The effect produced by even one singular actor, or one trivial incident, is sometimes surprising. The dramatic trifle or translation called “Paul Pry” had a greater run, I believe, than any piece of the kind ever exhibited in London, though it is a mere bagatelle—in itself nothing. I went to see it, and was greatly amused—not by the piece, but by the ultra oddity of one performer. Put any handsome, or even human-looking person, in Liston’s place, and take away his umbrella, and Paul Pry would scarcely bring another audience. His countenance certainly presents the drollest set of stationary features I ever saw, and has the uncommon merit of being exquisitely comic per se, without the slightest distortion: no artificial grimace, indeed, could improve his natural. I remember O’Keeffe, justly the delight of Dublin: and Ryder, the best Sir John Brute, Ranger, Marplot, &c. in the world: the prologue of “Bucks, have at ye all!” was repeated by him four hundred and twenty-four times. O’Keeffe’s Tony Lumpkin, Vandermere’s Skirmish, Wilder’s Colonel Oldboy, Wilks’s Jessamy, and the performances of several others in the comic line, came as near nature as acting and mimicry could possibly approach. There was also a first edition of Liston as to drollery, on the Dublin stage, usually called “Old Sparkes.” He was very tall, and of a very large size; with heavy-hanging jaws, gouty ancles, big paunch, and sluggish motion; but his comic face and natural drollery were irresistible. He was a most excellent actor in every thing he could personate: his grotesque figure, however, rendered these parts but few. Peachum, in the “Beggar’s Opera,” Caliban, (with his own additions) in “The Tempest,” and all bulky, droll, low characters, he did to the greatest perfection. At one time, when the audiences of Smock-Alley were beginning to flag, Old Sparkes told Ryder, if he would bring out the afterpiece of “The Padlock,” and permit him to manage it, he would ensure him a succession of good nights. Ryder gave him his way, and the bills announced a first appearance in the part of Leonora: the débutante was reported to be a Spanish lady. The public curiosity was excited, and youth, beauty, and tremulous modesty were all anticipated; the house overflowed; impatience was unbounded; the play ended in confusion, and the overture of “The Padlock” was received with rapture. Leonora at length appeared; the clapping was like thunder, to give courage to the débutante, who had a handsome face, and was very beautifully dressed as a Spanish donna, which it was supposed she really was. Her gigantic size, it is true, rather astonished the audience. However, they willingly took for granted that the Spaniards were an immense people, and it was observed that England must have had a great escape of the Spanish Armada, if the men were proportionably gigantic to the ladies. Her voice too was rather of the hoarsest, but that was accounted for by the sudden change of climate: at last, Leonora began her song of “Sweet Robin”—
Say, little foolish fluttering thing,
Whither, ah! whither would you wing?
and at the same moment Leonora’s mask falling off, Old Sparkes stood confessed, with an immense gander which he brought from under his cloak, and which he had trained to stand on his hand and screech to his voice, and in chorus with himself. The whim took: the roar of laughter was quite inconceivable: he had also got Mungo played by a real black: and the whole was so extravagantly ludicrous, and so entirely to the taste of the Irish galleries at that time, that his “Sweet Robin” was encored, and the frequent repetition of the piece replenished poor Ryder’s treasury for the residue of the season.
I think about that time Mr. John Johnstone was a dragoon. His mother was a very good sort of woman, whom I remember extremely well. Between fifty and sixty years ago she gave me a little book, entitled “The History of the Seven Champions of Christendom,” which I have (with several other books of my childhood) to this day. She used to call at my grandmother’s, to sell run muslins, &c. which she carried about her hips in great wallets, passing them off for a hoop. She was called by the old women, in pleasantry, “Mull and Jacconot;” sold great bargains, and was a universal favourite with the ladies. Young Johnstone was a remarkably genteel well-looking lad; he used to bring presents of trout to my grandmother, which he caught in the great canal then going on close to Dublin. He soon went into the army: but having a weakness in his legs, he procured a speedy discharge, and acquired eminence on the Irish stage.
I never happened to meet Mr. John Johnstone for many years in private society till we met at dinner at Lord Barrymore’s, in 1812, where Col. Bloomfield, my old and good-hearted friend Mr. Richard Martin, and others, were assembled. I was glad to meet the distinguished comedian, and mentioned some circumstances to him which proved the extent of my memory. He sang that night as sweetly as ever I heard him on the stage, and that is saying much.
Mr. Johnstone was a truly excellent performer of the more refined species of Irish characters; but Nature had not given him enough of that original shoulder-twist, and what they call the “pot-sheen-twang,” which so strongly characterise the genuine national vis comica of the lower orders of Irish. In this respect, Owenson was superior to him, of whom the reader will find a more detailed account in a future page.
No modern comedy, in my mind, equals those of the old writers. The former are altogether devoid of that high-bred, witty playfulness of dialogue so conspicuous in the works of the latter. Gaudy spectacle, common-place clap-traps, forced dialogue, and bad puns, together with ill-placed mongrel sentiment, ad captandum vulgus, have been substituted to “make the unskilful laugh,” and to the manifest sorrow of the “judicious.” Perhaps so much the better:—as, although there are now most excellent scene-painters and fire-workers, the London stage appears to be almost destitute of competent performers in the parts of the old genuine comedy, and the present London audiences seem to prefer gunpowder, resin, brimstone, musketry, burning castles, dancing ponies, and German hobgoblins, to any human or Christian entertainments, evidently despising all those high-finished comic characters, which satisfy the understanding and owe nothing to the scenery.
In Paris the scenery and orchestra at the first theatre for acting in the world (the Theatre François) are below mediocrity. But there is another species of theatrical representation extant in France—namely, scriptural pieces; half burlesque, half melodrame. These are undoubtedly among the drollest things imaginable; mixing up in one unconnected mass, tragedy, comedy, and farce, painting, music, scenery, dress and undress, decency and indecency![[32]]