A Georgian Pageant

by Frank Frankfort Moore

At any rate, Colman got the play—and kept it. He would give the author no straightforward opinion as to its prospects in his hands. He refused to say when he would produce it—nay, he declined to promise that he would produce it at all. Goldsmith was thus left in torment for month after month, and the effect of the treatment that he received was to bring on an illness, and the effect of his illness was to sink him to a depth of despondency that even Goldsmith had never before sounded. The story told by Cooke of his coming upon the unhappy man in a coffeehouse, and of the latter's attempt to give him some of the details of the plot of the comedy, speaks for itself. “I shook my head,” wrote Cooke, “and said that I was afraid the audience, under their then sentimental impressions, would think it too broad and farcical for comedy.” This was poor comfort for the author; but after a pause he shook the man by the hand, saying piteously: “I am much obliged to you, my dear friend, for the candour of your opinion, but it is all I can do; for alas! I find that my genius, if ever I had any, has of late totally deserted me.”

This exclamation is the most piteous that ever came from a man of genius; and there can be no doubt of the sincerity of its utterance, for it was during these miserable months that he began a new novel, but found himself unable to get further than a few chapters. And all this time, when, in order to recover his health, he should have had no worries of a lesser nature, he was being harassed by the trivial cares of a poor, generous man's life—those mosquito vexations which, accumulating, become more intolerable than a great calamity.

He had once had great hopes of good resulting from Colman's taking up the management of Covent Garden, and had written congratulations to him within the first week of his entering into possession of the theatre. A very different letter he had now to write to the same man. Colman had endeavoured to evade the responsibility of giving him a direct answer about the play. He clearly meant that the onus of refusing it should lie at the door of some one else.

“Dear Sir,” wrote the author in January, 1773, “I entreat you'll release me from that state of suspense in which I have been kept for a long time. Whatever objections you have made or shall make to my play I will endeavour to remove and not argue about them. To bring in any new judges either of its merits or faults I can never submit to. Upon a former occasion when my other play was before Mr. Garrick he offered to bring me before Mr. Whitehead's tribunal, but I refused the proposal with indignation. I hope I shall not experience as hard treatment from you as from him.... For God's sake take the play and let us make the best of it, and let me have the same measure at least which you have given as bad plays as mine.”

Upon receiving this letter, Colman at once returned to him the manuscript of the play, and on the author's unfolding it he found that on the back of almost every page, on the blank space reserved for the prompter's hieroglyphs, some sneering criticism was scrawled. To emphasise this insult Colman had enclosed a letter to the effect that if the author was still unconvinced that the piece would be a failure, he, Colman, would produce it.

Immediately on receipt of this contemptible effort at contempt Goldsmith packed up the play and sent it to Garrick at Drury Lane. That same evening, however, he met Johnson and told him what he had done; and Johnson, whose judgment on the practical side of authorship was rarely at fault, assured him that he had done wrong and that he must get the manuscript back without delay, and submit to Colman's sneers for the sake of having the comedy produced. Upon Johnson's promising to visit Colman, and to urge upon him the claims of Goldsmith to his consideration, the distracted author wrote to Drury Lane:

“Upon more mature deliberation and the advice of a sensible friend, I begin to think it indelicate in me to throw upon you the odium of confirming Mr. Colman's sentence. I therefore request that you will send my play by my servant back; for having been assured of having it acted at the other house, though I confess yours in every respect more to my wish, yet it would be folly in me to forgo an advantage which lies in my power of appealing from Mr. Colman's opinion to the judgment of the town.”

Goldsmith got back the play, and Johnson explained to him, as he did some years later to Reynolds, that the solicitations which he had made to Colman to put it in rehearsal without delay amounted almost to force. At any rate, the play was announced and the parts distributed to the excellent company which Colman controlled. It was soon proved that he controlled some members of this company only too well. The spirit in, which he set about the discharge of his duties as a manager was apparent to every one during the earliest rehearsals. Johnson, writing to an American correspondent, mentioned that Colman made no secret of his belief that the play would be a failure. Far from it. He seems to have taken the most extraordinary trouble to spread his belief far and wide; and when a manager adopts such a course, what chance, one may ask, has the play? What chance, the players could not but ask, have the players?

This was possibly the only occasion in the history of the English drama on which such questions could be asked. If managers have a fault at all—a question which is not yet ripe for discussion—it has never been in the direction of depreciating a play which they are about to produce—that is, of course, outside the author's immediate circle. It is only when the play has failed that they sometimes allow that it was a bad one, and incapable of being saved even by the fine acting of the company and the sumptuous mounting.

But Colman controlled his company all too well, and after a day or two it was announced that the leading lady, the accomplished Mrs. Abington, had retired from the part of Miss Hardcastle; that Smith, known as Gentleman Smith, had refused to play Young Marlow; and that Woodward, the most popular comedian in the company, had thrown up the part of Tony Lumpkin.