IN THE MANAGER’S BOX.
When Mr. Harris came back, he said he had nothing to propose but his own box, which was readily accepted. To this our access was easy, as it was over the king and queen, and consequently not desirable to those who came to see them. I too now preferred it, as it was out of their sight, and enabled me to tell Lord Mountmorres, who led me to it through the crowd with unceasing trouble and attention, that till he could get better accommodated a place was at his service.
He closed instantly with the offer, placing himself behind me; but said he saw some of his relations in the opposite stage-box, Lady Mornington and her beautiful daughter Lady Ann Wellesley, and, as soon as the act was over, he would go down and persuade them to make room for him.
I was shocked, however, after all this, to hear him own himself glad to sit down, as he was still rather lame, from a dreadful overturn in a carriage, in which his leg had been nearly crushed by being caught within the coach-door, which beat down upon it, and almost demolished it.
This anecdote, however, led to another more pleasant; for it brought on a conversation which showed me his present principles, at least, were all on the government side. The accident had happened during a Journey to Chester, in his way to Ireland, whither he was hastening upon the Regency business, last winter: and he went to the Irish House of Peers the first time he quitted his room, after a confinement of three weeks from this terrible bruise.
“But how,” cried I, “could you stand?”
“I did not stand,” he answered; “they indulged me with leave to speak sitting.”
“What a useful opening, then, my lord,” cried I, “did you lose for every new paragraph!” I meant, the cant of “Now I am upon my legs.” He understood it instantly, and laughed heartily, protesting it was no small detriment to his oratory.
The play was the “Dramatist,"[324] written with that species of humour in caricature that resembles O’Keefe’s performances; full of absurdities, yet laughable in the extreme. We heard very ill, and, missing the beginning, we understood still worse: so that, in fact, I was indebted to my new associate for all the entertainment I received the whole evening.
When the act was over, the place on which he had cast his eye, near Lady Mornington, was seized; he laughed, put down his hat, and composed himself quietly for remaining where he was. He must be a man of a singular character, though of what sort I know not: but in his conversation he showed much information, and a spirited desire of interchanging ideas with those who came in his way.
We talked a great deal of France, and he related to me a variety of anecdotes just fresh imported thence. He was there at the first assembling of the Notables, and he saw, he said impending great events from that assemblage. The two most remarkable things that had struck him, he told me, in this wonderful revolution, were—first, that the French guards should ever give up their king; and secondly, that the chief spirit and capacity hither-to shown amongst individuals had come from the ecclesiastics.
He is very much of the opinion the spirit of the times will come round to this island. In what, I asked, could be its pretence?—The game-laws, he answered, and the tithes. He told me, also, a great deal of Ireland, and enlarged my political knowledge abundantly,—but I shall not be so generous, my dear friends, as to let you into all these state matters.
But I must tell you a good sort of quirk of Mr. Wilkes, who, when the power of the mob and their cruelty were first reciting, quarrelled with a gentleman for saying the French government was become a democracy and asserted it was rather a mobocracy. The pit, he said, reminded him of a sight he once saw in Westminster Hall,—a floor of faces.
He was a candidate for Westminster at that time, with Charles Fox!—thus do we veer about.
At the end of the farce, “God save the king” was most vociferously called for from all parts of the theatre, and all the singers of the theatre came on the stage to sing it, joined by the whole audience, who kept it up till the sovereign of his people’s hearts left the house. It was noble and heart-melting at once to hear and see such loyal rapture, and to feel and know it so deserved.