The average expenses of Drury Lane Theatre at Christmas-tide, when there are extra performances, amount to nearly 1,500l. per week. The rent paid is reckoned at 4,500l. for two hundred nights of acting, and only 5l. per night for all performances beyond that number. About 160l. must be in the house before the lessees can begin to reckon on any profit. In old times, the presence of royalty made a great difference in the receipts. On February 12, 1777,I find from the books that the ‘Jealous Wife,’ and ‘Neck or Nothing,’ were played. An entry is added that ‘the king and queen were present,’ and the result is registered under the form, ‘receipts 245l. 9s. 6d., a hundred pounds more than the previous night.’
The number of children engaged in a pantomime at Drury Lane generally exceeds two hundred. The girls are more numerous than the boys. It is a curious fact that in engaging these children the manager prefers the quiet and dull to the smart and lively. Your smart lad and girl are given to ‘larking’ and thinking of their own cleverness. The quiet and dull are more ‘teachable,’ and can be made to seem lively without flinging off discipline. These little creatures are thus kept from the streets; many of them are sons and daughters of persons employed in the house, and their shilling a night and a good washing tells pleasantly in many a humble household, to which, on Saturday nights, they contribute their wages and clean faces. It was for a clever body of children of this sort that benefits were first established in France in 1747. In England they date from Elizabeth Barry, on whose behalf the first was given, by order of James the Second.
Then there are the indispensable, but not easily procured, ‘ladies of the ballet.’ They number about five dozen; two dozen principals, the rest in training to become so. Their salary is not so low as is generally supposed—twenty-five, and occasionally thirty shillings a week. They are ‘respectable.’ I have seen three or four dozen of them together in their green-room, where they conducted themselves as ‘properly’ as any number of well-trained young ladies could at the most fashionable of finishing establishments.
There was a scene in the ‘Sergeant’s Wife’ which was always played with a terrible power by Miss Kelly; and yet the audience, during the most exciting portion of the scene, saw only the back of the actress. Miss Kelly represented the wife, who, footsore and ignorant of her way, had found rude hospitality and rough sleeping quarters in a wretched hut. Unable to sleep, something tempts her to look through the interstices of the planks which divide her room from the adjoining one. While looking, she is witness of the commission of a murder. Spell-bound, she gazes on, in terror almost mute, save a few broken words. During this incident the actress had her back turned to the audience; nevertheless, she conveyed to the enthralled house an expression of overwhelming and indescribable horror as faithfully as if they had seen it in her features or heard it in her voice. Every spectator confessed her irresistible power, but none could even guess at the secret by which she exercised it.
The mystery was, in fact, none at all. Miss Kelly’s acting in this scene was wonderfully impressive, simply because she kept strictly to nature. She knew that not to the face alone belongs all power of interpretation of passion or feeling. This knowledge gave to Rich his marvellous power as Harlequin. In the old days, when harlequinades had an intelligible plot in which the spectators took interest, it was the office of Harlequin to guard the glittering lady of his love from the malice of their respective enemies. There always occurred an incident in which Columbine was carried off from her despairing lord, and it was on this occasion that Rich, all power of conveying facial expression being cut off by his mask, used to move the house to sympathy, and sometimes, it is said, to tears, by the pathos of his mute and tragic action. As he gazed up the stage at the forced departure of Columbine every limb told unmistakably that the poor fellow’s heart was breaking within him. When she was restored the whole house broke forth into a thunder of exultation, as if the whole scene had been a reality.
I cannot tell how this was effected, but I can tell a story that is not unconnected with the terrible pantomime of suffering nature.
Some years ago an unfortunate man, who had made war against society, and had to suffer death for it in front of the old Debtors’ door, Newgate, took leave of his wife and daughters not many hours before execution, in presence of the ‘Reverend Ordinary,’ Mr. Cotton, and a young officer in the prison, who has since attained to eminence and corresponding responsibility in the gloomy service to which he is devoted. The scene of separation was heartrending to all but the doomed man, who was calm, and even smiled once or twice, in order to cheer, if he could, the poor creatures whom he had rendered cheerless for ever. When the ordinary and the prison officer were left alone, the reverend gentleman remarked—‘Well, H——, what do you think of the way in which the prisoner went through that?’
‘Wonderfully, sir,’ answered H——, ‘considering the circumstances.’
‘Wonderfully!’ replied Mr. Cotton, ‘yes; but not in your sense, my friend.’
‘In what sense, then, sir?’ asked H——.