GEORGE FREDERICK COOKE.
About the time when Garrick was reluctantly bidding farewell to his
home on the stage, at Drury Lane, a hopeful youth, of twenty years of
age, born no one can well tell where, but it is said, in a barrack,
of an English sergeant and a Scottish mother, was making his first
grasp at the dramatic laurel, in the little town of Brentford.
With the exception of a passing appearance at the Haymarket, for
a benefit, in 1778, as Castalio,--when London was recognising in
Henderson the true successor of Garrick--the town knew nothing of
this ambitious youth for more than twenty years; then he came to
Covent Garden to dethrone John Kemble; and he disquieted that actor
for awhile. In ten years more, his English race was done, and while
Kemble was beginning the splendid evening of his career, Cooke passed
over to America, prematurely ending his course, in disgrace and ruin,
and occupying a grave which a civilised Yankee speedily dishonoured.
If Cooke was an Irishman, it was by accident. He was certainly
educated in England; and he early acquired, by reading Otway and
seeing Vanbrugh, a taste for the drama. In school theatricals,
he made his Horatio outshine the Hamlet of the night; and
his Lucia,--though the boy cried at having to play a part in
petticoats,[74]--win more applause than his schoolfellow's Cato.
School-time over, the wayward boy went to sea, and came back with
small liking for the vocation; turned to "business," only to turn
from it in disgust; inherited some property, and swiftly spent it;
and then we find him in that inn-yard at Brentford, enrolled among
strollers, and playing Dumont in "Jane Shore," to the great delight
of the upper servants from Kew, Gunnersbury, and parts adjacent,
sent thither to represent their masters, who had not the "particular
desire" to see the play, for which the bills gave them credit.
The murmur of London approval, awarded to his Castalio, was the
delicious magic which drew him for ever within the charmed circle
of the actors, and George Frederick passed through all the heavy
trials through which most of the vocation have to pass. He strolled
through villages, thence to provincial towns, and I think, when in
1786, he played Baldwin to the Isabella of Mrs. Siddons, that lady
must have been compelled, perhaps was willing, to confess, that there
was a dramatic genius who, at least, approached the excellence of her
brother.
From York, after much more probation, Cooke went over to Dublin,
where he acted well, drank hard, and lost himself, in one of his wild
fits, by enlisting. Fancy the proud and maddened George Frederick
doing barrack scullery-work, and worse!--he who had played the Moor
in presence of a vice-regal court! If his friends had not purchased
his discharge, Miss Campion would certainly soon have heard that her
Othello had hanged himself. The genius who would not be a soldier,
though born in a barrack, found an asylum in the Manchester theatre;
and subsequently Dublin welcomed him back to its well-trod stage.
There, he and John Kemble met for the first time.
John took the lead, George Frederick played,--I can hardly call them
secondary parts, for Booth had acted some of them to Betterton,
Garrick to Sheridan, and one great performer to another,--such parts,
in fact, as Ghost to Kemble's Hamlet, Henry to his Richard, Edmund
to his Lear, and a similar disposition of characters. What Kemble
then thought of his acting, I cannot say, but he complained of being
disturbed by Mr. Cooke's tipsily defective memory. George Frederick
was stirred to anger and prophecy. "I won't have your faults fathered
upon me," he cried; "and hark ye, Black Jack,--hang me if I don't
make you tremble in your pumps one day yet."
He kept his word. On the 31st of October 1801,[75] he acted Richard,
at Covent Garden, to the Henry of Murray, the Richmond of Pope, the
Queen of Miss Chapman, and the Lady Anne of Mrs. Litchfield;--and
Kemble was present to see how Cooke would realise his promise.
Kemble had played Richard himself that season at Drury Lane, to the
Richmond of his brother Charles,--Henry, Wroughton; Queen, Mrs.
Powell; Lady Anne, Miss Biggs. I fancy he was satisfied that in the
new and well-trained actor there was a dangerous rival. Kemble acted
Shylock and one or two other characters against him. They stood
opposed in some degree as Quin and Garrick were, at Covent Garden
and Drury Lane, in 1742-43. In that season, Garrick played Richard
eleven times.[76] In Cooke's first season at the Garden, he acted the
same part double the number of times. Shylock, Iago, and Kitely, he
acted each ten times. Macbeth, seven; Sir Giles Overreach, five; the
Stranger, twice; and Sir Archy Macsarcasm, several times.
Of his first reception in Richard, Cooke speaks, as being flattering,
encouraging, indulgent, and warm, throughout the play and at the
conclusion. Cooke was not blinded by this triumphant season. Long
after he said, when referring to having played with and also against
John Kemble: "He is an _actor_. He is my superior, though they did
not think so in London. I acknowledge it!" Having made Black Jack
"tremble in his pumps," Cooke honestly acknowledged, in homely
phrase, that he could not stand in Kemble's shoes.
Kemble, however, was not superior to Cooke in all his range of
characters. In the very first season of their opposition, after
an obstinate struggle, Kemble gave up Richard, but in Macbeth
he remained unapproachable by Cooke, who, in his turn, set all
competition at defiance in his Iago, in which, says Dunlap, "the
quickness of his action, and the strong natural expression of
feeling, which were so peculiarly his own, identified him with
the character." In Kitely, his remembrance of Garrick confessedly
served him well. In Sir Giles, he excelled Kemble; but the Stranger
was speedily given up by Cooke, and it remained one of his rival's
glories to the last.
Cooke's general success, the position he had attained, and the
prospect before him, steadied his mind, strengthened his good
purposes, made him master of himself under a healthy stimulus,
careful of his reputation, and strict in performing his duties.
I record this, as his previous biographers have registered the
character. Consequently, on the night he was announced to appear,
to open his second season of anticipated triumph--September 14th,
1801--as Richard, a crowded audience had collected about the doors,
to welcome him, as early as four o'clock. At that hour no one could
tell where he was, and a bill was issued, stating that it was
apprehended some accident had happened to Mr. Cooke; and the play was
changed to "Lovers' Vows." In five weeks the truant turned up, played
magnificently, and was forgiven.
During his truant time, young Henry Siddons made his first appearance
at Covent Garden. He played Herman in a dull new comedy, "Integrity,"
and Hamlet; but the Charter-house student would have done better if
he had accepted the vocation to which his mother would have called
him--the Church. Henry Siddons acted Alonzo to Cooke's Zanga, Hotspur
to Cooke's Falstaff, and Ford to the other's Sir John, in the "Merry
Wives." Cooke's criticism on his own performance was, that having
acted all the Falstaffs, he had never been able to please himself,
or to come up to his own ideas in any of them. His great failure was
Hamlet, in which even young Siddons excelled him, but a triumph which
compensated for any such failures, and for numerous offences given to
the audience--made victims of his "sudden indispositions"--was found
in Sir Pertinax, in which, even by those who remembered Macklin, he
was held to have fully equalled the great and venerable original.
In the season of 1802, Cooke's indispositions became more frequently
sudden, and lasted longer. On the days of his acting nights, his
manager was accustomed to entertain him, supervise his supply of
liquor, and carry him to the theatre; but George Frederick often
escaped, and could not be traced. In many old characters he sustained
his high reputation, but his Hamlet and Cato only added to that of
Kemble. Perhaps his Peregrine, in "John Bull," of which he was the
original representative, would have been a more finished performance
but for--not the actor, but the author's indiscretion. "We got
'John Bull' from Colman," said Cooke to Dunlap, "act by act, as he
wanted money, but the last act did not come, and Harris refused to
make any further advances. At last necessity drove Colman to make
a finish, and he wrote the fifth act, in one night, on separate
pieces of paper. As he filled one piece after the other, he threw
them on the floor, and, finishing his liquor, went to bed. Harris,
who impatiently expected the _dénouement_ of the play, according
to promise, sent Fawcett to Colman, whom he found in bed. By his
direction Fawcett picked up the scraps, and brought them to the
theatre."
In the season of 1803-4, when Kemble became part proprietor and
acting manager at Covent Garden, he played in several pieces with
Cooke. They were thus brought into direct contrast. Kemble acted
Richmond to Cooke's Richard; Old Norval to his Glenalvon; Rolla to
his Pizarro; Beverley to his Stukely; Horatio to his Sciolto--Charles
Kemble playing Lothario, and Mrs. Siddons, Calista,--such a cast as
the "Fair Penitent" had not had for many years! John Kemble further
played Jaffier to Cooke's Pierre; Antonio to his Shylock; the Duke,
in "Measure for Measure," to his Angelo; Macbeth, with George
Frederick for Macduff; Henry IV. to Cooke's Falstaff; Othello to
his Iago; King John, with Cooke as Hubert, and Charles Kemble as
Faulconbridge--Mrs. Siddons being, of course, the Constance; Kemble
also played Ford to Cooke's Falstaff, and Hamlet to Cooke's Ghost;
and, in a subsequent season, Posthumus to his Iachimo, with some
other parts, which must have recalled the old excitement of the times
of Garrick and Quin, but that audiences were going mad about Master
Betty, to the Rolla of which little and, no doubt, clever gentleman,
George Frederick, needy and careless, was compelled to play Pizarro!
For a few seasons more he kept his ground with difficulty. He did
not play many parts well, it has been said, but those he did play
well, he played better than anybody else. But dissipation marred his
vast powers even in these; and recklessness reduced this genius to
penury. After receiving £400 in banknotes, the proceeds of a benefit
at Manchester, in one of his summer tours, he thrust the whole into
the fire, in order to put himself on a level to fight a man, in a
pothouse row, who had said that Cooke provoked him to battle, only
because he was a rich man, and the other poor!
It is not surprising that prison locks kept such a man from his
duties in the playhouse; but the public always welcomed the prodigal
on his return. When he reappeared at Covent Garden, as Sir Pertinax,
in March 1808, after a long confinement, it was to "the greatest
money-house, one excepted, ever known at that theatre. Never was a
performer received in a more flattering or gratifying manner."
[Illustration: (George F. Cooke)]
But he slipped back into bad habits, was often forgetful of his
parts, and was sometimes speechless; yet he was generally able to
keep up the Scottish dialect, if he could speak at all, and his part
require it. Once, when playing Sir Archy Macsarcasm, he forgot his
name, called himself _Sir Pertinax Macsycophant_, and was corrected
by a purist in the gallery. Cooke looked up, and happily enough
remarked, "_Eet's aw ane blude_!"
He was hardly less happy, when, for some offence given by him, on
the stage, at Liverpool, he was called on to offer an apology to the
audience. Liverpool merchants had much fattened, then, by a fortunate
pushing of the trade in human flesh. "Apology! from George Frederick
Cooke!" he cried; "take it from this remark: There's not a brick in
your infernal town which is not cemented by the blood of a slave!"
The American Cooper found him in the lowest of the slums of
Liverpool, and tempted, or kidnapped him to America, whence this
compound of genius and blackguard never returned. On one of his
early appearances, in New York, he is said, being elated, to have
refused to act till the orchestra had played "God Save the King;"
and then he insisted, with tipsy gravity, that the audience should
be "upstanding." In seventeen nights following the 21st of November
1810, when he first appeared in New York, as Richard, the treasury
was the richer by twenty-one thousand five hundred and seventy-eight
dollars. He felt and expressed, however, such a contempt for the
Yankee character, that New York soon deserted him, and Philadelphia
paid him little or no homage. Once he was informed that Mr. Madison
was coming from Washington, expressly to see him in a favourite
character.
"Then, if he does, I'll be ---- if I play before him. What, I, George
Frederick Cooke, who have acted before the Majesty of Britain, play
before your Yankee President! No! I'll go forward to the audience,
and I'll say, Ladies and gentlemen,--
"The King of the Yankee-doodles has come to see me act; _me_, George
Frederick Cooke, who have stood before my royal master, George III.,
and received his imperial approbation ... it is degradation enough to
play before rebels; but I'll not go on for the amusement of a king of
rebels, the contemptible King of the Yankee-doodles!"
From among the "Yankee-doodles" Cooke found, however, a lady with
the old dramatic name of Behn, who became his second wife; but his
condition was little improved thereby. Dr. Francis, in his _Old New
York_, gives the following picture of him at this time:--
"After one of those catastrophes to which I have alluded, I paid
him a visit at early afternoon, the better to secure his attendance
at the theatre. He was seated at his table, with many decanters,
all exhausted, save two or three appropriated for candlesticks, the
lights in full blaze. He had not rested for some thirty hours or
more. With much ado, aided by Price the manager, he was persuaded
to enter the carriage waiting at the door to take him to the
playhouse. It was a stormy night. He repaired to the green-room,
and was soon ready. Price saw he was the worse from excess, but the
public were not to be disappointed. 'Let him,' says the manager,
'only get before the lights and the receipts are secure.' Within
the wonted time Cooke entered on his part, the Duke of Gloster. The
public were unanimous in their decision, that he never performed
with greater satisfaction. As he left the house he whispered, 'Have
I not pleased the Yankee-doodles?' Hardly twenty-four hours after
this memorable night, he scattered some 400 dollars among the needy
and the solicitous, and took refreshment in a sound sleep. A striking
peculiarity often marked the conduct of Cooke: he was the most
indifferent of mortals to the results which might be attendant on his
folly and his recklessness. When his society was solicited by the
highest in literature and the arts, he might determine to while away
a limited leisure among the illiterate and the vulgar, and yet none
was so fastidious in the demands of courtesy. When the painter Stuart
was engaged with the delineation of his noble features, he chose
to select those hours for sleeping; yet the great artist triumphed
and satisfied his liberal patron, Price. Stuart proved a match for
him, by occasionally raising the lid of his eye. On the night of his
benefit, the most memorable of his career in New York, with a house
crowded to suffocation, he abused public confidence, and had nothing
to say but that Cato had full right to take liberty with his senate."
In this strange being, there are two phases of character that are
beyond ordinary singularity. The first was his "mental intoxication,"
of which he thus speaks in one of his journals: "To use a strange
expression, I am sometimes in a kind of mental intoxication; some,
I believe, would call it insanity. I believe it is allied to it. I
then can imagine myself in strange situations and strange places.
This humour, whatever it is, comes uninvited, but it is nevertheless
easily dispelled,--at least, generally so. When it _cannot_ be
dispelled, it must, of course, become madness." Here was a decided
perception of the way he might be going,--from physical, through
mental, intoxication, to the madhouse!
His common sense is another phase in the character of this great
actor, who manifested so little for his own profit. He was the
guardian of female morals against the perils of contemporary
literature! "In my humble opinion," he says, "a licencer is as
necessary for a circulating library, as for dramatic productions
intended for representation; especially when it is considered how
young people, particularly girls, often procure, and sometimes in
a secret manner, books of so evil a tendency, that not only their
time is most shamefully wasted, but their morals and manners tainted
and warped for the remainder of their lives. I am firmly of opinion
that many females owe the loss of reputation to the pernicious
publications too often found in those dangerous seminaries."
Cooke may be said to have been dying, from the day he landed in the,
then, United States. His vigorous constitution only slowly gave way.
It was difficult for him to destroy that; for in occasional rests he
gave it, when he sat down to write on religion, philosophy, ideas
for improving society, and diatribes against drinking, in his diary,
his constitution recovered all its vigour, and started refreshed
for a new struggle against drunkenness and death. The former,
however, gave it a mortal fall, in July 1812, when Death grasped
his victim, for ever. Cooke was taken ill, while playing Sir Giles
Overreach, at Boston, on the 31st of the above month.[77] He went
home, irrecoverably stricken, met his fate with decency, and calmly
breathed his last in the following September, in full possession of
his mental faculties to the supreme moment.
He was buried in the "strangers' vault," of St. Paul's Church, New
York, with much respectful ceremony, on the part of friends who
admired his genius and mutilated his body, as I shall presently show.
Meanwhile, let me record here, that Cooke was of the middle size,
strongly and stoutly built, with a face capable of every expression,
and an eye which was as grand an interpreter of the poets, as the
tongue. He was free from gesticulation and all trickery, but he
lacked the grace and refinement of less accomplished actors. In
soliloquies, he recognised no audience; and his hearers seemed to
detect his thoughts by some other process than listening to his
words.
Kemble excelled Cooke in nobleness of presence, but Cooke surpassed
the other in power and compass of voice, which was sometimes as harsh
as Kemble's; and indeed I may say _the_ Kemble voice was invariably
feeble. In statuesque parts, and in picturesque characters,--in the
Roman Coriolanus, and in Hamlet the Dane,--Kemble's scholarly and
artistic feeling gave him the precedence; but in Iago, and especially
in Richard, Cooke has been adjudged very superior in voice,
expression, and style; "his manner being more quick, abrupt, and
impetuous, and his attitudes better, as having less the appearance
of study." Off the stage, during the progress of a play, he did not,
like Betterton, preserve the character he was acting; nor like Young,
tell gay stories, and even sing gay songs; but he loved to have the
strictest order and decorum,--he, the most drunken player that had
glorified the stage, since the days of George Powell! Could he have
carried into real life the scrupulousness which, at one time, he
carried into the mimicry of it, he would have been a better actor and
a better man.
When Edmund Kean was in America, Bishop Hobart gave permission for
the removal of Cooke's body, from the "strangers' vault," to the
public burial-ground of the parish, where Kean was about to erect
a monument to the memory of his ill-fated predecessor. On that
occasion, "tears fell from Kean's eyes in abundance," says Dr.
Francis; but those eyes would have flashed lightning, had Kean been
aware that there was a headless trunk beneath the monument; and that,
whoever may have been the savage who mutilated the body and stole
the head,--that head was in the possession of Dr. Francis! To what
purposes it has been turned, this gentleman may tell in his own words.
"A theatrical benefit had been announced at the Park, and 'Hamlet,'
the play. A subordinate of the theatre hurried at a late hour to
my office, for a skull. I was compelled to loan the head of my
old friend, George Frederick Cooke. 'Alas, poor Yorick!' It was
returned in the morning; but on the ensuing evening, at a meeting
of the Cooper Club, the circumstance becoming known to several of
the members, and a general desire being expressed to investigate,
phrenologically, the head of the great tragedian, the article was
again released from its privacy, when Daniel Webster, Henry Wheaton,
and many others who enriched the meeting of that night, applied the
principles of craniological science to the interesting specimen
before them.... Cooper felt as a coadjutor of Albinus, and Cooke
enacted a great part that night." If Cooke could have spoken his
great part, he would assuredly have added something strong to his
comments on what he used to call the civilisation of Yankee-doodle.
The monument, erected by Edmund Kean, consists of a pedestal,
surmounted by an urn, with this inscription:--"Erected to the memory
of George Frederick Cooke, by Edmund Kean, of the Theatre Royal,
Drury Lane, 1821;" and, beneath, this not very choice, nor very
accurate distich:--
"Three kingdoms claim his birth.
Both hemispheres pronounce his worth!"
And below this superscription lies all that has not been stolen of
what was mortal of one among the greatest and the least of British
actors.
During his career, flourished and passed into private life a boy, who
still survives, rich with the fortune rapidly acquired in those old
playgoing days,--Master Betty.[78]
[Illustration: Mr. Moody as Simon.]
FOOTNOTES:
[74] His appearance as Lucia was after his becoming bound to a
printer, and his crying is apocryphal.
[75] Should be 31st October 1800.
[76] Should be fourteen times. See note in vol. ii. page 82.
[77] Cooke was playing at Providence, with the Boston company. Dunlap
does not say, or imply, that he was taken ill specially on that
night, which finished his engagement at Providence.
[78] Died 24th August 1874, aged eighty-two.
[Illustration: MASTER BETTY.]