here must be many old stagers still surviving amongst us who can remember the two managers of the Theatre Royal, Messrs. Knight and Lewis. The latter was the father of Mr. Thomas Lewis, so well known to the present and last generations. In Tyke and similar characters Knight was unequalled; while Lewis was the best Mercutio ever seen upon the stage. Both were gentlemen, and much liked in society. In those days, moreover, we had occasional visits from the celebrated John Kemble, and his as celebrated sister, Mrs. Siddons, when they were “starring it” in the provinces. Cooke, likewise, the predecessor of Kean in his peculiar line of characters, often appeared upon the Liverpool boards. He was not famous for his sobriety, and one night, being hissed for his usual sin, he rushed forward to the lights, and most unceremoniously told the audience that “he was not there to be insulted by a set of wretches, every brick in whose infernal town was cemented by an African’s blood!” This was a home thrust for our grandfathers. Fortunately for the offender, Lynch-law was unknown in those times, or he might have been the author and hero of a tragedy of his own.
And what glorious singers used to warble in our music-hall in those days! We can just remember them, although singing to us, in our babyhood and childhood, was very like “wasting their sweetness on the desert air.” Among them were Incledon, Bartleman, Braham, the semper florens, then in his prime, if not ever since and always in his prime; Mrs. Billington, and, above all and before all, that wonder of the world, Catalani herself. It is something to say that we have heard this glorious songstress, although then quite unable to appreciate her spirit-stirring and soul-melting notes.
But we forgot to mention Elliston among our list of actors; eccentric, clever, well-educated, well-read, accomplished, amusing, gentlemanly Elliston. He was a prodigious favourite in Liverpool, as much so off as on the stage. He was ever a welcome guest at the tables of our merchant princes, and, by his powers of conversation and amazing fund of information, well repaid all the attentions which he received. His range of characters, both in tragedy and comedy, was a very extensive one. His performance in Three and the Deuce was the perfection of acting, and, however often repeated, never failed to command the rapturous applause of the theatre-going public of Liverpool. A pleasant, agreeable man was Elliston, full of fun, abounding in good stories, and with an encyclopædia of anecdotes at his command. He was somewhat proud of his profession, and his profession was proud of him. It lost nothing when represented in his person.
And now, as we bring our reminiscences to a conclusion, we must not omit to chronicle that, three times since memory and observation dawned within us, we have seen Liverpool overwhelmed by grief and sorrow. The first of these occasions was when the intelligence arrived of the death of Nelson, in achieving the greatest of his great victories, that of Trafalgar. As a sailor, and the chief of sailors, he was an especial favourite in this seaport town. His name was among our “household words.” His life, a thousand romances in one reality, was the popular theme at every table, and round every fire. Wellington was in the bud then, and all the talk was of Nelson, Nelson, nothing but Nelson. When, therefore, the account of his death was received, there was not a man in Liverpool but wished with all his heart and soul that the battle had been unfought, and the victory unwon, and the departed hero yet alive and spared to us. It seemed, so intense was the feeling of regret, as if the destroying angel had again passed through the land, as of old through Egypt, and taken one from every house. Grief was in every family, lamentation in every circle, sorrow on every countenance. These feelings were the more intense in Liverpool, inasmuch as the intelligence of the hero’s death followed close upon a letter from himself, in which he announced his intention, as he had never yet seen “the good old town,” of paying it a visit, as soon as he had “settled his small account” with the French and Spanish fleets, which he was then blockading in Cadiz. How uncertain are the events of this life! We wept the hero dead, whom we hoped to welcome in all the pride and brilliancy of his glory! The envelope containing the letter in which the announcement alluded to was made, hung for many a long year, in a splendid frame, in the dining-room of Mr. J. B. Aspinall, of Duke-street. But there are hero-worshippers yet surviving, who look up to Nelson as their idol. A few months since we entered a cottage in a remote district, far from Liverpool. Our eye at once settled upon an autograph, framed and suspended against the wall. It was Nelson’s handwriting. The owner of the house entered as we were gazing at it, and seeing how we were employed, remarked, “That is the greatest treasure I possess. Nothing on earth should separate me from it while I live.” We looked at the man, who seemed not to have a spark of enthusiasm in his composition on any other subject; but, upon talking to him, we found that his whole soul was wrapped up in adoration of the memory of Nelson. We may not wonder, then, when such a feeling is found to exist now, at the burst of enthusiasm which echoed through the nation during the life, and at the death, of the popular idol; and what a subscription was raised for a monument to the mighty and fallen hero! And what collections were made in all our churches for the widows and orphans of the brave defenders of their country, who fought and were killed on the same day with their glorious chief! But Liverpool was never deaf to the call and inspirations of charity. To the poet’s question,
“Art thou content to be the modern Tyre,
Half pedlar and half tyrant of the world?”
she may proudly and truly answer, that she has ever recognised and acted upon a loftier and nobler mission. Behold her Infirmary, her Blind Asylum, her Dispensaries, her Hospitals, her institutions of every kind, for every form and shape in which woe and want come upon mankind! Freely have her sons of many generations received, and freely have they given. They are not perfect, but selfishness has never been among their faults.
The second time when Liverpool, within our recollection, was struck with distress, but it was altogether of another character, was when the great West Indian merchant, George Bailey, failed. It was thought at the time that nobody could survive the shock. For a season all trade was checked, all credit and confidence paralysed, and “Who next?” was the question of every day in every mouth, as men walked about doubtingly on ’Change, and looked into every new Gazette with fear and trembling.
The third season of consternation to which we have alluded was the actual panic occasioned by the abolition of the African slave trade. Our whole community was terror-stricken, when the cause of philanthropy triumphed in Parliament, and it was decreed that England should no longer play a guilty part in perpetrating and perpetuating the horrors of the middle passage. When this was proclaimed in Liverpool, prophets of woe and evil sprung up in every street. Destruction was about to fall upon us, chaos was to come again, an avalanche was to overwhelm us, or an earthquake to swallow us up, grass was to grow in the area of the Exchange-buildings, our warehouses were to moulder into ruins, the streets were to be ploughed up, the docks were to become fish-ponds, and our mercantile navy, whose keels penetrate to every land, and whose white sails woo the breeze on every ocean, was to dwindle into a fishing vessel or two, or be utterly extinguished. It is true that there were some men amongst us of too sanguine or too sagacious a spirit to believe in these melancholy predictions. They had yet hope or faith in the development of the resources and energies of their townsmen. Among them we must place Mr. Shaw, of Everton, and Mr. Edward Houghton, of Great Nelson-street, both large holders of land in their respective neighbourhoods, who, influenced by an inward and assured conviction that Liverpool, cut off from one branch of trade, had yet a great future before her, calmly “bided their time,” and waited for the period when the town would reach them, and building land at so much per yard would be the cry. Above all Mr. Leigh, the solicitor, one of the shrewdest men of his day, clung to this notion, and boldly speculated upon it. And the result has been, in his case, that his son, Mr. John Shaw Leigh, is one of the wealthiest, probably the wealthiest, commoner in England, able, as some one lately observed in his presence, “not only to buy up a duke, but half-a-dozen dukes, if they were in the market.”
But these far-seeing men were the exceptions. Ruin to Liverpool was the general fear of her inhabitants upon the abolition of the slave-trade. We wonder now, when we look back, that England, and Englishmen, should ever have tolerated and sanctioned the nefarious traffic in human flesh. But, while the trade existed, it had champions and defenders, not only among those who were interested in it, but among classes whose blindness can only be attributed to prejudice, the offspring of habit and custom. Thus, Boswell, in his Life of Johnson, calmly writes, “The wild and dangerous attempt which has been for some time persisted in to obtain an act of our Legislature, to abolish so very important and necessary a branch of commercial interest, must have been crushed at once, had not the insignificance of the zealots who vainly took the lead in it made the vast body of planters, merchants, and others, whose immense properties are involved in the trade, reasonably enough suppose that there could be no danger. The encouragement which the attempt has received excites my wonder and indignation, and, though some men of superior abilities have supported it, whether from a love of temporary popularity, when prosperous, or a love of general mischief, when desperate, my opinion is unshaken. To abolish a status, which, in all ages, God has sanctioned, and man has continued, would not only be robbery to an innumerable class of our fellow-subjects, but it would be extreme cruelty to the African savages, a portion of whom it saves from massacre and intolerable bondage in their own country, and introduces into a much happier state of life, especially now when their passage to the West Indies, and their treatment there, is humanely regulated. To abolish this trade would be, to
‘Shut the gates of mercy on mankind.’