THE DUKE'S THEATRE, DORSET GARDEN.
[CHAPTER VI.]
"EXEUNT" AND "ENTER."
After Betterton, there was not, in the Duke's Company, a more accomplished actor than Harris. He lived in gayer society than Betterton, and cared more for the associates he found there. He had some knowledge of art, danced gracefully, and had that dangerous gift for a young man—a charming voice, with a love for displaying it. His portrait was taken by Mr. Hailes;—"in his habit of Henry V., mighty like a player;" and as Cardinal Wolsey; which latter portrait may now be seen in the Pepysian Library at Cambridge.
Pepys assigns good grounds for his esteem for Harris. "I do find him," says the diarist, "a very excellent person, such as in my whole acquaintance I do not know another better qualified for converse, whether in things of his own trade, or of other kind; a man of great understanding and observation, and very agreeable in the manner of his discourse, and civil, as far as is possible. I was mighty pleased with his company," a company with which were united, now Killigrew and the rakes, and anon, Cooper the artist, and "Cooper's cosen Jacke," and "Mr. Butler, that wrote Hudibras," being, says Mr. Pepys, "all eminent men in their way." Indeed, Harris was to be found in company even more eminent than the above, and at the great coffee-house in Covent Garden he listened to or talked with Dryden, and held his own against the best wits of the town. The playwrights were there too; but these were to be found in the coffee-houses, generally, often wrapped up in their cloaks, and eagerly heeding all that the critics had to say to each other respecting the last new play.
Harris was aware that in one or two light characters he was Betterton's equal. He was a restless actor, threatening, when discontented, to secede from the Duke's to the King's Company, and causing equal trouble to his manager Davenant, and to his monarch Charles—the two officials most vexed in the settling of the little kingdom of the stage.
There was a graceful, general actor of the troop to which Harris belonged, who drew upon himself the special observation of the Government at home and an English ambassador abroad. Scudamore was the original Garcia of Congreve's "Mourning Bride;" he also played amorous young knights, sparkling young gentlemen, scampish French and English beaux, gay and good-looking kings, and roystering kings' sons; such as Harry, Prince of Wales. Off the stage, he enacted another part. When King James was in exile, Scudamore was engaged as a Jacobite agent, and he carried many a despatch or message between London and St. Germains. But our ambassador, the Earl of Manchester, had his eye upon him. One of the Earl's despatches to the English Government, written in 1700, concludes with the words:—"One Scudamore, a player in Lincoln's Inn Fields, has been here, and was with the late King, and often at St. Germains. He is now, I believe, at London. Several such sort of fellows go and come very often; but I cannot see how it is to be prevented, for without a positive oath nothing can be done to them." The date of this despatch is August 1700, at which time the player ought to have been engaged in a less perilous character, for an entry in Luttrell's Diary, 28th May 1700, records that "Mr. Scudamore of the play-house is married to a young lady of £4000 fortune, who fell in love with him."