He was often careless, and would go on the stage very imperfect, trusting to his wits, his impudence, and the "usual indulgence" of the audience. On one occasion he delivered a prologue without knowing a line of it. The prompter was beneath a toilet table, and to Palmer standing near, he gave line for line, which Palmer repeated, with abounding smile and action to make up for dropped words. On another occasion, this actor took advantage of an uproar in front, to seem to deliver a prologue of which he knew nothing. He moved his lips, extended his arms, touched his heart, and said nothing. Suddenly came a lull, and then Palmer looked reproachfully as if the noise had embarrassed him; whereupon one half of the house stormed at the other, for not keeping silence, and, under cover of the storm, Palmer seemed to conclude the prologue, and made a grateful bow, as if pleased with the fact of having been enabled to perform a pleasant task.
After playing Father Philip and Comus at Drury Lane, on the 19th of June 1798, Palmer proceeded to Liverpool. He had finished at Drury as radiant with gaiety, on the stage, as if his heart were not breaking. Death had taken from his family circle his wife and the most dearly loved of his sons. Sorrow for those who had departed, and anxiety for the remaining children who depended on him, affected him deeply, and, despite all effort, even when acting, he could not keep the dead or the living for a moment out of his memory. At length the night came when he was to repeat the character of the "Stranger," and then there was no simulation in his mournful aspect. He had got through his part to the middle of the opening scene of the fourth act. He had answered "I love her still," to the query of Baron Steinfort (Whitfield) respecting his wife; and then to the question as to his children, he gave the reply, "I left them at a small town hard by;" but the words, falteringly uttered, had scarcely passed his lips, when he fell, dead, at Whitfield's feet!
The sensation which this caused was most painful; and it was not allayed by those pious persons who saw in this sudden death an especial judgment launched by Heaven on the head of a man who exercised an unrighteous calling. To support their theory, they invented the story that Palmer was stricken after uttering the quotation, in the first scene of the third act, "there is another and a better world!" These words suited the inferences they wished to draw. They did not agree with the facts: but it was the old story, "so much the worse for the facts!" The lie yet lives.
Poor Palmer! One cannot help having a kindly feeling for "Plausible Jack." Can you not see him coming up to Sheridan, when reconciliation had followed quarrel, with his head bent blandly forward, his eyes turned up, his hand on his heart, and a phrase after the manner, if not of the very matter, of Joseph Surface, of which he was the original representative? "If you could but see my heart, Mr. Sheridan!" and Sheridan's pleasantly remonstrating remark, "Why, Jack, you forget I wrote it!"
And then he was so modest. "Plausible, am I?" he once asked; "you really rate me too highly. The utmost I ever did in that way was, on once being arrested by a bailiff; when I persuaded the fellow to bail me!"
After many of these actors had commenced their career, and long before some of them concluded it, a great player came, charmed, and departed, leaving a name and a reputation which render him worthy of a chapter to himself. I allude to Henderson.
Mr. Dunstall as Hodge.
FOOTNOTES:
[30] Should be 5th of May.