Curiosities of Impecuniosity Part 11

"That's all right; 4 makes 99 10_s._ and 10_s._--stop, let's count them--count after your own father, as the saying is--four and five's nine, and three fourpenny pieces; all right. Stop--one's a threepenny. Got a penny, or a post-office stamp? Never mind, I won't be hard upon you for the penny. There you are, all comfortable. Good evening."

Mathews paid away the cheque "as money." Two days afterwards he got an indignant note, stating that the cheque was dishonoured. Out of temper, Mathews sent for the discounter, and he appeared with alacrity.

"Not paid! Gribble's cheque not paid--some mistake--it's as good as the Bank. Here, give it to me, I'll get it for you in five minutes. How long shall you be here?"

"An hour."

"I'll be back in twenty minutes."

Mathews saw no more of the discounter or the cheque, the scoundrel entirely disappearing with the only proof in his pocket. But sometimes biters were bit, for an entry in one of the actor's diaries, dated January 1843, states, "called on Lawrence Levy to pay him 30, but borrowed 20 of him instead."

On one occasion a very gentlemanly man waited on Mathews.

"I'm sorry to trouble you," he quietly said, "but I've a duty to perform, and I am sure you are too much a man of the world to quarrel with me. I have a writ against you for a hundred pounds, and must request immediate payment, or the pleasure of your company elsewhere."

"Quite impossible," said Mathews, "at this moment to meet it; but I will consult with my treasurer, and see what can be done."

"Excuse me," said the sheriff's officer, "but I cannot lose sight of you; and whatever is to be done, must be done here. Come, pay the money, and there's an end."

"It can't be done," said Mathews.

"Why didn't you get him to renew the bill?" replied the other.

"He wouldn't renew it; nothing would induce him."

"Nonsense," said he, "accept this bill for the same amount, and put your own time for payment, and I undertake to get you his receipt."

"Agreed," answered the actor, accepting the bill, which, without another word the sheriff's officer took up, threw down the receipt, and walked towards the door.

"Stop," said Mathews, "you said you couldn't leave me without the money.

What does all this mean?"

"It means that I paid your debt as I knew you couldn't, and now you owe it me instead. Be punctual, and I'll do as much again."

The sheriff's officer just described was not the only one who befriended the luckless manager. A kindred functionary of the law, having been struck by the cruel conduct of a vindictive tradesman, actually paying the bill himself, and receiving the money back from Mathews in instalments of ten pounds.

Instances grave and gay might be multiplied of the actor's unfortunate position and the financial entanglements that, like heavy fetters, constrained him at every step. He said that the results of the Covent Garden speculation were for the first season _sowing_, for the second _hoeing_, and for the third _owing_. On his debts being called in, to his dismay he found that including rent the responsibilities amounted to the sum of 30,000. Mathews when he learned the fact was aghast, and his only remedy was the Insolvent Debtors' Court. Things were made easy for him, and he pa.s.sed a week in an elegantly fitted chamber above the Porters'

Lodge of the Queen's Bench Prison. He was not unacquainted with that prison, having had residence there soon after his first notorious American trip, and during that imprisonment he took advantage of the old rules pertaining to the liberties of the Bench, and played an engagement at the Surrey Theatre. The theatre being a few yards beyond the boundaries of the Queen's Bench liberties, Davidge, the Surrey lessee, and Cross, lessee of the Surrey Zoological Gardens, gave extra bail to enable Charles Mathews to have the day rule extended through the evening. A tipstaff was stationed at his dressing-room door and at each wing of the stage, to watch the actor, who, though out of the Bench, was in custody. When absolutely free from his Covent Garden liabilities he with a sense of honour that did him credit gave securities for what he considered purely personal debts, making himself still liable to the amount of about 4000, antic.i.p.ating that the creditors would treat him with consideration and thoughtfulness. He was mistaken, and for years he still had the millstone round his neck. During his lesseeship of the Lyceum he was in the same straits as he was in the Old Covent Garden days. Acc.u.mulated interest, law expenses for raising money, grew year after year and Mathews was still in his miserable plight of impecuniosity. At length in July 1856, while about to play at the Preston Theatre, he was arrested and imprisoned in Lancaster Gaol. He chafed under the incarceration, and he has left a touching account of the misery he felt on being separated from his wife, and of the melancholy influences of his prison-house. His imprisonment created much gossip, and ere he left "durance vile" a somewhat singular recognition of his circ.u.mstances took place. His fellow-prisoners in Lancaster Gaol communicated with him as follows:

Letter addressed to Charles J. Mathews, in Lancaster Castle, July 1856:--

"ILl.u.s.tRIOUS SIR,

"Permit us to address you as a brother-debtor surrounded by oppressive circ.u.mstances akin to our own, which are rendered the more striking to one who like yourself has acquired a world-wide reputation as an artist and elocutionist; and whose uniform kindness and manly conduct has excited the admiration of those who now respectfully, through this medium, tender you what they consider to be a just meed of approbation.

"With the newspaper gossip relative to your alleged state of affairs, which has been extensively circulated we have nothing to do and we know not whether you are fiercely opposed or otherwise; we seek not to elicit any facts connected with your position, but we beg most earnestly and respectfully to compa.s.sionate you as one of the most ingenious amongst our common manhood; and having for the most part felt the pangs attendant upon the day and hour of tribulation, allow us to express the strength of our sympathetic feeling by stating that we heartily wish you a signal, complete, and honourable release from that load of embarra.s.sment which so unhappily depresses us all, but which, by reason of your refined sensibility must necessarily press with great force upon your mental organization; and this feeling compels us to say, 'Go on and conquer.'

"Signed on behalf of the members of the Long Room,

"JOHN HARRIDGE, "_Chairman_."

Mathews thought that there was an odd flavour of Mr. Micawber about the foregoing epistle. Subsequently he did what he should have done years before, sought freedom from his liabilities under legal protection. Many droll scenes took place when the comedian was under Bankruptcy examination. On one occasion Mr. Commissioner Law asked him why he had kept a brougham, instead of taking a cab to and fro between his residence and the theatre; and the lawyer was told thereupon by the debtor, that the brougham was hired from the purest motives of economy.

"In a word," said Mathews, "I really could not afford the price of cabs."

"I should have thought that cabs were more economical than a private carriage," replied Law.

"Not at all," said Mathews. "Cabs take ready money, a precious article, to be carefully treasured and only parted with under absolute necessity, but a brougham can always be hired on credit."

Mathews, free of his liabilities, became prosperous, and his latter days were marked by success and happiness.

Of his attractiveness on the stage it is almost superfluous to speak; it may be said with truth, "We shall not look upon his like again;" for though not a great actor, he was unapproachable in those light comedy parts that require dash and go. I remember seeing him play Dazzle in 'London a.s.surance,' at Melbourne, exactly thirty years, to the very day, from the date of its first performance; and though he was the oldest member of the company on the stage that night, he was in manner and appearance by far the youngest.

CHAPTER VII.

IMPECUNIOSITY OF ARTISTS.

If there be two things on earth that may be said to have a more direct affinity for each other than aught else, those two things are Painting and Poverty. The artistic records of the past literally teem with sorrowful instances of their close relationship; and unfortunately the alliterative connection is by no means unknown in the present day.

Ruskin, who upholds contempt for poverty as a characteristic of our age which is both "just and wholesome," complains that we starve our great men for the first half of their lives by way of revenge, because they quarrel with us, and adds,--

"Precisely in the degree in which any painter possesses original genius, is at present the increase of moral certainty that during his early years he will have a hard battle to fight: and that just at the time when his conceptions ought to be full and happy, his temper gentle, and his hopes enthusiastic--just at that most critical period, his heart is full of anxieties and household cares: he is chilled by disappointments, and vexed by injustice, he becomes obstinate in his errors, no less than in his virtues, and the arrows of his aim are blunted, as the reeds of his trust are broken.... You may be fed with the fruit and fulness of his old age, but you were as the nipping blight in his blossoming, and your praise is only as the warm winds of autumn to the dying branches.... You feed him in his tender youth with ashes and dishonour: and then you come to him, obsequious but too late, with your sharp laurel crown, the dew all dried from off its leaves: and you thrust it into his languid hand, and he looks at you wistfully. What shall he do with it? What can he do, but go and lay it on his mother's grave."

In another part of the same work from which I have quoted, he says, with exquisite pathos,--

"You cannot consider, for you cannot conceive, the sickness of heart with which a young painter of deep feeling toils through his first obscurity--his sense of the strong voice within him which you will not hear, his vain, fond, wondering witness to the things you will not see--his far-away perception of things that he could accomplish if he had but peace and time, all unapproachable and vanishing from him, because no one will leave him peace or grant him time: all his friends falling back from him: those whom he would most reverently obey rebuking and paralyzing him: and last and worst of all, those who believe in him most faithfully, suffering by him the most bitterly.

The wife's eyes, in their sweet ambition, shining brighter as the cheek wastes away: and the little lips at his side parched and pale, which one day, he knows, although he may never see it, will quiver so proudly when they name his name, calling him 'Our father.'"

But if these pictures are now drawn from artist life, what must that life have been fifty or a hundred years ago? Art was always a plant of slow growth in England, and the great masters who were cherished in the Old World trade guilds, and flourished so grandly in Italy, Flanders, and Holland, had not a single native representative in this country. And when at last the land that had so long since produced a Shakespeare, could boast its Hogarth, native artists were still few and far between, and their chief means of living was found in painting signs. Neglected and scornfully humiliated by all cla.s.ses, isolated from refined society--such as it was--they suffered the extremes of poverty, with cheerful bravery, endured with a light heart, paid back scorn with scorn, and were linked together by sympathy and pity in such a bond of brotherly fellowship as is now utterly unknown. The taverns were their clubs, bread and cheese their fare: and if the rent of their garret homes were not forthcoming, they slept in the streets, and, careless Bohemians that they were, laughed together over the strangeness, or the dangers, of their nocturnal exposures. That their lives often found tragic endings may readily be known. Many a terrible story is extant of their heart-sickness and despair, of last awful struggles silently, heroically continued against overwhelming odds, and of lingering sufferings endured with martyr-like patience.

The earliest exhibitions of pictures--they were mainly street signs and portraits--were organized by the artists themselves for charitable purposes, as may be seen by the catalogue of one opened in Spring Gardens, in 1761; which contained a design by Samuel Wale, one of the founders of the Royal Academy, engraved by Charles Grignion, representing "The genius of painting, sculpture, and architecture relieving the distressed;" and these exhibitions were first established in the reign of George II.

The Samuel Wale here mentioned, afterwards R.A., was himself a sign-painter; and for many years a whole-length figure of Shakespeare, painted by him in the zenith of his powers, figured as the sign of a public-house at the north-west corner of Little Russell Street, in Drury Lane: while Charles Grignion, when an old man, suffered the then usual fate of artists old and young; and an appeal made for him by his brethren in 1808, now before me, speaks of him in his ninetieth year in the deepest distress, unable to work, with a wife entirely, and a nearly blind daughter partially, dependent upon him for support, saying, "Behold, reader, the united claims of virtue, old age, and professional merit, and filial and parental suffering." It also expressed a not unreasonable hope that "the claims of, a man who had done so much, and done so well, would be speedily attended to." Grignion died four years afterwards, his latest days made smooth by the personal contributions of a few artists and some of their patrons, so that the general appeal quoted from above seems to have fallen flatly; as well it might when the public regarded English artists with contempt, and their brethren were so meanly, miserably poor.

The first native artist whose fame extended beyond his birthplace was William Hogarth; but poverty, the bitter badge of all his tribe, he too wore. His father, a north-country schoolmaster, settled in London as an author and press-reader in the Old Bailey, where on the 10th November, 1697, the great painter to be was born. Everybody knows how the child's taste for art found its earliest expression in the eagerness with which he watched some poor artist at his work, and not less well known is the fact that he was the apprentice of a "silver plate engraver," and afterwards devoted himself to engraving on copper coats of arms and ornamental headings for shop bills, creeping upwards from such "small beginnings" to more ambitious efforts, until at last he made a hit by ill.u.s.trating 'Hudibras,' the commission for which, it is said, he owed to that successful caricature of his landlady to which I have previously referred.

There were then in all London but two print-shops, and they dealt princ.i.p.ally in foreign productions; so that it can be easily understood how, to eke out the shortcomings of his graver, Hogarth taught himself painting. Speaking long afterwards of this portion of his career, he said, "I could do little more than maintain myself till I was near thirty;" and added, "I remember the time when I have gone moping into the city with scarce a shilling, but as soon as I had obtained ten guineas there for a plate, I have returned home, put on my sword, and sallied forth again, with all the confidence of a man who had thousands in his pocket."

At another time he sold to the print-seller, W. Bowles, some plates he had just finished, by weight at half-a-crown a pound avoirdupois; but even when Hogarth was a famous man, and, compared with his former state, a prosperous one, we find such pictures as "The Harlot's Progress" and "The Rake's Progress" selling at from fourteen to twenty-two guineas each picture, and "The Strolling Players" bought by Francis Beckford, Esq., for 27 6_s._: but as he afterwards complained of that price as much too high, Hogarth took it back, and resold it for the same amount. "Marriage a la Mode," after the artist had published engravings from the set of six paintings so called, realised 19 6_s._ In 1797 they were sold for 1381, and now form part of our national collection through the bequest of Mr.

Angerstein. Another of his famous works, "March of the Guards to Finchley," was more satisfactorily disposed of by lottery, and it was this fact that Hogarth referred to when he said, "A lottery is the only chance a living painter has of being paid for his time." From that lottery sprang our modern art unions. It was of this picture, in a spirit of bitterness provoked by the poverty of his dear friend, its painter, that David Garrick wrote in a letter to Henry Fielding:--

"Its first and great fault is its being too new, and having too great a resemblance to the objects it represents; if this appears a paradox, you ought to take particular care in confessing it. This picture has too much of the l.u.s.tre, of that despicable freshness which we discover in nature, and which is never seen in the cabinets of the curious.

Time has not obscured it with that venerable smoke, that sacred cloud which will one day conceal it from the profane eye of the vulgar, so that its beauties may only be seen by those who are initiated into the mysteries of art: these are almost its only faults."

To the last Hogarth seems to have been a needy, struggling man. That unfrocked clergyman and satirical poet, Churchill, after quarrelling with the painter "over a rubber of shilling whist," at the Bedford Arms, near Covent Garden, attacked him with the bitterest scorn and hatred. Hogarth was then growing old and feeble, his health was bad, and he was melancholy and depressed by the fact that Sir Robert Grosvenor, having commissioned him to paint a picture ("Sigismunda"), had refused to pay for it when finished. At this juncture the mistress of Churchill told the poet that he had given Hogarth his death-blow; whereupon he unfeelingly remarked, "How sweet is flattery from the woman we love," adding, "He has broken into the pale of my private life, and has set the example of illiberality, _which I wanted_, and as he is dying from the effects of my former chastis.e.m.e.nt I will hasten his death by writing his elegy." The painter's death followed soon after, and all he had to leave his wife were his unsold plates, the copyrights of which were secured to her for twenty years by an Act of Parliament.