The success of Colley Cibber, throughout life, may be ascribed to three circumstances; the acuteness with which he detected opportunity, the electric rapidity with which he seized it, and the marvellous unerring tact by which he turned it to profit. By this he was distinguished, despite some easy negligence and luxurious idleness, from his earliest days; and from his first to his last consequent triumph, he paid for each in the malevolence of those who envied him his victories and denied his merit.
When a lad at Grantham Free School, he alone accepted the magisterial proposal to compose a funeral oration, in honour of the dead king, Charles II. He gained such glory by his achievement that his fellows sent him to Coventry. For succeeding better than any of them in writing an ode in honour of the new King, an ode which he modestly owns to have been as execrable as anything he composed half a century later, when poet-laureate, they ostracised the bard whom they could not equal in song. Colley was satisfied with his glory, and treated his young adversaries with all the mingled good-nature and audacity with which he subsequently treated his better armed enemy, Mr. Pope.
When he "met the Revolution," in 1688, at Nottingham, failing to obtain military employment, he gladly availed himself of an opportunity to wait behind Lady Churchill's chair, as she sat at table with the Princess Anne. Half a hundred years later he refers to the friend he acquired by thus performing lacquey to her; and he happily caps a climax of glorious compliment to the then Duchess of Marlborough, by flatteringly alluding to something that pleasantly distinguished her above all the women of her time,—a distinction which she received not from earthly sovereigns, but "from the Author of Nature;" that of being "a great grandmother without grey hairs."
He failed, indeed, in obtaining a commission, as he did in an attempt to enter the Church; but for those failures Cibber was, in no wise, responsible. Had he grasped a pair of colours we should have heard of him, honourably, in Flanders. Had he received ordination, he would at least have as well known how to push his way as the reverend Philip Bisse, who kissed the Countess of Plymouth in the dark, affecting to take her for a maid of honour, and who thereby gained that lively widow for a wife, and through her the bishoprics, successively, of St. Davids and Hereford.
Colley being alike debarred from ascending the pulpit, or leading to the imminently deadly breach, turned to the sock and buskin, alternately donning the one or the other, for nothing; but watching his opportunity, and never failing to take advantage of it. He gladly, after a term of hungry probation, accepted the little part of the Chaplain, in the "Orphan;" and when the old comedian Goodman swore there was the stuff for the making of a good actor in the young fellow, the tears came into Cibber's eyes; but they were tears of joy, for he recognised that his good time had commenced, and he watched opportunity more indefatigably than ever.
Meanwhile he was happy on ten, and fifteen shillings a week, with food, and raiment, and lodging, under his father's roof, and an ardent desire that he might one day play lover to Mrs. Bracegirdle. When the ambitious young fellow had induced his sire to allow him £20 a year, in addition to the £1 a week which he then gained on the stage, Colley made love to a young lady off the stage, and married at the age of twenty-two. He and his wife were as happy as any young couple that ever took a leap in the dark. This is his own testimony; but beyond that darkness he looked eagerly, watching still for opportunity. It came when Congreve's "Double Dealer" was to be played before Queen Mary. Kynaston had fallen suddenly ill, and who could learn and play the part of Lord Touchwood in a few hours? Congreve looks at Cibber, and the young actor looks confidently at Congreve. He undertakes the task, fired by the thought of promotion, and of performing before a crowned head. His success was perfect. Congreve was delighted, and the salary of the ecstatic comedian was raised some few shillings a week. His young wife danced round him for joy at this glimpse of Golconda. The company of actors began to dislike him, after the fashion of his Grantham schoolfellows.
Little recked Colley Cibber what men thought of him, provided only the thought helped him towards fortune. At a pinch, he supplied a new prologue, for the opening of a season at Drury Lane, the prosperity of which was menaced by an opposition from the new theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The poet begged hard that he might have the speaking of his own piece, but he was not accounted actor good enough for that, and thus he lost, not by error of his own, a particular opportunity. But the master slipped a couple of guineas into his hand, and declared that he, Colley, "was a very ingenious young man." Cibber was consoled; he had, at all events, profited by the opportunity, of making way with his "Master." To be sure, said Colley, "he knows no difference between Dryden and Durfey;" but that also made no difference to Colley.
Some weeks subsequently the "Old Batchelor" was suddenly substituted for the previously announced tragedy of "Hamlet." When all the parts had been distributed to the principal actors, Cibber, ever vigilant and ever ready, quietly remarked that they had forgotten one of the most telling parts in the whole play, Fondlewife. It was Dogget's great part. In it he was unapproachable. He was not a member of the company. Who could or would dare to face a public whose sides were still shaking with laughter at Dogget's irresistible performance of this character? No one knew the part; midday was at hand; the curtain must go up by four; the play could not be changed. What was to be done? Colley, of course, offered himself to do it, and his offer was treated with contempt;[77] but the managers were compelled to accept it. Here was a golden chance which had golden results for Cibber. He played the part at night, in dress, feature, voice, and action, so like to the incomparable Dogget himself, that the house was in an uproar of delight and perplexity,—delight at beholding their favourite, and perplexity as to how it could possibly be he. For there sat Dogget himself, in the very centre of a forward row in the pit; a stimulant rather than a stumbling-block to Cibber; and the astonished witness of the newly-acquired glory of this young actor, who always seemed ready to undertake anything, and who was always sure of accomplishing whatever he undertook. "It would be too rank an affectation," he writes, "if I should not confess that to see him there, a witness of my reception, was to me as consummate a triumph as the heart of vanity could be indulged with."
Surely, this persevering fellow merited success; but still were his playfellows like his schoolfellows. They envied and decried him. If he solicited a part, he was put by, with the remark that it was not in his way. He wisely replied that any part, naturally written, should be in the way of every man who pretended to be an actor. The managers thought otherwise, and left Colley—but not to despair. He had just discerned another opportunity, and, more suo, he clutched it, worked it to a noble end, and with it achieved a double and a permanent triumph—triumph as author as well as actor.