The Town Part 24

"There were people called _Anglers_, from the nature of their method of depredating, which was thus.--They had a rod or stick, with an iron hook affixed: this they introduced through a window, or any other aperture, where plunder might be procured, and helped themselves at pleasure; the day was occupied by them in the character of beggars, when they made their observations for the angling of the night.

"_Wild Rogues_ were the offspring of thieves and beggars, who received the rudiments of the art even before they left their mothers' backs: "To go into churches and great crowds, and to _nim_ golden b.u.t.tons off men's cloaks; and being very little are shown how to creep into cellar windows, or other small entrances, and in the night to convey out thereat whatever they can find to the thievish receivers, who wait without for that purpose; and sometimes do open the door to let in such who have designed to rob the house; if taken, the tenderness of their age makes an apology or an excuse for their fault, and so are let alone to be hanged at riper years.'

"_Palliards_ or _Clapperdogeons_, were those women who sat and reclined in the streets, with their own borrowed or stolen children hanging about them, crying through cold, pinching, or real disease, who begged relief as widows, and, in the name of their fatherless children, gaining by this artifice, 'a great deal of money, whilst her comrogue lies begging in the fields, with climes or artificial sores.' The way they commonly take to make them is by sperewort or a.r.s.enic, which will draw blisters; or they take unslacked lime and soap, mingled with the rust of old iron: these being well tempered together, and spread thick upon two pieces of leather, they apply to the leg, binding it thereunto very hard, which in a very little time would fret the skin so that the flesh would appear all raw, &c. &c.

"_Fraters_ were impostors who went through the country with forged patents for briefs, and thus diverted charity from its proper direction.

"_Abram men_ were fellows whose occupations seem to have been forgotten. They are described in the 'Canting Academy' in these words:--'Abram men are otherwise called Tom of Bedlams; they are very strangely and antickly garbed, with several coloured ribands or tape in their hats, it may be instead of a feather, a fox tail hanging down, a long stick with ribands streaming, and the like; yet for all their seeming madness they have wit enough to steal as they go.'[220]

"The _Whip-Jacks_ have left us a specimen of their fraternity.

They were counterfeit mariners, whose conversations were plentifully embellished with sea-terms, and falsehoods of their danger in the exercise of their profession. Instead of securing their arms and legs close to their bodies, and wrapping them in bandages (as the modern _whip-jack_ is in the habit of doing, to excite compa.s.sion for the loss of limbs and severe wounds), the _ancients_ merely pretended they had lost their all by shipwreck, and were reduced to beg their way to a sea-port, if in the country; or to some remote one, if in London.

"_Mumpers._--The persons thus termed are described as being of both s.e.xes: they were not solicitors for food, but money and cloathes. 'The male mumper, in the times of the late usurpation, was clothed in an old torn ca.s.sock, begirt with a girdle, with a black cap, and a white one peeping out underneath.' With a formal and studied countenance he stole up to a gentleman, and whispered him softly in the ear, that he was a poor sequestered parson, with a wife and many children.

At other times, they would a.s.sume the habit of a decayed gentleman, and beg as if they had been ruined by their attachment to the royal cause. Sometimes the mumper appeared with an ap.r.o.n before him, and a cap on his head, and begs in the nature of a broken tradesman, who, having been a long time sick, hath spent all his remaining stock, and so weak he cannot work! The females of this cla.s.s of miscreants generally attacked the ladies, and in a manner suited to make an impression on their finer feelings.

"_Domerars_ are such as counterfeit themselves dumb, and have a notable art to roll their tongues up into the roof of their mouth, that you would verily believe their tongues were cut out; and, to make you have a stronger belief thereof, they will gape and show you where it was done, clapping in a sharp stick, and, touching the tongue, make it bleed--and then the ignorant dispute it no further.'

"_Patricos_ are the strolling priests: every hedge is their parish, and every wandering rogue their parishioner. The service, he saith, is the marrying of couples, without the Gospel, or Book of Common Prayer, the solemnity whereof is thus: the parties to be married find out a dead horse, or any other beast, and standing the one on the one side and the other on the other, the patrico bids them to live together till death them part; and, so shaking hands, the wedding is ended.'"[221]

[Ill.u.s.tration: OLD THEATRE IN PORTUGAL STREET.]

On the southern side of Lincoln's Inn Fields, at the back of Portugal Row, is Portugal Street, formerly containing a theatre, as celebrated as Covent Garden or Drury Lane is now. This was the Duke's Theatre, so called from the Duke of York, afterwards James II., who, at the Restoration, patronised one of the princ.i.p.al companies of players, as his brother Charles did the other. The latter was the Drury Lane company. Readers of theatrical history are generally led to conclude that there was only one theatre in the Lincoln's Inn quarter; but this is a mistake. There were at least two successive houses in two different places, though usually confounded under the t.i.tle of "the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields." The first was in Gibbon's tennis-court, in Vere Street, Clare Market, where the actors who had played at the Red Bull opened their performances in the year of the Restoration, under the direction of Killigrew, and with the t.i.tle of King's Company. These in 1663 removed to Drury Lane. The Duke's, or Sir William Davenant's company, removed in 1662 from Salisbury Court (see Fleet Street) to a new theatre "in Portugal Row," says Malone, "_near_ Lincoln's Inn Fields."[222] Malone is a correct inquirer: so that he makes us doubt whether the name of Portugal Row did not formerly belong to Portugal Street. The latter is certainly meant, or he would describe it as _in_ and not _near_ the Fields. Davenant's company performed here till 1671, when they quitted it to return to the renovated theatre in Salisbury Court, under the management of his son, Charles Davenant (the father being dead), and the famous Betterton, who had been Sir William's first actor. The two companies afterwards came together at Drury Lane, but again fell apart; and in 1695 the Duke's company (if its altered composition could still warrant the name), with Betterton remaining at its head, and Congreve for a partner, again opened "the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields,"

which was rebuilt for the purpose, and is described as being in "the Tennis-court." Was this the tennis-court theatre in Vere Street? or were there two tennis-courts, one in Vere Street, and one in Lincoln's Inn Fields? We confess ourselves, after a diligent examination, unable to determine. At all events, the latest theatre of which we hear in Lincoln's Inn Fields, was not in Vere Street. It stood in Portugal Street, on the east end of the present burial ground, just at the back of Surgeons' College, and was subsequently the china warehouse of Messrs. Spode and Copeland.[223] This theatre, which was built of red brick, and had a front facing the market, is the one generally meant by the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. It finally became celebrated for the harlequinades of Rich; but, on his removal to Covent Garden, was deserted, and, after a short re-opening by Gifford from Goodman's Fields, finally ceased to be a theatre about the year 1737. Since that period Covent Garden and Drury Lane playhouses have had this part of the town to themselves.

It is conjectured, that the first appearance of an actress on the English stage, to the scandal of the Puritans, and with many apologies for the "indecorum" of giving up the performances of female characters by boys, took place in the theatre in Vere Street, on Sat.u.r.day, Dec.

8, 1660. The part first performed was certainly that of Desdemona; a very fit one to introduce the claims of the s.e.x.[224]

Mr. Malone has given us the prologue written for this occasion by Thomas Jordan; which, as it shows the "sensation" that was made, sets us in a lively manner in the situation of the spectators, and gives a curious account of some of the male actors of gentle womanhood, we shall here repeat. It is ent.i.tled "A Prologue, to introduce the first Woman that came to act on the Stage, in the Tragedy called the Moor of Venice:"

"I came unknown to any of the rest, To tell the news; I saw the lady drest: The woman plays to-day; mistake me not, No man in gown, or page in petticoat: A woman to my knowledge, yet I can't, If I should die, make affidavit on't.

Do you not twitter, gentlemen? I know You will be censuring: do it fairly, though; 'Tis possible a virtuous woman may Abhor all sorts of looseness, and yet play; Play on the stage--where all eyes are upon her: Shall we count that a crime France counts an honour?

In other kingdoms husbands safely trust 'em; The difference lies only in the custom.

And let it be our custom, I advise; I'm sure this custom's better than th' excise, And may procure _us_ custom: hearts of flint Will melt in pa.s.sion, when a woman's in't.

But, gentlemen, you that as judges sit In the Star-chamber of the house--the pit, Have modest thoughts of her; pray, do not run To give her visits when the play is done, With '_d.a.m.n me, your most humble servant, lady_;'

She knows these things as well as you, it may be; Not a bit there, dear gallants, she doth know Her own deserts,--and your temptations too.

But to the point:--in this reforming age We have intents to civilize the stage.

Our women are defective, and so sized, You'd think they were some of the guard disguised; For to speak truth, men act, that are between Forty and fifty, wenches of fifteen; With bone so large, and nerve so incompliant, When you call Desdemona, enter giant.

We shall purge everything that is unclean, Lascivious, scurrilous, impious, or obscene; And when we've put all things in this fair way, Barebones himself may come to see a play."[225]

The epilogue, "which consists of but twelve lines, is in the same strain of apology."

"And how do you like her; Come, what is't ye drive at?

She's the same thing in public as in private, As far from being what you call a wh.o.r.e, As Desdemona injured by the Moor; Then he that censures her in such a case, Hath a soul blacker than Oth.e.l.lo's face.

But, ladies, what think _you_? for if you tax Her freedom with dishonour to your s.e.x, She means to act no more, and this shall be No other play, but her own tragedy.

She will submit to none but your commands, And take commission only from your hands."[226]

From the nature of this epilogue, and the permission accorded by the ladies, the women actors appear to have met with all the success they could wish; yet a prologue to the second part of Davenant's "Siege of Rhodes," acted in April, 1662, shows us that the matter was still considered a delicate one upwards of a year afterwards.

"Hope little from our poet's withered wit, From infant players scarce grown puppets yet; Hope from our women less, whose bashful fear Wondered to see me dare to enter here: Each took her leave, and wished my danger past, And though I came back safe and undisgraced, Yet when they spy the wits here, then I doubt No amazon can make them venture out, Though I advised them not to fear you much, For I presume not half of you are such."[227]

It was in the Theatre at Vere Street that Pepys first saw a woman on the stage.[228] One of the earliest female performers mentioned by him was an actress whose name is not ascertained, but who attained an unfortunate celebrity in the part of Roxana in the "Siege of Rhodes."

She was seduced by Aubery de Vere, the last Earl of Oxford of that name, under the guise of a private marriage--a species of villany which made a great figure in works of fiction up to a late period. The story is "got up" in detail by Madame Dunois, in her "History of the Court of Charles II.;"[229] but it is told with more brevity in Grammont; and as the latter, though apocryphal enough, pretends to say nothing on the subject in which he is not borne out by other writers, his lively account may be laid before the reader.

"The Earl of Oxford," says one of his heroines, "fell in love with a handsome, graceful actress, belonging to the Duke's theatre, who performed to perfection, particularly the part of Roxana in a very fashionable new play; insomuch that she ever after retained that name. This creature being both very virtuous and very modest, or, if you please, wonderfully obstinate, proudly rejected the presents and addresses of the Earl of Oxford. The resistance inflamed his pa.s.sion; he had recourse to invectives and even spells; but all in vain. This disappointment had such an effect upon him, that he could neither eat nor drink; this did not signify to him; but his pa.s.sion at length became so violent, that he could neither play nor smoke. In this extremity, Love had recourse to Hymen; the Earl of Oxford, one of the first peers of the realm, is, you know, a very handsome man: he is of the order of the Garter, which greatly adds to an air naturally n.o.ble. In short, from his outward appearance, you would suppose he was really possessed of some sense; but as soon as ever you hear him speak, you are perfectly convinced to the contrary. This pa.s.sionate lover presented her with a promise of marriage, in due form, signed with his own hand; she would not, however, rely upon this; but the next day she thought there could be no danger, when the Earl himself came to her lodgings attended by a clergyman, and another man for a witness; the marriage was accordingly solemnized with all due ceremonies, in the presence of one of her fellow-players, who attended as a witness on her part. You will suppose, perhaps, that the new countess had nothing to do but to appear at court according to her rank, and to display the earl's arms upon her carriage. This was far from being the case. When examination was made concerning the marriage, it was found to be a mere deception: it appeared that the pretended priest was one of my lord's trumpeters, and the witness his kettle-drummer. The parson and his companion never appeared after the ceremony was over; and as for the other witness, he endeavoured to persuade her that the Sultana Roxana might have supposed, in some part or other of a play, that she was really married. It was all to no purpose that the poor creature claimed the protection of the laws of G.o.d and man; both which were violated and abused, as well as herself, by this infamous imposition: in vain did she throw herself at the king's feet to demand justice; she had only to rise up again without redress; and happy might she think herself to receive an annuity of one thousand crowns, and to resume the name of Roxana, instead of Countess of Oxford."[230]

This scoundrel Earl (whose alleged want of sense is extremely probable, and was his best excuse, as well as the worst thing to say for the lady), died full of years and honours, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

In 1664, Mr. Pepys witnessed a scene in the theatre in Portugal Street, which shows the extremity to which the speculation of managers and the curiosity of the British public can go. This was no other than the appearance of an imposter, called the German Princess, in the part of her own character, after having been tried for it at the Old Bailey. She was tried for bigamy, and acquitted; but she had inveigled a young citizen into marriage under pretence of being a German Princess, the citizen pretending at the same time to be a n.o.bleman.

The impudence of the thing was completed by the badness of her performance. Granger, however, who appears to have read a vindication of her, which she published, thinks she had great natural abilities.

The following is curious:--4th (Feb. 1666-7).

"Soon as dined," says Pepys, "my wife and I out to the Duke's playhouse, and there saw Heraclius, an excellent play, to my extraordinary content; and the more from the house being very full, and great company; among others Mrs. Stuart,[231] very fine, with her locks done up in puffes, as my wife calls them: and several other great ladies had their hair so, though I do not like it, but my wife do mightily; but it is only because she sees it is the fashion. Here I saw my Lord Rochester[232]

and his lady, Mrs. Mallet, who hath after all this ado married him; and, as I hear some say in the pit, it is a great act of charity, for he hath no estate. But it was pleasant to see how everybody rose up when my Lord John Butler, the Duke of Ormond's son, came into the pit, towards the end of the play, who was a servant to Mrs. Mallett, and now smiled upon her, and she on him."[233]

One little thinks, now-a-days, in turning into Portugal Street, that all the fashionable world, with the wits and poets, once thronged into that poor-looking thoroughfare, with its bailiffs at one end, and its butchers at the other. The difference, however, between beaux and butchers was not so great at that time as it became afterwards; though none arrogated the praise of high breeding more than the fine gentlemen of Charles II. Next year Pepys speaks of a fray at this house between Harry Killigrew and the Duke of Buckingham, in which the latter beat him, and took away his sword. Another time, according to his account, Rochester beat Tom Killigrew, at the Dutch Amba.s.sador's, and in the King's presence. Blows from people of rank do not appear to have been resented as they would be now.

In the following pa.s.sage we have an author's first night before us, and that author the gallant Etherege, with dukes and wits about him in the pit. He makes, however, a very different figure in our eyes from what we commonly conceive of him, for he is unsuccessful and complaining.

"My wife," says Pepys, "being gone before (6th Feb. 1667-8), I to the Duke of York's playhouse, where a new play of Etheridge's, called 'She would if she could;' and, though I was there by two o'clock, there was one thousand people put back that could not have room in the pit; and I at last, because my wife was there, made shift to get into the 18_d._ box, and there saw. But Lord! how full was the house, and how silly the play, there being nothing in the world good in it, and few people pleased in it. The King was there; but I sat mightily behind, and could see but little, and hear not at all. The play being done, I into the pit to look for my wife, it being dark and raining; but could not find her, and so staid, going between the two doors and through the pit, an hour and a half, I think, after the play was done, the people staying there till the rain was over, and to talk one with another. And among the rest here was the Duke of Buckingham to-day openly sat in the pit; and there I found him with my Lord Buckhurst, and Sedley, and Etheridge the poet; the last of whom I did hear mightily find fault with the actors, that they were out of humour and had not their parts perfect, and that Harris did do nothing, nor could so much as sing a catch in it; and so was mightily concerned; while all the rest did through the whole pit blame the play as a silly, dull thing, though there was something very roguish and witty; but the design of the play and end mighty insipid. At last I did find my wife."

The ensuing is a specimen of the manners of one of the fine ladies:-

"5th (May, 1668), Creed and I to the Duke of York's playhouse; and there, coming late, up to the balcony-box, where we find my Lady Castlemaine (the King's mistress) and several great ladies; and there we sat with them, and I saw the 'Impertinents' once more than yesterday! and I for that reason like it, I find, the better too. By Sir Positive At-all I understand is meant Sir Robert Howard. My lady pretty well pleased with it; but here I sat close to her fine woman, Wilson, who indeed is very handsome, but they say with child by the King. I asked, and she told me this was the first time her lady had seen it, I having a mind to say something to her. One thing of familiarity I observed in my Lady Castlemaine; she called to one of her women, another that sat by this, for a little patch off of her face, and put it into her mouth and wetted it, and so clapped it upon her own by the side of her mouth; I suppose she feeling a pimple rising there."[234]

More manners of this gallant reign. Pepys says he went to see a woman with a great bushy beard, "which pleased him mightily."

"Thence to the Duke's playhouse, and saw 'Macbeth.' The King and Court there; and we sat just under them and my Lady Castlemaine, and close to a woman that comes into the pit, a kind of a loose gossip, that pretends to be like her, and is so something. And my wife, by my troth, appeared, I think, as pretty as any of them; I never thought so much before; and so did Talbot and W. Hewer, as they said, I heard, to one another.

The King and Duke of York minded me, and smiled upon me, at the handsome woman near me; but it vexed me to see Moll Davies, in the box over the King and my Lady Castlemaine, look down upon the King and he up to her; and so did my Lady Castlemaine once to see who it was; but when she saw Moll Davies, she looked like fire; which troubled me."[235]

Modes of thinking. Mr. Pepys is of opinion that the "Tempest," which he saw at this house, is an "innocent" play; "no great wit, but yet good above ordinary plays." This appears to have been his general opinion of Shakspeare. That year he says,

"After dinner to the Duke of York's playhouse, and there saw 'Sir Martin Mar-all,' which I have seen so often, and yet am mightily pleased with it, and think it mighty witty, and the fullest of proper matter for mirth that was ever writ; and I do clearly see that they do improve in their acting of it. Here a mighty company of citizens, 'prentices, and others; and it makes me observe, that when I began first to be able to bestow a play on myself, I do not remember that I saw so many by half of the ordinary 'prentices and mean people in the pit, at 2_s._ 6_d._ a piece, as now; I going for several years no higher than the 12_d._ and then the 18_d._ places, though I strained hard to go in them when I did: so much the vanity and prodigality of the age is to be observed in this particular."[236]

What he calls the vanity of the age, was one of the best signs of its advancement. Plays, at the time above mentioned, began as early as they did before the civil wars; and when they were over, people rode out in their coaches to take the air. Our author, when the King visited the theatre, speaks of being there by one o'clock to get a seat. Kynaston, a favourite actor at this house, used to be taken out airing by the ladies, in the dress which he wore as a female. Cibber mentions this particular among others in an entertaining account of Kynaston, whom the ladies do not appear to have spoiled:--

"Though women," he says, "were not admitted to the stage till the return of King Charles, yet it could not be so suddenly supplied with them, but that there was still a necessity, for some time, to put the handsomest young men into petticoats, which Kynaston was then said to have worn with success; particularly in the part of Evadne, in the 'Maid's Tragedy,'

which I have heard him speak of; and which calls to my mind a ridiculous distress that arose from these sort of shifts, which the stage was then put to. The King, coming a little before his usual time to a tragedy, found the actors not ready to begin, when his Majesty, not choosing to have as much patience as his good subjects, sent to them to know the meaning of it; upon which the master of the company came to the box, and rightly judging that the best excuse for their default would be the true one, fairly told his Majesty that the queen was not _shaved_ yet: the King, whose good humour loved to laugh at a jest as well as to make one, accepted the excuse, which served to divert him till the male queen could be effeminated. In a word, Kynaston, at that time, was so beautiful a youth, that the ladies of quality prided themselves in taking him with them in their coaches to Hyde Park in his theatrical habit, after the play; which in those days they might have sufficient time to do, because plays then were used to begin at four o'clock: the hour that people of the same rank are now going to dinner.

Of this truth I had the curiosity to inquire, and had it confirmed from his own mouth, in his advanced age: and, indeed, to the last of him, his handsomeness was very little abated; even at past sixty his teeth were sound, white and even, as one would wish to see in a reigning toast of twenty. He had something of a formal gravity in his mien, which was attributed to the stately step he had been so early confined to, in a female decency. But even that, in characters of superiority, had its proper graces; it misbecame him not in the part of Leon, in Fletcher's 'Rule a Wife,' &c., which he executed with a determined manliness, and honest authority, well worth the best actor's imitation. He had a piercing eye, and, in characters of heroic life, a quick imperious vivacity in his tone of voice, that painted the tyrant truly terrible. There were two plays of Dryden in which he shone with uncommon l.u.s.tre; in 'Aurengzebe' he played Morat, and in 'Don Sebastian,' Muley Moloch; in both these parts he had a fierce, lion-like majesty in his port and utterance, that gave the spectator a kind of trembling admiration."[237]

Pepys does not speak much of Betterton, the chief performer at the Portugal-street playhouse. The reason must be, either that Betterton played chiefly in tragedy, or that his comic talent (which is probable) was not equal to his tragic. He was the great actor of his time, as Garrick was of the last century, and Mr. Kean lately. His most admired character appears to have been that of Hamlet; though Steele, in a paper to his memory in the '_Tatler_,' seems to have been most impressed by his performance of Oth.e.l.lo. If an actor's Oth.e.l.lo is really fine, perhaps it must be his best part, as in Mr. Kean's instance, owing to the nature of the character. Hamlet speaks to the reflecting part of us; Oth.e.l.lo to the sensitive. We will not present the reader with extracts from Cibber which contain little respecting this actor that might not be said of others; only it may be observed, that in the better parts of the performances of the old players we have something perhaps handed down to us of the manner of these ancient ornaments of the stage. The liveliest idea remaining of the genius of Betterton is furnished by an anecdote of Booth, who, when he first performed the Ghost to Betterton's Hamlet, is said to have been so astonished at the other's look of surprise, that for some moments he was unable to speak. Betterton died old and poor, rather, it should seem, from misfortune than imprudence. The actors in those times, though much admired, were not rewarded as they have been since; nor received anything like the modern salaries. His death is said to have been hastened by tampering with the gout, in order to perform on his benefit night. His person was rather manly than graceful. He was a good-natured man; and, like Moliere, would perform when he was ill, rather than hinder the profits of his brother actors.[238] At Caen Wood, Hampstead, the seat of Lord Mansfield, there is a portrait of him by Pope, who was an amateur in painting. They became acquainted when the latter was young, and the actor old; and took such a liking to one another, that Pope is supposed to have had a hand in a volume of pieces from 'Chaucer,' purporting to have been modernised by Betterton.

Another celebrated actor in Portugal Street during the reign of Charles II. was Nokes, who appears, from Cibber's account of him to have been something between Liston and Munden. By a line in one of Dryden's Epistles, the town seem to have thought a comedy deficient in which he did not make his appearance. The poet says to Southern on his play of the '_Wives' Excuse_'--

"The hearers may for want of Nokes repine, But rest secure, the readers will be thine."

Nokes was one of those actors who create a roar the moment they are seen, and make people ache with laughter.

These were among the older performers in Portugal Street. When Congreve took a share in the theatre, some others had joined it, and become celebrated, two of whom, Mr. Mountford and Mrs. Bracegirdle, we have already described. Another two, whose names remain familiar with posterity, are Mrs. Mountford and Mrs. Barry. Mrs. Mountford was a capital stage coquette; besides being able to act male c.o.xcombs and country dowdies. Mrs. Barry was a fine tragedian, both of the heroic and tender cast. Dryden p.r.o.nounced her the best actress he had seen.