DICKEY SUETT.
I met with him once in a house situated on the very confines of Beef and Law; on the line of demarcation between the theatres and Lincoln's Inn; a sort of debateable ground between the spouters and ranters of the stage, and the eaters of commons, by either of which party it was frequented. Around a large table in the parlour sat a motley group. There were ragged wits, well-dressed students, new-fledged actors, a hackney writer or so, an Irish barrister named Shuter, a Scotch reporter, and a hodge-podge of most discordant materials congregated under the amalgamating power of Suett, who seemed, by the incongruity of his dress and diversified manner, to have studied the various tastes of those he swayed, and to be the comprehensive representative of each of the strange beings he looked upon, with all of whom he would occasionally identify himself with so much ease, that it were hard to say whether it was the result of labour or of tact, of calculation, or the mere impulse of mother-wit. The ropes of his face, when drawn taught, peculiarly commanded the attention of the Caledonian, while the sly and humorous glance of his half-shut eye was acknowledged by the Hibernian to whom it was addressed; the snow drift of powder which lay in patches on his long, straight hair, agreed with the taste of his dramatic nursling; the far-extended cambric of white frill imposed upon the students, while the unseemly rents in his coat at once compensated to the wits for what there might be of gaudy or gay in his outward man. We were received with equal courtesy and ceremony by the president; and were just seated, when a ballet-dancer of Drury-lane entered. As he was a Frenchman, it became a question of national politeness: and Dicky chestered him to his dexter! and, as was befitting, condescended to address him. "I am proud, sir," said Suett, with the formality of Black Rod himself, "to do the honours of my country to the representative of a nation which held my master Garrick in peculiar respect. He was a great actor, sir; a wonderful man! Your Lekain, or any other Cain, could not come up to him, for he was Able, Pardon the pun. Oh, la!—but he was vain, sir; vain as a peacock; it could not be of his person. Had he been, as Richard has it, 'a marvellous proper man' like myself, one might have said something. He used to say, I was too lean for Suett. Oh, dear. A votre santé, Monsieur, happy to see you on this side the Channel. Never been to France yet, although in the Straits great part of my life, and not unfrequently half seas over.—Well, sir, to return to Garrick. There was that man 'frae the north,' who wrote the History of England and Roderick Random,—the latter a true story, they say;—he who challenged Campbell the barrister, for calling him names, To bias the cause. Well, sir, Davy refused one of his farces; but the wily Caledonian pocketed the affront, in coolly observing, 'that he had nearly completed another volume of his history, and hoped he might be permitted to name the British Roscius, the pride of his country, and all that sort of thing.' It was a palpable hit, sir—the thing was settled—the manager managed; and Smelfungus retired, without his manuscript, half sorry he had not added another scene to his farce. Well, sir, the story got wind, and some days after Davy dined with a lawyer who had interested himself vainly for a friend's comedy with him, when, in the course of conversation, the barrister observed to Davy, before a large company, that he had nearly compiled another volume of The Statutes at large (would they were all at large), and hoped he might be permitted to name the British Roscius, the pride of his country. There was a roar at the expense of Garrick. 'The galled jade' winced terribly:—he was touchy as tinder, sir:—never was Digest so ill-digested.'"
It was when the meteor-like popularity of little Betty was at its height that poor Suett fell ill, at what he termed his town residence (a second-floor in a low street), and the pigmy Roscius, having eaten too much fruit, kept all London in intense agony for his fate at the same moment. Bulletins were exhibited in Southampton-row several times a-day, signed by numerous physicians. Had he died, how posterity would have been befooled! Suett was then actually dying, yet would he have his joke, and his last moments were cheered by the horse-laugh of the rabble assembled to spell the bulletin suspended to "the second-floor bell," attested by the mark of the old woman who attended him. "You shall be buried in Saint Paul's," said a friend. "Oh, la!" was the dying ejaculation of the comedian.
New Monthly Magazine.