To this he was urged by Garrick; and the execution was appropriate,
and full of merit. But though the music, from its simplicity and the
sweetness of its melody, was peculiarly fitted to refine the public
taste amongst the middle classes; while it could not fail to give
passing pleasure even to the highest; the drama was too denuded of
intricacy or variety for the amusement of John Bull; and the appearance
of only three interlocuters caused a gaping expectation of some
followers, that made every new scene begin by inflicting disappointment.
Mr. Garrick, and his accomplished, high-bred, and engaging wife, La
Violetta, had been amongst the earliest of the pristine connexions of
Mr. Burney, who had sought him, with compassionate kindness, as soon
after his heart-breaking loss as he could admit any friends to his
sight. The ensuing paragraph on his warm sentiments of this talented
and bewitching pair, is copied from one of his manuscript memorandums.
“My acquaintance, at this time, with Mrs. as well as Mr.
Garrick, was improved into a real friendship; and frequently,
on the Saturday night, when Mr. Garrick did not act, he
carried me to his villa at Hampton, whence he brought me to
my home early on Monday morning. I seldom was more happy
than in these visits. His wit, humour, and constant gaiety
at home; and Mrs. Garrick’s good sense, good breeding, and
obliging desire to please, rendered their Hampton villa, on
these occasions, a terrestrial paradise.
“Mrs. Garrick had every faculty of social judgment, good
taste, and steadiness of character, which he wanted. She was
an excellent appreciator of the fine arts; and attended all
the last rehearsals of new or of revived plays, to give her
opinion of effects, dresses, scenery, and machinery. She
seemed to be his real other half; and he, by his intelligence
and accomplishments, seemed to complete the Hydroggynus.”
This eminent couple paid their court to Mr. Burney in the manner that
was most sure to be successful, namely, by their endearing and good
natured attentions to his young family; frequently giving them, with
some chaperon of their father’s appointing, the lightsome pleasure of
possessing Mrs. Garrick’s private box at Drury Lane Theatre; and that,
from time to time, even when the incomparable Roscius acted himself;
which so enchanted their gratitude, that they nearly—as Mr. Burney
laughingly quoted to Garrick from Hudibras—
“Did,—as was their duty,
Worship the shadow of his shoe-tie.”
Garrick, who was passionately fond of children, never withheld his
visits from Poland-street on account of the absence of the master
of the house; for though it was the master he came to seek, he
was too susceptible to his own lively gift of bestowing pleasure,
to resist witnessing the ecstacy he was sure to excite, when he
burst in unexpectedly upon the younger branches: for so playfully
he individualised his attentions, by an endless variety of comic
badinage,—now exhibited in lofty bombast; now in ludicrous
obsequiousness; now by a sarcasm skilfully implying a compliment; now
by a compliment archly conveying a sarcasm; that every happy day that
gave them but a glimpse of this idol of their juvenile fancy, was
exhilarated to its close by reciprocating anecdotes of the look, the
smile, the bow, the shrug, the start, that, after his departure, each
enraptured admirer could describe.
A circumstance of no small weight at that time, contributed to allure
Mr. Garrick to granting these joyous scenes to the young Burney tribe.
When he made the tour of Italy, for the recovery of his health, and the
refreshment of his popularity, he committed to the care of Mr. Burney
and his young family his own and Mrs. Garrick’s favourite little dog,
Phill, a beautiful black and white spaniel, of King Charles’s breed,
luxuriant in tail and mane, with the whitest breast, and spotted with
perfect symmetry.
The fondness of Mr. Garrick for this little spaniel was so great, that
one of his first visits on his return from the continent was to see,
caress, and reclaim him. Phill was necessarily resigned, though with
the most dismal reluctance, by his new friends: but if parting with
the favoured little quadruped was a disaster, how was that annoyance
overpaid, when, two or three days afterwards, Phill re-appeared! and
when the pleasure of his welcome to the young folks was increased by a
message, that the little animal had seemed so moping, so unsettled,
and so forlorn, that Mr. and Mrs. Garrick had not the heart to break
his new engagements, and requested his entire acceptance and adoption
in Poland-street.
During the life of this favourite, all the juvenile group were sought
and visited together, by the gay-hearted Roscius; and with as much glee
as he himself was received by these happy young creatures, whether
two-footed or four.
On the first coming-out of the “Cunning Man,” Mr. Garrick, who
undoubtedly owed his unequalled varieties in delineating every species
of comic character, to an inquisitive observance of Nature in all her
workings, amused himself in watching from the orchestra, where he
frequently sat on the first night of new pieces, the young auditory
in Mrs. Garrick’s box; and he imitatingly described to Mr. Burney the
innocent confidence of success with which they all openly bent forward,
to look exultingly at the audience, when a loud clapping followed
the overture: and their smiles, or nods: or chuckling and laughter,
according to their more or less advanced years, during the unmingled
approbation that was bestowed upon about half the piece—contrasted
with, first the amazement; next, the indignation; and, lastly, the
affright and disappointment, that were brought forth by the beginning
buzz of hissing, and followed by the shrill horrors of the catcall: and
then the return—joyous, but no longer dauntless!—of hope, when again
the applause prevailed.
In these various changes, Mr. Garrick altered the expression of
his features, and almost his features themselves, by apparent
transformations—which, however less poetical, were at least more
natural than those of Ovid.
Mr. Garrick possessed not only every possible inflexion of voice, save
for singing, but also of countenance; varying his looks into young,
old, sick, vigorous, downcast, or frolicsome, at his personal volition;
as if his face, and even his form, had been put into his own hands to
be worked upon like Man a Machine.
Mr. Garrick, about this time, warmly urged the subject of these memoirs
to set to music an English opera called Orpheus; but while, for that
purpose, Mr. Burney was examining the drama, he was informed that it
had been put into the hands of Mr. Barthelemon, who was preparing it
for the stage.
Astonished, and very much hurt, Mr. Burney hastily returned the copy
with which he had been entrusted, to Mr. Johnstone, the prompter;
dryly, and without letter or comment, directing him to deliver it to
Mr. Garrick.
Mr. Garrick, with the utmost animation, instantly wrote to Johnstone
an apology rather than a justification; desiring that the opera should
be withdrawn from Mr. Barthelemon, and consigned wholly to the subject
of these memoirs; for whom Mr. Garrick declared himself to entertain a
friendship that nothing should dissolve.[27]
But Mr. Burney, conceiving that Barthelemon, who had offended no one,
and who bore a most amiable character, might justly resent so abrupt a
discharge, declined setting the opera: and never afterwards composed
for the theatres.
This trait, however trifling, cannot but be considered as biographical,
at least for Mr. Garrick; as it so strongly authenticates the veracity
of the two principal lines of the epitaph designed for Roscius, many
years afterwards, by that acute observer of every character—save his
own!—Dr. Goldsmith.
“He cast off his friends as a huntsman his pack,
For he knew, when he would, he could whistle them back.”
Whether negligence, mistake, or caprice, had occasioned this double
nomination to the same office, is not clear; but Garrick, who loved Mr.
Burney with real affection, lost no time, and spared no blandishment,
to re-instate himself in the confidence which this untoward accident
had somewhat shaken. And he had full success, to the great satisfaction
of Mr. Burney, and joy of his family; who all rapturously delighted in
the talents and society of the immortal Roscius.