'He was a fine fellow in his way, and the world is really impoverished
by his sinking glories. I would have his life written with
diligence.'[130]--DR. JOHNSON.
It is not a little remarkable that the fame of Samuel Foote, great
as it was during his lifetime, and for some time after his death,
has so rapidly dimmed; for he was not only a capital mimic, a boon
companion, a most generous master to his subordinates, a ready wit,
and an accomplished actor, but he was also a fair scholar, a bitter
though an avowed satirist, and a prolific, as well as skilled, dramatic
writer and critic. He wrote about thirty pieces for the stage (which
were translated into the German in 1796), and the list of his works in
their various editions occupies about thirty pages in the MS. British
Museum catalogue. His slightest sayings were carefully preserved; and
the very slightness of some of them is, perhaps, one of the strongest
evidences of the fame which he enjoyed.
Foster says of him, in the _Quarterly Review_ for 1854, that his
writings are 'not unworthy of a very high place in literature;' and
that his name 'was once both a terrible and a delightful reality.'
And yet, notwithstanding the amusing picture which they present of
the manners and conversation of London a hundred years ago, they have
not sufficed to preserve his fame. Who of the rising generation has
ever read anything of Foote's besides his ever-ready and often quoted
_bon-mots_; or knows anything more of his plays than has been learnt
from an occasional representation of 'The Liar' on the stage? It is
hardly necessary to inquire into the cause of this, for the joker's
reputation is proverbially fleeting. Moreover, Foote's pieces are
somewhat too slightly constructed, depending not so much upon the
plot or the _dénouement_ as upon such a delineation of the various
characters as seems hardly to come within the scope of our modern
actors; but, nevertheless, it certainly does cause one to reflect
how soon a man, not without strong claims to be remembered, may be
forgotten. Yet, while he lived, his name was in every man's mouth,
and in a vast number of contemporaneous books. 'No man,' says Baker,
'was more courted when in the zenith of his fame: for instance,
when the Duke of York returned from the Continent, he went first to
his mother's, then to His Majesty's, and directly from them to Mr.
Foote's.' And yet it should be well understood that he was, withal,
no toady. To the Scotch nobleman, boasting of his old wine, which he
doled out in very small _glasses_--'It is very _little_, of its age,'
said Foote, handling his glass. He congratulated the Duke of Cumberland
on his digestion, when the Duke said he had come for the purpose
of swallowing all Foote's good things--'for,' said the coarse wit,
'you never bring any of them up again.' And when the Duke of Norfolk
consulted him as to going to a masquerade in a _new character_--'Go
_sober_,' was Foote's instant reply.
It will be the object of the following memoir not only to sketch
the life of the Truro wit, and to enumerate most of his plays in
chronological order, but also to give one or two short specimens of
his powers as a writer: the difficulty on the latter point being to
make a selection from the very numerous examples left to us. But it
should always be remembered that the parts played by Foote are, as
written, but a very faint reflexion of what he actually uttered, often
_impromptu_.
Samuel Foote was the older of two sons of Samuel and Eleanor Foote,
of Truro. His younger brother Edward, a clergyman, was all but an
imbecile, and in his later years depended almost entirely upon his
elder brother for support. Samuel was born, not as is generally
stated, at the Red Lion Inn, in Boscawen Street, which was at one time
the residence of Henry Foote--a distant relation; but 'at Johnson
Vivian's[131] house, near the Coinage Hall' (now removed). So far as
I can ascertain, this house must have stood nearly opposite to the
Red Lion, on the site of the old King's Head inn, where, Lysons says,
a nunnery of Poor Clares once stood, and close to the spot where
Lemon Street and Boscawen Street now join. Polwhele suggests that
the inscription 'I. F., 1671,' still to be seen over the door of the
Red Lion, refers to John Foote, the dramatist's grandfather.[132]
His father was M.P. for Tiverton, Mayor and Alderman of Truro, a
Commissioner of the Prize Office, and Receiver of Fines for the Duchy
of Cornwall; and had his summer residence at Pencalenick, about a mile
east of the new city. And here it may be said that Foote was to the
last very proud of his genealogy. His father died at 'Pednkallinick,'
as his epitaph records, on 12th March, 1754, in the seventy-sixth
year of his age, and was buried at St. Clement's, near Truro: his
grave-stone is on the east wall of the little north transept. But
the Footes had another residence in the same parish, namely, at
Lambesso, where, according to Lysons, they were seated in the days of
Charles II. His mother was a daughter of Sir Edward Goodere, Bart. (a
descendant of the Earl of Portland), M.P. for Herefordshire; she was
a lady of considerable vivacity, from whom Foote is supposed to have
derived what Carlyle calls the 'aroma' of his character, rather than
from his father. She was eighty-four years of age when she died, and
'Hesiod' Cooke (who wrote Foote's life) says, she was as sprightly at
seventy-nine as most women are at forty. She was as thriftless as her
celebrated son himself, and he had ultimately to grant her an annual
allowance. The following letters once passed between them:
'DEAR SAM,
'I am in prison for debt: come and assist
'Your loving mother,
'E. FOOTE.'
'DEAR MOTHER,
'So am I; which prevents his duty being
paid to his loving mother by
'Her affectionate son,
'SAM FOOTE.'
However, he added, by way of postscript:
'I have sent my attorney to assist you; in the meantime let us hope
for better days.'
Samuel Foote, the subject of our sketch, was christened on 17th
January, 1720, at St. Mary's Church (on the site of the Cathedral now
in progress), and was educated first at the Truro Grammar School,
under Mr. Conon, where he was particularly fond of his Terence, and
afterwards under Dr. Miles, at Worcester. Notwithstanding his strong
propensity for jokes and tricks, he was a favourite with his master,
and made fair progress with his studies; and he never failed, when
visiting Truro, to call at the old school, and, in mock-heroic style,
to beg a holiday for the boys.
In 1737, he was entered at Worcester College, Oxford, which had been
in 1714 founded anew by a connexion of the Foote family,[133] and
worked tolerably hard, acquiring considerable proficiency in the
lighter classical authors; but his chief delight lay in caricaturing
the Provost, Dr. Gower, and in playing tricks upon him and the verger
of the College Chapel. One of these tricks consisted in tying a wisp
of hay to the bell-rope which hung outside the chapel, in a lane down
which certain cows went to grass. The cows naturally snatched at the
tempting morsel, and rung the bell in a most weird manner, to the alarm
of the authorities, who determined on sitting up to watch the rope one
night in order to discover the author of the trick played upon them.
Another of Foote's Oxford freaks is recorded by Murphy, who says that
whilst at Oxford the future player and dramatist acted in the part of
Punch.
Shortly after he came of age, which was in 1741, he was entered at
the Inner Temple, where he distinguished himself chiefly by the
magnificence of his chambers, and by the smartness of his oral
criticisms on the actors of the day, when discussing their merits and
their faults with other sparks and critics at the Grecian, in Devereux
Court, or at the Bedford Coffee-house in Covent Garden. The dry study
of the law had little or no attraction for our volatile hero; and
Dr. Barrowby (the friend and adviser of Macklin in his controversy
with Foote's chief rival, Garrick[134]) has thus sketched the Truro
youngster for us at this period of his life. One evening, says he, I
saw a young man extravagantly dressed out in a frock-suit of green and
silver lace, bag-wig, sword, bouquet, and point ruffles, enter the
room,[135] and immediately join the circle at the upper end. Nobody
recognised him; but such was the ease of his bearing, and the point and
humour of remark with which he at once took part in the conversation,
that his presence seemed to disconcert no one, and a sort of pleased
buzz of '_Who is he?_' was still going round the room unanswered, when
a handsome carriage stopped at the door, and the servants announced
that his name was Foote, that he was a young gentleman of family and
fortune, a student of the Inner Temple, and that the carriage had
called for him on its way to the assembly of a lady of fashion. Vanity
was indeed to the last one of Foote's besetting sins, and he could not
shake it off, even on the stage; for he was very greedy of applause,
and often sacrificed his fellow-actors performances to his own ends.
'Fine feathers, however, do not make fine birds;' and Foote must have
relied a great deal on the skill of his tailor; for he was in person
rather short and stout--exactly like his mother--and his features were
plain and coarse. Yet, his arch smile and merry eye, preserved to us
in his likeness, when fifty years old, by Colson (engraved by Caroline
Watson), redeemed his otherwise commonplace visage, and made him, on
the whole, not an unattractive-looking person. Zoffani also painted
two admirable portraits of him, in character; but the best is that by
Sir Joshua, now at the Garrick Club, painted about the year 1760, when
Foote was forty years of age.
Two of Foote's 'three fortunes' came chiefly through his mother, who
succeeded to the Goodere family property, said to have been worth
about £5,000 a year, in a most strange and tragic manner; but he also
inherited some property left by his father. Mrs. Foote's elder brother
Sir John, a man of weak intellect, was entrapped on board his brother
Samuel's ship, the _Ruby_, in Bristol Roads, and was then and there
strangled by him--a crime for which the younger Goodere was deservedly
hanged.[136] Foote, at that time in terrible pecuniary straits--in
fact, literally a stockingless Foote, as he himself would perhaps
have said--wrote, for £20, a pamphlet, describing the murder, and
endeavouring, but vainly, to exculpate his uncle and namesake. It was
published anonymously in April, 1741.
With so much wealth and popularity as he had even thus early acquired,
it is wonderful that Foote continued his legal studies for so long a
period as three years; but, in fact, he can hardly be said to have done
this, for he had already begun to earn money by his pen (chiefly by
writing a few pamphlets), having contrived in a couple of years, like
the prodigal of old, to 'waste all his substance in riotous living,'
and to fall into sad straits.
Accordingly, his connexion with the stage, to which he seems to have
been introduced by some excellent amateur actors, his valued friends
the Delaines, now commenced, in 1743, by his taking a share with
his friend Macklin in the wooden theatre in the Haymarket, known as
'The Little' or 'Summer Theatre,' and 'The Hay'--the laudable and
distinguishing feature of the performances being a _natural_ mode of
elocution and gesture, as contra-distinguished from the stilted and
drawling sing-song style then in vogue (from which Foote used to think
Garrick himself was not entirely free), and at least an attempt to
dress the characters in something like correct costume. And here it may
be convenient to observe that the title of the 'English Aristophanes,'
by which Foote came to be generally known, is not altogether
applicable to him. Foote could lay small claim to Aristophanes' genius
as a poet; whilst, on the other hand, he never libelled his country or
his gods, as did the illustrious Greek.
With that strange infatuation which induces so many born comic actors
to fancy themselves tragedians, he made his _début_ as a paid actor at
the above theatre on 6th February, 1744, as Othello; the performance
was, as might have been expected, an utter failure, as were likewise
his attempts at Shylock[137] and Pierre on other occasions. The same
may be said of his essay at genteel comedy as Lord Foppington, in
'The Relapse.' But in the following winter he found his true line,
and appeared at Drury Lane in the characters of Sir Paul Pliant,
Fondlewife, and Bayes; in all of which (especially in the latter) he
succeeded admirably, and his success determined his career as that of a
comic player and writer.
His first piece, 'The Diversions of a Morning,' in which he himself
played the part of Puzzle (intended for Macklin[138]), was brought out
at the Haymarket in the spring of 1747; but the satire was so keenly
felt by many of the persons represented, mostly prominent actors of the
day, that, at their instance, the magistrates withdrew Foote's license,
and he adopted an expedient which it is said had also been employed
by Garrick at the Goodman's Fields Theatre, of evading the interdict
of the justices by inviting his friends to 'drink tea' with him 'at
_playhouse prices_,' and entertaining his audience with 'The Diversions
of a Morning' _whilst tea was getting ready_,--a 'tea' which never
appeared.
This venture had what was then considered the long run of forty
representations; in fact, 'to drink a dish of tea with Mr. Foote'
became the rage of the season. It was succeeded by a somewhat similar
performance entitled 'An Auction of Pictures,'[139] in which Foote
'knocked down' sundry worthless persons of the day at ruinous prices,
contriving that the stage company of purchasers should make satirical
observations on the subjects of the pictures. Peter Aretine, 'the
Scourge of Princes,' says Davies, was not more dreaded than Foote had
now become; and in this piece the satire was again so biting that Foote
made many enemies, for there was somewhat of a vindictive character
in his vein. Yet, notwithstanding, perhaps partly in consequence of,
the coarse and furious lampoons with which he was assailed, and of
which notable specimens will be found in Churchill's 'Rosciad,' and in
Chetwood's 'General History of the Stage,' the town continued to run
after and applaud him. And here it may be added that Polwhele records
how Foote's address and politeness had a similar soothing effect upon
two gentlemen who called to cudgel him for caricaturing them, to that
which Incledon's singing had on a somewhat similar occasion.
The same season saw the production of 'The Knights,' in which Foote
introduces the character of Timothy, who speaks in the Cornish dialect;
the performance of this part by a Mr. Castallo was warmly applauded.
Foster says of this piece that 'it is the first sprightly running of
a wit which to the last retained its sparkle and clearness; that its
flow of dialogue is exquisitely neat, natural, and easy; and that its
expression is always terse and characteristic.'
About this time, 1748, he got another windfall of money from the
Goodere estates; and, not warned by the misery and poverty to which
his previous recklessness and extravagance had reduced him, again went
on in his old way, now setting up his carriage with the motto 'Iterum,
iterum, iterumque,' on its panels, in allusion to his having been
left a third fortune. The story goes that the only attempt that Foote
ever made to regulate his money matters was to keep one paying and
one receiving pocket. Four years of fast living in France dissipated
nearly all his money, and the year 1752 witnessed his return to London,
confuting by his arrival all sorts of rumours which had been circulated
as to his death by many who had felt the sting of his whip, and who
doubtless were believing, because they hoped, the rumours true. To
these Foote alludes in the prologue (said to have been written by
Garrick) to 'The Englishman at Paris'--his next production.
* * * * *
'Sir Peter Primrose, smirking o'er his tea,
Sinks from himself and politics, to _me_.
"Paper, boy!" "Here, sir, I am!" "What news to-day?"
"Foote, sir, is advertised--" "What! run away?"
"No, sir, he acts this week at Drury Lane."
"How's that," cries feeble Grub; "Foote come again?
I thought that fool had done his devil's dance:
Was he not hanged some months ago, in France?"'
Foote once again took the Haymarket Theatre in 1754; and, for a
few nights, ridiculed Macklin's celebrated School of Oratory, in
the 'Inquisition.'[140] But he soon returned to Drury Lane, as an
actor chiefly in his own pieces, and at the same time was occupied
in preparing for publication his amusing farce of 'The Knights.'
'The Author,' which was successful, but which was suppressed by the
Lord Chamberlain in consequence of the severity of its satire on Mr.
Ap Reece (Cadwallader), appeared in 1757; and, probably owing to
complications arising out of the matter, early in 1758 Foote went to
Dublin with Tate Wilkinson the mimic (who imitated Foote himself so
well, as more than once to deceive a shrewd audience). With the same
companion Foote visited Edinburgh during the following season, where
they reaped a good harvest. It was whilst on this occasion in Ireland
that he exclaimed of the Irish peasantry: 'I never knew before what
the English beggars did with their cast-off clothes.' In the winter,
however, the two returned to Dublin, and here on 28th January, 1760,
that clever comedy, 'The Minor,' made its first appearance, but with
indifferent success, so that Foote lost a considerable sum of money.
During his first visit to Dublin, in January, 1758, having hung a
room at his lodgings in black, and provided himself with a dark
lanthorn, Foote disseminated hand-bills to the effect that 'there was
a man to be met with at such a place who wrote down people's fortunes
without asking them any questions.' He is said to have carried on the
deception with great success for many days, sometimes clearing as
much as £30 a day, it is said, from his dupes. He soon after returned
to London, and, having enlarged and improved 'The Minor,' brought it
again before the public, and this time with the most satisfactory
results, the theatre closing, after the piece had run thirty-eight
nights, 'with a full treasury.' Foster thinks its three acts are worth
almost any five that he knew. The object of the play was to ridicule
religious _cant_, and especially Whitefield, then in the height of his
popularity.[141] The story runs that Foote submitted the MS. to the
Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Secker, with a request that his Grace
would strike out anything that, from a religious point of view, might
appear objectionable. But the Archbishop--knowing the sort of character
he had to deal with--returned the MS. untouched, observing that if he
erased or corrected anything, Foote would probably have advertised
the piece as 'corrected and prepared for the press by the Archbishop
of Canterbury.' 'The Minor' elicited many sharp pamphlets and letters
against Foote, but he readily disposed of them all in a reply which he
published, replete with learning, wit, and satire; and which contains
an admirable vindication of the Comic Muse. It has been said that if
all his other works had perished, this one letter would have sufficed
to establish his wit, scholarship, and sense as of the rarest order;
every line tells. His defence of the course which he adopted in
ridiculing Whitefield contains the following spirited passage:
'Why should I not ridicule what is done in a church if it deserves
ridicule? Is not the crime greater if you pick a pocket at church? and
is the additional reason why a man should _not_ have done it, to be
the only argument why he should not be punished for doing it? You call
profaneness an offence; you will not have ignorant men idly invoke the
name or attributes of the Supreme; and may not I ridicule a fanatic
whom I think mischievous because he is for ever polluting that name
with blasphemous associations--mixing it with the highest, the meanest
and most trivial things; degrading Providence to every low and vulgar
occasion of life; crying out that he is buffeted by Satan, if only
bit by fleas, and, when able to catch them, triumphing with texts of
Scripture over the blessing specially vouchsafed?'
Foote seems at this time to have lodged in Suffolk Street, and to
have got into several petty quarrels with his fellow-actors, whose
manners and defects he imitated only too closely, and whose antecedents
he used to make fun of: for instance, alluding to Garrick's having
failed in his first start in life as a wine-merchant, Foote used to
say: 'I remember Davy when he used to live in Durham Yard, and all
his stock-in-trade was three quarts of vinegar in what he called
his wine-cellar.' But such were his tact and jolly manner, that the
estrangements were rarely of long endurance; and most, if not all
of the offended parties were, sooner or later, glad to shake hands
with the reckless mimic. He was always, however, implacably hostile
to newspaper critics--then, by the way, a new institution--and very
coarse in his remarks upon them, although the critics generally
wrote of him with respect and praise; but it should be added that at
one time managers were almost invariably their own critics, and the
innovation was to them most unwelcome. Nor did he think much of the
reliability of the judgment of the public. In Foote's 'Treatise on the
Passions,' he says: 'There are 12,000 playgoers in London; but not the
four-and-twentieth part of them can judge correctly of the merits of
plays or players.'
In January, 1762, 'The Liar,' the plot of which was taken from the
Spanish, was produced at Covent Garden, and those who, like the
writer of these pages, have had the good fortune to see the late
Charles Mathews in the piece, will readily believe that it was highly
successful. 'The Orators' shortly followed; it is said that it was
in this piece that he intended to introduce Dr. Samuel Johnson, and
that he was only deterred from doing so by the sturdy Doctor's threat
that, if Foote did, he would get on the stage and soundly thrash the
mimic with an oaken cudgel. But Johnson had a real regard for Foote
and his abilities. Resolved _not_ to be pleased with him, the Doctor
was compelled to give in, and to laugh with the rest of the company
that Foote was entertaining. 'Sir,' said Johnson, 'the dog was so very
comical that he was irresistible.' Charles James Fox thought even more
highly still of Foote's conversational powers. In fact he generally got
the better of his opponents in all verbal encounters:--but the tables
were once turned against him. He leased the Edinburgh Theatre for 500
guineas a year--a lawsuit arose, and Foote was defeated. The Scotch
lawyer called upon him for his bill of costs; and on Foote's paying
him the money and observing to the lawyer that he would no doubt, like
most of his countrymen, return in the cheapest way possible, was drily
answered: 'Yes, I shall travel _on foot_.'
'The Mayor of Garrat;'[142] 'The Patron' (in which he ridiculed
the 'Enthusiasm of Antiquaries,' drawing his friend and host, Lord
Melcombe, in the character of Sir Thomas Lofty, which Foote played
himself); and 'The Commissary' (in which the Duke of Newcastle figured
as Matthew Mug), followed 'The Orators' at the Haymarket in rapid
succession, bringing Foote considerable profit, and his worldly success
now seemed assured. But early in 1766, a sad accident whilst hunting
(when he broke his leg) marred his prospects, and embittered the close
of his career. Amputation above the knee was pronounced necessary,
and, though this was, of course, before the days of chloroform, he
bore the terrible operation with remarkable fortitude, and could not,
even then, resist the temptation to joke, begging the surgeons to deal
gently with him, as it was his 'first appearance in the character of
a patientee'--an allusion which will presently be made apparent. From
this time he always wore, and played in, a cork leg. It was pitiable,
O'Keefe remarks, to see Foote leaning sorrowfully against the wall of
his stage dressing-room while his servant dressed this sham leg to suit
the character in which his master was to appear; but in an instant
resuming all his high comic humour and mirth, he hobbled forward,
entered the scene, and gave the audience what they expected, their fill
of laughter and delight.
The Duke of York, with whom Foote seems to have been a favourite, now
procured for him a Royal Patent for a summer theatre, thus enabling
him to keep it open between the 14th May and the 14th September; and
in May, 1767, the old theatre having been pulled down, and a new one
erected in its stead, Foote appeared, as _Himself_, in 'An Occasional
Prelude,' concluding with the following not ungraceful allusion to his
Royal Highness's timely succour in the hour of misfortune:
'Consult,' he says, referring to the audience on the opening night:
'Consult with care each countenance around,
Not one malignant aspect can be found
To check the Royal hand that raised me from the ground.'
The 'Devil on Two Sticks,' an excellent little piece, which appeared
in 1768, and which ran for a whole season, is said to have brought
Foote some three or four thousand pounds! This play is a satire on
medical quackery. Amongst others caricatured was Sir William Browne,
'whose wig, coat, and contracted eye firmly holding an eye-glass, and
his remarkably upright figure were all there; but the caricaturist had
forgotten Sir William's special characteristic--his muff, which the
good-tempered doctor sent to Foote, to make the figure complete!'
But, 'lightly come, lightly go;' Foote could not keep money as easily
as he could earn it; and, on his way once more to Ireland, he fell in
with some blacklegs at Bath, to whom he lost all his money; so that he
was 'ruined once more,' and actually had to borrow £100 in order to
complete his journey. The 'Devil on Two Sticks,' however, took as well
in Dublin as it had done in London; Foote was again rehabilitated, and
was received with great favour at the Castle.
His play 'The Lame Lover,' produced in London in 1770, did not prove a
success; it was followed, in 1771, by the 'Maid of Bath;' and by the
'Nabob' in 1772. But the 'Primitive Puppet-show,' or rather 'Piety in
Pattens,' in which the 'Puppet-show' was introduced, brought crowded
houses to the Haymarket in 1773; it was performed by wooden puppets
nearly as large as life. In the prologue, spoken by Foote _in propriâ
personâ_, and in a scarlet livery, as was the practice with the
theatrical managers of the time, he says: 'All _our_ actors are the
produce of England ... to their various families you are, none of you,
strangers. We have modern patriots made from the box--it is a wood
that carries an imposing _gloss_ and is easily _turned_; for constant
lovers we have the encircling ivy; crab-stocks for old maids; and
weeping-willows for Methodist preachers; for modish wives we have the
brittle poplar; their husbands we shall give you in hornbeam;' and so
on. In this piece he ridiculed 'Sentimental Comedy;' it was not one of
his most successful productions; but the 'Exordium' was very clever,
and is given entire in the _Town and Country Magazine_, vol. v., p.
319.
'The Cozeners' appeared in 1774, with a prologue written by Garrick, to
whom Foote was again reconciled, after a quarrel caused by Garrick's
refusing to lend his successful but impecunious friend the sum of
£500. 'The Cozeners' fairly enough caricatured Mrs. Grieve as Mrs.
Fleecem--a woman who extorted money from her victims by promising
to procure for them Government appointments. Now, Foote himself was
generally thought to have obtained an annuity from Sir Francis Delaval,
by bringing about a marriage between him and Lady Nassau Powlett, with
whom Foote had been very intimate. It was, however, too bad of Foote
to caricature, under the name of Mrs. Simony, the widow of the Rev.
Dr. Dodd, then only recently hanged. But Foote's aims were really not
lofty; he sought, as Dr. Doran says, less to reform vice and folly than
to produce amusement (sometimes unscrupulously enough), by holding them
up to ridicule. And here it must be observed that, although he was
thin-skinned, and not over-courageous, yet Davies wrote of him: 'There
is hardly a public man in England who has not entered Mr. Foote's
theatre with an aching heart, under the apprehension of seeing himself
laughed at.'
The following year saw Foote involved in one of the most disastrous
and disagreeable events of his life--namely, his prosecution at the
instance of the profligate Duchess of Kingston, whom Foote had
prepared to lampoon in a little piece called 'A Trip to Calais,' in
respect of her then approaching trial for bigamy, when she was found
guilty by the House of Peers. The Duchess's influence, however,
prevailed to prevent the appearance of the piece, and the Lord
Chamberlain's license was withheld; and correspondence of a most
virulent nature between Foote and the Duchess ensued. It was on this
occasion that Foote penned the following defence of his writings:
'During my continuance in the service of the public I never profited
by flattering their passions, or falling in with their humours. In
exposing follies I never lost my credit with the public, because
they knew I proceeded _upon principle_.' The Duchess tried to _buy_
off her persecutor, but in vain; attacks on each side, of the
grossest and most virulent nature, now appeared in the papers; and an
expensive prosecution of Foote on a foul but imaginary charge, by one
Jackson,[143] was instituted; but Lord Mansfield summed up in Foote's
favour, and the result was his immediate and honourable acquittal (the
jury not even turning round in the box to consider their verdict). The
worry and anxiety attendant upon so abominable a persecution shattered
Foote's health and spirits, and unfitted him for awhile for appearing
again on the stage. He accordingly sold his patent, including the
theatrical wardrobe and leave to perform any of Foote's unpublished
plays, to George Coleman, for £1,600 a year; and he only went on the
stage thrice afterwards.
During the quarrel with the Duchess of Kingston Foote had bitterly
satirized some of her worthless creatures in a piece called 'The
Capucin'--the last that he ever wrote except 'The Slanderer,' which,
however, he left unfinished at his death.
In May, 1777, he made another attempt to appear on the stage; but
illness and anxiety had made fearful havoc with his looks and his
gaiety; and a paralytic stroke whilst acting in his own piece, 'The
Devil on Two Sticks,' put an end for ever to his stage performances.
He retired to Bath, and there his health and sprightliness somewhat
recovered; but it was only a flickering of the expiring candle in its
socket. The doctors advised him to try Paris, and thither, from his
house in Suffolk Street, Pall Mall, he proceeded, by way of Dover,
in the following October, with a presentiment that he should never
return to Town alive. It was here, whilst waiting at the Ship Inn for
a favourable passage, the conversation occurred with the cook-maid,
and probably Foote's very last jokes, without which no account of him
seems to be considered complete. The woman was boasting that _she_ had
never left _her_ native place, when Foote retorted by saying that he
had heard upstairs that she had been 'several times all over Greece,'
and that he himself had seen her at 'Spithead.' On the following day,
the 21st October, 1777, he had another paralytic seizure, and was no
more. On the 3rd November he was buried by torch-light in the west
cloister of Westminster Abbey.[144] No stone marks his resting-place;
but there is an epitaph to his memory at St. Mary's, Dover, of which
the following is a copy:
Sacred to the memory of
SAMUEL FOOTE, ESQ.,
Who had a Tear for a Friend,
And a Hand and Heart ever ready
To Relieve the Distressed.
He departed this life Oct. 21st, 1777 (on his journey to France),
at the Ship Inn, Dover,
aged 55 years.
This inscription was placed here by his affectionate Friend,
Mr. Wm. Jewell.[145]
He left, besides portraits and small legacies to sundry of his friends,
the bulk of the property remaining to him to his two natural children,
Francis and George; and I may here observe that, notwithstanding
Cooke's positive statement that Foote married a Worcestershire lady,
and that shortly after the wedding he took her to his father's house
at Truro; and Polwhele's dictum that he married Miss Polly Hicks, of
Prince's Street, Truro--(she is said to have been sixteen and Foote
eighteen when they married, but she died early of consumption)--I
have been unable to discover with certainty whether or not he was
ever really married. Certainly, no Mrs. Foote ever appeared upon the
scene when he lived at 'The Hermitage,' North End, between Fulham
and Hammersmith (to which place he had moved from Parson's Green,
where Theodore Hooke afterwards lived). Here he used to be very fond
of entertaining his friends, amongst whom were many members of the
nobility, and occasionally even royal personages, with his usual
wasteful extravagance. There is a story of his having been 'reconciled'
to his wife whilst he was living at Blackheath; and another story of
his old fellow-collegian Dr. Nash, the historian of Worcestershire,
having called to see him when confined for debt in the Fleet Prison,
and finding a supposed Mrs. Foote hiding somewhere in the room; but
there are, I believe, no proofs positive of the reckless, dissipated
subject of this memoir having ever submitted to the marriage tie.
The _Gentleman's Magazine_ for 1777 says of him that 'As no man ever
contributed more to the entertainment of the public, so no man oftener
made the minds of his companions expand with mirth and good-humour; and
in the company of men of high rank and superior fortune, who courted
his acquaintance, he always preserved a noble independency. That he had
his foibles and caprices no one will pretend to deny; but they were
amply counterbalanced by his merit and abilities, which will transmit
his name to posterity with distinguished reputation.'
We commenced this article by considering how fleeting this reputation
was; yet still it is strange that in this case it has died from amongst
us so soon. Garrick said of Foote that he was a man of wonderful
abilities, and the most entertaining man he had ever known; and this
was a tribute from a rival manager and actor, be it remembered. Fox,
eminent conversationalist as he was, said that whatever was the subject
of conversation, 'Foote instantly took the lead, and delighted us all.'
Davies, Tate Wilkinson, and Horace Walpole joined in the chorus of his
praise; and even Dr. Samuel Johnson, who perhaps feared Foote as much
as he disliked him, admitted that he was a scholar, that his humour
was irresistible, and that he could drive any of his rivals out of the
room by the sheer force of his wit. The remarks of Sir Walter Scott and
Lord Macaulay fall flat after such tributes as the above; and they are
probably to be explained by the fact that they never came within the
range of the personal influence of the man--without having done which
they can hardly be considered competent judges of so amusing an actor,
and such an invariably ready, courageous wit and satirist as was Samuel
Foote.
[Illustration: (end of chapter vignette.)]