TEN THOUSAND A-YEAR!
The dramatic capabilities of “Ten Thousand a-Year,” as manifested in the vicissitudes that happen to the Yatton Borough (appropriately recorded by Mr. Warren in Blackwood’s Magazine), have been fairly put to the test by a popular and Peake-ante play-wright. What a subject! With ten thousand a-year a man may do anything. There is attraction in the very sound of the words. It is well worth the penny one gives for a bill to con over those rich, euphonious, delicious syllables—TEN THOUSAND A-YEAR! Why, the magic letters express the concentrated essence of human felicity—the summum bonum of mortal bliss!
Charles Aubrey, of Yatton, in the county of York, Esquire, possesses ten thousand a-year in landed property, a lovely sister in yellow satin, a wife who can sing, and two charming children, who dance the mazourka as well as they do it at Almack’s, or at Mr. Baron Nathan’s. As is generally the case with gentlemen of large fortunes, he is the repository of all the cardinal virtues, and of all the talents. Good husbands, good fathers, good brothers, and idolised landlords, are plenty enough; but a man who, like Aubrey, is all these put together, is indeed a scarce article; the more so, as he is also a profound scholar, and an honest statesman. In short, though pretty well versed in the paragons of virtue that belong to the drama, we find this Charles Aubrey to be the veriest angel that ever wore black trousers and pumps.
The most exalted virtue of the stage is, in the long run, seen in good circumstances, and vice versa; for, in this country, one of the chief elements of crime is poverty. Hence the picture is reversed; we behold a striking contrast—a scene antithetical. We are shown into a miserable garret, and introduced to a vulgar, illiterate, cockneyfied, dirty, dandified linendraper’s shopman, in the person of Tittlebat Titmouse. In the midst of his distresses his attention is directed to a “Next of Kin” advertisement. It relates to him and to the Yatton property; and if you be the least conversant with stage effect, you know what is coming: though the author thinks he is leaving you in a state of agonising suspense by closing the act.
The next scene is the robing-room of the York Court-house; and the curtains at the back are afterwards drawn aside to disclose a large cupboard, meant to represent an assize-court. On one shelf of it is seated a supposititious Judge, surrounded by some half-dozen pseudo female spectators; the bottom shelf being occupied by counsel, attorney, crier of the court, and plaintiff. The special jury are severally called in to occupy the right-hand shelf; and when the cupboard is quite full, all the forms of returning a verdict are gone through. This is for the plaintiff! Mr. Aubrey is ruined; and Mr. Titmouse jumps about, at the imminent risk of breaking the cupboard to pieces, having already knocked down a counsel or two, and rolled over his own attorney.
This idea of dramatising proceedings at nisi prius only shows the state of destitution into which the promoters of stage excitement have fallen. The Baileys, Old and New, have, from constant use, lost their charms; the police officers were completely worn out by Tom and Jerry, Oliver Twist, &c.; so that now, all the courts left to be “done” for the drama are the Exchequer and Ecclesiastical, Secondaries and Summonsing, Petty Sessions and Prerogative. But what is to happen when these are exhausted? The answer is obvious:—Mr. Yates will turn his attention to the Church! Depend upon it, we shall soon have the potent Paul Bedford, or the grave and reverend Mr. John Saunders, in solemn sables, converting the stage into a Baptist meeting, and repentant supernumeraries with the real water!
Hoping to be forgiven for this, perhaps misplaced, levity, we proceed to Act III., in which we find that, fortune having shuffled the cards, and the judge and jury cut them, Mr. Titmouse turns up possessor of Yatton and ten thousand a-year; while Aubrey, quite at the bottom of the pack, is in a state of destitution. To show the depth of distress into which he has fallen, a happy expedient is hit upon: he is described as turning his attention and attainments to literature; and that the unfathomable straits he is put to may be fully understood, he is made a reviewer! Thus the highest degree of sympathy is excited towards him; for everybody knows that no person would willingly resort to criticism (literary or dramatic) as a means of livelihood, if he could command a broom and a crossing to earn a penny by, or while there exists a Mendicity Society to get soup from.
We have yet to mention one character; and considering that he is the main-spring of the whole matter, we cannot put it off any longer. Mr. Gammon is a lawyer—that is quite enough; we need not say more. You all know that stage solicitors are more outrageous villains than even their originals. Mr. Gammon is, of course, a “fine speciment of the specious,” as Mr. Hood’s Mr. Higgings says. It is he who, finding out a flaw in Aubrey’s title, angled per advertisement for the heir, and caught a Tittlebat—Titmouse. It is he who has so disinterestedly made that gentleman’s fortune.—“Only just merely for the sake of the costs?” one naturally asks. Oh no; there is a stronger reason (with which, however, reason has nothing to do)—love! Mr. Gammon became desperately enamoured of Miss Aubrey; but she was silly enough to prefer the heir to a peerage, Mr. Delamere. Mr. Gammon never forgave her, and so ruins her brother.
Having brought the whole family to a state in which he supposes they will refuse nothing, Gammon visits Miss Aubrey, and, in the most handsome manner, offers her—notwithstanding the disparity in their circumstances—his hand, heart, and fortune. More than that, he promises to restore the estate of Yatton to its late possessor. To his astonishment the lady rejects him; and, he showing what the bills call the “cloven foot,” Miss Aubrey orders him to be shown out. Meantime, Mr. Tittlebat Titmouse, having been returned M.P. for Yatton, has made a great noise in house, not by his oratorical powers, but by his proficient imitations of cock-crowing and donkey-braying.
This being Act IV., it is quite clear that Gammon’s villany and Tittlebat’s prosperity cannot last much longer. Both are ended in an original manner. True to the principle with which the Adelphi commenced its season—that of putting stage villany into comedy—Mr. Gammon concludes the facetiæ with which his part abounds by a comic suicide! All the details of this revolting operation are gone through amidst the most ponderous levity; insomuch, that the audience had virtue enough to hiss most lustily33. While this page was passing through the press, we witnessed a representation of “Ten Thousand a-Year” a second time, and observed that the offensiveness of this scene was considerably abated. Mr. Lyon deserves a word of praise for his acting in that passage of the piece as it now stands. .
Thus the string of rascality by which the piece is held together being cut, it naturally finishes by the reinstatement of Aubrey—together with a view of Yatton in sunshine, a procession of charity children, mutual embraces by all the characters, and a song by Mrs. Grattan. What becomes of Titmouse is not known, and did not seem to be much cared about.
This piece is interesting, not because it is cleverly constructed (for it is not), nor because Mr. Titmouse dyes his hair green with a barber’s nostrum, nor on account of the cupboard court of Nisi Prius, nor of the charity children, nor because Mr. Wieland, instead of playing the devil himself, played Mr. Snap, one of his limbs—but because many of the scenes are well-drawn pictures of life. The children’s ball in the first “epoch,” for instance, was altogether excellently managed and true; and though many of the characters are overcharged, yet we have seen people like them in Chancery-lane, at Messrs. Swan and Edgar’s, in country houses, and elsewhere. The suicide incident is, however, a disgusting drawback.
The acting was also good, but too extravagantly so. Mr. Wright, as Titmouse, thought perhaps that a Cockney dandy could not be caricatured, and he consequently went desperate lengths, but threw in here and there a touch of nature. Mr. Lyon was as energetic as ever in Gammon; Mrs. Yates as lugubrious as is her wont in Miss Aubrey; Mrs. Grattan acted and looked as if she were quite deserving of a man with ten thousand a year. As to her singing, if her husband were in possession of twenty thousand per annum, (would to the gods he were!) it could not have been more charmingly tasteful. The pathetics of Wilkinson (as Quirk) in the suicide scene, and just before the event, deserve the attention and imitation of Macready. We hope the former comedian’s next character will be Ion, or, at least, Othello. He has now proved that smaller parts are beneath his purely histrionic talents.
Mr. Yates did not make a speech! This extraordinary omission set the house in a buzz of conjectural wonderment till “The Maid of Honour” put a stop to it.
NOTE.—A critique on this piece would have appeared last week, if it had pleased some of the people at the post-office (through which the MS. was sent to the Editors) not to steal it. Perhaps they took it for something valuable; and, perhaps, they were not mistaken. Thanks be to Mercury, we have plenty of wit to spare, and can afford some of it to be stolen now and then. Still we entreat Colonel Maberly (Editor of the “Post” in St. Martin’s-le-Grand) to supply his clerks with jokes enough to keep them alive, that they may not be driven to steal other people’s. The most effectual way to preserve them in a state of jocular honesty would be for him to present every person on the establishment with a copy of “Punch” from week to week.