The illustration is insulting; and therefore is it anonymous. The poets generally have, as I have shown, been complimentary to the tailors. Few of the sons of song have reviled the true “makers of men.” When they have done so, they have not dared to expose themselves to the sartorian wrath by boldly avowing their name. None ever did so on so extensive a scale as the author of the three-act piece, called ‘The Tailors: a Tragedy for Warm Weather;’ and no author has remained so utterly uncomeatable by the public curiosity. What is the mystery about Junius, touching whom there are a thousand guesses, compared with the greater impenetrability of this secret author, about whom no man ever heard a conjecture?
It is now nearly ninety years ago since a manuscript was sent from Dodsley’s shop to Foote, the manager of the “Little Haymarket.” The manuscript was that of the Warm Weather Tragedy, and Foote was requested to return the copy if it were not approved of. The great comedian knew better. The burlesque play of the anonymous author was acted with a strong cast. Foote himself was the Francesco; Shuter played Abrahamides, the Flint; Western did justice to Jackides; old Bannister was ponderous as Campbello; and gay Jack Palmer was just the man to enact that Lothario of stage-tailors, the seductive Isaacos. Mrs. Jeffries represented the false wife Dorothea, and Mrs. Gardner the faithful maid Titillinda. It was said by the critics of the period, that the radical fault of this burlesque play was, that “in burlesque, the characters ought to be persons of consequence, instead of which they are here tailors;” but the truth is, that the fault lies in the fact, that the tailors talk as correctly as persons of consequence, and are not half so bombastic as Nat Lee’s kings and queens. The profession exhibited much unnecessary susceptibility in being offended at this piece. Its tendency, if it have any at all, is rather to elevate than depress the public appreciation for the tailor, whether in his aspect of master or of “Flint” out upon strike. The entire action is devoted to the history of a strike for wages, with a supplemental love-plot annexed. The head master-tailor is a highly respectable individual, who has our sympathy because he is betrayed by his wife; and the chief Flint wins admiration, because he gets hanged and is cheated out of his mistress. The strike ends unfavourably for those who make it; but though the author sets out with the determination to render all his dramatis personæ ridiculous, he cannot do it. He is like the prophet who was compelled to vaticinate against his inclinations; and the deity of dramatic poetry and tailors compels him to reverence where he would fain have committed desecration. The very first sentence in this play contains an allusion to Elliott’s brigade, that famous band of warriors made up almost entirely of tailors. I must refer my readers to the piece itself, if they be curious to see how the subject is treated in evident contrariety to the author’s own design; he makes all the characters utter commonplace common sense, when his intention was to make them lose themselves upon stilts in a sea of tropes, tirades, and thunderings against tyranny.
The antiquarian will not fail to notice that Bedfordbury is a locality set down in this piece as a place where tailors’ men did congregate some century ago. They still much do congregate on the same spot. A century before the period of the piece, Frank Kynaston, the poet, resided in a house adjacent to the “Bury,” and the memory thereof is still kept up in the name Kynaston-alley, which is within that same “Bury” of classical associations. Thus do tailoring and the belles lettres continue to be in close connection; and where Kynaston’s muse kept itself warm, the sacred goose of the schneider still glows with fervid heat. The operatives of the “Bury,” moreover, look as much like poets as tailors,—so abstract are they of air, so romantically heedless of personal appearance, and so unromantically and really “half-starved.” Not of them can be said what Titillinda says of Abrahamides—
“Whose form might claim attention even from queens.”
Finally: want of space, and not of material, brings that troublesome adverb upon me. If it be objected, that the tailors of the poets do sometimes waver in critical situations, and condescend to tremble in presence of emergency, I have to answer, that such facts prove their heroism, as being akin to that of the Conqueror and Cœur de Lion. When the former was being crowned at York, he heard such an uproar in the streets, caused by the massacre of the inhabitants by the amiable Normans, that he sat upon his throne shaking with affright; “vehementer tremens,” says Orderic Vitalis, and he is very good authority. As for that tinselled bully, Richard, nobody doubts his single virtue—courage; but bold as he was, we all know that when in Sicily, he discreetly ran away from a bumpkin who threatened to cudgel him for attempting a matter of petty larceny. Francis Feeble and his brethren may, therefore, not be ashamed if they have foibles in common with William of Normandy and Richard of Bordeaux.
Dr. O. Wendell Holmes has cleverly conjectured what a tailor, poetically given, might say of the beauties that cluster about the closing day; and he has thus described
Evening.
BY A TAILOR.