GODOLPHIN’S PASSION FOR THE STAGE.--THE DIFFERENCE IT ENGENDERED IN HIS
HABITS OF LIFE.
Now this event produced a great influence over Godolphin’s habits--and
I suppose, therefore, I may add, over his character. He renewed his
acquaintance with the lively actress.
“What a change!” cried both.
“The strolling player risen into celebrity!”
“And the runaway boy polished into fashion!”
“You are handsomer than ever, Fanny.”
“I return the compliment,” replied Fanny; with a curtsey.
And now Godolphin became a constant attendant at the theatre. This led
him into a mode of life quite different from that which he had lately
cultivated.
There are in London two sets of idle men: one set, the butterflies of
balls; the loungers of the regular walks of society; diners out; the
“old familiar faces,” seen everywhere, known to every one: the other
set, a more wild, irregular, careless race; who go little into parties,
and vote balls a nuisance; who live in clubs; frequent theatres; drive
about late o’ nights in mysterious-looking vehicles and enjoy a vast
acquaintance among the Aspasias of pleasure. These are the men who are
the critics of theatricals: black-neckclothed and well-booted, they sit
in their boxes and decide on the ankles of a dancer or the voice of a
singer. They have a smattering of literature, and use a great deal of
French in their conversation: they have something of romance in their
composition, and have been known to marry for love. In short, there is
in their whole nature, a more roving, liberal, Continental character of
dissipation, than belongs to the cold, tame, dull, prim, hedge-clipped
indolence of more national exquisitism. Into this set, out of the other
set, fell young Godolphin; and oh! the merry mornings at actresses’
houses; the jovial suppers after the play; the buoyancy, the brilliancy,
the esprit, with which the hours, from midnight to cockcrow, were often
pelted with rose-leaves and drowned in Rhenish.
By degrees, however, as Godolphin warmed into his attendance at the
playhouses, the fine intellectual something that lay yet undestroyed at
his heart stirred up emotions which he felt his more vulgar associates
were unfitted to share.
There is that in theatrical representation which perpetually awakens
whatever romance belongs to our character. The magic lights; the pomp
of scene; the palace, the camp; the forest; the midnight wold; the
moonlight reflected on the water; the melody of the tragic rhythm; the
grace of the comic wit; the strange art that give such meaning to the
poet’s lightest word;--the fair, false, exciting life that is detailed
before us--crowding into some three little hours all that our most
busy ambition could desire--love, enterprise, war, glory! the kindling
exaggeration of the sentiments which belong to the stage--like our own
in our boldest moments: all these appeals to our finer senses are not
made in vain. Our taste for castle-building and visions deepens upon us;
and we chew a mental opium which stagnates all the other faculties, but
wakens that of the ideal.
Godolphin was peculiarly fascinated by the stage; he loved to steal away
from his companions, and, alone, and unheeded, to feast his mind on the
unreal stream of existence that mirrored images so beautiful. And oh!
while yet we are young--while yet the dew lingers on the green leaf of
spring--while all the brighter, the more enterprising part of the future
is to come--while we know not whether the true life may not be visionary
and excited as the false--how deep and rich a transport is it to see,
to feel, to hear Shakspeare’s conceptions made actual, though
all imperfectly, and only for an hour! Sweet Arden! are we in thy
forest?--thy “shadowy groves and unfrequented glens”? Rosalind,
Jaques, Orlando, have you indeed a being upon earth! Ah! this is true
enchantment! and when we turn back to life, we turn from the colours
which the Claude glass breathes over a winter’s landscape to the
nakedness of the landscape itself!