“His Majesty has sent me ten guineas because I am poor and live in an alley. Go and tell him his soul lives in an alley.”
Jonson died on the 6th August, 1637, having long outlived his wife and all his children.
It is curious still to note how many of our literary lions began to make their way in the world, as Jonson did, on the stage. It was so with William Leman Rede, who, starting as an actor at Margate (the Margate boards formed indeed the porch through which a very large number of histrionic aspirants entered the theatrical profession), became an itinerant actor, at one time playing Hamlet in a barn and at another Rover on a billiard-table; sometimes foodless and hungry, travelling on foot and sometimes luxuriating in a waggon, but always light-hearted and gay. Once when he was laughing merrily at the plight he was in on a “treasury day,” when, in the phraseology of the profession, “the ghost didn’t walk,” that is to say when there was no money in hand to pay the actors’ salaries, some one asked how he continued to be jolly under such miserably depressing circumstances. He replied, “I drink spring water and dance.” Rede was always a sober, abstemious man. Coming to London in 1825, he published his first novel, ‘The Wedded Wanderer,’ which was followed by a second, ‘The White Tower,’ each in three volumes. This was followed by his ‘Crimes and Criminals in Yorkshire,’ and his connection with a weekly publication belonging to his brother Thomas, called Oxberry’s Dramatic Biography—Thomas having married the widow of Oxberry the comedian, by whom the serial had been started.
As actor, magazine writer, dramatist, journalist and novelist Rede acquired fame but not wealth. One evening he was arrested for debt while acting on the stage, by a sheriff’s officer, who sprang from the pit over the orchestra and footlights to secure his prisoner. Rede originated the Dramatic Authors’ Society.
Sheridan, to whom I have previously alluded, was another famous literary man familiar with the boards and—need I say?—with impecuniosity. He was, according to Haydon, “in debt all round to milkman, grocer, baker, and butcher. Sometimes his wife would be kept waiting for an hour or more while the servants were beating up the neighbourhood for coffee, butter, eggs and rolls. While Sheridan was Paymaster of the Navy, a butcher one day brought a leg of mutton; the cook took it and clapped it in the pot to boil and went upstairs for the money, but the cook not returning, the butcher removed the pot-lid, took out the mutton, and walked away with it.” On another occasion Michael Kelly, the musical celebrity, was complaining to him of a wine merchant at Hochheim who instead of six dozen of wine had sent him sixteen. Sheridan said he would take some off his hands if he were not quite able to pay for it, but, said he, “you can get rid of it easily, put up a sign over your door and write on it, ‘Michael Kelly, Composer of Wines and Importer of Music;’” a sly rub which the composer received with a laugh, wittily retorting that there was one wine so poisonous and intoxicating that he would neither compose nor import, and that was “Old Sherry” (Sheridan’s nickname).
One night when Sheridan was at home in a cottage he had about a mile from Hounslow Heath, his son Tom asked him for some cash. “Money, I have none,” was the reply.
“But let the consequences be what they may, money I must have,” said Tom fiercely.
“In that case, my dear Tom,” said the father, “you will find a case of loaded pistols upstairs and a horse ready saddled in the stable, the night is dark and you are within half a mile of Hounslow Heath”—a place of terrible repute for highway robbers.
“I understand,” said Tom, “but I tried that before I came to you. Unluckily the man I stopped was Peake, your treasurer, and he told me that you had been beforehand with him and robbed him of every sixpence he had in the world.”
Kelly saw many instances of Sheridan raising money, but one instance in particular astonished him. Sheridan was £3000 in arrear with the Italian Opera performance; there were continual postponements, and at last the singers resolved to strike. Kelly, as manager, received a note that on the evening of a certain day they would not sing unless paid, and hurried off to Morlands, the bankers in Pall Mall, for advances. The bankers were inexorable; like the singers, they were worn out. The manager then flew off to Sheridan at his residence in Hertford Street, Mayfair, where he was kept waiting two hours. Sheridan was told that if he could not raise £3000 the theatre must be closed. “£3000, Kelly,” he said; “there is no such sum in nature. Are you an admirer of Shakespeare?”