REMNANTS OF STAGE DRESSES.
There were few people who wore such a stage-look in the last century as a country squire in London. Mr. Isaac Bickerstaff speaks of one whom he had just seen in the Park. He was of a bulk and stature, we are told, larger than the ordinary; “had a red coat, flung open to show a gay calamanco waistcoat; his periwig fell in a very considerable batch upon each shoulder; his arms naturally swung at an unreasonable distance from his sides, which, with the advantage of a cane that he brandished in a great variety of irregular motions, made it unsafe for any one to walk within several yards of him.”
If this was the public dress of a country gentleman, the town fops had their own costume for their own stage. There was the dapper gentleman, with his cane hanging to the fifth button. The smart fop rejoiced in red-heeled shoes and a hat hung, rather than cocked, upon one side of the head. The set of “a good periwig made into a twist” denoted the “fellow of mettle.” The coffee-house politician was known by the moustache of snuff on his upper lip; and the lords of acres, as I have just remarked, by their glaring scarlet coats.
The walks looked like a masquerade scene at a time of high carnival, and bad taste reigned undisturbed. Reformers however sought to amend it; and Paul Whitehead, the tailor-poet, used to say that the taste of the nation depended upon Garrick! Davy’s own taste was very questionable in some respects, for he played Macbeth in the then costume of a general officer, with scarlet coat, gold lace, and a tail-wig. All the other actors were attired in similar dresses; and if Malcolm, on seeing Rosse at a distance, exclaimed, “My countryman!” he was quite right to exclaim, on seeing an English recruiting sergeant advance, “and yet I know him not!” But Rosse might have said as much of Malcolm. It was Macklin who first put Macbeth and all the characters into national costume, when he played the chief character himself, in 1773; and all the thanks he got for it was in the remark that he looked like a drunken Scotch piper—which he did. But Macbeth in kilts is nearly as great an anomaly as when he is in the uniform of a brigadier-general; and even Mr. Charles Kean, though he exhibited the Thane short-petticoated, seemed glad to get into long clothes and propriety as soon as the Thane had grown into a king.
Macklin was a comedian rather than a tragedian, and it is singular that it is to another comic actor we owe the correct dressing of Othello. It was in the latter character that Foote made his first appearance in London, at the Haymarket, in 1744. He was announced as a “gentleman” whose Othello “will be new dressed, after the manner of his country.” Mr. Wright would now play the character with about as much propriety and equal success, or the want of it. Foote is said to have looked very much like the black boy with the tea-kettle in Hogarth’s ‘Marriage à la Mode.’ “Bring the tea-kettle and lamp!” was Quin’s exclamation, when he saw Garrick enter, blacked as Othello. And we may note that, at this time, if a stage-manager were not acting in any piece represented during the evening, he was exempted from coming before the audience, whatever confusion might reign in the house. He was said to be not dressed. Austin never so much offended Garrick as when he bought a cast-off dress, the exact counterpart of that worn by Garrick himself in Lothario, and in which Austin intended to accompany Roscius on the stage. It was assumed on purpose to annoy Garrick, who wanted Austin to increase the number of companions who should surround the gallant, gay Lothario; and Austin’s method of obedience made Davy eager to excuse his humble friend’s attendance.
A better illustration of stage costume is afforded us in the story of (I think) Bensley. He had to play Henry VI. in ‘Richard the Third.’ After the monarch’s death in the early part of the play, he had to appear for a moment or two as his own ghost, in the fifth act. The spirits were at that time exhibited en buste, by a trap. Now our Henry was invited out to supper, and being anxious to get there early, and knowing that little more than his shoulders would be seen by the public, he retained his black velvet vest and bugles; but, discarding the lower part of his stage costume, he drew on a jaunty pair of new, tight, nankeen pantaloons, to be as far dressed for his supper company as he could. When he stood on the trap, he cautioned the men who turned the crank not to raise him as high as usual, and of course they promised to obey. But a wicked low comedian was at hand, whose love of mischief prevailed over his judgement, and he suddenly applied himself with such goodwill to the winch that he ran King Henry up right to a level with the stage; and moreover gave his majesty such a jerk, that he was forced to step from the trap on to the boards, to save himself from falling. The sight of the old Lancastrian monarch in a costume of two such different periods,—mediæval above, all nankeen and novelty below,—was destructive of all decorum both before the stage and upon it. The audience emphatically “split their sides;” and as for the tyrant in the tent, he sat bolt upright, and burst into such an insane roar, that the real Richard could not have looked more frantically hysterical had the deceased Henry actually so visited him in the nankeen spirit.
Mrs. Barry is said to have been a very elegant dresser; but, like most of her contemporaries, she was not a very correct one. Thus, in the ‘Unhappy Favourite,’ she played Queen Elizabeth, and, in the scene of the crowning, she wore the coronation robes of James the Second’s queen; and Ewell says that she gave the audience a strong idea of the first-named Queen. Anne of Modena, with the exception of some small details, was dressed as little like Elizabeth as Queen Victoria was dressed like Anne. Royal dresses in earlier days were not turned to such base uses. Wichtlaf, King of the Mercians, gave his purple coronation robes to the monks of courteous Croyland; and they wore the same, cut up into copes and chasubles, at the service of the altar. Goodman, the comedian, who left the stage towards the close of the seventeenth century, was originally a Cambridge student, celebrated for his extravagance in dress, and for his being expelled for cutting and defacing the picture of the Duke of Monmouth, Chancellor of the University. He took to the stage, and was successful; but his salary was not sufficient to enable him to dress as he liked, and consequently he was “compelled,” as he himself said, “to take the air.” The light comedian, when the play was over, mounted a horse, turned highwayman, and was brought thereby so near to the gallows, that it was only the sign manual of James II. that saved his neck. The famous Duchess of Cleveland, “my Duchess,” as Goodman used to call her, ought not to have left her handsome favourite in such a mean condition.
His condition was so mean, that he and a fellow comedian, named Griffin, lived in one room, shared the same bed, and had but one shirt between them. This they wore alternately. It happened that one of them had to pay a visit to a lady, and wished to wear the shirt out of his turn; and this wish so enraged the other, that a fierce battle ensued, which ended, like many other battles, in the destruction of the prize contended for, and the mutual damage of the combatants.
Jevon was another of the actors of this period who was noted for his dress and easy manners. The latter were particularly easy. As an example of it, I may remark that one day, as he entered a club room, he took a clean napkin from one of the tables, and wiped therewith his muddy shoes. The waiter begged him to wait till he fetched a coarser cloth. “No, thank you, my lad,” said Jevon, “this will serve me well enough. I’m neither proud nor particular.”
Wilks the actor was the great ruler in matters of dress about this time. He was exceedingly simple in his tastes off the stage, but he was the best-dressed man upon it; and what he adopted was universally followed. An eminent critic, writing of this actor in 1729, says:—“Whatever he did on the stage, let it be ever so trifling,—whether it consisted in putting on his gloves, or taking out his watch, lolling on his cane, or taking snuff,—every movement was marked by such an ease of breeding and manner, everything told so strongly the involuntary motion of a gentleman, that it was impossible to consider the character he represented in any other light than that of reality; but what was still more surprising, that person who could thus delight an audience from the gaiety and sprightliness of his manner, I met the next day in the street hobbling to a hackney coach, seemingly so enfeebled by age and infirmities, that I could scarcely believe him to be the same man.” This splendid dresser exercised charity in a questionably liberal manner. He was a father to orphans, and left his widow with scarcely enough to find herself in cotton gowns.
Our provincial theatres exhibit some strange anomalies with regard to costume, and there the sons and daughters of today have middle-aged sires wearing the costume of the time of George I. But the most singular anomaly in dress ever encountered by my experience was at a small theatre in Ireland, not very far from Sligo. The entertainment consisted of ‘Venice Preserved,’ and the balcony scene from ‘Romeo and Juliet.’ The Venetian ladies and gentlemen were attired in every possible variety of costume; yet not one of them wore a dress that could have been distinguished at any period as being once worn by any people, civilized or savage. Jaffier and Pierre however presented the greatest singularity, for they were not only indescribably decked, but they had but one pair of buskin boots between them; and accordingly, when it was necessary for both to be in presence of the audience, each stood at the side-scene with a single leg protruded into sight and duly booted! When a soliloquy was to be delivered, the actor came forward, as easy in his buskins as though they belonged to himself, and were not enjoyed by a partner, à la Box and Cox. Nor was this all. The appointments of the entire house were of the same character. The roof was of tiles, the seats in the pit were of potato-sacks and sacks of potatoes; and never did I laugh so much at a tragedy as when a torrent of rain fell upon audience and actors, and Juliet went through the balcony scene in a dirty bed-gown, and under a cotton umbrella.
I may observe that this Juliet, though unmarried, was spoken of as “Mrs.” and not “Miss,” for the reason that she was old enough to be the former. This was invariably the rule on our own stage a century and a half ago; and Cibber, in the ‘Lady’s Last Stake,’ calls two of his female characters Miss Notable and Mrs. Conquest, though both are unmarried; but the former is hardly old enough to be a bride, and the latter might have had daughters of her own. Another coincidence struck me in the Irish theatre. The performances were announced as for the benefit of a certain actor and his creditors. I should have set this down to Irish humour, had I not remembered having read that Spiller, in 1719, had made the same announcement at Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
But enough of these remnants. I leave them, to portray an illustrative drama, the chief character in which was enacted by one who was great in costume; and who may therefore claim to have his story, hitherto told but to the select few, placed upon our record.