Robin Roughhead, Mr. Mathews,
Rattle, Mr. Palmer, Nancy Miss Lacy
Margery, Mrs. Sparks,
Dolly, Mrs. Harlowe.
Places for the Boxes to be taken of Mr.
Spring, at the Box-Office, Russel-street.
No money to be returned.
Vivant Rex et Regina! (Lowndes and Hobbs,
Printers, Marquis-court, Drury-lane.)
“Elia.”-Why should J. H. pop on me with his mention of Elia, just as I was about to write “an article?” Write!—it’s impossible. I have turned to “My First Play”—I cannot get it out my head: the reader must take the consequence of my inability, and of the fault of J. H., and read what I shall never approach to, in writing, were I to “grind my quill these hundred years”——
MY FIRST PLAY
By Elia.
At the north end of Cross-court there yet stands a portal, of some architectural pretensions, though reduced to humble use, serving at present for an entrance to a printing-office. This old door-way, if you are young, reader, you may not know was the identical pit entrance to Old Drury—Garrick’s Drury—all of it that is left. I never pass it without shaking some forty years from off my shoulders, recurring to the evening when I passed through it to see my first play. The afternoon had been wet, and the condition of our going (the elder folks and myself) was, that the rain should cease. With what a beating heart did I watch from the window the puddles, from the stillness of which I was taught to prognosticate the desired cessation! I seem to remember the last spurt, and the glee with which I ran to announce it.
We went with orders, which my godfather F. had sent us. He kept the oil shop (now Davies’s) at the corner of Featherstone-building, in Holborn. F. was a tall grave person, lofty in speech, and had pretensions above his rank. He associated in those days with John Palmer, the comedian, whose gait and bearing he seemed to copy; if John (which is quite as likely) did not rather borrow somewhat of his manner from my godfather. He was also known to, and visited by, Sheridan. It was to his house in Holborn, that young Brinsley brought his first wife on her elopement with him from a boarding school at Bath—the beautiful Maria Linley. My parents were present (over a quadrille table) when he arrived in the evening with his harmonious charge.—From either of these connections, it may be inferred that my godfather could command an order for the then Drury-lane theatre at pleasure—and, indeed, a pretty liberal issue of those cheap billets, in Brinsley’s easy autograph, I have heard him say was the sole remuneration which he had received for many years’ nightly illumination of the orchestra, and various avenues of that theatre—and he was content that it should be so. The honour of Sheridan’s familiarity—or supposed familiarity—was better to my godfather than money.
F. was the most gentlemanly of oilmen; grandiloquent, yet courteous. His delivery of the commonest matters of fact was Ciceronian. He had two Latin words almost constantly in his mouth, (how odd sounds Latin from an oilman’s lips!) which my better knowledge since, has enabled me to correct. In strict pronunciation they should have been sounded vice versâ—but in those young years they impressed me with more awe than they would now do, read aright from Seneca or Varro—in his own peculiar pronunciation, monosyllabically elaborated, or anglicized, into something like verse verse. By an imposing manner, and the help of these distorted syllables, he climbed (but that was little) to the highest parochial honours which St. Andrew’s has to bestow.