FOOTNOTES:
[108] Very imaginative. Mrs. Mountfort lived with another lover, Mr. Minshull, for a year before Booth's marriage.
[109] There are adaptations of "Coriolanus" by Tate, Dennis, Sheridan, and Kemble.
[110] Dennis born 1657; Southerne 1660.
[111] Tragedy.
[112] Should be Mitchell.
[113] But the wife and children do not die; the poisoned cup having been emptied, and refilled with a harmless potion.
[114] Should be "Hibernia Freed."
[115] "By reason of the indisposition of an actress."
[116] This is a most strange mistake. It is evidently caused by the entry in Genest on 10th January 1723, which is:—"Julius Cæsar. Comic characters—Hippisley, &c." This of course means that the characters in the tragedy which were, according to theatrical usage, played by comedians (the Plebeians, for instance), were played by Hippisley, &c., not that all the characters were made comic.
[117] Thurmond's piece appears to have been called "Harlequin Doctor Faustus."
[118] Genest says 12th of December 1723.
[119] Should be 2d.
[120] Should be "Female Fortune-teller."
[121] Emilia is the Dissembled Wanton.
[122] Acted four times.
[123] Cooke (Memoirs of Macklin) says "a young libertine of very high rank."
[124] The Notes to the Dunciad say "sixty-three days, uninterrupted;" but this is probably an error.
BARTON BOOTH.
[CHAPTER XVIII.]
BARTON BOOTH.
At this period it was evident that the stage was about to lose its greatest tragedian since the death of Betterton. Booth was stricken past recovery, and all the mirth caused by the "Beggar's Opera" could not make his own peculiar public forget him. Scarcely eight and thirty years had elapsed since the time when, in 1690, a handsome, well-bred lad, whose age did not then amount to two lustres, sought admission into Westminster School. Dr. Busby thought him too young; but young Barton Booth was the son of a gentleman, was of the family of Booth, Earl of Warrington, and was a remarkably clever and attractive boy. The Doctor, whose acting had been commended by Charles I., perhaps thought of the school-plays, and recognised in little Barton the promise of a lover in Terence's comedies. At all events, he admitted the applicant.
Barton Booth, a younger son of a Lancashire sire, was destined for Holy Orders. He was a fine elocutionist, and he took to Latin as readily as Erasmus; but then he had Nicholas Rowe for a school-fellow; and, one day, was cast for Pamphilus in the "Andria." Luckily, or unluckily, he played this prototype of young Bevil in Steele's "Conscious Lovers" with such ease, perfection, and charming intelligence, that the old dormitory shook with plaudits. The shouts of approbation changed the whole purpose of his sire; they deprived the church of a graceful clergyman, and gave to the stage one of the most celebrated of our actors.
He was but seventeen, when his brilliant folly led him to run away from home, and tempt fortune, by playing Oroonoko, in Dublin. The Irish audiences confirmed the judgment of the Westminster critics, and the intelligent lad moved the hands of the men and the hearts of the women, without a check, during a glorious three years of probation. And yet he narrowly escaped failure, through a ridiculous accident, when, in 1698, he made his début as Oroonoko. It was a sultry night in June. While waiting to go on, before his last scene, he inadvertently wiped his darkened face, and the lamp-black thereon came off in streaks. On entering on the stage, unconscious of the countenance he presented, he was saluted with a roar of laughter, and became much confused. The generous laughers then sustained him by loud applause. But Booth was disturbed by this accident, and to obviate its repetition, he went on, the next night, in a crape mask, made by an actress to fit close to his face. Unfortunately, in the first scene the mask slipped, and the new audience were as hilarious as the old. "I looked like a magpie," said Barton; "but they lamp-blacked me for the rest of the night, and I was flayed before I could get it off again." The mishap of the first night did not affect his triumph; this was so complete that Ashbury, the "master," made him a present of five guineas; bright forerunners of the fifty that were to be placed in his hands by delighted Bolingbroke.
The hitherto penniless player was now fairly on the first step of the ascent it was his to accomplish. When he subsequently passed through Lancashire to London, in 1701, his fame had gone before him; he reached the capital with his manly beauty to gain him additional favour, with a heavy purse, and a steady conviction of even better fortune to come. With such a personage, his hitherto angry kinsmen were, of course, reconciled forthwith.
One morning early in that year, 1701, he might have been seen leaving Lord Fitzharding's rooms at St. James's, with Bowman, the player, and making his way to Betterton's house in Great Russell Street. From the lord in waiting to Prince George of Denmark, he carries a letter of recommendation to the father of the stage; and generous old Thomas, jealous of no rival, depreciator of no talent, gave the stranger a hearty welcome; heard his story, asked for a taste of his quality, imparted good counsel, took him into training, and ultimately brought him out at Lincoln's Inn Fields, 1701, as Maximus, in Rochester's "Valentinian." Betterton played Ætius, and Mrs. Barry, Lucina. These two alone were enough to daunt so young an actor; but Booth was not vain enough to be too modest, and the public at once hailed in him a new charmer. His ease, grace, fire, and the peculiar harmony of his voice, altogether distinct from that of Betterton's, created a great impression. "Booth with the silver tongue" gained the epithet before Barry was born. Westminster subsequently celebrated him in one of her school prologues:—
"Old Roscius to our Booth must bow,
'Twas then but art, 'tis nature now,"
and the district was proud of both players; of the young one of gentle blood, educated in St. Peter's College, and of the old one, the royal cook's son, who was christened in St. Margaret's, August 12,[125] 1635.
At first, Booth was thought of as a promising undergraduate of the buskin, and he had faults to amend. He confessed to Cibber that "he had been for some time too frank a lover of the bottle;" but, having the tipsyness of Powell ever before him as a terrible warning, he made a resolution of maintaining a sobriety of character, from which he never departed. Cibber pronounces this to be "an uncommon act of philosophy in a young man;" but he adds, that "in his fame and fortune he afterwards enjoyed the reward and benefit."
For a few years, then, Booth had arduous work to go through, and every sort of "business" to play. The House in the Fields, too, suffered from the tumblers, dancers, and sagacious animals, added to the ordinary and well-acted plays at the House in the Lane. Leisure he had also amid all his labour, to pay successful suit to a young lady, the daughter of a Norfolk baronet, Sir William Barkham, whom he married in 1704. The lady died childless six years later. Till this last period—that, too, of the death of Betterton—Booth may be said to have been in his minority as an actor, or, as Cibber puts it, "only in the promise of that reputation," which he soon after happily arrived at. Not that when that was gained he deemed himself perfect. The longest life, he used to say, was not long enough to enable an actor to be perfect in his art.
Previous to 1710 he had created many new characters; among others, Dick, in the "Confederacy;" and he had played the Ghost in "Hamlet," with such extraordinary power, such a supernatural effect, so solemn, so majestic, and so affecting, that it was only second in attraction to the Dane of Betterton. But Pyrrhus and Cato were yet to come. Meanwhile, soon after his wife's death, he played Captain Worthy, in the "Fair Quaker of Deal," to the Dorcas Zeal of Miss Santlow, destined to be his second wife—but not just yet.
The two great characters created by him, between the year when he played with Miss Santlow in Charles Shadwell's comedy, and that in which he married her, were Pyrrhus, in the "Distressed Mother" (1712), and "Cato" (1713). Within the limits stated, Booth kept household with poor Susan Mountfort, the daughter of the abler actress of that name. At such arrangements society took small objection, and beyond the fact, there was nothing to carp at in Barton's home. The latter was broken up, however—the lady being in fault—in 1718, when Booth, who had been the faithful steward of Susan's savings, consigned to her £3200, which were speedily squandered by her next "friend," Mr. Minshull. The hapless young creature became insane; in which condition it is credibly asserted that she one night went through the part of Ophelia, with a melancholy wildness which rendered many of her hearers almost as distraught as herself; soon after which she died. Meanwhile, her more faithful friend, the acknowledged successor of Betterton, achieved his two greatest triumphs—in characters originally represented by him—Pyrrhus and Cato. Those who have experienced the affliction of seeing or reading the "Distressed Mother," may remember that the heaviest part in that heavy play is that of Pyrrhus. But in acting it, Booth set the Orestes of less careful Powell in the shade. "His entrance," says Victor, "his walking and mounting to the throne, his sitting down, his manner of giving audience to the ambassador,[126] his rising from the throne, his descending and leaving the stage—though circumstances of a very common character in theatrical performances, yet were executed by him with a grandeur not to be described."
But it is with "Cato" that Booth is identified. Fortunate it was for him that the play Addison had kept so long in his desk was not printed, according to Pope's advice, for readers only. Fortunate, too, was the actor in the political coincidences of the time. Marlborough, now a Whig, had asked to be appointed "commander-in-chief for life." Harley, Bolingbroke, and the other Tories, described this as an attempt to establish a perpetual dictatorship. The action and the sentiment of "Cato" are antagonistic to such an attempt, and the play had a present political, as well as a great dramatic interest. Common consent gave the part of the philosopher of Utica to Booth; Addison named young Ryan, son of a Westminster tailor, as Marcus, and the young fellow justified the nomination. Wilks, Cibber, and Mrs. Oldfield filled the other principal parts. Addison surrendered all claim to profit, and on the evening of April 14, 1713, there was excitement and expectation on both sides of the curtain.
Booth really surpassed himself; his dignity, pathos, energy, were all worthy of Betterton, and yet were in nowise after the old actor's manner. The latter was forgotten on this night, and Booth occupied exclusively the public eye, ear, and heart. The public judgment answered to the public feeling. The Tories applauded every line in favour of popular liberty, and the Whigs sent forth responsive peals to show that they, too, were advocates of popular freedom.[127] The pit was in a whirlwind of delicious agitation, and the Tory occupants of the boxes were so affected by the acting of Booth, that Bolingbroke, when the play was over, sent for the now greatest actor of the day, and presented him with a purse containing fifty guineas, the contributions of gentlemen who had experienced the greatest delight at the energy with which he had resisted a perpetual dictatorship, and maintained the cause of public liberty! The managers paid the actor a similar pecuniary compliment, and for five-and-thirty[128] consecutive nights "Cato" filled Drury Lane, and swelled the triumph of Barton Booth. There was no longer anything sad in the old exclamation of Steele—"Ye gods! what a part would Betterton make of Cato!" The managers, Wilks, Cibber, and Dogget, were as satisfied as the public, for the share of profit to each at the end of this eventful season amounted to £1350! When Booth and his fellow-actors, after the close of the London season, went to Oxford to play "Cato," before a learned and critical audience, "our house was in a manner invested, and entrance demanded by twelve o'clock at noon, and, before one, it was not wide enough for many who came too late for places. The same crowds continued for three days together (an uncommon curiosity in that place), and the death of Cato triumphed over the injuries of Cæsar everywhere. At our taking leave, we had the thanks of the Vice-Chancellor, 'for the decency and order observed by our whole society;' an honour," adds Cibber, proudly, "which had not always been paid on the same occasion." Four hundred and fifty pounds clear profit were shared by the managers, who gave the actors double pay, and sent a contribution of fifty pounds towards the repairs of St. Mary's Church.
The church, of which Booth was intended to be a minister, added its approbation, through Dr. Smalridge, Dean of Carlisle, who was present at the performance in Oxford. "I heartily wish all discourses from the pulpit were as instructive and edifying, as pathetic and affecting, as that which the audience was then entertained with from the stage." This is a reproach to church-preachers at the cost of a compliment to Booth; and old Compton, ex-dragoon, and now dying Bishop of London, would not have relished it. Some of the metropolitan pulpits were, no doubt, less "entertaining" than the stage, but many of them were held to good purpose; and, as for the Nonconformist chapels, of which Smalridge knew nothing—there enthusiastic Pomfret and Matthew Clarke were drawing as great crowds as Booth; Bradbury, that cheerful-minded patriarch of the Dissenters, was even more entertaining; while Neale was pathetic and earnest in Aldersgate Street; and John Gale, affecting and zealous, amid his eager hearers in Barbican. There is no greater mistake than in supposing that at this time the whole London world was engaged in resorting exclusively to the theatres, and especially to behold Booth in Cato.
The grandeur of this piece has become somewhat dulled, but it contains more true sayings constantly quoted than any other English work, save Gray's Elegy. It has been translated into French, Italian, Latin, and Russian, and has been played in Italy and in the Jesuits' College at St. Omer. Pope adorned it with a prologue; Dr. Garth trimmed it with an epilogue; dozens of poets wrote testimonial verses; tippling Eusden gave it his solemn sanction, while Dennis, with some "horseplay raillery," but with irrefutable argument, inexorably proved that, despite beauties of diction, it is one of the most absurd, inconsistent, and unnatural plays ever conceived by poet. But, Johnson remarks truly, "as we love better to be pleased than to be taught, Cato is read, and the critic is neglected."
Booth reaped no brighter triumph than in this character, in which he has had worthy, but never equally able successors. Boheme was respectable in it; Quin imposing, and generally successful; Sheridan, conventional, but grandly eloquent; Mossop, heavy; Walker, a failure; Digges, stagy; Kemble, next to the original; Pope, "mouthy;" Cooke, altogether out of his line; Wright, weak; Young, traditional but effective; and Vandenhoff, classically correct and statuesque. In Cato, the name of Booth stands supreme; in that, the kinsman of the Earls of Warrington was never equalled. It was his good fortune, too, not to be admired less because of the affection for Betterton in the hearts of surviving admirers. This is manifest from the lines of Pope:—
"On Avon's bank where flow'rs eternal blow,
If I but ask,—if any weed can grow?—
One tragic sentence if I dare deride,
Which Betterton's grave action dignified,
Or well-mouth'd Booth with emphasis proclaims
(Though but perhaps a muster-roll of names),
How will our fathers rise up in a rage,
And swear all shame is lost in George's age."
The performance of Cato raised Booth to fortune as well as to fame; and through Bolingbroke he was appointed to a share in the profits of the management of Drury Lane, with Cibber, Wilks, and Dogget. The last-named, thereupon, retired in disgust, with compensation; and Cibber hints that Booth owed his promotion as much to his Tory sentiments as to his merits in acting Cato. The new partner had to pay £600 for his share of the stock property, "which was to be paid by such sums as should arise from half his profits of acting, till the whole was discharged." This incumbrance upon his share he discharged out of the income he received in the first year of his joint management.
His fame, however, by this time had culminated. He sustained it well, but he cannot be said to have increased it. No other such a creation as Cato fell to his lot. Young and Thomson could not serve him as Addison and opportunity had done, and if he can be said to have won additional laurels after Cato, it was in the season of 1722-23, when he played Young Bevil, in Steele's "Conscious Lovers," with a success which belied the assertion that he was inefficient in genteel comedy. The season of 1725-26 was also one of his most brilliant.
Meanwhile, a success off the stage secured him as much happiness as, on it, he had acquired wealth and reputation. The home he had kept with Susan Mountfort was broken up. In the course of this "intimate alliance of strict friendship," as the moral euphuists called it, Booth had acted with remarkable generosity towards the lady. In the year 1714 they bought several tickets in the State Lottery, and agreed to share equally whatever fortune might ensue. Booth gained nothing; the lady won a prize of £5000, and kept it. His friends counselled him to claim half the sum, but he laughingly remarked that there had never been any but a verbal agreement on the matter; and since the result had been fortunate for his friend, she should enjoy it all.
A truer friend he found in Miss Santlow, the "Santlow famed for dance," of Gay. From the ballet she had passed to the dignity of an actress, and Booth had been enamoured of her "poetry of motion" before he had played Worthy to her Dorcas Zeal. He described her, with all due ardour, in an Ode on Mira, dancing,—as resembling Venus in shape, air, mien, and eyes, and striking a whole theatre with love, when alone she filled the spacious scene. Thus was Miss Santlow in the popular Cato's eyes:—
"Whether her easy body bend,
Or her fair bosom heave with sighs,
Whether her graceful arms extend,
Or gently fall, or slowly rise,
Or returning, or advancing;
Swimming round, or side-long glancing;
Gods, how divine an air
Harmonious gesture gives the fair."
Her grace of motion effected more than eloquence, at least so Booth thought, who thus sang the nymph in her more accelerated steps to conquest:—
"But now the flying fingers strike the lyre,
The sprightly notes the nymph inspire.
She whirls around! she bounds! she springs!
As if Jove's messenger had lent her wings.
Such Daphne was....
Such were her lovely limbs, so flushed her charming face!
So round her neck! her eyes so fair!
So rose her swelling chest! so flow'd her amber hair!
While her swift feet outstript the wind,
And left the enamour'd God of Day behind."
Now, this goddess became to Booth one of the truest, most charming, and most unselfish of mortal wives.[129] But see of what perilous stuff she was made who enraptured the generally unruffled poet Thomson almost as much as she did Barton Booth. For her smiles, Marlborough had given what he least cared to part with—gold. Craggs, the Secretary of State, albeit a barber's son, had made her spouse, in all but name, and their daughter was mother of the first Lord St. Germans, and, by a second marriage, of the first Marquis of Abercorn. The Santlow blood thus danced itself into very excellent company; but the aristocracy gave good blood to the stage, as well as took gay blood from it. Contemporary with Booth and Mrs. Santlow were the sisters, frolic Mrs. Bicknell and Mrs. Younger. They were nearly related to Keith, Earl Marshal of Scotland. Their father had served in Flanders under King William, "perhaps," says Mr. Carruthers, in his Life of Pope, "rode by the side of Steele, whence Steele's interest in Mrs. Bicknell, whom he praises in the Tatler and Spectator." Mrs. Younger, in middle age, married John, brother of the seventh Earl of Winchelsea.
When Miss Santlow left the ballet for comedy, it was accounted one of the lucky incidents in the fortune of Drury. Dorcas Zeal, in the "Fair Quaker of Deal," was the first original part in which Miss Santlow appeared. Cibber says, somewhat equivocally, "that she was then in the full bloom of what beauty she might pretend to," and he, not very logically, adds, that her reception as an actress was, perhaps, owing to the admiration she had excited as a dancer. The part was suited to her figure and capacity. "The gentle softness of her voice, the composed innocence of her aspect, the modesty of her dress, the reserved decency of her gesture, and the simplicity of the sentiments that naturally fell from her, made her seem the amiable maid she represented."
Many admirers, however, regretted that she had abandoned the ballet for the drama. They mourned as if Terpsichore herself had been on earth to charm mankind, and had gone never to return. They remembered, longed for, and now longed in vain for, that sight which used to set a whole audience half distraught with delight, when in the very ecstasy of her dance, Santlow contrived to loosen her clustering auburn hair, and letting it fall about such a neck and shoulders as Praxiteles could more readily imagine than imitate, danced on, the locks flying in the air, and half a dozen hearts at the end of every one of them.
The union of Booth and Miss Santlow was as productive of happiness as that of Betterton and Miss Saunderson. Indeed, with some few exceptions, the marriages of English players have been generally so. As much, perhaps, can hardly be said of the alliances of French actors. Molière had but a miserable time of it with Mademoiselle Béjart; but he revenged himself by producing domestic incidents of a stormy and aggravating nature, on the stage. The status of the French players was even lower, in one respect, than that of their English brethren. The French ecclesiastical law did not allow of marrying or giving in marriage amongst actors. They were excommunicated, by the mere fact that they were stage-players. The Church refused them the Sacrament of Marriage, and a loving couple who desired to be honestly wed, were driven into lying. It was their habit to retire from their profession, get married as individuals who had no vocation, and the honeymoon over, to return again to the stage and their impatient public. The Church was aware of the subterfuge, and did its utmost to establish the concubinage of parties thus united; but civil law and royal influence invariably declared that these marriages were valid, seeing that the contracting parties were not excommunicated actors when the ceremony was performed, whatever they may have been a month before, or a month after.
No such difficulties as these had to be encountered by Booth and Miss Santlow; and the former lost no opportunity to render justice to the excellence of his wife. This actor's leisure was a learned leisure. Once, in his poetic vein, when turning an ode of his favourite Horace into English, he went into an original digression on the becomingness of a married life, and the peculiar felicity it had brought to himself. Thus sang the Benedict when the union was a few brief years old:—
"Happy the hour when first our souls were joined!
The social virtues and the cheerful mind
Have ever crowned our days, beguiled our pain;
Strangers to discord and her clamorous train.
Connubial friendship, hail! but haste away,
The lark and nightingale reproach thy stay;
From splendid theatres to rural scenes,
Joyous retire! so bounteous Heav'n ordains.
There we may dwell in peace.
There bless the rising morn, and flow'ry field,
Charm'd with the guiltless sports the woods and waters yield."
But neither the married nor the professional life of Booth was destined to be of long continuance. His health began to give way before he was forty. The managers hoped they had found a fair substitute for him in the actor Elrington. Tom Elrington subsequently became so great a favourite with the Dublin audience that they remembered his Bajazet as preferable to that of Barry or Mossop, on the ground that in that character his voice could be heard beyond the Blind Quay, whereas that of the other-named actors was not audible outside the house! Elrington had none of the scholar-like training of Booth. He was originally apprentice to an upholsterer in Covent Garden, was wont to attend plays unknown to his master, and to act in them privately, and with equal lack of sanction. His master was a vivacious Frenchman, who, one day, came upon him as, under the instruction of Chetwood, he was studying a part in some stilted and ranting tragedy. The stage-struck apprentice, in his agitation, sewed his book up inside the cushion, on which he was at work, "while he and Chetwood exchanged many a desponding look, and every stitch went to both their hearts." The offenders escaped detection; but on another occasion the Frenchman came upon his apprentice as he was enacting the Ghost in "Hamlet," when he laid the spirit, with irresistible effect of his good right arm. Elrington was, from the beginning, a sort of "copper Booth." His first appearance on the stage, at Drury Lane, in 1709, was in Oroonoko, the character in which Booth had made his coup d'essai in Dublin. He was ambitious, too, and had influential support. When Cibber refused to allow him to play Torrismond, while Elrington was yet young, a noble friend of the actor asked the manager to assign cause for the refusal. Colley was not at a loss. "It is not with us as with you, my Lord," said he; "your Lordship is sensible that there is no difficulty in filling places at court, you cannot be at a loss for persons to act their part there; but I assure you, it is quite otherwise in our theatrical world. If we should invest people with characters they should be unable to support, we should be undone."
Elrington, after a few years of success in Dublin, boldly attempted to take rank in London with Booth himself. He began the attempt in his favourite part of Bajazet, Booth playing Tamerlane. The latter, we are told by Victor, "being in full force, and perhaps animated by a spirit of emulation towards the new Bajazet, exerted all his powers; and Elrington owned to his friends that, never having felt the force of such an actor, he was not aware that it was in the power of mortal to soar so much above him and shrink him into nothing." Booth was quite satisfied with his own success, for he complimented Elrington on his, adding that his Bajazet was ten times as good as that of Mills, who had pretensions to play the character. The compliment was not ill-deserved, for Elrington possessed many of the natural and some of the acquired qualifications of Booth, whom perhaps he equalled in Oroonoko. He undoubtedly excelled Mills in Zanga, of which the latter was the original representative. After Dr. Young had seen Elrington play it, he went round, shook him cordially by the hand, thanked him heartily, and declared he had never seen the part done such justice to as by him; "acknowledging, with some regret," says Dr. Lewis, "that Mills did but growl and mouth the character." Such was the actor who became for a time Booth's "double," and might have become his rival. During the illness of the latter, in 1728-29, Elrington, we are told, was the principal support of tragedy in Drury Lane. At that time, says Davies, "the managers were so well convinced of his importance to them, that they offered him his own conditions, if he would engage with them for a term of years." Elrington replied, "I am truly sensible of the value of your offer, but in Ireland I am so well rewarded for my services that I cannot think of leaving it on any consideration. There is not a gentleman's house to which I am not a welcome visitor."
Booth has been called indolent, but he was never so when in health, and before a fitting audience. On one thin night, indeed, he was enacting Othello rather languidly, but he suddenly began to exert himself to the utmost, in the great scene of the third act. On coming off the stage, he was asked the cause of this sudden effort. "I saw an Oxford man in the pit," he answered, "for whose judgment I had more respect than for that of the rest of the audience;" and he played the Moor to that one but efficient judge. Some causes of languor may, perhaps, be traced to the too warm patronage he received, or rather friendship, at the hands of the nobility. It was no uncommon thing for "a carriage and six" to be in waiting for him—the equipage of some court friend—which conveyed him, in what was then considered the brief period of three hours to Windsor, and back again the next day in time for play or rehearsal. This agitated sort of life seriously affected his health; and on one occasion his recovery was despaired of. But the public favourite was restored to the town; and learned Mattaire celebrated the event in a Latin ode, in which he did honour to the memory of Betterton, and the living and invigorated genius of Booth. That genius was not so perfect as that of his great predecessor. When able to go to the theatre, though not yet able to perform, he saw Wilks play two of his parts,—Jaffier and Hastings,—and heard the applause which was awarded to his efforts; and the sound was ungrateful to the ears of the philosophical and unimpassioned Cato. But Jaffier was one of his triumphs; and he whose tenderness, pity, and terror had touched the hearts of a whole audience, was painfully affected at the triumph of another, though achieved by different means.
One of the secrets of his own success, lay, undoubtedly, in his education, feeling, and judgment. It may be readily seen from Aaron Hill's rather elaborate criticism, that he was an actor who made "points;" "he could soften and slide over, with an elegant negligence, the improprieties of a part he acted; while, on the contrary, he could dwell with energy upon the beauties, as if he exerted a latent spirit, which he kept back for such an occasion, that he might alarm, awaken, and transport, in those places only which were worthy of his best exertions." This was really to depend on "points;" and was, perhaps, a defect in a player of whom it has been said, that he had learning to understand perfectly what it was his part to speak, and judgment to know how it agreed or disagreed with his character. The following, by Hill, is as graphic as anything in Cibber:—"Booth had a talent at discovering the passions, where they lay hid in some celebrated parts, by the injudicious practice of other actors; when he had discovered, he soon grew able to express them; and his secret of attaining this great lesson of the theatre, was an adaptation of his look to his voice, by which artful imitation of nature, the variations in the sounds of his words gave propriety to every change in his countenance. So that it was Mr. Booth's peculiar felicity to be heard and seen the same; whether as the pleased, the grieved, the pitying, the reproachful, or the angry. One would be almost tempted to borrow the aid of a very bold figure, and to express this excellency the more significantly, by permission to affirm, that the Blind might have seen him in his voice, and the Deaf have heard him in his visage."
In his later years, says a critic, "his merit as an actor was unrivalled, and even so extraordinary, as to be almost beyond the reach of envy." His Othello, Cato, and his Polydore, in the "Orphan," in which he was never equalled, were long the theme of admiration to his survivors, as were in a less degree his sorrowing and not roaring Lear, his manly yet not blustering Hotspur. Dickey Brass and Dorimant, Wildair and Sir Charles Easy,[130] Pinchwife, Manley, and Young Bevil, were among the best of his essays in comedy,—where, however, he was surpassed by Wilks. "But then, I believe," says a critic, "no one will say he did not appear the fine gentleman in the character of Bevil, in the 'Conscious Lovers.' It is said that he once played Falstaff in the presence of Queen Anne, 'to the delight of the whole audience.'"
Aaron Hill, curiously statistical, states, that by the peculiar delivery of certain sentiments in Cato, Booth was always sure of obtaining from eighteen to twenty rounds of applause during the evening,—marks of approval, both of matter and manner. Like Betterton, he abounded in feeling. There was nothing of the stolidity of "Punch" in either of them. Betterton is said to have sometimes turned as "white as his neck-cloth," on seeing his father's ghost; while Booth, when playing the ghost to Betterton's Hamlet, was once so horror-stricken at his distraught aspect, as to be too disconcerted to proceed, for a while, in his part. Either actor, however, knew how far to safely yield themselves to feeling. Judgment was always within call; the head ready to control the heart, however wildly it might be impelled by the latter. Baron, the French actor, did not know better than they, that while rules may teach the actor not to raise his arms above his head, he will do well to break the rule, if passion carry him that way. "Passion," as Baron remarked, "knows more than art."
I have noticed the report that Booth and Wilks were jealous of each other; I think there was more of emulation than of envy between them. Booth could make sacrifices in favour of young actors as unreservedly as Betterton. I find, even when he was in possession, as it was called, of all the leading parts, that he as often played Laertes, or even Horatio, as the Ghost or Hamlet. His Laertes was wonderfully fine, and in a great actor's hands, may be made, in the fifth act, at least, equal with the princely Dane himself. Again, although his Othello was one of his grandest impersonations, he would take Cassio, in order to give an aspirant a chance of triumph in the Moor. In "Macbeth," Booth played, one night, the hero of the piece; on another, Banquo; and on a third, the little part of Lennox. He was quite content that Cibber should play Wolsey, while he captivated the audience by enacting the King. His Henry was a mixture of frank humour, dignity, and sternness. Theophilus Cibber says enough to convince us that Booth, in the King, could be familiar without being vulgar, and that his anger was of the quality that excites terror. He pronounced the four words, "Go thy ways, Kate," with such a happy emphasis as to win admiration and applause: and "when he said, 'Now, to breakfast with what appetite you may,' his expression was rapid and vehement, and his look tremendous."
The credit attached to the acting of inferior parts by leading players was shared with Booth by Wilks and Cibber. Of the latter, his son says, that "though justly esteemed the first comedian of his time, and superior to all we have since beheld, he has played several parts, to keep up the spirit of some comedies, which you will now scarcely find one player in twenty who will not reject as beneath his Mock-Excellence."
Booth could, after all, perhaps, occasionally be languid without the excuse of illness. He would play his best to a single man in the pit whom he recognised as a playgoer, and a judge of acting; but to an unappreciating audience he could exhibit an almost contemptuous disinclination to exert himself. On one occasion of this sort he was made painfully sensible of his mistake, and a note was addressed to him from the stage-box, the purport of which was to know whether he was acting for his own diversion or in the service and for the entertainment of the public?
On another occasion, with a thin house, and a cold audience, he was languidly going through one of his usually grandest impersonations, namely, Pyrrhus. At his very dullest scene he started into the utmost brilliancy and effectiveness. His eye had just previously detected in the pit a gentleman, named Stanyan, the friend of Addison and Steele, and the correspondent of the Earl of Manchester. Stanyan was an accomplished man and a judicious critic. Booth played to him with the utmost care and corresponding success. "No, no!" he exclaimed, as he passed behind the scenes, radiant with the effect he had produced, "I will not have it said at Button's, that Barton Booth is losing his powers!"
Some indolence was excusable, however, in actors who ordinarily laboured as Booth did. As an instance of the toil which they had to endure for the sake of applause, I will notice that in the season of 1712-13, when Booth studied, played, and triumphed in Cato, he within not many weeks studied and performed five original and very varied characters, Cato being the last of a roll, which included Arviragus, in the "Successful Pirate;" Captain Stanworth, in the "Female Advocates;" Captain Wildish, in "Humours of the Army;" Cinna, in an adaptation of Corneille's play, and finally, Cato.
No doubt Booth was finest when put upon his mettle. In May 1726, for instance, Giffard from Dublin appeared at Drury Lane, as the Prince of Wales, in "Henry IV." The debutant was known to be an admirer of the Hotspur of roaring Elrington. The Percy was one of Booth's most perfect exhibitions; and, ill as he was on the night he was to play it to Giffard's Harry, he protested that he would surprise the new comer, and the house too; and he played with such grace, fire, and energy, that the audience were beside themselves with ecstasy, and the new actor was profuse at the side-scenes, and even out of hearing of Booth, in acknowledgment of the great master and his superiority over every living competitor.
Betterton cared little if his audience was select, provided it also was judicious; Booth, however, loved a full house, though he could play his best to a solitary, but competent, individual in the pit. He confessed that he considered profit after fame, and thought that large audiences tended to the increase of both. The intercourse between audience and actor was, in his time, more intimate and familiar than it is now. Thus we see Booth entering a coffee-house in Bow Street, one morning after he had played Varanes, on the preceding night. The gentlemen present, all playgoers, as naturally as they were coffee-house frequenters, cluster round him, and acknowledge the pleasure they had enjoyed in witnessing him act. These pleasant morning critics only venture to blame him for allowing such unmeaning stuff as the pantomime of "Perseus and Andromeda" to follow the classical tragedy and mar its impression. But the ballet-pantomime draws great houses, and is therefore a less indignity in Booth's eye, than half empty benches. It was not the business of managers, he said, to be wise to empty boxes. "There were many more spectators," he said, "than men of taste and judgment; and if by the artifice of a pantomime they could entice a greater number to partake of a good play than could be drawn without it, he could not see any great harm in it; and that, as those pieces were performed after the play, they were no interruption to it." In short, he held pantomimes to be rank nonsense, which might be rendered useful, after the fashion of his explanation.
His retirement from the stage may be laid to the importunity of Mr. Theobald, who urged him to act in a play, for a moment attributed to Shakspeare, the "Double Falsehood." Booth struggled through the part of Julio, for a week, in the season of 1727-28, and then withdrew, utterly cast down, and in his forty-sixth year. Broxham, Friend, Colebatch, and Mead came with their canes, perukes, pills, and proposals, and failing to restore him, they sent him away from London. The sick player and his wife wandered from town to Bath, from the unavailing springs there to Ostend, thence to Antwerp, and on to Holland, to consult Boerhaave, who could only tell the invalid that in England a man should never leave off his winter clothing till midsummer-day, and that he should resume it the day after. From Holland the sad couple came home to Hampstead, and ultimately back to London, where fever, jaundice, and other maladies attacked Booth with intermitting severity. Here, in May 1733, a quack doctor persuaded him that if he would take "crude mercury" it would not only prevent the return of his fever but effectually cure him of all his complaints. As we are gravely informed that, within five days the poor victim "took within two ounces of two pounds weight of mercury," we are not surprised to hear that at the end of that time Booth was in extremis, and that Sir Hans Sloane was at his bedside to accelerate, as it would seem, the catastrophe.
To peruse what followed is like reading the details of an assassination. As if the two pounds, minus two ounces, of mercury were not enough, poor Booth was bled profusely at the jugular, his feet were plastered, and his scalp was blistered; he was assailed in various ways by cathartics, and mocked, I may so call it, by emulsions; the Daily Post announced that he lay a-dying at his house in Hart Street, other notices pronounced him moribund in Charles Street; but he was alive on the morning of the 10th of May 1733, when a triad of prescriptions being applied against him, Cato at length happily succumbed. But the surgeons would not let the dead actor rest; they opened his body, and dived into its recesses, and called things by strong names, and avoided technicalities; and, after declaring everything to be very much worse than the state of Denmark, as briefly described by Hamlet, Alexander Small, the especial examiner, signing the report, added a postscript thereto, implying that "There was no fault in any part of his body, but what is here mentioned." Poor fellow! We are told that he recovered from his fever, but that he died of the jaundice, helped, I think, by the treatment.
A few days subsequently the body was privately interred in Cowley Church, near Uxbridge, where he occasionally resided. A few old friends, and some dearer than friends, accompanied him to the grave. His will was as a kiss on either cheek of his beautiful widow, and a slap on both cheeks of sundry of his relations. To the former he left everything he had possessed, and for the very best of reasons. "As I have been," he says, "a man much known and talked of, my not leaving legacies to my relations may give occasion to censorious people to reflect upon my conduct in this latter act of my life; therefore, I think it necessary to declare that I have considered my circumstances, and finding, upon a strict examination, that all I am now possessed of does not amount to two-thirds of the fortune my wife brought me on the day of our marriage, together with the yearly additions and advantages since arising from her laborious employment on the stage during twelve years past, I thought myself bound by honesty, honour, and gratitude, due to her constant affection, not to give away any part of the remainder of her fortune at my death, having already bestowed, in free gifts, upon my sister, Barbara Rogers, upwards of thirteen hundred pounds, out of my wife's substance, and full four hundred pounds of her money on my undeserving brother, George Booth (besides the gifts they received before my marriage), and all those benefits were conferred on my said brother and sister, from time to time, at the earnest solicitation of my wife, who was perpetually entreating me to continue the allowance I gave my relations before my marriage. The inhuman return that has been made my wife for these obligations, by my sister, I forbear to mention." This was justice without vengeance, and worthy of the sage, of whom Booth was the most finished representative. The generosity of Hester Santlow, too, has been fittingly preserved in the will; the whole of which, moreover, is a social illustration of the times.
In Westminster, "Barton Street" keeps up the actor's name; and "Cowley Street" the remembrance of his proprietorship of a country estate near Uxbridge. To pass through the former street is like being transported to the times of Queen Anne. It is a quaint old locality, very little changed since the period in which Barton built it. No great stretch of imagination is required to fancy the original Pyrrhus and Cato gliding along the shady side, with a smile on his lips and a certain fire in his eye. He is thinking of Miss Santlow!
With Booth slowly dying, and Mrs. Oldfield often too ill to act, the prospects of Drury began to wane in 1728-29. Elrington could not supply the place of the former; nor Mrs. Porter and Mrs. Horton combined, that of the latter. Cibber carefully instructed his son Theophilus in the part of Pistol, which became his one great part, and the appearance of Miss Raftor as Dorinda, in Dryden's version of the "Tempest," on the 2nd of January 1729, marks the first step in the bright and unchequered career of one who is better remembered as Kitty Clive, of whom, more hereafter.[131] She was not able to save Cibber's pastoral comedy, "Love in a Riddle," from condemnation by an audience who had the ill-manners, as it was considered, to hiss, despite a royal presence in the house. As the new names rose the old ones fell off, and Congreve and Steele—the first rich and a gentleman, the second needy, but a gentleman, too—died in 1729, leaving no one but Cibber fit to compete with them in comedy. Musical pieces, such as the "Village Opera" and the "Lover's Opera," born of Gay's success, brought no such golden results to their authors or the house, which was still happy in retaining Wilks.
On the other hand, in the Fields, where ballad-opera had been a mine of wealth to astonished managers, classical tragedy took the lead, with Quin leading in everything, and growing in favour with a town whose applause could no longer be claimed by Booth. But classical tragedy reaped no golden harvests. Barford's "Virgin Queen" lives but in a line of Pope to Arbuthnot. The "Themistocles" (Quin) of young Madden, whom Ireland ought to remember as one of her benefactors who was no mere politician, lived but for a few nights.[132] Mrs. Heywood succeeded as ill with her romantic tragedy, "Frederick, Duke of Brunswick," which was five acts of flattery to the House of Hanover, some of whose members yawned over it ungratefully. But the "Beggar's Opera" could always fill the house whether Miss Cantrell warbled Polly, with the old cast, or children played all the parts—a foolish novelty, not unattractive. Hawker, an actor, vainly tried to rival Gay, with a serio-comic opera, the "Wedding," and Gay himself was doomed to suffer disappointment; for the authorities suppressed his "Polly," a vapid continuation of the fortunes of Macheath and the lady, and thereby drove almost to the disaffection of which he was accused, not only Gay, but his patrons, the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, who punished the Court by absenting themselves from its pleasures and duties. The poet, who desired nothing but the joys of a quiet life, a good table, and a suit of blue and silver, all which he enjoyed beneath the ducal roof, happiest of mercer's apprentices, found compensation in publishing his work by subscription, whereby he realised so large a sum as to satisfy his utmost wishes.
Drury Lane was not fortunate in any of its new pieces in the season of 1729-30. It was, perhaps, unfortunate that Mrs. Oldfield, by her recommendation, and by her acting, obtained even partial success for a comedy, by the Rev. James Miller, the "Humours of Oxford." This satirical piece brought the author into trouble with his University, at some of whose members it was aimed, and it did not tend to raise him in the estimation of his congregation in Conduit Street.
The tragedy of "Timoleon" was ruined[133] by the zeal of the author's friends, who crowded the house, and as loudly applauded the candle-snuffers and furniture as they did Mills or Mrs. Porter. Martyn, the author, had been a linen-draper, but his epitaph in Lewisham Churchyard describes him as "one of the best bred men in England." He was certainly well connected, but he exhibited more efficiency in colonising Georgia than in writing poetry. His "Timoleon" had neither beauty of style, nor incident.
This season, too, saw the first dramatic attempt of Thomson, in "Sophonisba." Lee's tragedy of that name used to drown the female part of the house in tears; but Thomson's could not stir even his own friends to enthusiasm. They rose from the full-dress rehearsals to which they were invited, dulled in sense rather than touched or elevated. Thomson's play is far less tender than Lee's; his Sophonisba (the last character originally played by Mrs. Oldfield), more stern and patriotic, and less loving. The author himself described her as a "female Cato," and in the Epilogue not too delicately indicated that if the audience would only applaud a native poet,
"Then other Shakspeares yet may rouse the stage,
And other Otways melt another age."
"Sophonisba," which Thomson was not afraid to set above the heroine of Corneille, abounds in platitudes, and it was fatal to Cibber, who, never tolerable in tragedy, was fairly hissed out of the character of Scipio, which he surrendered to a promising player, Williams. The latter was violently hissed also on the first night of his acting Scipio, he bore so close a resemblance to his predecessor. Mrs. Oldfield, alone, made a sensation, especially in the delivery of the line,
"Not one base word of Carthage—on thy soul!"
Her grandeur of action, her stern expression, and her powerful tone of voice, elicited the most enthusiastic applause. Exactly two months later, on the 28th of April 1730, she acted Lady Brute, and therewith suddenly terminated her thirty years of service, dying exactly six months after illness compelled her to withdraw.
Before noticing more fully the career of Mrs. Oldfield, let me record here, that on the night she played Lady Brute in the "Provoked Wife," the part of Mademoiselle was acted by Charlotte Charke, the wife of a good singer, but a worthless man, and the youngest child of Colley Cibber.[134] There seems to have been a touch of insanity, certainly there was no power of self-control in this poor woman. From her childhood she had been wild, wayward, and rebellious; self-taught as a boy might be, and with nothing feminine in her character or pursuits. With self-assertion, too, she was weak enough to be won by a knave with a sweet voice, whose cruel treatment drove his intractable wife to the stage, where she failed to profit by her fine opportunities.
The corresponding season at Lincoln's Inn Fields was the usual one of an unfashionable house; but Quin, Ryan, Walker, and Boheme were actors who made way against Wilks, Cibber, Mills, and Bridgewater. No new piece of any value was produced; the only incidents worth recording being the playing of Macheath by Quin, for his benefit: and the sudden death of Spiller, stricken by apoplexy, as he was playing in the "Rape of Proserpine." He was inimitable in old men, though he himself was young; but whatever he played, he so identified himself with his character that Spiller disappeared from the eyes and the thoughts of an audience, unconsciously deluded by the artist.
As the town grew, so also did theatres increase; that in Goodman's Fields, and the little house in the Haymarket, were open this season. At the former Giffard and his wife led in tragedy and comedy; but the company was generally weak. Not so the authors who wrote for the house. First among them was Fielding, a young fellow of three and twenty; bred to the law, but driven to the drama by the inability of his father, the General, to supply him with funds. His first play, "Love in Several Masques," was acted at Drury Lane in 1728; his second, and a better, the "Temple Beau," was played at Goodman's Fields.
Ralph, who had been a schoolmaster in Philadelphia, and came to England to thrive by political, satirical, or dramatic writings, and to live for ever in the abuse lavished on him by Pope, supplied a ballad-opera, the "Fashionable Lady," which was intended to rival the "Beggar's Opera." To Macheath-Walker is ascribed a tragedy, the "Fate of Villany;" and Mottley, the disappointed candidate for place, and the compiler of Joe Miller's Jests—Miller being a better joker than he was an actor—wrote for this house his "Widow Bewitched," the last and poorest of his contributions to the stage.
For the Haymarket, Fielding wrote the only piece which has come down to our times, his immortal burlesque-tragedy of "Tom Thumb," in which the weakness and bombast of late or contemporary writers are copied with wonderful effect. Young suffered severely by this;—and the "Oh, Huncamunca! Huncamunca, oh!" was a dart at the "Oh, Sophonisba! Sophonisba, oh!" of Jamie Thomson. Of the other pieces I need not disturb the dust. Let me rather, contemplating that of Mrs. Oldfield, glance at the career of that great actress, who living knew no rival, and in her peculiar line has never been excelled.
Mr. Garrick as Abel Drugger.