JOHN GILPIN
| The Examiner.] | [May 4, 1817. |
Drury-Lane.
When Mr. Dowton advertised for his benefit that he was to appear in the after-piece as John Gilpin, and to ride for that night only, we immediately felt tempted to go as the self-appointed executors and residuary legatees of the original author of the story, who concludes his account with these two lines—
‘And when he next does ride abroad,
May we be there to see.’
So we took upon us to fulfil Cowper’s wish, and went to see, not John Gilpin, nor, as we are credibly informed, even Mr. Dowton, but something very laughable, and still more absurd, which had however a certain charm about it, from the very name of the hero of the piece. We have an interest in John Gilpin; aye, almost as great an interest as we have in ourselves; for we remember him almost as long. We remember the prints of him and his travels hung round a little parlour where we used to visit when we were children—just about the time of the beginning of the French Revolution. While the old ladies were playing at whist, and the young ones at forfeits, we crept about the sides of the room and tracked John Gilpin from his counter to his horse, from his own door to the turnpike, and far beyond the turnpike gate and the bell at Edmonton, with loss of wig and hat, but with an increasing impetus and reputation, the farther he went from home.
‘The turnpike men their gates wide open threw,
He carries weight, he rides a race,
’Tis for a thousand pounds.’
What an impression was here made, never to be effaced! What a thing it is to be an author, and how much better a thing it is to be a reader, with all the pleasure and without any of the trouble—but without any of the fame, you will say. That is not worth two-pence. And yet true fame is something, the fame, for instance, of Cowper or of Thomson—not to live in the mouths of pedants, and coxcombs, and professional men, but in the heart and soul of every living being, to mingle with every thought, to beat in every pulse, to be hailed with transport by those who are young, and to be remembered with regret by those who are old, to be ‘first, last, and midst’ in the minds of others. True fame is like a Lapland sun, that never goes down; it rises with us in the morning, and rolls round and round till our night of life. Why, look here, what a thing it is to be an author! John Gilpin delighted us when we were children, and were we to die to-morrow, the name of John Gilpin would excite a momentary sense of pleasure. The same feeling of delight, with which at ten years old we read the story, makes us thirty years after go, laughing, to see the play. In all that time, the remembrance has been cherished at the heart, like the pulse that sustains our life. ‘That ligament, fine as it was, was never broken!’ and yet it was nearly broken the other night, in the after-piece of this name, and would have been quite so for the evening, if it had not been for Mr. Munden, who, as a subordinate agent, prevented Mr. Dowton from breaking his neck in the principal character. We differed from the audience on this occasion, who did not much relish Mr. Munden in his part of a cockney: we relished him altogether and mightily. His speech, his countenance, and his dress, were in high costume and keeping. There was a greatness of gusto about Timothy Brittle, Mrs. Gilpin’s favourite but unfortunate son-in-law. It might be said of Mr. Munden in this character, that not only did his dress appear to have come fresh from the shop-board, his coat, his pantaloons, his waistcoat—but his speech was clipped and snipped as with a pair of sheers, and his face looked just as if the tailor’s goose had gone over it. It was a fine and inimitable piece of acting, but it was damned.—Dowton, in The Rivals, played Mrs. Malaprop, and Mrs. Sparks played Sir Anthony Absolute. We cannot say much of these transformations, for the performers themselves remained just the same, breeches and petticoats out of the question; nothing was transformed or ridiculous but their dress. Dowton was as blunt and bluff, and Mrs. Sparks was as keen, querulous, and scolding, as in any of their usual characters. The effect was flat after the first entrée, and the whole play was, in other respects, very poorly got up;—quite in the comic negligé of Drury-lane.—We ought to say something of Mrs. Hill, who came out on Tuesday evening as Lady Macbeth. She is neither a good nor a bad actress. She has, however, a sentimental drawl in her voice and manner which is very little to our taste, and not at all in character as Lady Macbeth. The King never dies. Why should Mrs. Siddons ever die? Why, because Kings are fictions in law: Mrs. Siddons was one of nature’s greatest works.