors were only paid for those
four nights. Within the period I have named, Elliston received a
higher salary than Kean, namely 5_l._ per night, or 30_l._ per week,
if the house was open for six consecutive nights. The salary of Dowton
and Munden, during the same period, was equal to that of Kean. They
received at the rate of 3_l._ 8_s._ 8_d._ nightly, or 20_l._ weekly, if
there were six performances, irrespective as to their being employed in
them or not. That great actor Bannister, according to these Drury Lane
account-books, at this period received 4_s._ per night less than Kean,
Dowton and Munden; while Jack Johnstone’s salary was only 2_l._ 10_s._
nightly, and that was 6_s._ 8_d._ _less_ than was paid to the handsome,
rather than _good_ player, Rae.
It was not till April 1815, when Kean was turning the tide of Pactolus
into the treasury, that his salary was advanced to 4_l._ 3_s._ 8_d._
per night. This was still below the sum received by Elliston. Kean
had run through the most brilliant part of his career, before his
salary equalled that of Elliston. In 1820, it was raised to 30_l._ per
week if six nights; but Elliston’s stipend at that time had fallen to
20_l._, and at the close of the season that of Kean was further raised
to 40_l._ for every six nights that the house was open. That sum is
occasionally entered in the books as being for ‘seven days’ pay,’ but
the meaning is manifestly ‘for the acting week of six days.’
At this time Mrs. Glover was at the head of the Drury Lane actresses,
and that eminent and great-hearted woman never drew from the Drury Lane
treasury more than 7_l._ 13_s._ 4_d._ weekly. From these details, it
will be seen that the most brilliant actors were not very brilliantly
paid. The humbler yet very useful players were, of course, remunerated
in proportion.
There was a Mr. Marshall who made a successful _début_ on the same
night with Incledon in 1790, in the ‘Poor Soldier,’ the sweet
ballad-singer, as Dermot; Marshall, as Bagatelli. The latter soon
passed to Drury Lane, where he remained till 1820. The highest
salary he ever attained was 10_s._ per night; yet with this, in his
prettily-furnished apartments in Crown Court, where he lived and died,
Mr. Marshall presided, like a gentleman, at a hospitable table, and
in entertaining his friends never exceeded his income. You might have
taken him in the street for one of those enviable old gentlemen who
have very nice balances at their bankers.
The difference between the actor’s salaries of the last century and of
this, is as great in France as in England. One of the greatest French
tragedians, Lekain, earned only a couple of thousand livres, yearly,
from his Paris engagement. When Gabrielli demanded 500 ducats yearly,
for singing in the Imperial Theatre at St. Petersburg, this took the
Czarina’s breath away. ‘I only pay my field-marshals at that rate,’
said Catherine.
‘Very well,’ replied Gabrielli, ‘your Majesty had better make your
field-marshals sing.’
With higher salaries, all other expenses have increased. Take the
mere item of advertisements, including bill-sticking and posters at
railway stations, formerly, the expense of advertising never exceeded
4_l._ per week; now it is never under 100_l._ Of bill-stickers and
board-carriers, upwards of one hundred are generally employed. In
the early part of the last century, the proprietors of a newspaper
thought it a privilege to insert theatrical announcements gratis, and
proprietors of theatres forbade the insertion of their advertisements
in papers not duly authorised!
Dryden was the first dramatic author who wrote a programme of his
piece (‘The Indian Emperor’), and distributed it at the playhouse
door. Barton Booth, the original ‘Cato,’ drew 50_l._ a year for
writing out the daily bills for the printer. In still earlier days,
theatrical announcements were made by sound of drum. The absence of
the names of actors in old play-books, perhaps, arose from a feeling
which animated French actors as late as 1789, when those of Paris
entreated the _maire_ not to compel them to have their names in the
‘Affiche,’ as it might prove detrimental to their interests. Some of
our earliest announcements only name the piece, and state that it
will be acted by ‘all the best members of the company, now in town.’
There was a fashion, which only expired about a score or so of years
ago, as the curtain was descending at the close of the five-act piece,
which was always played first, an actor stepped forward, and when the
curtain separated him from his fellows, he gave out the next evening’s
performance, and retired, bowing, through one of the doors which always
then stood, with brass knockers on them, upon the stage.
The average expenses of Drury Lane Theatre at Christmas-tide, when
there are extra performances, amount to nearly 1,500_l._ per week. The
rent paid is reckoned at 4,500_l._ for two hundred nights of acting,
and only 5_l._ per night for all performances beyond that number.
About 160_l._ must be in the house before the lessees can begin to
reckon on any profit. In old times, the presence of royalty made a
great difference in the receipts. On February 12, 1777,I find from the
books that the ‘Jealous Wife,’ and ‘Neck or Nothing,’ were played. An
entry is added that ‘the king and queen were present,’ and the result
is registered under the form, ‘receipts 245_l._ 9_s._ 6_d._, a hundred
pounds more than the previous night.’
The number of children engaged in a pantomime at Drury Lane generally
exceeds two hundred. The girls are more numerous than the boys. It is
a curious fact that in engaging these children the manager prefers the
quiet and dull to the smart and lively. Your smart lad and girl are
given to ‘larking’ and thinking of their own cleverness. The quiet
and dull are more ‘teachable,’ and can be made to seem lively without
flinging off discipline. These little creatures are thus kept from the
streets; many of them are sons and daughters of persons employed in the
house, and their shilling a night and a good washing tells pleasantly
in many a humble household, to which, on Saturday nights, they
contribute their wages and clean faces. It was for a clever body of
children of this sort that _benefits_ were first established in France
in 1747. In England they date from Elizabeth Barry, on whose behalf the
first was given, by order of James the Second.
Then there are the indispensable, but not easily procured, ‘ladies
of the ballet.’ They number about five dozen; two dozen principals,
the rest in training to become so. Their salary is not so low as is
generally supposed--twenty-five, and occasionally thirty shillings
a week. They are ‘respectable.’ I have seen three or four dozen of
them together in their green-room, where they conducted themselves as
‘properly’ as any number of well-trained young ladies could at the most
fashionable of finishing establishments.
There was a scene in the ‘Sergeant’s Wife’ which was always played with
a terrible power by Miss Kelly; and yet the audience, during the most
exciting portion of the scene, saw only the back of the actress. Miss
Kelly represented the wife, who, footsore and ignorant of her way, had
found rude hospitality and rough sleeping quarters in a wretched hut.
Unable to sleep, something tempts her to look through the interstices
of the planks which divide her room from the adjoining one. While
looking, she is witness of the commission of a murder. Spell-bound, she
gazes on, in terror almost mute, save a few broken words. During this
incident the actress had her back turned to the audience; nevertheless,
she conveyed to the enthralled house an expression of overwhelming
and indescribable horror as faithfully as if they had seen it in her
features or heard it in her voice. Every spectator confessed her
irresistible power, but none could even guess at the secret by which
she exercised it.
The mystery was, in fact, none at all. Miss Kelly’s acting in this
scene was wonderfully impressive, simply because she kept strictly
to nature. She knew that not to the face alone belongs all power of
interpretation of passion or feeling. This knowledge gave to Rich his
marvellous power as Harlequin. In the old days, when harlequinades had
an intelligible plot in which the spectators took interest, it was the
office of Harlequin to guard the glittering lady of his love from the
malice of their respective enemies. There always occurred an incident
in which Columbine was carried off from her despairing lord, and it was
on this occasion that Rich, all power of conveying facial expression
being cut off by his mask, used to move the house to sympathy, and
sometimes, it is said, to tears, by the pathos of his mute and tragic
action. As he gazed up the stage at the forced departure of Columbine
every limb told unmistakably that the poor fellow’s heart was breaking
within him. When she was restored the whole house broke forth into a
thunder of exultation, as if the whole scene had been a reality.
I cannot tell how this was effected, but I _can_ tell a story that is
not unconnected with the terrible pantomime of suffering nature.
Some years ago an unfortunate man, who had made war against society,
and had to suffer death for it in front of the old Debtors’ door,
Newgate, took leave of his wife and daughters not many hours before
execution, in presence of the ‘Reverend Ordinary,’ Mr. Cotton, and a
young officer in the prison, who has since attained to eminence and
corresponding responsibility in the gloomy service to which he is
devoted. The scene of separation was heartrending to all but the doomed
man, who was calm, and even smiled once or twice, in order to cheer, if
he could, the poor creatures whom he had rendered cheerless for ever.
When the ordinary and the prison officer were left alone, the reverend
gentleman remarked--‘Well, H----, what do you think of the way in which
the prisoner went through _that_?’
‘Wonderfully, sir,’ answered H----, ‘considering the circumstances.’
‘Wonderfully!’ replied Mr. Cotton, ‘yes; but not in your sense, my
friend.’
‘In what sense, then, sir?’ asked H----.
‘You said “wonderfully.” I know very well, wherefore--because you saw
him smile; and because he smiled, you thought he did not feel his
condition as his wife and daughters did.’
‘I confess that is the case,’ said the young officer.
‘Ah! H----,’ exclaimed Mr. Cotton, ‘you are new to this sort of thing.
You looked in the man’s face, and thought he was bold. I had my eye on
his back, and I saw that it gave his face the lie. It showed that he
was suffering mortal agony.’
H---- looked inquiringly at the chaplain, who answered the look by
saying, ‘Listen to me, H----. You are young. Some day you will rise to
a post that will require you to sit in the dock, behind the prisoners
who are tried on capital charges. On one of those occasions, you will
see what is common enough--a prisoner who is saucy and defiant, and who
laughs in the judge’s face as he puts on the black cap, and while he
is condemning him. Well, H----, if you want to know what that prisoner
really feels, don’t look at his face--look at his back. All along and
about the spine, you will find it boiling, heaving, surging, like
volcanic matter. Keep your eye upon it, H----; and when you see the
irrepressible emotion in the back suddenly subsiding, open wide your
arms, my boy, for the seemingly saucy fellow is about to tumble into
them, in a dead faint. All the “sauce,” Mr. H----, will be out of him
at once, and perhaps for ever, unless he be exceptionally constituted.’
A little party of visitors was gathered round the narrator of this, the
other day, in that dreadful room where Calcraft keeps his ‘traps and
things.’ I had my hand on the new coil already prepared and in order
for the next criminal who may deserve it; another was looking at Jack
Sheppard’s irons, which were never able to confine him; and others,
with a sort of unwilling gaze at things in a half-open cupboard, which
looked like the furniture of a saddle-room, but which were instruments
of other purposes. We all turned to the speaker, as he ceased, and
inquired if his experience corroborated Mr. Cotton’s description. H----
answered in the affirmative, and he went into particulars to which we
listened with the air of men who were curious yet not sympathizing;
but I felt, at the same time, under the influences of the place, and
of being suddenly told that I was standing where Calcraft stands on
particular occasions, a hot and irrepressible motion adown the back,
which satisfied me that the Cottonian theory had something in it, and
that Miss Kelly, without knowing it, was acting in strict accordance
with nature, when she made her back interpret to an audience all the
anguish she was supposed to feel at the sorry sight on which her face
was turned.
By way of parenthesis, let me add that Mr. Cotton himself was a most
accomplished actor on his own unstable boards. When he grew somewhat
a-weary of his labour--it was a heavy labour when Monday mornings
were hanging mornings, and wretches went to the beam in leashes--when
Mr. Cotton was tired of this, he thought of a good opportunity for
retiring. ‘I have now,’ he said, ‘accompanied just three hundred
and sixty-five poor fellows to the gallows. That’s one for every
day in the year. I may retire after seeing such a round number die
with _cotton in their ears_.’ Whether the reverend gentleman was the
author of this ingenious comparison for getting hanged, or whether he
playfully adopted the phrase which was soon so popularly accepted as a
definition, cannot now be determined.
While on this subject, let me notice that, with the exception of one
Matthew Coppinger, a subaltern player in the Stuart days, no English
actor has ever suffered death on the scaffold. Mat’s offence was not
worse than the mad Prince’s on Gad’s Hill, and it must be confessed
that one or two other gentlemen of the King’s or Duke’s company ‘took
to the road’ of an evening, and perhaps deserved hanging, though the
royal grace saved them. Neither in England nor France has an actor ever
appeared on the scaffold under heavy weight of crime. As for taking
to the highway, baronets’ sons have gone that road on their fathers’
horses; and society construed lightly the offences of highwaymen who
met travellers face to face and set life fairly against life. In
England, Coppinger alone went to Tyburn. In France, I can recall but
two out of the many thousands of actors who have trodden its very
numerous stages,--not including an occasional player who suffered
for political reasons during the French Revolution. One of the two
was Barrières, a Gascon, who, after studying for the church and the
law, turning dramatic poet and mathematician, and finally enlisting
in the army, obtained leave of absence, and profited thereby by
repairing to Paris, and appearing at the Théâtre Français, in 1729, as
Mithridate. His Gascon extravagance and eccentricity caused at first
much amusement, but he speedily established himself as an excellent
general actor, and forgot all about his military leave of absence. Not
so his colonel, who had no difficulty in laying his hand on the Gascon
recruit, who was playing in his own name in Paris, and under authority
of a furlough, the period of which he had probably exceeded--the
document itself he had unfortunately lost. Barrières was tried,
condemned, and shot, in spite of all the endeavours made to save him.
Sixty years later it went as hardly with Bordier, an actor of the
Variétés, of whom I have heard old French players speak with great
regard and admiration. He was on a provincial tour, when he talked
so plainly at _tables d’hôte_ of the misery of the times and the
prospects of the poor, that he was seized and tried at Rouen under a
charge of fomenting insurrection in order to lower the price of corn.
Just before his seizure he had played the principal part (L’Olive)
in ‘Trick against Trick’ (_Ruses contre Ruses_), in which he had to
exclaim gaily: ‘You will see that to settle this affair, I shall
have to be hanged!’ And Bordier _was_ hanged, unjustly, at Rouen. He
suffered with dignity, and a touch of stage humour. He had been used to
play in Pompigny’s ‘Prince turned Sweep’ (_Ramoneur Prince_)--a piece
in which Sloman used to keep the Coburg audience in a roar of delight.
In the course of the piece, standing at the foot of a ladder, and
doubtful as to whether he should ascend or not, he had to say: ‘Shall I
go up or not?’ So, when he came to the foot of the lofty ladder leaning
against the gigantic gallows in the market-place at Rouen, Bordier
turned with a sad smile to the hangman and said: ‘Shall I go up or
not?’ The hangman smiled too, but pointed the way that Bordier should
go; and the wits of Rouen were soon singing of him in the spirit of the
wits of Covent Garden singing of Coppinger:
Mat did not go dead, like a sluggard to bed,
But boldly, in his shoes, died of a noose
That he found under Tyburn tree.
To return to more general statistics, it may be stated that, in busy
times, four dozen persons are engaged in perfecting the wardrobes
of the ladies and gentlemen. Only to attire these and the children,
forty-five dressers are required; and the various _coiffures_ you
behold have busily employed half a dozen hairdressers. If it should
occur to you that you are sitting over or near a gasometer, you may
find confidence in knowing that it is being watched by seventeen
gasmen; and that even the young ladies who glitter and look so happy as
they float in the air in transformation scenes, could not be roasted
alive, provided they are released in time from the iron rods to which
they are bound. These ineffably exquisite nymphs, however, suffer more
or less from the trials they have to undergo for our amusement. Seldom
a night passes without one or two of them fainting; and I remember, on
once assisting several of them to alight, as they neared the ground,
and they were screened from the public gaze, that their hands were
cold and clammy, like clay. The blood had left the surface and rushed
to the heart, and the spangled nymphs who seemed to rule destiny and
the elements, were under a nervous tremor; but, almost as soon as they
had touched the ground, they shook their spangles, laughed their light
laugh, and tripped away in the direction of the stately housekeeper of
Drury, Mrs. Lush, with dignity enough not to care to claim kinship
with her namesake, the judge; for she was once of the household of
Queen Adelaide, and now has the keeping of ‘the national theatre,’ with
nine servants to obey her behests.
To those who would compare the season of 1865-1866 at Drury Lane with
that of 1765-1766, it is only necessary to say that a hundred years ago
Mrs. Pritchard was playing a character of which she was the original
representative in 1761, namely, Mrs. Oakley, in Coleman’s ‘Jealous
Wife,’ a part which has been well played this year by Mrs. Vezin to
the excellent Mr. Oakley of Mr. Phelps. The Drury Lane company, a
hundred years ago, included Garrick, Powell, Holland, King, Palmer,
Parsons, Bensley, Dodd, Yates, Moody, Baddeley, all men of great but
various merit. Among the ladies were Mrs. Cibber, Mrs. Yates, Mrs.
Clive, Mrs. Abington, Mrs. Pritchard, Miss Pope, Mrs. Baddeley, and
some others--a galaxy the like of which, in any one company, could
nowhere be found in these later days. In that season of a hundred
years ago, a new actress, Mrs. Fitzhenry, very nearly gained a seat
upon the tragic throne. In the same season Melpomene lost her noblest
daughter, albeit the last character her name was attached to in the
bills was Lady Brute. I allude to Mrs. Cibber. ‘Mrs. Cibber dead!’ was
Garrick’s cry; ‘then tragedy has died with her.’ Since that season of
a century since, there has been no such Ophelia as hers, the touching
charm of which used to melt a whole house to tears. It was the season
in which Garrick abolished the candles in brass sockets, fixed in
chandeliers, which hung on the stage; in place of which he introduced
the footlights, which were then supplied by oil, and long retained the
significant name of ‘floats.’ In that season, the first benefit was
given for the Drury Lane Theatrical Fund, ‘for the relief of those who,
from infirmities, shall be obliged to retire from the stage.’ On this
occasion Garrick acted _Kitely_, in ‘Every Man in his Humour.’ Lastly,
in that season was produced, for the first time, the ever-lively
comedy, ‘The Clandestine Marriage,’ in which King, as Lord Ogleby, won
such renown that Garrick never ceased to repent of his having declined
the character. After he left the stage he did not seem to be sorry for
the course he had taken. ‘You all think,’ he used to say, ‘that no one
can excel, or even equal King, in Lord Ogleby. It had great merit, but
it was not my Lord Ogleby; and if I could appear again, that is the
only character in which I should care to play.’ And, no doubt, Roscius
would have delighted his audience, though his new reading might not
have induced them to forget the original representation.
_ABOUT MASTER BETTY._
In a valley at the foot of the Slieve Croob mountains, in County
Antrim, there is a pretty village called Ballynahinch. The head of the
river Lagan, which flows by Belfast into the lough, is to be found in
that valley. Near the town is a ‘spa,’ with a couple of wells, and a
delicious air, sufficient in itself to cure all travellers from Dublin
who have narrowly escaped being poisoned by the Liffey, in whose
murderous stinks the metropolitan authorities seem to think the chief
attraction to draw strangers to Dublin is now to be found.
To the flax-cultivating Ballynahinch, in the last quarter of the last
century, a gentleman named Betty brought (after a brief sojourn at
Lisburn) his young English wife and their only child, a boy. This
married couple were of very good blood. The lady was of the Stantons,
of Hopton Court. Mr. Betty’s father was a physician of some celebrity,
at Lisburn, where, and in the neighbourhood, he practised to such good
purpose that he left a handsome fortune to his son. That son invested a
portion of his inheritance in a farm, and in the manufacture of linen
at Ballynahinch. Whence the Bettys originally came it would be hard to
say. A good many Huguenots lie in the churchyard at Lisburn, and the
Bettys may have originally sprung from a kindred source. In the reign
of George the Second there was a Rev. Joseph Betty, who created a great
sensation by a sermon which he preached at Oxford. Whether the Betty of
Oxford was an ancestor of him of Ballynahinch is a question which may
be left to Mr. Forster, the pedigree hunter.
I have said that with his young wife Mr. Betty took to Ireland their
son. Their boy was, and remained, their only child. He was born at
Shrewsbury, which place is also proud of having given birth to famous
Admiral Benbow, also to Orton, the eminent Nonconformist. Master Betty
was English born and Irish bred; half-bred, however; for his English
mother was his nurse, his companion, his friend--in other words, his
true mother. Such an only child used to be called ‘a parlour child,’ to
denote that there was more intercourse between child and parent than
exists in a ‘nursery child,’ to whom the nurse seems his natural guide
and ruler.
The English lady happened to be a lady well endowed as to her mind,
her tastes, and her accomplishments. She was exactly the mother for
such a boy. She was not only excessively fond of reading the best
poets, but of reading passages aloud, or reciting them from memory. Her
audience was her boy. His tastes were in sympathy with his mother’s,
and he was never more delighted than when he sat listening to her
reading or reciting, except when he was reciting passages to her. It
was a peculiar training; it really shaped the boy’s life--and it was
no ill shape which the life took. The father had his share, however,
in clearing the path for the bright, though brief, career. One day the
father, whose intellectual tastes responded to his wife’s, repeated to
his son the speech of Cardinal Wolsey, beginning, ‘Farewell, a long
farewell, to all my greatness.’ In doing this, he suited the action
to the word. Young Betty had never seen this before, and he asked the
meaning of it. ‘It is what is called acting,’ said the father. The boy
thought over it, tried by himself action and motion with elocution, and
he spoke and acted the cardinal’s soliloquy before his mother with an
effect that excited in her the greatest surprise and admiration.
Not the faintest idea of the stage had, at this time, entered the
minds of any of the family. The eager young lad himself was satisfied
with reading plays, learning passages from them, and reciting speeches
from ‘Douglas’ and ‘Zara,’ from ‘Pizarro’ and the ‘Stranger.’ He also
repeated the episodical tales from Thomson’s ‘Seasons.’ Only the above
trace of his learning anything from Shakespeare is to be found, but
he listened to readings from the national poet by one or other of his
parents. This course had its natural results. By degrees the boy took
to rude attempts, from domestic materials, of dress. ‘Properties’ were
created out of anything that could be turned to the purpose; a screen
was adopted for scenery; audiences of ones and twos were pressed by the
stage-struck youth to tarry and see him act; and finally his father,
well qualified, taught him fencing, the son proving an apt pupil, and
becoming a swordsman as perfect and graceful as Edmund Kean himself.
His reputation spread beyond home into distant branches of the family.
Those branches shook with disgust. The parents were warned that if
they did not take care the boy would come to the evil end of being
a play-actor! They were alarmed. The domestic stage was suppressed;
silence reigned where the echoes of the dramatic poets once pleasantly
rang, and the heir of Hopton Court and Hopton Wafers was ignominiously
packed off to school. When I say ‘the heir,’ it is because Master Betty
was so called; but it really seems as if his claim resembled that of
the Irish gentleman who was kept out of his property by the rightful
owner.
There is no record of Master Betty’s school life. We only know that it
did not suppress his taste for dramatic poetry and dramatic action. At
this time, 1802, Mrs. Siddons, who had been acting with her brother,
John Kemble, to empty houses at Drury Lane, left England, in disgust
at the so-called ‘Drury treasury,’ for Ireland. It was the journey
on which she set out with such morbid feelings of despair, as if she
were assured of the trip ending by some catastrophe. It was, in fact,
all triumph, and in the course of her triumphant career she arrived
in Belfast, where, with other parts, she acted Elvira in ‘Pizarro.’
She had not thought much of the part of the camp-follower when she was
first cast for it, and Sheridan was so dilatory that she had to learn
the last portion of the character after the curtain had risen for the
first acting of the piece. But Sarah Siddons was a true artist. She
ever made the best of the very worst materials; she invested Elvira
with dignity, and it became by far the most popular of the characters
of which she was the original representative. Young Betty entered a
theatre for the first time to see Sheridan’s ‘Pizarro’ acted at the
Belfast theatre, and Mrs. Siddons as Elvira. The boy’s tastes were in
the right direction. He had neither eyes, nor ears, nor senses, but for
her. He was, so to speak, ‘stricken’ by her majestic march, her awful
brow, her graceful action, and her incomparable delivery. He drank at
a fresh fountain; he beheld a new guiding light; he went home in a
trance; he now knew what was meant by ‘the stage,’ what acting was,
what appropriate speech meant, what it was to be an actor, and what
a delicious reward there was for an inspired artist in the music of
tumultuous applause. When Master Betty awoke from his dream it was to
announce to his parents that he should certainly die if he were not
allowed to be a play-actor!
He was only eleven years old, and those parents did not wish to lose
him. They at first humoured his bent, and listened smilingly to his
rehearsal of the whole part of Elvira. They had to listen to other
parts, and still had to hear his impressive iteration of his resolution
to die if he were thwarted in his views. At length they yielded. The
father addressed himself to Mr. Atkins, the proprietor and manager of
the Belfast theatre, who consented that the boy should give him a taste
of his quality. When this was done, Atkins was sufficiently struck by
its novelty not to know exactly what to make of it. He called into
council Hough, the prompter, who was warm in his approval. ‘You are my
guardian angel!’ exclaimed the excited boy to the old prompter. Atkins,
with full faith in Hough’s verdict, observed, when the lad had left,
‘I never expected to see another Garrick, but I have seen an infant
Garrick in Master Betty!’
After some preliminary bargaining, Atkins would not go further than
engage the promising ‘infant’ for four nights. The terms were that,
after deducting _twelve pounds_ for the expenses of the house, the
rest was to be divided between the manager and the _débutant_. The
tragedy of ‘Zara’ was accordingly announced for August 16, 1803,
‘Osman (Sultan of Jerusalem) by a Young Gentleman.’ Now, that year
(and several before and after it) was a troubled year, part of a
perilous time, for Ireland. Sedition was abroad, and everybody, true
man or not, was required to be at home early. The manager could not
have got his tragedy and farce ended and his audience dismissed to
their homes within the legal time but for the order which he obtained
from the military commander of the district that (as printed in the
bill), ‘At the request of the manager the drums have been ordered to
beat an hour later at night.’ The performance was further advertised
‘to begin precisely at six o’clock, that the theatre may be closed by
nine.’ The prices were reckoned by the Irish equivalent of English
shillings--‘Boxes, 3_s._ 3_d._; Pit, 2_s._ 2_d._; Gallery, 1_s._ 1_d._’
In return for the military courtesy, if not as a regular manifestation
of loyalty, it was also stated in the bill, ‘GOD SAVE THE KING’ (in
capital letters!) ‘will be played at the end of the second act, and
RULE BRITANNIA at the end of the play.’
Belfast was, as it is, an intellectual town. The audience assembled
were not likely to be carried away by a mere phenomenon. They
listened, became interested, then deeply stirred, and at last
enthusiastic. The next day the whole town was talking of the almost
perfection with which this boy represented the rage, jealousy, and
despair of Osman. In truth, there was something more than cleverness
in this representation. Let anyone, if he can, read Aaron Hill’s
adaptation of Voltaire’s ‘Zaire’ through. He will see of what dry
bones it is made. Those heavy lines, long speeches, dull movement of
dull plot, stirred now and then by a rant or a roar, require a great
deal more than cleverness to make them endurable. No human being could
live out five acts of such stuff if genius did not uphold the stuff
itself. It was exquisite Mrs. Cibber who gave ‘Zara’ life when she made
her _début_ on the stage, when the tragedy was first played in 1736.
Spranger Barry added fresh vigour to that life when he acted Osman in
1751. Garrick’s genius in Lusignan galvanised the dead heap into living
beauty, never more so than in his last performance in 1776; but the
great genius was Mrs. Cibber; neither Mrs. Bellamy, nor Mrs. Barry, nor
Miss Younge, equalled her. Mrs. Siddons, after them, made Zara live
again, and was nearly equal to Mrs. Cibber. Since her time there has
been neither a Zara, nor Lusignan, nor grown-up Osman, of any note;
and nothing short of genius could make the dry bones live. Voltaire’s
‘Zaire’ is as dull as Hill’s, but it has revived, and been played
at the Théâtre Français. But every character is well played, from
Mounet Sully, who acts Orosmane, to Dupont Vernon, in Corasmin. The
accomplished Berton plays Nerestan; and it is a lesson to actors only
to hear Maubant deliver the famous lines beginning with ‘Mon Dieu, j’ai
combattu.’
Mdlle. Sarah Bernhardt is the Zaire, and I can fancy her a French
Cibber. She dies, however, on the stage too much in the horrible
fashion of the ‘Sphinx’; but what attracts French audience is, that
the piece abounds in passages which such audiences may hail in ecstasy
or denounce in disgust. The passages are political, religious, and
cunningly framed free-thinking passages. For these the audience waits,
and signalises their coming by an enthusiasm of delight or an excess of
displeasure.
At Belfast there was only the eleven-years-old Osman to enthral an
audience. The rest were respectable players. It is not to be believed
that such an audience would have been stirred as they were on that
August night had there not been some mind behind the voice of the young
_débutant_. He had never been on a stage before, had only once seen a
play acted, had received only a few hints from the old prompter, yet
he seemed to be the very part he represented. There were many doubters
and disbelievers in Belfast, but they, for the most part, went to
the theatre and were convinced. The three other parts he played were
Douglas, Rolla, and, for his benefit on August 29, Romeo. From that
moment he was ‘renowned,’ and his career certain of success.
While this boy snatched a triumph, there was another eagerly,
painfully, yet hopefully and determinedly, struggling for one. _This_
boy scarcely knew by what name to pass, for his mother was a certain
Nance Carey, and his reputed father was one of two brothers, he did
not know which, named Kean. This boy claimed in after years to be an
illegitimate son of the Duke of Norfolk, and he referred, in a way, to
this claim when he called his first child Howard. For Nance Carey the
boy had no love. There was but one woman who was kind to him in his
childhood, Miss Tidswell, of Drury Lane Theatre, and Edmund Kean used
to say, ‘If she was not my mother, why was she kind to me?’ When I pass
Orange Court, Leicester Square, I look with curiosity at the hole where
he got a month’s schooling.
Born and dragged up, the young life experiences of Edmund Kean were
exactly opposite to those of William Henry West Betty. He had indeed,
because of his childish beauty, been allowed at three years old to
stand or lie as Cupid in one of Noverre’s ballets; and he had, as an
unlucky imp in the witches’ scene of ‘Macbeth,’ been rebuked by the
offended John Kemble. Since then he had rolled or been kicked about
the world. When Master Betty, at the age of eleven, or nearly twelve,
was laying the foundations of his fortune at Belfast, Edmund Kean was
fifteen, and had often laid himself to sleep on the lee side of a
haystack, for want of wherewith to pay for a better lodging. He had
danced and tumbled at fairs, and had sung in taverns; he had tramped
about the country, carrying Nance Carey’s box of _falbalas_ for sale;
he had been over sea and land; he had joined Richardson’s booth
company, and, at Windsor, it is said that George III. had heard him
recite, and had expressed his approbation in the shape of two guineas,
which Miss Carey took from him.
It was for the benefit of a mother so different from Master Betty’s
mother that he recited in private families. It is a matter of history
that by one of these recitations he inspired another boy, two years
older than himself, with a taste for the stage and a determination to
gain thereon an honourable position. This third boy was Charles Young.
His son and biographer has told us, that as Charles was one evening at
Christmas time descending the stairs of his father’s house full dressed
for _dessert_--his father, a London surgeon, lived in rather high
style--he saw a slatternly woman seated on one of the chairs in the
hall, with a boy standing by her side dressed in fantastic garb, with
the blackest and most penetrating eyes he had ever beheld in human
head. His first impression was that the two were strolling gipsies who
had come for medical advice. Charles Young, we are told, ‘was soon
undeceived, for he had no sooner taken his place by his father’s side
than, to his surprise, the master, instead of manifesting displeasure,
smirked and smiled, and, with an air of self-complacent patronage,
desired his butler to bring in the boy. On his entry he was taken by
the hand, patted on the head, and requested to favour the company with
a specimen of his histrionic ability. With a self-possession marvellous
in one so young he stood forth, knitted his brows, hunched up one
shoulder-blade, and with sardonic grin and husky voice spouted forth
Gloster’s opening soliloquy in “Richard the Third.” He then recited
selections from some of our minor British poets, both grave and gay;
danced a hornpipe; sang songs, both comic and pathetic; and, for fully
an hour, displayed such versatility as to elicit vociferous applause
from his auditory and substantial evidence of its sincerity by a shower
of crown pieces and shillings, a napkin having been opened and spread
upon the floor for their reception. The accumulated treasury having
been poured into the gaping pockets of the lad’s trousers, with a smile
of gratified vanity and grateful acknowledgment he withdrew, rejoined
his tatterdemalion friend in the hall, and left the house rejoicing.
The door was no sooner closed than the guests desired to know the name
of the youthful prodigy who had so astonished them. The host replied
that this was not the first time he had had him to amuse his friends;
that he knew nothing of the lad’s history or antecedents, but that his
name was Edmund Kean, and that of the woman who seemed to have charge
of him and was his supposititious mother, Carey.’ This pretty scene,
described by the Rev. Julian Young, had a supplement to it of which he
was not aware. ‘She took all from me,’ was Edmund Kean’s cry when he
used to tell similar incidents of his hard youthful times.
While Edmund was thus struggling, Master Betty had leaped into fame.
Irish managers were ready to fight duels for the possession of him.
When the announcement went forth that Mr. Frederick Jones, of the Crow
Street Theatre, Dublin, was the possessor of the youthful phenomenon
for nine nights, there was a rush of multitudes to secure places, with
twenty times more applicants than places. There was ferocious fighting
for what could be secured, and much spoliation, with peril of life and
damage to limb, and an atmosphere filled with thunder and lightning,
delightful to the Dublin mind.
On November 29, 1803, Master Betty, not in his own name, but simply
as a ‘young gentleman, only twelve years of age,’ made his _début_
in Dublin as Douglas. The play-bill, indeed, did add, ‘his admirable
talents have procured him the deserved appellation of the INFANT
ROSCIUS.’ As there were sensitive people in Dublin who remembered that
Dublin itself was in what would now be called a state of siege, and
that it was unlawful to be out after a certain hour in the evening,
these were won over by this delicious announcement: ‘The public are
respectfully informed that no person coming from the theatre will
be stopped till after eleven o’clock.’ This was the time, too, when
travellers were induced to trust themselves to mail and stagecoaches
by the assurance that the vehicles were made proof against shot. There
was no certainty the travellers would not be fired at, but the comfort
was that if the bullets did not go through the window and kill the
travellers, they could not much injure the vehicle itself!