Richard Steele / Edited, with an Introduction and Notes by G. A. Aitken

by Sir Richard Steele

There were other pamphlets for and against the play, and the newspapers contained many articles on the subject. One writer remarked that a great part of Squire Cimberton's conversation, "some of which has since been omitted," could not be reconciled with rules often laid down by Steele. "He [Steele] must always be agreeable, till he ceases to be at all; and yet it has been always fashionable to use him ill: Blockheads of quality, who are scarce capable of reading his works, have affected a sort of ill-bred merit in despising 'em; and they who have no taste for his writings, have pretended to a displeasure at his conduct."

X.

The remaining years of Steele's life need not detain us long. In 1723 he wrote to his eldest daughter, Betty, "I have taken a great deal of pains to serve the world, and hope God will allow me some time to serve my own family. My good girl, employ yourself always in some good work, that you may be as good a woman as your mother." A few days later Vanbrugh wrote, "Happening to meet with Sir Richard Steele t'other day at Mr. Walpole's in town, he seemed to me to be (at least) in the declining way I had heard he was." The complications arising from the mortgage of Steele's interest in the theatre still troubled him, and from the 18th of June the other managers each took, for his own use, £1 13s. 4d. for every day upon which a play was acted, an arrangement from which Steele was excluded.

The success of The Conscious Lovers encouraged Steele to endeavour to finish another play; and the newspapers reported that it would be acted that winter. This was The School of Action, which has for its scene a theatre, mistaken by a lady's guardian for an inn; but the piece was left in a very incomplete condition. There is also a fragment of another play, The Gentleman; it was a dramatised version of a paper in the Spectator upon high life below stairs. In September illness forced Steele to go to Bath, and a few weeks later his only surviving son, Eugene, died. "Lord, grant me patience; pray write to me constantly," the father wrote to Betty: "Why don't you mention Molly? Is she dead, too?" In the spring of 1724 he was again in London, and in April a proposal for the payment of his debts was drawn up, from which it appears that, as he lived for more than five years afterwards, his liabilities were probably all met before his death. There was again reference to "a new play, which Sir Richard may produce next winter." In June an indenture quadrupartite was made between Steele, of the first part; Wilks, Cibber, and Booth, of the second part; a number of creditors, of the third part; and the Rev. David Scurlock, of the fourth part, to provide for the payment of debts out of Steele's share of the profits of the theatre. For this purpose Mr. Scurlock—Lady Steele's cousin—was appointed trustee.

The autumn of 1724 was spent at Carmarthen. In February, 1725, Steele was at Hereford, where he received £100 from the King's bounty; and in July he was again at Carmarthen. He retired to the country from "a principle of doing justice to his creditors," and not, as Swift said after his death, because of the "perils of a hundred gaols." In December, 1724, the other managers urged him to return to town at once; the audiences decreased daily, and it was impossible to contend against other forms of entertainment; the profits had fallen by more than a half. Nothing came of this application, and in September, 1725, protracted law proceedings were instituted in the Court of Chancery, by Steele and Scurlock, against Wilks, Cibber, Booth, Castleman, and Woolley. An abstract of the pleadings will be found in the Appendix. The Court gave judgment in February, 1728, confirming the allowance of £1 13s. 4d. a day to each of the three managers; but the case was not brought to a close until July, when, as Cibber says, "Sir Richard not being advised to appeal to the Lord Chancellor, both parties paid their own costs, and thought it their mutual interest to let this be the last of their law suits."

During the remaining three years of his life Steele lived chiefly at Tygwyn, a farm-house overlooking the Towy, and within sight of Carmarthen. There he had a stroke of paralysis, which was accompanied by a partial loss of speech, but he kept his sweetness of temper and kindliness towards others to the last. There is a pleasant anecdote, told by Victor, and fully confirmed elsewhere, that he "would often be carried out on a summer's evening, where the country lads and lasses were assembled at their rural sports, and, with his pencil, give an order on his agent, the mercer, for a new gown to the best dancer." By his will, made in 1727, and witnessed by John Dyer, the poet, he left the residue of his small property, after certain legacies, to his "dear and well-beloved daughters, Elizabeth and Mary." Elizabeth, who had many admirers, afterwards married Lord Trevor; Mary died shortly after her father. Before his death Steele was moved to a house in King Street, Carmarthen, where he passed away on September 1, 1729. On the 4th he was privately buried in the vault of the Scurlocks, in St. Peter's Church. This vault was accidentally opened in 1876, and Steele's remains exposed to view; but they were carefully re-interred, and the skull enclosed in a small lead coffin.

Steele's faults are apparent, and they have not been allowed to be forgotten by writers of his own day or of later times. That he was thriftless is manifest, but his income, though it came from various sources, was uncertain and irregular, and he had passed the prime of life before he had anything like handsome means. Many of his debts, too, are to be accounted for by the generosity and open-handedness which are a characteristic of the nation in which he was born. That he sometimes drank more than was wise is equally well known, but that fault does not strike us so much when we remember that hard drinking was then the common practice, and that many could consume, with impunity, an amount which would undoubtedly have upset Steele entirely.

Against these defects, and a certain general weakness of character to which they were due, we have to set his unselfish patriotism, the high aims of his writings, which had a most beneficial effect upon his own and future generations, his affection for wife and children, and his loyalty to his friends. Whatever there is to forgive is more than made up for by these qualities, which have made him, to this day, one of the best-loved characters of his time.

Steele's comedies were often reprinted in separate form during the century following their production, and there were about a dozen editions in which these separate plays were collected together, with a general title-page. The last of these bears the date 1761. In 1809 Nichols published the fragments of two unfinished comedies in his edition of Steele's Correspondence. In the present volume all Steele's dramatic works have for the first time been gathered together, and an attempt has been made to provide such annotation as seemed necessary. Changes of scene, sometimes not noticed in the old copies, have been indicated, and modern conventions respecting spelling and the like have been adopted, while punctuation, which was very erratic in the early issues, has, where necessary, been modified. The text has been collated with the first and later editions of each play.

G. A. Aitken.