“KING COLLEY”
“We will now, my dear people,” said Mr. Cibber, “proceed to investigate the ecclesiastical Phœnix which has reared its giant head from the ashes of the conflagration, and to criticise its claims to a greatness commensurate with its bulk.”
He spoke of St. Paul’s Cathedral, which, in this summer of 1721, had stood some years completed, the stupendous “monument without a tomb” to its creator’s genius.
Mr. Cibber had been entertaining a party of provincial actors and actresses to luncheon at the “Globe” tavern, in Fleet Street, where, amongst other things, they had consumed a half-gallon of arrack punch at six shillings the quart. The company was in consequence very merry, and, though still properly impressed with the magnitude of the occasion, a little more inclined than heretofore, perhaps, to familiarity with its host, and even to a touch of that professional sportiveness whose cheap but characteristic quality seems somehow to this day to suggest the missing link, much sought and unaccountably overlooked, between men and monkeys. Mr. Cibber, however, genial as always in self-sufficiency, recked nothing of the change. He walked at the height of pompous good-humour, his usually pasty countenance flushed, his hat under his arm, and his full wig pushed a trifle back from his forehead. He wore a heavily embroidered claret-coloured coat with stiff skirts, buttoned at the waist alone, black velvet breeches, ruffles, and a “bosom” of Mechlin lace, pearl silk stockings with gold clocks, and scarlet heels to his shoes. His magnificence put into the shade the somewhat meretricious finery of his companions, and that was exactly as it should have been. King Colley would have wished to impress upon the public in general the fact that he was merely acting cicerone, in a spirit of tolerant condescension, to certain country insignificances whom it was his humour to patronise, and that there was something a little fine in his taking these humble, unsophisticated souls under his personal protection, and exhibiting to them the lions of the Metropolis.
The party, chattering, laughing, and gaping, went down Fleet Street, and paused a moment at the ruined gateway on Ludgate Hill. It had been gutted by the great fire, but the mutilated statues of King Lud and his sons still remained to its west front. Mr. Cibber pointed out the middle figure.
“King Lud,” he said.
“Lud!” responded Mrs. Lightfoot, and Mr. Barney Bellingham, low comedian, laughed suddenly, and then looked preternaturally solemn.
They were some five or six in all, including a “heavy father” and spouse, “Sweet Corinna,” so called, the most affectedly rapturous of ingénues, and the two above-mentioned. Mrs. Lightfoot, a faded coquette in a soiled “paysanne,” had once played Hypolita in the Laureate’s own “She Would and She Would Not,” and could claim some kinship with genius.
“A fabulous monarch,” said Mr. Cibber grandiloquently, “and therefore figuring not inappropriately on the portal, as one might call it, to Pretence. Your servant, sir.”
He addressed a little old gentleman who at that moment had alighted from a chair which had been deposited close beside the speaker. The stranger was the most withered small creature it was possible to conceive—a nonagenarian at least by his looks—a fledgling of second childhood, his head, naked and skinny, in a great wig like a nest. His eyes were dim, his nose was a rasped claw, his fingers were horny talons. He was dressed very plainly, almost like a farmer, in a drab-coloured coat and breeches; and something of rustic vigour showed in the positive sprightliness with which, in spite of his years, he stepped out upon the stones. Mr. Cibber, a practised reader of character, distinguished the country cousin in him at once, and was moved to some affable patronage.
“If you are going our way, sir,” he said, “and an arm would be of any service to you? My name is Cibber—Colley Cibber, sir, of whom it is just possible you may have heard.”
“O, indeed!” said the old gentleman, with a kindly, nervous lift of his eyes. “Mr. Cibber is it? A very gratifying accident. I must live remote beyond conception, sir, to be ignorant of that name. Thank you, Mr. Cibber. You were saying, sir, as I alighted——?”
“I was saying, sir,” said the Laureate, “that a fabulous monarch, like him above, fittingly adorns the portal to pretence.”
“Meaning——?” said the old gentleman, pointing forward with his stick.
“Yes, sir,” said Mr. Cibber—“meaning the vast but ineffective fane towards which we are now directing our steps.”
“Ah!” said the old gentleman. “It will have its faults, no doubt.”
“We will consider them,” said the poet loftily. “Is this possibly your first visit, sir? Well, better late than never, as old Heywood has it. You will find much to surprise and more to disapprove, or I am mistaken in myself. I am doing showman at the moment, sir, to a party of country cousins”—he whispered, “plain, unsophisticated folk, but respectable—and if you care to join us——”
“With pleasure, Mr. Cibber,” said the old fellow. “It is a most happy chance for me—and not less for the support of your arm than of your opinion. I thought I should like to approach the Cathedral on foot—to have its dimensions gradually revealed to me; but I find in good truth the hill trying to my old bones. I am eighty-nine, Mr. Cibber. Would you believe it?”
“It is a creditable venture, sir,” said the poet. “Ulysses himself in his old age never made a bolder.”
They approached, as he spoke, the extended space on which the building stood, and divers exclamations of wonder broke from the lips of the little party—“My stars!” “Prodigious fine, on my word!” “’Tis mighty likeable!” “Why—why, the sweetest regale!” “Are you not properly struck, Barney, my boy?” “Mum, mum,” and so on. Mr. Cibber, with the air of one magnificently responsible for the show, stood leaning familiarly against one of the posts which encompassed the paved area before the west door, and remained silent pending the recovery of his company. But he took snuff, and laughed patronisingly from time to time over the fervour of its ejaculations.
“Rat me, my dears,” he said by and by, when the volume of enthusiasm had spent itself; “but your artlessness refreshes me—upon my soul and honour, it refreshes me. This is the very respectable work of a journeyman builder, and as full of holes as poor Tom’s coat.”
“La, Mr. Cibber!” said the sweet Corinna, with a giggle, “I always thought the gentleman was at the top of his trade.”
“‘They say best men are moulded out of faults,’” murmured Mr. Bellingham, with a wink at the heavy mother.
The poet saw the wink, and waxed a little emphatic. It was Dr. Johnson who had once said of his art of conversation that “he had but half to furnish, since one-half was oaths.” But he was after all a good-natured man.
“Then, God judge me,” he cried, straining his voice, which was none of the strongest, “if he hadn’t a title to be called perfection!”
Mrs. Lightfoot, alarmed by his heat, stopped a levity on her lips half-way, and addressed the great man very soberly.
“I prithee, sir,” she said, “to correct our untutored visions, naturally dazzled in their first contemplation of so unaccustomed a sight.”
“Why, my dear,” said the Laureate, mollified at once, “I can quite understand your naïve enthusiasm; but it is a fact that in order to criticise an achievement one must know something of the principles of the art which designed it.”
“No greater architect of his own fortune than King Colley!” cried Mr. Bellingham.
“I thank you, sir,” answered Mr. Cibber stiffly; then added, blazing out again, “You will oblige me by holding your damned tongue!”
The old gentleman, anxious and conciliatory, put in a word:
“Your professional knowledge, sir, must make your comments doubly instructive. Pray inform us to what details of the building you take particular exception.”
“That is a very reasonable demand, sir,” answered the Laureate, daring the offending and rather elated low comedian from the corner of his eye. “I have no doubt that to the uninformed in such matters the magnitude of this conception palliates, or even overpowers, the meretriciousness of its details. But you mistake me on one point. My profession, though it embodies all the arts, specialises in none, and if I claim a dictatorial right in this instance, it is simply because as an actor I represent the trinity in unity of the creative faculty.”
“I see, I see,” said the old gentleman. “It is merely accident which has kept dormant your architectural proclivities.”
“Well, sir,” said the poet, with a smile, “I flatter myself I could have evolved, under compulsion, a more faultless erection than this.”
The stranger nodded with an air of satisfied acquiescence.
“I shall be really grateful to Mr. Cibber,” he said, “if he will help me to the right point of view. To my uninstructed intelligence, I confess, the pile seems to stand well.”
The poet laughed tolerantly.
“A good fortune it owes to its site. O, you must really pardon me, sir! It is in truth a cold, heavy, tasteless affair, imposing in no more than bulk, lacking the inspiration of sacramentality. Bear with me, now bear with me, while I strip off for your edification a little of the monster’s pretence. You will observe its most prominent feature, the dome? Very well, sir; that dome sums up in itself the hollowness of the entire conception. It violates the first principles of the art it professes, with a monstrous impertinence, to crown. Its height bears no relation to the proportions of the structure within, and is fixed thus arbitrarily for no other purpose than effect.”
“But is not the effect good?” ventured the old gentleman.
“Why, stap my vitals, sir!” said Mr. Cibber, “have you the assurance to condone a whited sepulchre? The greater the audacity, the worse the pretence. The cupola proper to this design lies within that external sham like a head under a steel basinet. What we look on is a mere exuberance, supporting nothing but itself. Will you tell me that that is in accordance with the principles of art, which demand that each part should naturally progress in lines of beauty from the parent stock?”
“No,” said the stranger—“no. You teach me much, sir.”
“That pretence,” continued the poet triumphantly, “is not confined to the head, though naturally it finds there its most swollen expression.”
“By the Lord, that’s true,” murmured Mr. Bellingham, and the sweet Corinna choked a little laugh into her handkerchief.
“Those side elevations, for instance,” went on Mr. Cibber, with a doubtful glance askance at the lady, “concealing as they do the buttresses and clerestory windows of the nave, constitute in their upper order a mere mask to the real form and construction of the building. Now, in a perfect design there should be no screening of structural necessities, but an ingenious adaptation of all such to the general conception. These, sir, are a few of the most patent defects, upon which, saving your patience, I could enlarge at pleasure. But I trust I have said enough to correct your point of view to its necessary focus; and if some disenchantment is the result——”
“Well, well, Mr. Cibber,” interrupted the old gentleman—“well, well. But I don’t know that I can quite confess to that.”
“O, very good, sir!” cried the poet ironically. “And according to what impenetrable illusion, if you please, do you persist in your faith?”
“Why,” said the old gentleman—“why, you see, Mr. Cibber, I designed the thing myself.”
“Sir Christopher, Sir Christopher!” cried a breathless gentleman who came hurrying up at the moment. “We had lost you, sir. This was naughty of you to venture up the hill alone.”
Mr. Bellingham, with one look at the rueful Laureate, sat flat down upon the pavement and delivered himself to hysterics.