After supper was done, the coach-party were informed that some of Mr. Garrick’s servants were that night to exhibit in an old thatched house in a corner of the town. They had come abroad into the country during the summer vacation, to see if they could find anything to keep their grinders going until the opening of Drury Lane Theatre. They were that night to play the Went Indian and the Jubilee.
The whole of the passengers went to see the performance. The actors played their parts very indifferently, but, after all, not so badly but that one could, with some trouble, manage to perceive as much meaning in their actions as to be able to distinguish between an honest man and a rogue. Our ingenious and imaginative Mr. Murray thought it must be dangerous for an actor to play the rogue often, for fear of his performance becoming something more than an imitation. But after all, he says, with the fine intolerant scorn of the old-time dissenting minister, the generality of players had little morality to lose.
It was a very poor theatre—being, indeed, not a theatre at all, and little better than a barn. The audience, however, was good, and well dressed, and the ladies handsome. The performance was over by eleven o’clock, and the company dismissed. Mr. Murray concludes his account of the evening’s entertainment by very sourly observing that their time and that of the rest of the audience might have been better employed than in seeing a few stupid rogues endeavouring to imitate what some of them really were.
The coach left Grantham at two o’clock the next morning; much too early, considering the short rest the night’s gaiety had left them. But there was no choice—they were under authority, and had to obey. That person would be a fool who, having paid £3 8s. 6d. for a seat in a stage-coach from Newcastle to London, should consent to lose it by not rising betimes. The worst of it was, that here one had to take care of one’s self, because no one would wait upon him or return him his money. Observe the passengers, therefore, all, in the coach by 2 a.m. The company being seated, the driver went off as fast as if he would have driven them to Stamford in the twinkling of an eye. So early was the hour that we are not surprised to be told that the author fell asleep by the time they were clear of the town, and doubtless the others did the same. It may be remarked here that a very excellent proof of this being a fictitious journey is found in there being no mention of the passengers being turned out of the coach to walk up the steep Spitalgate Hill—a thing always necessary at that period of coaching history.
The remainder of this not-inaptly named Travels of the Imagination is made up chiefly of a long disquisition upon sleep—itself highly soporific—which only gives place to remarks upon the journey when the coach arrives on Highgate Hill. Coming over that eminence, they had a peep at London.
“It must be a wonderful holy place,” he suggests to the other passengers, “there are so many church steeples to be seen.”
The others, who must have known better, said nothing.
“Are we there?” he asked when they had reached Islington.
“No, not there yet.”
“Is it a large place: four times as large, for instance, as Newcastle?”