And now he crosses Piccadilly, and passes through Albemarle Street, slowly, but cheerfully, with an eye and a salutation for any pretty woman of his acquaintance, and a word for any "good fellow" whose purse he has lightened or who has lightened his, at dice or whist. And so he turns into the adjacent square, and as his servant closes the door, after admitting him, neither of them wots that the master has passed over the threshold for the last time a living man.
In December 1757 I read in contemporary publications that there "died at his house at Berkeley Square, Colley Cibber, Esq., Poet Laureate." The year of his death was as eventful as that of his birth. In its course Byng was shot, and Calmet died; the Duke of Newcastle became Prime Minister, Clive won the battle of Plassy, and the Duke of Cumberland surrendered Hanover and a confederate army to the French by the treaty of Closter-seven. Within Cibber's era the Stuart had gone, Nassau had been, and the House of Brunswick had succeeded. This house was never more unpopular than at the time of Cibber's death, for one of its sons had permanently tarnished his military fame; but great as the public indignation was at the convention of Closter-seven, there was a large fraction of the London population, at least, who ceased to think of it, while Colley Cibber was carried to sleep with kings and heroes in Westminster Abbey. The general conclusion arrived at seems to have been that he was a well-abused man, who would speedily be forgotten.
To this, it may be replied, that in spite of the abuse, often little merited, he was an eminently successful man throughout life; and accomplished a career, achieved (and scattered) a fortune, and built up a fame which will always render him an object of interest.
A little too careless, perhaps; rather too much given to gambling and philandering; somewhat more than might be of the young beau about him, even in his old days, when, however, he was happy and resigned under a burthen of years which few men bear with content or resignation.
At the period of Colley Cibber's death, his daughter-in-law, Mrs. Susanna Cibber, was enchanting the town with her Isabella played to Garrick's Biron; and Barry and Mrs. Bellamy were raising melodious echoes within the walls of Covent Garden. His son, Theophilus Cibber, was hanging about the town without an engagement and in a fine suit of clothes. Colley had once thus seen him, and had saluted him with a contemptuous "I pity you!" "You had better pity my tailor!" said the son, who was then challenging Garrick to play with him the same parts alternately! Then, while the body of the Poet Laureate was being carried to Westminster Abbey, there was, up away in a hut in then desolate Clerkenwell, and starving, Colley's own daughter, Charlotte Charke. Seven and twenty years before she had first come upon the stage, after a stormy girlhood, and something akin to insanity strongly upon her. Her abilities were fair, her opportunities great, but her temper rendered both unavailable. She appears to have had a mania for appearing in male characters on, and in male attire off, the stage. By some terrible offence she forfeited the recognition of her father, who was otherwise of a benevolent disposition; and friendless, she fought a series of battles with the world, and came off in all more and more damaged.
She starved with strollers, failed as a grocer in Long Acre, became bankrupt as a puppet-show proprietor in James Street, Haymarket; re-married, became a widow a second time, was plunged into deeper ruin, thrown into prison for debt, and released only by the subscriptions of the lowest, but not least charitable, sisterhood of Drury Lane. Assuming male attire, she hung about the theatres for casual hire, went on the tramp with itinerants, hungered daily, and was weekly cheated, but yet kept up such an appearance that an heiress fell in love with her, who was reduced to despair when Charlotte Charke revealed her story, and abandoned the place.
Her next post was that of valet to an Irish Lord, forfeiting which, she and her child became sausage-makers, but could not obtain a living; and then Charlotte Charke cried "Coming, coming, sir!" as a waiter at the King's Head Tavern, Mary-le-Bone. Thence she was drawn by an offer to make her manager of a company of strolling players, with whom she enjoyed more appetite than means to appease it. She endured sharp distress, again and again; but was relieved by an uncle, who furnished her with funds, with which she opened a tavern in Drury Lane, where, after a brief career of success, she again became bankrupt. To the regular stage she once more returned, under her brother Theophilus, at the Haymarket; but the Lord Chamberlain closed the house, and Charlotte Charke took to working the wires of Russell's famous puppets in the Great Room, still existing in Brewer Street. There was a gleam of good fortune for her; but it soon faded away, and then for nine wretched years this clever, but most wretched of women, struggled frantically for bare existence, among the most wretched of strollers, with whom she endured unmitigated misery.
And yet Cibber's erring and hapless daughter contrived to reach London, where, in 1755, she published her remarkable autobiography, the details of which make the heart ache, in spite of the small sympathy of the reader for this half-mad creature. On the profits of this book she was enabled to open, as Landlord, a tavern at Islington; but, of course, ruin ensued; and in a hut, amid the cinder heaps and worse refuse in the desolate fields, she found a refuge, and even wrote a novel, on a pair of bellows in her lap, by way of desk! Here she lived, with a squalid handmaiden, a cat, dog, magpie, and monkey. Humbled, disconsolate, abandoned, she readily accepted from a publisher who visited her, £10 for her manuscript. This was at the close of the year 1755, and I do not meet with her again till 1759, two years after her father's death, when she played Marplot, in the "Busy Body," for her own benefit, at the Haymarket, with this advertisement:—"As I am entirely dependent on chance for a subsistence, and desirous of settling into business, I humbly hope the town will favour me on the occasion, which, added to the rest of their indulgences, will be ever gratefully acknowledged by their truly obliged and obedient servant, Charlotte Charke."
She died on the 6th of April 1760. Her father was then sleeping in Westminster Abbey; her brother Theophilus was at the bottom of the Irish Sea, with a shipful of Irish peers, English players, pantomimists, and wire-dancers: and her sister-in-law, Susanna Cibber, was playing Juliet to Garrick's Romeo, and approaching the time when she was to be carried to Westminster also.
Cibber had other daughters besides that audacious Charlotte, who is said to have once given imitations of her father on the stage; to have presented a pistol at, and robbed him on the highway; and to have smacked his face with a pair of soles out of her own basket. Again may it be said, happy are the women who have no histories! Let us part kindly with this poor woman's father—a man who had many virtues, and whose vices were the fashions of his time. Of him, a writer has sarcastically remarked, that he praised only the dead, and was for ever attacking his contemporaries! He who refrained from evil-speaking against those who could no longer defend themselves, and who flung the shafts of his wit and satire only at those who had tongues wherewith to reply, was in that much a true and honest fellow. "Mr. Cibber, I take my leave of you with some respect!" It is none the less for the satire of the "Craftsman," who ordered the players to go into mourning for the defunct manager; the actresses to wear black capuchins, and the men of the company "dirty shirts!"