Knights and their days

by Dr. Doran

STAGE KNIGHTS.

“The stage and actors are not so contemptful

As every innovating puritan,

And ignorant swearer, out of jealous envy,

Would have the world imagine.”— George Chapman.

The Commonwealth had no admiration for the stage, and no toleration for actors. When theatricals looked up again, the stage took its revenge, and seldom represented a puritan who was not a knave. There is an instance of this in the old play, entitled “The Puritan, or the Widow of Watling Street.” “Wilt steal me thy master’s chain?” quoth Captain Idle to Nicholas St. Antlings, the puritan serving-man. “Steal my master’s chain!” quoth Nicholas; “no, it shall ne’er be said that Nicholas St. Antlings committed bird-lime. Anything else that I can do,” adds the casuist in a serge jerkin, “had it been to rob, I would ha’ done it; but I must not steal, that’s the word, the literal, Thou shalt not steal; and would you wish me to steal then?” “No, faith,” answers Pyeboard, the scholar; “that were too much;—but wilt thou nim it from him?” To which honest St. Nicholas, so anxious to observe the letter of the law, so careless about its spirit, remarks, with alacrity, “That, I will!”

I have said in another page, that ridicule was especially showered down upon some of those whom Oliver delighted to honor. As late as the era of Sir George Etherege, we find “one of Oliver’s knights” figuring as the buffoon of that delicate gentleman’s comedy, “The Comical Revenge.” It is hardly creditable to the times, or to the prevailing taste, that the theatre in Lincoln’s-inn Fields cleared one thousand pounds, in less than a month, by this comedy; and that the company gained more reputation by it, than by any preceding piece represented on the same stage. The plot is soon told. Two very fine and not very profligate gentlemen, Lord Beaufort and Colonel Bruce, are in love with a tolerably-refined lady, Graciana. The lord wins the lady, and the philosophical soldier accepts a certain Aurelia, who has the singular merit of being in love with the Colonel. The under-plot has “Oliver’s knight” for its hero. The latter is a Sir Nicholas Cully who is cheated out of a promissory note for one thousand pounds, by two gentlemen-sharpers, Wheadle and Palmer. Sir Nicholas is partly saved by the gay, rather than moral, Sir Frederick Frolick. The latter recovers the note, but he passes off his mistress on Sir Nicholas as his sister, and induces him to marry her. The only difference between the sharpers and the “Knight baronet,” Sir Frederick, is this:—Wheadle had dressed up his mistress, Grace, as Widow Rich; and Sir Nicholas had engaged to marry her, under certain penalties, forced on him by Wheadle and his friend. Sir Frederick, at the conclusion, marries the Widow, to oblige a lady who is fond of him, and the curtain falls upon the customary indecent jokes, and the following uneasy and metrical maxim:—

“On what small accidents depends our Fate,

While Chance, not Prudence, makes us fortunate.”

What the two Bettertons made of Lord Beaufort and Graciana, I do not pretend to say, but Nokes is said to have been “screamingly farcical,” to adopt an equivalent modern phrase, in Sir Nicholas Cully. His successor, Norris, fell short of the great original in broad humor, but Nokes himself was surpassed by Dogget, who played “Oliver’s Knight” with all the comic effect which he imparted to the then low comedy part of Shylock. It is inexplicable to me how any actor would ever have extracted a laugh from the audience at anything he had to say, or chose to do, when enacting the “Cavalier of the Commonwealth.” There is not a humorous speech, nor a witty remark, nor a comic situation for the knight to profit by. In 1664, however, people could laugh heartily at seeing one of the Protector’s knights swindled, and beaten on the stage. The knight is represented as a thirsty drunkard, “all the drier for the last night’s wetting,” with a more eager desire to attack the ladies of cavaliers than cavaliers themselves, and no reluctance to cheat any man who will undertake to throw a main with him at dice. He has, however, great reluctance to pay his losses, when he unconsciously falls into the hands of a greater knave than himself, and bodily declares—

“I had been a madman to play at such a rate,

If I had ever intended to pay.”

He had less boldness in accepting the results of such a declaration, and in meeting his antagonist at the end of a rapier. He is brought to the sticking-point, just as Acres is, by an assurance that his adversary is an arrant coward. The scene of “the Field” is worth quoting in part, inasmuch as it is not only an illustration of the spirit of chivalry, as imputed to Oliver’s knights by cavalier-poets, but also as it will, perhaps, serve to show that when Sheridan sat down at his table in Orchard Street, Portman Square, to bring Acres and Beverley together in mortal combat, he probably had a copy of Etherege’s play before—or the memory of it strong within—him.

Wheadle and Cully are on the stage:—

W. What makes you so serious?

C. I am sorry I did not provide for both our safeties.

W. How so?

C. Colonel Hanson is my neighbor, and very good friend. I might have acquainted him with the business, and got him, with a file of musketeers, to secure us all.

W. But this would not secure your honor. What would the world have judged.

C. Let the world have judged what it would! Have we not had many precedents of late? and the world knows not what to judge.

It may be observed here, that Sir Nicholas may be supposed to be alluding to such men as Hans Behr, who was much addicted to firing printed broadsides at his adversaries, who advertised him as “poltroon” in return. There are some placards having reference to this matter, in the British Museum, which admirably display the caution of the wordsmen and the spirit of the swordsmen of that day. But to resume. Cully, observing that his adversary has not arrived, suggests that his own duty has been fulfilled, and that he “will be going,” the more particularly, says the knight, as “the air is so bleak, I can no longer endure it.”

W. Have a little patience. Methinks I see two making toward us in the next close.

C. Where? Where? ’Tis them!

W. Bear up bravely, now, like a man.

C. I protest I am the worst dissembler, now, in cases of this nature.

W. Allons! Look like a man of resolution. Whither, whither go you?

C. But to the next house to make my will, for fear of the worst. Tell them I’ll be here again, presently.

The provident knight is, however, detained, and on Palmer and that gentleman’s second appearing, the swords are measured, “and all strip but Cully, who fumbles with his doublet.”

P. Come, sir! are you ready for this sport?

C. By-and-by, sir. I will not rend the buttons from my doublet for no man’s pleasure.

And so “Oliver’s Knight” continues to procrastinate; he can not be either pricked or pinked into action; and at length, pleading that his conscience will not let him fight in a wrong cause, he purchases a whole skin, at the price of a promissory note for a thousand pounds.

I have said that there is no comic situation for the actor who represents Sir Nicholas, but the scene from which the above passages are taken may, perhaps, be an exception to the rule. That Sheridan has profited by it, will be clear to any reader who will take the trouble to compare this scene with the fighting scene in the “Rivals.” The latter is far richer in humor, and while we care very little what becomes of Sir Nicholas, we should regret that any harm should befall poor Acres—although he prefers fighting at forty paces, would stand sidewise to be shot at, feels that he would be horribly afraid if he were alone, and confesses that valor oozes out at the palms of his hands when his adversary appears in sight, with pistols for two.

Sir Nicholas is in spirits again when making love to one whom he considers a woman of rank and fortune. No cavalier could then vie with him in finery. “I protest,” he says, “I was at least at sixteen brokers, before I could put myself exactly in the fashion.” But with all this, he is a craven again when he is called upon to enter and address her who awaits the wooing with impatience. “Come!” he exclaims, “I will go to the tavern and swallow two whole quarts of wine instantly; and when I am drunk, ride on a drawer’s back, to visit her.” Wheadle suggests that “some less frolic will do, to begin with.”—“I will cut three drawers over the pate, then,” says the knight, “and go with a tavern-lanthorn before me at noonday;”—just as very mad gallants were wont to do.

The liquor has not the effect of rendering Oliver’s knight decent, for in proposing the health of “my lord’s sister,” he does it in the elegant form of “Here’s a brimmer to her then, and all the fleas about her;” offers to break the windows to show his spirit, and in the lady’s very presence exclaims, “Hither am I come to be drunk, that you may see me drunk, and here’s a health to your flannel petticoat.” The latter gentillesse is by way of proof of the knight’s quality, for it was of the very essence of polite manners, when a spirited gentleman drank to a spirited lady, to strain the wine through what the Chesterfields and Mrs. Chapones of that day, if such were to be found, would not have blushed to call “their smocks.”

But enough of the way in which the stage represented “one of Oliver’s knights.” He is not worse than the courtiers and gentlemen by whom he is swindled out of his money and into a wife. Nay, nearly the last sentence put into his mouth is, at least, a complimentary testimony to the side of which Sir Nicholas is but an unworthy member. “If I discover this,” he remarks, “I am lost. I shall be ridiculous even to our own party.”—The reader will, probably, not require to be reminded that before Etherege drew Cully, Jonson had depicted Sogliardo, and that the latter, in the very spirit of Oliver’s knight, remarks:—“I do not like the humor of challenge; it may be accepted.”

The stage, from about the middle of the seventeenth century to nearly the middle of the succeeding century, was uncommonly busy with knights as heroes of new plays. The piece which brought most money to the theatrical treasury, after the “Comical Revenge,” was the “Sir Martin Mar-all,” an adaptation by Dryden, from the “Etourdi” of Molière. Such adaptations were in fashion, and the heroes of the French author were invariably knighted on their promotion to the English stage. Such was the case with “Sir Solomon, or the Cautious Coxcomb,” adapted by Carill, from Molière’s “Ecole des Femmes.” The same course was adopted by Mrs. Behn when she transferred Molière’s “Malade Imaginaire” to the stage at Dorset Gardens, and transformed Argon into Sir Patient Fancy. One of the characters in this intolerably indecent play instructs the city knight’s lady how to divide her time according to the fashion set by “the quality.” “From eight to twelve,” he says, “you ought to employ in dressing. Till two, at dinner. Till five, in visits. Till seven, at the play. Till nine, in the park; and at ten, to supper with your lover.”

In the “Sir Barnaby Whig, or No Wit like a Woman’s,” one of D’Urfey’s comedies, and produced in 1681, we have again a hero who is described as one of Oliver’s knights. The play is avowedly a party piece, and the author, in his prologue, remarks,

“That he shall know both parties now, he glories;

By hisses, Whigs; and by their claps, the Tories.”

The audience at the “Theatre Royal,” in the days of Charles II., was made especially merry by this poor jest. Sir Barnaby is represented as a Cromwellian fanatic, who will not drink the King’s health; is in an agony of terror at hearing that an army of twenty thousand men is about to sweep every rebel from the land; turns traitor; sings a comic song against the Roundheads; is saluted as Rabbi Achitophel; offers to turn Roman Catholic or Mohammedan; and is finally consigned to Newgate.

Mrs. Behn, in the same year, had her political knight as well as D’Urfey. In this lady’s more than usually licentious play, the “City Heiress,” performed at Dorset Gardens, she has a Sir Timothy Treat-all for her comic hero. She boasts in her introduction that her play is political, loyal, true Tory all over; and as “Whiggism has become a jest,” she makes a caricature of Sir Timothy, an old, seditious, Oliverian knight, who keeps open house for commonwealth-men and true-blue Protestants. He is contrasted with two Tory knights, Sir Anthony and Sir Charles Meriwill, and a Tory gentleman, named Wilding. The old Whig knight, however, is by far the least disreputable fellow of the lot. The Tory knights and their friends are rogues, perjurers, and something worse. When they are not on the stage, Mrs. Behn is not afraid to tell what they are about, and that in the very plainest language. “D—n the City!” exclaims the courtly Sir Charles. “Ay, ay!” adds his uncle, Sir Anthony, “and all the Whigs, Charles, d—n all the Whigs!”—And in such wise did Mrs. Afra Behn take vengeance upon political enemies, to the infinite delight of loyal audiences. How the Whig knights ever kept their own against the assaults made on them in plays, prologues, and epilogues, is, as Mr. Slick says, “a caution!” It is a fact, however, that these political plays were far more highly relished than those which merely satirized passing social follies. Audiences roared at the dull jokes against the Oliverian knights, but they had no relish for the rhyme-loving Sir Hercules Buffoon, of Lacy.

For one stage knight we may be said to be indebted to Charles II. himself. It was from a hint from him that Crowne wrote his “Sir Courtly Nice,” produced at the Theatre Royal shortly after the death of Charles. Sir Courtly alludes to the death of one, and the accession of a new, king, in very flattering terms:—

“What nation upon earth, besides our own,

But by a loss like ours had been undone?

Ten ages scarce such royal worth display

As England lost and found in one strange day.”

Of all the comedies with knights for their heroes, this one of Sir Courtly Nice retained a place longest on the stage. The hero was originally played by handsome, but hapless Will Mountfort. Cibber played it at the Haymarket in Queen Anne’s time, 1706, and again at Drury Lane, and before George I. at Hampton Court. Foote and Cibber, jun., and Woodward, were there presentatives of the gallant knight, and under George II. Foote played it, for the first time, at Drury Lane, and the younger Cibber at Covent Garden, in 1746, and Woodward, at the latter house, in 1751. The last-named actor was long the favorite representative of the gentlemanly knight, retaining the character as his own for full a quarter of a century, and being succeeded, but not surpassed in it, by sparkling Lewis, at Covent Garden, in 1781.

The satire in this piece against the Puritans is of a more refined character than in any other play of the period; and the contrast between the rash and ardent cavalier and the cautious Puritan is very fairly drawn. “Suppose I see not many vices,” says the Roundhead, Testimony, “morality is not the thing. The heathens had morality; and, forsooth, would you have your footman or your coachman to be no better than Seneca?” This is really complimentary to the Cromwellians; and there is but a good-natured dash of satire in the answer of Testimony, when asked what time of day it may be, that—“Truly, I do believe it is about four. I can not say it positively, for I would not tell a lie for the whole world.”

I find little worthy of notice in other dramatic pieces having knights for their heroes. Southeran produced one entitled, “Sir Anthony Love” at the Theatre Royal in 1691, for the purpose of showing off Mrs. Mountfort as an errant lady in male attire.

In the eighteenth century, the knights gave name to a few historical pieces not worth recording. The only exceptions are scarcely worthy of more notice. Dodsley’s “Sir John Cockle at Court” made our ancestors, of George the Second’s time, laugh at the sequel of the “King and the Miller of Mansfield;” and “Sir Roger de Coverley” was made the hero of a pantomime at Covent Garden in 1746. By this time, however, the fashion was extinct of satirizing living politicians under knightly names. To detail the few exceptions to the rule would only fatigue the perhaps already wearied reader.

To what a low condition knight and squire could fall may be seen in the Sir Joseph Wittol and Captain Bluffe, in Congreve’s comedy, the “Old Batchelor.” The only redeeming point about this disreputable pair is, that, cowards and bullies as they are, they have both read a little. The Captain has dipped into history, and he remarks that “Hannibal was a pretty fellow in his day, it must be granted; but, alas, sir! were he alive now, he would be nothing; nothing on the earth.” Sir Joseph, the knight, in comitatu Bucks, has also indulged in a little reading, but that of a lighter sort than the Captain’s. When the gallant Captain affects not to be frightened at the aspect of Sharper, and exclaims, “I am prepared for him now, and he shall find he might have safer roused a sleeping lion,” the knight remarks, “Egad, if he should hear the lion roar, he’d cudgel him into an ass, and his primitive braying. Don’t you remember the story in Æsop’s Fables, Bully? Egad, there are good morals to be picked out of Æsop’s Fables, let me tell you that; and ‘Reynard the Fox’ too;” to which the deboshed Captain can only reply, “D—n your morals!” as though he despised fiction when compared with history.

Some of the stage knights are wonderfully great boasters, yet exceedingly dull fellows. I do not know that in the mouth of any one of them there is put so spirited a remark as the great Huniades made to Ulderick, Count of Sicily. The latter asked for a conference with the great governor of Hungary. Huniades bade him come to the Hungarian camp. The offended Ulderick, in a great chafe, replied that it was beneath him to do such a thing, seeing that he was descended from a long line of princely ancestors; whereas Huniades was the first of his family who had ever been raised to honor. The Hungarian very handsomely remarked, “I do not compare myself with your ancestors; but with you!” This has always appeared to me as highly dramatic in spirit. There is nothing half so spirited in the knightly pieces brought on the stage during the reign of George III., and which caused infinite delight to very easily-pleased audiences. It is well known that the good-natured Sovereign of England, although unassuming in his domestic character, was exceedingly fond of display in public ceremonies. He used to arrange the paraphernalia of an installation of the Garter with all the energy and care of an anxious stage-manager. The people generally were as anxious to have an idea of the reality. On one occasion, in the preceding reign, they so nearly forced their way into the banqueting-room, where the knights were holding festival, that the troops fired over their heads in order to frighten them into dispersing. Under George III. they were more content to view these splendors through a dramatic lens.

In 1771, accordingly, the splendors of the then late installation of the Garter were reproduced on the stage, in a masque, called “The Institution of the Garter, or Arthur’s Round Table Restored.” The show was as good as the piece was bad. The former was got up to profit the managers, the latter to flatter or do homage to the King and Queen. It was at once cumbersome and comic. A trio of spirits opened the delectable entertainment by summoning other spirits from every nook and corner of the skies, the moon’s horns included, to the work of escorting the car of the Male Genius of England, the husband probably of Britannia, down to earth. Nothing can exceed the alacrity with which the spirits and bards of the empyreal heaven obey the summons. They descend with the car of the Genius, singing a heavy chorus, ponderous as the chariot they help to “waft down,”—in which, not the chariot, but the chorus, there is the assurance that

“The bliss that spotless patriots feel

Is kindred to the bliss above,”—

so that we may hope, though we can not feel certain, that there are some few persons here below, who are not unconscious of an ante-past of heaven.

The Genius is a civil and polished personage, who with due remembrance to metropolitan fogs, very courteously apologizes to the spirits, that he has been the cause of bringing them down

“To this grosser atmosphere awhile.”

After such celestial compliments as these, he despatches them to shed heavenly influences over Windsor, while he remains to hold a little colloquy with the Druids, “Britain’s old philosophers,” as he calls them. He adds an assertion that may, probably, have startled the Society of Antiquaries of that day, namely, that the aforesaid Druids—

“Still enamored of their ancient haunts,

Unseen of mortal eyes, do hover round

Their ruined altars and their sacred oaks,”

which may account for that loose heterodoxy which marked the period when Druids exercised these unseen influences.

The Genius requests the Druids to have the kindness to repair to Windsor, where the order is in the act of being founded by Edward, and there direct his choice in the selection of members. This is a very heathenish idea, but Druids and Bards are alike delighted at it; for, as the Genius remarks, Edward’s perspicuity, his intellectual eyes, needed charming

“from the mists

It haply hath contracted from a long

Unebbing current of prosperity.”

The heathen priests are flaming patriots, and express their eagerness to leave Heaven for England, seeing that the new order may be the means to propagate

“The sovereignty of England, and erect

Her monarchs into judges of mankind.”

As this expressed end has not been accomplished, and the order has not propagated the sovereignty of England, we may logically conclude that the Druids themselves hardly knew much of the subject upon which they were singing to their tuneless harps. Meanwhile, the first Bard, in a bass song, petitions the south gales to blow very mildly, and bring blue skies and sweet smells to the installation.

The ceremony of the installation then opens to the view when all the knights have been created, except the King’s son, Edward the Black Prince, who really was not created knight when the order was founded. How far the Druids have succeeded in influencing the choice of the King, there is no possibility of knowing. No one utters a word, save royal father and son: and the commonplace prose which they deliver does not give us a very exalted idea of the Druidic inspiration. The old sages themselves, however, are perfectly satisfied with the result; and in a noisy chorus, they make an assertion which might well have frightened the Archbishop of Canterbury—had he cared about the matter. After vaticinating that the name of the Prince should roll down through the tide of ages, they add, that glory shall fire him, and virtue inspire him,

“Till blessed and blessing,

Power possessing,

From earth to heaven he lifts his soul,”—

a feat which one would like to see put upon canvass by a Pre-Raphaelite.

While the Knights are supposed to be preparing to pass to the hall, the scene takes us to the front of the castle, where crowds of liege and loyal people are assembled. First Citizen, “very like a whale indeed,” sings a comic song, which, as a specimen of the homage offered to monarch and consort, more than fourscore years ago, is worth transcribing—for both its imagery and syntax:—

“Oh, the glorious installation!

Happy nation!

You shall see the King and Queen:

Such a scene!

Valor he, sir;

Virtue she, sir;

Which our hearts will ever win.

Sweet her face is,

With such graces

Show what goodness dwells within.

“Oh, the glorious installation!

Happy nation!

You shall see the noble knights:

Charming sights!

Feathers wagging,

Velvet dragging,

Trailing, sailing, on the ground;

Loud in talking,

Proud in walking,

Nodding, ogling, smirking round.”

The banquet over, and more comic business, as dreary as the song above quoted, being concluded, King Edward walks forth into the garden for refreshment—and there the Genius of England takes him by the hand. Edward, we are sorry to say, knows so little of this Genius, that he boldly asks him, “What art thou, stranger?” We should, only with reluctance, trouble our readers with all this unrecognised Genius says in reply to the royal inquirer, but one passage may be transcribed to show what the popular spirit was thought to be in the last century.

“Know that those actions which are great and good,

Receive a nobler sanction from the free

And universal voices from all mankind,

Which is the voice of Heaven, than from the highest,

The most illustrious act of royal power.”

This maxim of the Genius of England further shows that the individual in question not only passed off prose for blank verse, but stole the phrase of “Vox populi vox Dei,” and tried to render it unrecognisable by indefinite extension.

That the sentiment is not very much to the taste of the Monarch may be conjectured from the fact that he sulkily lets it pass without any comment, and very naturally falls asleep of being talked-at by so heavily-pinioned a Genius. The latter avails himself of the opportunity to exhibit to the slumbering Monarch a vision of the future of England, down to the era of George and Charlotte. The spectacle soothes him still less than the speech, though oppressive ecstacy may be sweet, and Edward springs into wakefulness, and loudly exclaiming that

“This is too much for human strength to bear,”

the loquacious Genius flies at him again with some remarkable figures of speech, to which the worn-out Edward answers nothing. The Genius, unwilling to attribute his taciturnity to rudeness, finds a satisfactory solution in the conclusion that

“Astonishment seals up his lips.”

The founder of the “Garter” will not provoke the eloquence of the heavenly visiter by unsealing the lips which astonishment is supposed to have sealed up, and the remainder of the piece is left to Genius and chorus, who unite in a musical asseveration, to the effect that the reigning Sovereign of England is

“The great miracle on earth, a patriot king,”

and so terminates, amid the most vociferous plaudits, the scenic story of the Garter, enacted in celebration of the great installation of 1771.

The real installation was, by far, a more cheerful matter than its theatrical counterfeit. It took place on the 25th of July. At this ceremony the King raised to the dignity of Knights of the illustrious order, his sons the Prince of Wales and the Bishop of Osnaburg, his brother the Duke of Cumberland, with the Queen’s brother, the Duke of Mecklenburgh, and Prince Henry of Brunswick, the Dukes of Marlborough and Grafton, and the Earls of Gower and Albermarle. The festival occupied the entire day. Four mortal hours in the morning were consumed in making the Knights, after which Sovereign and chapter dined together in St. George’s Hall. While the banquet was progressing, Queen Charlotte sat in a gallery, looking on. She was brilliantly surrounded, and had at her right side the pretty Princess Royal, and the infant Prince Ernest at her left. One of her Majesty’s brothers stood by each royal child. On the right of the canopy under which the King dined, was a long table, at which were seated all the Knights, in full view of the occupants of raised seats and a gallery in front. At the end of the first course, the good-natured Monarch was determined to make a Knight Bachelor of some deserving individual present, and he rendered good Mr. Dessac (clerk of the check, belonging to the band of Gentlemen Pensioners) supremely happy by selecting him. As soon as the other courses had been served, and the banquet was concluded, which was not till between six and seven o’clock, the whole of the cavaliers and company separated in haste, hurrying to their respective rooms or hotels, to dress for the ball which was to be held in the Great Guard-Room. When all the guests were there assembled, the King and Queen entered the apartment about nine o’clock. Whereupon the Duke of Gloucester danced a couple of minuets with a brace of duchesses—Grafton and Marlborough. The minuets were continued till eleven o’clock. No one seemed to tire of the stately, graceful dance, and it was only during the hour that followed, that any young lady, as anxious as the elegant American belle, who told Mr. Oliphant at Minnesota that “she longed to shake the knots out of her legs,” had a chance of indulging in her liveliness. During one hour—from eleven to midnight—country dances were accomplished. I say accomplished, for only three were danced—and each set procured twenty minutes of very active exercise. Midnight had scarcely been tolled out by the castle clock when the festive throng separated—and thus closed one of the most brilliant installations that Windsor had ever seen, since Edward first became the founder of the order. If there was any drawback to the gratification which the King felt on this occasion, it was at beholding Wilkes and his daughter conspicuously seated among the spectators in the courtyard; whither the man whom the King hated had penetrated by means of a ticket from Lord Tankerville. It was at this period that Mr. Fox revived, for a few court-days, the fashion of appearing at the drawing-room in red-heeled shoes. To the public, these matters were far more comic than the comic portion of the “Installation,” in which (setting aside the Edward III. of Aikin, and the Genius of England, played by Reddish) King enacted Sir Dingle, a court fool knighted; Parsons, Nat Needle; and Weston, Roger. Never was foolish knight played by an actor so chivalrous of aspect as King.

I will avail myself of this opportunity to state that at solemn ceremonies, like that above named, four of our kings of England were knighted by their own subjects. These were Edward III., Henry VI. and VII., and Edward VI. The latter was dubbed by the Lord Protector, who was himself empowered to perform the act by letters patent, under the great seal. At a very early period, priests, or prelates rather, sometimes conferred the honor on great public occasions. The Westminster Synod deprived them of this privilege in 1102.

It has been said that English knights wearing foreign orders, without permission of their own sovereign, are no more knights in reality than those stage knights of whom I have been treating. This, however, is questionable, if so great an authority as Coke be not in error. That great lawyer declares that a knight, by whomsoever created, can sue and be sued by his knightly title, and that such is not the case with persons holding other foreign titles, similar to those of the English peerage. Let me add that, among other old customs, it was once common in our armies for knighthood to be conferred previous to a battle, to arouse courage, rather than afterward, as is the case now—after the action, in order to reward valor. Even this fashion is more reasonable than that of the Czar, who claps stars and crosses of chivalry on the bosoms of beaten generals, to make them pass in Muscovy for conquerors.

In connection with the stage, knights have figured sometimes before, as well as behind the curtain. Of all the contests ever maintained, there was never, in its way a fiercer than that which took place between Sir William Rawlings, and young Tom Dibdin. The son of “tuneful Charlie,” born in 1771, and held at the font, as the “Lady’s Magazine” used to say, by Garrick, was not above four years of age when he played Cupid to Mrs. Siddons’ Venus, in Shakespeare’s Jubilee. It was hardly to be expected that after this and a course of attendance as choir-boy at St. Paul’s, he would settle down quietly to learn upholstery. This was expected of him by his very unreasonable relatives, who bound him apprentice to the city knight, Sir William Rawlings, a then fashionable upholsterer in Moorfields. The boy was dull as the mahogany he had to polish, and the knight could never make him half so bright in business matters. “Tom Dibdin,” thus used to remark the city cavalier—“Tom Dibdin is the stupidest hound on earth!” The knight, however, changed his mind when his apprentice, grown up to man’s estate, produced “The Cabinet.” Sir William probably thought that the opera was the upholstery business set to music. But before this point was reached, dire was the struggle between the knight and the page, who would not “turn over a new leaf.” When work was over, the boy was accustomed to follow it up with a turn at the play—generally in the gallery of the Royalty Theatre. On one of these occasions the knight followed him thither, dragged him out, gave him a sound thrashing, and, next morning, brought him before that awfully squinting official, John Wilkes. The struggle ended in a drawn battle, and Tom abandoned trade: and instead of turning out patent bedsteads, turned out the “English Fleet,” and became the father of “Mother Goose.” He would have shown less of his relationship to the family of that name, had he stuck to his tools; in the latter case he might have taken his seat as Lord Mayor, in a chair made by himself, and in those stirring times he might have become as good a knight as his master.

As it was, the refuse of knighthood had a hard time of it. He was actor of all work, wrote thousands of songs, which he sold as cheap as chips, and composed four pieces for Astley’s Theatre, for which he received fourteen pounds—hardly the price of a couple of arm-chairs. How he flourished and fell after this, may be seen in his biography. He had fortune within his grasp at one time, but he lost his hold when he became proprietor of a theatre. The ex-apprentice of the old knight-upholder could not furnish his own house with audiences, and the angry knight himself might have been appeased could his spirit have seen the condition into which “poor Tom” had fallen just previous to his death, some twenty years ago.

But I fear I have said more than enough about stage knights; may I add some short gossip touching real knights with stage ladies? Before doing so, I may just notice that the wedded wife of a bona fide knight once acted on the English boards under the chivalric name—and a time-honored one it is in Yorkshire—of her husband, Slingsby. Dame, or Lady Slingsby, who had been formerly a Mrs. Lee, was a favorite actress in the days of James II. She belonged to the Theatre Royal, resided in St. James’s parish, and was buried in Pancras church-yard in March 1693-4. In the list of the Slingsbys, baronets, of Scriven, given in Harborough’s “History of Knaresborough,” Sir Henry Slingsby, who died in 1692, is the only one of whose marriage no notice is taken. But to our stage ladies and gallant lovers.