DRURY LANE

VOL. I.

LONDON: PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET

IN AND ABOUT

DRURY LANE

AND OTHER PAPERS

REPRINTED FROM THE PAGES OF THE ‘TEMPLE BAR’ MAGAZINE

BY

D^R DORAN

AUTHOR OF ‘TABLE TRAITS AND SOMETHING ON THEM’ ‘JACOBITE LONDON’
‘QUEENS OF ENGLAND OF THE HOUSE OF HANOVER’

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOL. I.

LONDON
RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen
1881

All rights reserved

PREFATORY REMARKS.

The republication of papers which have originally appeared in a Magazine frequently requires justification.

In the present instance this justification, it is thought, may be found in the special knowledge which Dr. Doran had of all matters pertaining to the stage; in his intimacy with the literature which treats of manners and customs, English and foreign; and in his memory, which retained and retailed a great amount of anecdote, told with a sprightly wit.

These volumes, reprinted with one or two exceptions from the pages of the ‘Temple Bar’ Magazine, will, it is believed, be found to contain many good stories, and much information unostentatiously conveyed. It is hoped, therefore, that the public will endorse the opinion of the writer of this Preface, and consider that the plea of justification has been made out.

G. B.

CONTENTS

OF

THE FIRST VOLUME.

IN AND ABOUT DRURY LANE.

In the afternoon of ‘Boxing-day,’ 1865, I had to pass through Drury Lane, and some of the worst of the ‘slums’ which find vent therein. There was a general movement in the place, and the effect was not savoury. There was a going to-and-fro of groups of people, and there was nothing picturesque in them; assemblings of children, but alas! nothing lovable in them. It was a universal holiday, yet its aspect was hideous.

Arrived at the stage-door of Drury Lane Theatre, I found my way on to the stage itself, where the last rehearsal of the pantomime, to be played for the first time that evening, was progressing.

The change from the external pandemonium to the hive of humming industry in which I then stood, was striking and singular. Outside were blasphemy and drunkenness. Inside, boundless activity, order, hard work, and cheerful hearts. There was very much to do, but every man had his especial work assigned him, every girl her allotted task. An unaccustomed person might have pronounced as mere confusion, that shifting of scenes, that forming, unforming, and reforming of groups, that unintelligible dumb show, that collecting, scattering, and gathering together of ‘young ladies’ in sober-coloured dresses and business-like faces, who were to be so resplendent in the evening as fairies, all gold, glitter, lustrous eyes, and virtuous intentions. There was Mr. Beverley—perhaps the greatest magician there—not only to see that nothing should mar the beauty he had created, but to take care that the colours of the costumes should not be in antagonism with the scenes before which they were to be worn. There was that Michael Angelo of pantomimic mask inventors, Mr. Keene, anxiously looking to the expressions of the masks, of which he is the prince of designers. Then, if you think those graceful and varied figures of the ballet as easy to invent, or to trace, as they seem, and are, at last, easily performed, you should witness the trouble taken to invent, and the patience taken to bring to perfection—the figures and the figurantes—on the part of the artistic ballet-master, Mr. Cormack. But, responsible for the good result of all, there stands Mr. Roxby, stern as Rhadamanthus, just as Aristides, inflexible as determination can make him, and good-natured as a happy child, he is one of the most efficient of stage-managers, for he is both loved and feared. No defect escapes his eye, and no well-directed zeal goes without his word of approval. Messrs. Falconer and Chatterton are meanwhile busy with a thousand details, but they wisely leave the management of the stage to their lieutenant-general, who has the honour of Old Drury at heart.

When a spectator takes his seat in front of the curtain, he is hardly aware that he is about to address himself to an entertainment, for the production of which nearly nine hundred persons—from the foremost man down to the charwoman—are constantly employed and liberally remunerated. Touching this ‘remuneration,’ let me here notice that I have some doubt as to the story of Quin ever receiving 50l. a night. By the courtesy of Mr. ——, the gentleman at the head of the Drury Lane treasury, and by the favour of the proprietors, I have looked through many of the well-kept account-books of bygone years. These, indeed, do not, at least as far as I have seen, go back to the days of Quin, but there are traces of the greater actor Garrick, who certainly never received so rich an honorarium. His actual income it is not easy to ascertain, as his profits as proprietor were mixed up with his salary as actor. It has often been said that Garrick was never to be met with in a tavern (always, I suppose, excepting the ‘Turk’s Head’), but he appears to have drawn refreshment during the Drury Lane seasons, as there is unfailing entry in his weekly account of ‘the Ben Jonson’s Head bill,’ the total of which varies between sixteen and five-and-twenty shillings.

At Drury Lane, John Kemble does not appear to have ever received above 2l. a night, exclusive of his salary as a manager. Nor did his sister’s salary for some years exceed that sum. When Edmund Kean raised the fallen fortunes of old Drury, he only slowly began to mend his own. From January 1814, to April 1815, during the time the house was open, Kean’s salary was 3l. 8s. 8d. nightly. If the theatre was open every night in the week, that sum was the actor’s nightly stipend, whether he performed or not. If there were only four performances weekly, as in Lent, he and all other actors were only paid for those four nights. Within the period I have named, Elliston received a higher salary than Kean, namely 5l. per night, or 30l. per week, if the house was open for six consecutive nights. The salary of Dowton and Munden, during the same period, was equal to that of Kean. They received at the rate of 3l. 8s. 8d. nightly, or 20l. weekly, if there were six performances, irrespective as to their being employed in them or not. That great actor Bannister, according to these Drury Lane account-books, at this period received 4s. per night less than Kean, Dowton and Munden; while Jack Johnstone’s salary was only 2l. 10s. nightly, and that was 6s. 8d. less than was paid to the handsome, rather than good player, Rae.

It was not till April 1815, when Kean was turning the tide of Pactolus into the treasury, that his salary was advanced to 4l. 3s. 8d. per night. This was still below the sum received by Elliston. Kean had run through the most brilliant part of his career, before his salary equalled that of Elliston. In 1820, it was raised to 30l. per week if six nights; but Elliston’s stipend at that time had fallen to 20l., and at the close of the season that of Kean was further raised to 40l. for every six nights that the house was open. That sum is occasionally entered in the books as being for ‘seven days’ pay,’ but the meaning is manifestly ‘for the acting week of six days.’

At this time Mrs. Glover was at the head of the Drury Lane actresses, and that eminent and great-hearted woman never drew from the Drury Lane treasury more than 7l. 13s. 4d. weekly. From these details, it will be seen that the most brilliant actors were not very brilliantly paid. The humbler yet very useful players were, of course, remunerated in proportion.

There was a Mr. Marshall who made a successful début on the same night with Incledon in 1790, in the ‘Poor Soldier,’ the sweet ballad-singer, as Dermot; Marshall, as Bagatelli. The latter soon passed to Drury Lane, where he remained till 1820. The highest salary he ever attained was 10s. per night; yet with this, in his prettily-furnished apartments in Crown Court, where he lived and died, Mr. Marshall presided, like a gentleman, at a hospitable table, and in entertaining his friends never exceeded his income. You might have taken him in the street for one of those enviable old gentlemen who have very nice balances at their bankers.

The difference between the actor’s salaries of the last century and of this, is as great in France as in England. One of the greatest French tragedians, Lekain, earned only a couple of thousand livres, yearly, from his Paris engagement. When Gabrielli demanded 500 ducats yearly, for singing in the Imperial Theatre at St. Petersburg, this took the Czarina’s breath away. ‘I only pay my field-marshals at that rate,’ said Catherine.

‘Very well,’ replied Gabrielli, ‘your Majesty had better make your field-marshals sing.’

With higher salaries, all other expenses have increased. Take the mere item of advertisements, including bill-sticking and posters at railway stations, formerly, the expense of advertising never exceeded 4l. per week; now it is never under 100l. Of bill-stickers and board-carriers, upwards of one hundred are generally employed. In the early part of the last century, the proprietors of a newspaper thought it a privilege to insert theatrical announcements gratis, and proprietors of theatres forbade the insertion of their advertisements in papers not duly authorised!

Dryden was the first dramatic author who wrote a programme of his piece (‘The Indian Emperor’), and distributed it at the playhouse door. Barton Booth, the original ‘Cato,’ drew 50l. a year for writing out the daily bills for the printer. In still earlier days, theatrical announcements were made by sound of drum. The absence of the names of actors in old play-books, perhaps, arose from a feeling which animated French actors as late as 1789, when those of Paris entreated the maire not to compel them to have their names in the ‘Affiche,’ as it might prove detrimental to their interests. Some of our earliest announcements only name the piece, and state that it will be acted by ‘all the best members of the company, now in town.’ There was a fashion, which only expired about a score or so of years ago, as the curtain was descending at the close of the five-act piece, which was always played first, an actor stepped forward, and when the curtain separated him from his fellows, he gave out the next evening’s performance, and retired, bowing, through one of the doors which always then stood, with brass knockers on them, upon the stage.

The average expenses of Drury Lane Theatre at Christmas-tide, when there are extra performances, amount to nearly 1,500l. per week. The rent paid is reckoned at 4,500l. for two hundred nights of acting, and only 5l. per night for all performances beyond that number. About 160l. must be in the house before the lessees can begin to reckon on any profit. In old times, the presence of royalty made a great difference in the receipts. On February 12, 1777,I find from the books that the ‘Jealous Wife,’ and ‘Neck or Nothing,’ were played. An entry is added that ‘the king and queen were present,’ and the result is registered under the form, ‘receipts 245l. 9s. 6d., a hundred pounds more than the previous night.’

The number of children engaged in a pantomime at Drury Lane generally exceeds two hundred. The girls are more numerous than the boys. It is a curious fact that in engaging these children the manager prefers the quiet and dull to the smart and lively. Your smart lad and girl are given to ‘larking’ and thinking of their own cleverness. The quiet and dull are more ‘teachable,’ and can be made to seem lively without flinging off discipline. These little creatures are thus kept from the streets; many of them are sons and daughters of persons employed in the house, and their shilling a night and a good washing tells pleasantly in many a humble household, to which, on Saturday nights, they contribute their wages and clean faces. It was for a clever body of children of this sort that benefits were first established in France in 1747. In England they date from Elizabeth Barry, on whose behalf the first was given, by order of James the Second.

Then there are the indispensable, but not easily procured, ‘ladies of the ballet.’ They number about five dozen; two dozen principals, the rest in training to become so. Their salary is not so low as is generally supposed—twenty-five, and occasionally thirty shillings a week. They are ‘respectable.’ I have seen three or four dozen of them together in their green-room, where they conducted themselves as ‘properly’ as any number of well-trained young ladies could at the most fashionable of finishing establishments.

There was a scene in the ‘Sergeant’s Wife’ which was always played with a terrible power by Miss Kelly; and yet the audience, during the most exciting portion of the scene, saw only the back of the actress. Miss Kelly represented the wife, who, footsore and ignorant of her way, had found rude hospitality and rough sleeping quarters in a wretched hut. Unable to sleep, something tempts her to look through the interstices of the planks which divide her room from the adjoining one. While looking, she is witness of the commission of a murder. Spell-bound, she gazes on, in terror almost mute, save a few broken words. During this incident the actress had her back turned to the audience; nevertheless, she conveyed to the enthralled house an expression of overwhelming and indescribable horror as faithfully as if they had seen it in her features or heard it in her voice. Every spectator confessed her irresistible power, but none could even guess at the secret by which she exercised it.

The mystery was, in fact, none at all. Miss Kelly’s acting in this scene was wonderfully impressive, simply because she kept strictly to nature. She knew that not to the face alone belongs all power of interpretation of passion or feeling. This knowledge gave to Rich his marvellous power as Harlequin. In the old days, when harlequinades had an intelligible plot in which the spectators took interest, it was the office of Harlequin to guard the glittering lady of his love from the malice of their respective enemies. There always occurred an incident in which Columbine was carried off from her despairing lord, and it was on this occasion that Rich, all power of conveying facial expression being cut off by his mask, used to move the house to sympathy, and sometimes, it is said, to tears, by the pathos of his mute and tragic action. As he gazed up the stage at the forced departure of Columbine every limb told unmistakably that the poor fellow’s heart was breaking within him. When she was restored the whole house broke forth into a thunder of exultation, as if the whole scene had been a reality.

I cannot tell how this was effected, but I can tell a story that is not unconnected with the terrible pantomime of suffering nature.

Some years ago an unfortunate man, who had made war against society, and had to suffer death for it in front of the old Debtors’ door, Newgate, took leave of his wife and daughters not many hours before execution, in presence of the ‘Reverend Ordinary,’ Mr. Cotton, and a young officer in the prison, who has since attained to eminence and corresponding responsibility in the gloomy service to which he is devoted. The scene of separation was heartrending to all but the doomed man, who was calm, and even smiled once or twice, in order to cheer, if he could, the poor creatures whom he had rendered cheerless for ever. When the ordinary and the prison officer were left alone, the reverend gentleman remarked—‘Well, H——, what do you think of the way in which the prisoner went through that?’

‘Wonderfully, sir,’ answered H——, ‘considering the circumstances.’

‘Wonderfully!’ replied Mr. Cotton, ‘yes; but not in your sense, my friend.’

‘In what sense, then, sir?’ asked H——.

‘You said “wonderfully.” I know very well, wherefore—because you saw him smile; and because he smiled, you thought he did not feel his condition as his wife and daughters did.’

‘I confess that is the case,’ said the young officer.

‘Ah! H——,’ exclaimed Mr. Cotton, ‘you are new to this sort of thing. You looked in the man’s face, and thought he was bold. I had my eye on his back, and I saw that it gave his face the lie. It showed that he was suffering mortal agony.’

H—— looked inquiringly at the chaplain, who answered the look by saying, ‘Listen to me, H——. You are young. Some day you will rise to a post that will require you to sit in the dock, behind the prisoners who are tried on capital charges. On one of those occasions, you will see what is common enough—a prisoner who is saucy and defiant, and who laughs in the judge’s face as he puts on the black cap, and while he is condemning him. Well, H——, if you want to know what that prisoner really feels, don’t look at his face—look at his back. All along and about the spine, you will find it boiling, heaving, surging, like volcanic matter. Keep your eye upon it, H——; and when you see the irrepressible emotion in the back suddenly subsiding, open wide your arms, my boy, for the seemingly saucy fellow is about to tumble into them, in a dead faint. All the “sauce,” Mr. H——, will be out of him at once, and perhaps for ever, unless he be exceptionally constituted.’

A little party of visitors was gathered round the narrator of this, the other day, in that dreadful room where Calcraft keeps his ‘traps and things.’ I had my hand on the new coil already prepared and in order for the next criminal who may deserve it; another was looking at Jack Sheppard’s irons, which were never able to confine him; and others, with a sort of unwilling gaze at things in a half-open cupboard, which looked like the furniture of a saddle-room, but which were instruments of other purposes. We all turned to the speaker, as he ceased, and inquired if his experience corroborated Mr. Cotton’s description. H—— answered in the affirmative, and he went into particulars to which we listened with the air of men who were curious yet not sympathizing; but I felt, at the same time, under the influences of the place, and of being suddenly told that I was standing where Calcraft stands on particular occasions, a hot and irrepressible motion adown the back, which satisfied me that the Cottonian theory had something in it, and that Miss Kelly, without knowing it, was acting in strict accordance with nature, when she made her back interpret to an audience all the anguish she was supposed to feel at the sorry sight on which her face was turned.

By way of parenthesis, let me add that Mr. Cotton himself was a most accomplished actor on his own unstable boards. When he grew somewhat a-weary of his labour—it was a heavy labour when Monday mornings were hanging mornings, and wretches went to the beam in leashes—when Mr. Cotton was tired of this, he thought of a good opportunity for retiring. ‘I have now,’ he said, ‘accompanied just three hundred and sixty-five poor fellows to the gallows. That’s one for every day in the year. I may retire after seeing such a round number die with cotton in their ears.’ Whether the reverend gentleman was the author of this ingenious comparison for getting hanged, or whether he playfully adopted the phrase which was soon so popularly accepted as a definition, cannot now be determined.

While on this subject, let me notice that, with the exception of one Matthew Coppinger, a subaltern player in the Stuart days, no English actor has ever suffered death on the scaffold. Mat’s offence was not worse than the mad Prince’s on Gad’s Hill, and it must be confessed that one or two other gentlemen of the King’s or Duke’s company ‘took to the road’ of an evening, and perhaps deserved hanging, though the royal grace saved them. Neither in England nor France has an actor ever appeared on the scaffold under heavy weight of crime. As for taking to the highway, baronets’ sons have gone that road on their fathers’ horses; and society construed lightly the offences of highwaymen who met travellers face to face and set life fairly against life. In England, Coppinger alone went to Tyburn. In France, I can recall but two out of the many thousands of actors who have trodden its very numerous stages,—not including an occasional player who suffered for political reasons during the French Revolution. One of the two was Barrières, a Gascon, who, after studying for the church and the law, turning dramatic poet and mathematician, and finally enlisting in the army, obtained leave of absence, and profited thereby by repairing to Paris, and appearing at the Théâtre Français, in 1729, as Mithridate. His Gascon extravagance and eccentricity caused at first much amusement, but he speedily established himself as an excellent general actor, and forgot all about his military leave of absence. Not so his colonel, who had no difficulty in laying his hand on the Gascon recruit, who was playing in his own name in Paris, and under authority of a furlough, the period of which he had probably exceeded—the document itself he had unfortunately lost. Barrières was tried, condemned, and shot, in spite of all the endeavours made to save him.

Sixty years later it went as hardly with Bordier, an actor of the Variétés, of whom I have heard old French players speak with great regard and admiration. He was on a provincial tour, when he talked so plainly at tables d’hôte of the misery of the times and the prospects of the poor, that he was seized and tried at Rouen under a charge of fomenting insurrection in order to lower the price of corn. Just before his seizure he had played the principal part (L’Olive) in ‘Trick against Trick’ (Ruses contre Ruses), in which he had to exclaim gaily: ‘You will see that to settle this affair, I shall have to be hanged!’ And Bordier was hanged, unjustly, at Rouen. He suffered with dignity, and a touch of stage humour. He had been used to play in Pompigny’s ‘Prince turned Sweep’ (Ramoneur Prince)—a piece in which Sloman used to keep the Coburg audience in a roar of delight. In the course of the piece, standing at the foot of a ladder, and doubtful as to whether he should ascend or not, he had to say: ‘Shall I go up or not?’ So, when he came to the foot of the lofty ladder leaning against the gigantic gallows in the market-place at Rouen, Bordier turned with a sad smile to the hangman and said: ‘Shall I go up or not?’ The hangman smiled too, but pointed the way that Bordier should go; and the wits of Rouen were soon singing of him in the spirit of the wits of Covent Garden singing of Coppinger:

To return to more general statistics, it may be stated that, in busy times, four dozen persons are engaged in perfecting the wardrobes of the ladies and gentlemen. Only to attire these and the children, forty-five dressers are required; and the various coiffures you behold have busily employed half a dozen hairdressers. If it should occur to you that you are sitting over or near a gasometer, you may find confidence in knowing that it is being watched by seventeen gasmen; and that even the young ladies who glitter and look so happy as they float in the air in transformation scenes, could not be roasted alive, provided they are released in time from the iron rods to which they are bound. These ineffably exquisite nymphs, however, suffer more or less from the trials they have to undergo for our amusement. Seldom a night passes without one or two of them fainting; and I remember, on once assisting several of them to alight, as they neared the ground, and they were screened from the public gaze, that their hands were cold and clammy, like clay. The blood had left the surface and rushed to the heart, and the spangled nymphs who seemed to rule destiny and the elements, were under a nervous tremor; but, almost as soon as they had touched the ground, they shook their spangles, laughed their light laugh, and tripped away in the direction of the stately housekeeper of Drury, Mrs. Lush, with dignity enough not to care to claim kinship with her namesake, the judge; for she was once of the household of Queen Adelaide, and now has the keeping of ‘the national theatre,’ with nine servants to obey her behests.

To those who would compare the season of 1865-1866 at Drury Lane with that of 1765-1766, it is only necessary to say that a hundred years ago Mrs. Pritchard was playing a character of which she was the original representative in 1761, namely, Mrs. Oakley, in Coleman’s ‘Jealous Wife,’ a part which has been well played this year by Mrs. Vezin to the excellent Mr. Oakley of Mr. Phelps. The Drury Lane company, a hundred years ago, included Garrick, Powell, Holland, King, Palmer, Parsons, Bensley, Dodd, Yates, Moody, Baddeley, all men of great but various merit. Among the ladies were Mrs. Cibber, Mrs. Yates, Mrs. Clive, Mrs. Abington, Mrs. Pritchard, Miss Pope, Mrs. Baddeley, and some others—a galaxy the like of which, in any one company, could nowhere be found in these later days. In that season of a hundred years ago, a new actress, Mrs. Fitzhenry, very nearly gained a seat upon the tragic throne. In the same season Melpomene lost her noblest daughter, albeit the last character her name was attached to in the bills was Lady Brute. I allude to Mrs. Cibber. ‘Mrs. Cibber dead!’ was Garrick’s cry; ‘then tragedy has died with her.’ Since that season of a century since, there has been no such Ophelia as hers, the touching charm of which used to melt a whole house to tears. It was the season in which Garrick abolished the candles in brass sockets, fixed in chandeliers, which hung on the stage; in place of which he introduced the footlights, which were then supplied by oil, and long retained the significant name of ‘floats.’ In that season, the first benefit was given for the Drury Lane Theatrical Fund, ‘for the relief of those who, from infirmities, shall be obliged to retire from the stage.’ On this occasion Garrick acted Kitely, in ‘Every Man in his Humour.’ Lastly, in that season was produced, for the first time, the ever-lively comedy, ‘The Clandestine Marriage,’ in which King, as Lord Ogleby, won such renown that Garrick never ceased to repent of his having declined the character. After he left the stage he did not seem to be sorry for the course he had taken. ‘You all think,’ he used to say, ‘that no one can excel, or even equal King, in Lord Ogleby. It had great merit, but it was not my Lord Ogleby; and if I could appear again, that is the only character in which I should care to play.’ And, no doubt, Roscius would have delighted his audience, though his new reading might not have induced them to forget the original representation.

ABOUT MASTER BETTY.

In a valley at the foot of the Slieve Croob mountains, in County Antrim, there is a pretty village called Ballynahinch. The head of the river Lagan, which flows by Belfast into the lough, is to be found in that valley. Near the town is a ‘spa,’ with a couple of wells, and a delicious air, sufficient in itself to cure all travellers from Dublin who have narrowly escaped being poisoned by the Liffey, in whose murderous stinks the metropolitan authorities seem to think the chief attraction to draw strangers to Dublin is now to be found.

To the flax-cultivating Ballynahinch, in the last quarter of the last century, a gentleman named Betty brought (after a brief sojourn at Lisburn) his young English wife and their only child, a boy. This married couple were of very good blood. The lady was of the Stantons, of Hopton Court. Mr. Betty’s father was a physician of some celebrity, at Lisburn, where, and in the neighbourhood, he practised to such good purpose that he left a handsome fortune to his son. That son invested a portion of his inheritance in a farm, and in the manufacture of linen at Ballynahinch. Whence the Bettys originally came it would be hard to say. A good many Huguenots lie in the churchyard at Lisburn, and the Bettys may have originally sprung from a kindred source. In the reign of George the Second there was a Rev. Joseph Betty, who created a great sensation by a sermon which he preached at Oxford. Whether the Betty of Oxford was an ancestor of him of Ballynahinch is a question which may be left to Mr. Forster, the pedigree hunter.

I have said that with his young wife Mr. Betty took to Ireland their son. Their boy was, and remained, their only child. He was born at Shrewsbury, which place is also proud of having given birth to famous Admiral Benbow, also to Orton, the eminent Nonconformist. Master Betty was English born and Irish bred; half-bred, however; for his English mother was his nurse, his companion, his friend—in other words, his true mother. Such an only child used to be called ‘a parlour child,’ to denote that there was more intercourse between child and parent than exists in a ‘nursery child,’ to whom the nurse seems his natural guide and ruler.

The English lady happened to be a lady well endowed as to her mind, her tastes, and her accomplishments. She was exactly the mother for such a boy. She was not only excessively fond of reading the best poets, but of reading passages aloud, or reciting them from memory. Her audience was her boy. His tastes were in sympathy with his mother’s, and he was never more delighted than when he sat listening to her reading or reciting, except when he was reciting passages to her. It was a peculiar training; it really shaped the boy’s life—and it was no ill shape which the life took. The father had his share, however, in clearing the path for the bright, though brief, career. One day the father, whose intellectual tastes responded to his wife’s, repeated to his son the speech of Cardinal Wolsey, beginning, ‘Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness.’ In doing this, he suited the action to the word. Young Betty had never seen this before, and he asked the meaning of it. ‘It is what is called acting,’ said the father. The boy thought over it, tried by himself action and motion with elocution, and he spoke and acted the cardinal’s soliloquy before his mother with an effect that excited in her the greatest surprise and admiration.

Not the faintest idea of the stage had, at this time, entered the minds of any of the family. The eager young lad himself was satisfied with reading plays, learning passages from them, and reciting speeches from ‘Douglas’ and ‘Zara,’ from ‘Pizarro’ and the ‘Stranger.’ He also repeated the episodical tales from Thomson’s ‘Seasons.’ Only the above trace of his learning anything from Shakespeare is to be found, but he listened to readings from the national poet by one or other of his parents. This course had its natural results. By degrees the boy took to rude attempts, from domestic materials, of dress. ‘Properties’ were created out of anything that could be turned to the purpose; a screen was adopted for scenery; audiences of ones and twos were pressed by the stage-struck youth to tarry and see him act; and finally his father, well qualified, taught him fencing, the son proving an apt pupil, and becoming a swordsman as perfect and graceful as Edmund Kean himself.

His reputation spread beyond home into distant branches of the family. Those branches shook with disgust. The parents were warned that if they did not take care the boy would come to the evil end of being a play-actor! They were alarmed. The domestic stage was suppressed; silence reigned where the echoes of the dramatic poets once pleasantly rang, and the heir of Hopton Court and Hopton Wafers was ignominiously packed off to school. When I say ‘the heir,’ it is because Master Betty was so called; but it really seems as if his claim resembled that of the Irish gentleman who was kept out of his property by the rightful owner.

There is no record of Master Betty’s school life. We only know that it did not suppress his taste for dramatic poetry and dramatic action. At this time, 1802, Mrs. Siddons, who had been acting with her brother, John Kemble, to empty houses at Drury Lane, left England, in disgust at the so-called ‘Drury treasury,’ for Ireland. It was the journey on which she set out with such morbid feelings of despair, as if she were assured of the trip ending by some catastrophe. It was, in fact, all triumph, and in the course of her triumphant career she arrived in Belfast, where, with other parts, she acted Elvira in ‘Pizarro.’ She had not thought much of the part of the camp-follower when she was first cast for it, and Sheridan was so dilatory that she had to learn the last portion of the character after the curtain had risen for the first acting of the piece. But Sarah Siddons was a true artist. She ever made the best of the very worst materials; she invested Elvira with dignity, and it became by far the most popular of the characters of which she was the original representative. Young Betty entered a theatre for the first time to see Sheridan’s ‘Pizarro’ acted at the Belfast theatre, and Mrs. Siddons as Elvira. The boy’s tastes were in the right direction. He had neither eyes, nor ears, nor senses, but for her. He was, so to speak, ‘stricken’ by her majestic march, her awful brow, her graceful action, and her incomparable delivery. He drank at a fresh fountain; he beheld a new guiding light; he went home in a trance; he now knew what was meant by ‘the stage,’ what acting was, what appropriate speech meant, what it was to be an actor, and what a delicious reward there was for an inspired artist in the music of tumultuous applause. When Master Betty awoke from his dream it was to announce to his parents that he should certainly die if he were not allowed to be a play-actor!

He was only eleven years old, and those parents did not wish to lose him. They at first humoured his bent, and listened smilingly to his rehearsal of the whole part of Elvira. They had to listen to other parts, and still had to hear his impressive iteration of his resolution to die if he were thwarted in his views. At length they yielded. The father addressed himself to Mr. Atkins, the proprietor and manager of the Belfast theatre, who consented that the boy should give him a taste of his quality. When this was done, Atkins was sufficiently struck by its novelty not to know exactly what to make of it. He called into council Hough, the prompter, who was warm in his approval. ‘You are my guardian angel!’ exclaimed the excited boy to the old prompter. Atkins, with full faith in Hough’s verdict, observed, when the lad had left, ‘I never expected to see another Garrick, but I have seen an infant Garrick in Master Betty!’

After some preliminary bargaining, Atkins would not go further than engage the promising ‘infant’ for four nights. The terms were that, after deducting twelve pounds for the expenses of the house, the rest was to be divided between the manager and the débutant. The tragedy of ‘Zara’ was accordingly announced for August 16, 1803, ‘Osman (Sultan of Jerusalem) by a Young Gentleman.’ Now, that year (and several before and after it) was a troubled year, part of a perilous time, for Ireland. Sedition was abroad, and everybody, true man or not, was required to be at home early. The manager could not have got his tragedy and farce ended and his audience dismissed to their homes within the legal time but for the order which he obtained from the military commander of the district that (as printed in the bill), ‘At the request of the manager the drums have been ordered to beat an hour later at night.’ The performance was further advertised ‘to begin precisely at six o’clock, that the theatre may be closed by nine.’ The prices were reckoned by the Irish equivalent of English shillings—‘Boxes, 3s. 3d.; Pit, 2s. 2d.; Gallery, 1s. 1d.’ In return for the military courtesy, if not as a regular manifestation of loyalty, it was also stated in the bill, ‘God save the King’ (in capital letters!) ‘will be played at the end of the second act, and Rule Britannia at the end of the play.’

Belfast was, as it is, an intellectual town. The audience assembled were not likely to be carried away by a mere phenomenon. They listened, became interested, then deeply stirred, and at last enthusiastic. The next day the whole town was talking of the almost perfection with which this boy represented the rage, jealousy, and despair of Osman. In truth, there was something more than cleverness in this representation. Let anyone, if he can, read Aaron Hill’s adaptation of Voltaire’s ‘Zaire’ through. He will see of what dry bones it is made. Those heavy lines, long speeches, dull movement of dull plot, stirred now and then by a rant or a roar, require a great deal more than cleverness to make them endurable. No human being could live out five acts of such stuff if genius did not uphold the stuff itself. It was exquisite Mrs. Cibber who gave ‘Zara’ life when she made her début on the stage, when the tragedy was first played in 1736. Spranger Barry added fresh vigour to that life when he acted Osman in 1751. Garrick’s genius in Lusignan galvanised the dead heap into living beauty, never more so than in his last performance in 1776; but the great genius was Mrs. Cibber; neither Mrs. Bellamy, nor Mrs. Barry, nor Miss Younge, equalled her. Mrs. Siddons, after them, made Zara live again, and was nearly equal to Mrs. Cibber. Since her time there has been neither a Zara, nor Lusignan, nor grown-up Osman, of any note; and nothing short of genius could make the dry bones live. Voltaire’s ‘Zaire’ is as dull as Hill’s, but it has revived, and been played at the Théâtre Français. But every character is well played, from Mounet Sully, who acts Orosmane, to Dupont Vernon, in Corasmin. The accomplished Berton plays Nerestan; and it is a lesson to actors only to hear Maubant deliver the famous lines beginning with ‘Mon Dieu, j’ai combattu.’

Mdlle. Sarah Bernhardt is the Zaire, and I can fancy her a French Cibber. She dies, however, on the stage too much in the horrible fashion of the ‘Sphinx’; but what attracts French audience is, that the piece abounds in passages which such audiences may hail in ecstasy or denounce in disgust. The passages are political, religious, and cunningly framed free-thinking passages. For these the audience waits, and signalises their coming by an enthusiasm of delight or an excess of displeasure.

At Belfast there was only the eleven-years-old Osman to enthral an audience. The rest were respectable players. It is not to be believed that such an audience would have been stirred as they were on that August night had there not been some mind behind the voice of the young débutant. He had never been on a stage before, had only once seen a play acted, had received only a few hints from the old prompter, yet he seemed to be the very part he represented. There were many doubters and disbelievers in Belfast, but they, for the most part, went to the theatre and were convinced. The three other parts he played were Douglas, Rolla, and, for his benefit on August 29, Romeo. From that moment he was ‘renowned,’ and his career certain of success.

While this boy snatched a triumph, there was another eagerly, painfully, yet hopefully and determinedly, struggling for one. This boy scarcely knew by what name to pass, for his mother was a certain Nance Carey, and his reputed father was one of two brothers, he did not know which, named Kean. This boy claimed in after years to be an illegitimate son of the Duke of Norfolk, and he referred, in a way, to this claim when he called his first child Howard. For Nance Carey the boy had no love. There was but one woman who was kind to him in his childhood, Miss Tidswell, of Drury Lane Theatre, and Edmund Kean used to say, ‘If she was not my mother, why was she kind to me?’ When I pass Orange Court, Leicester Square, I look with curiosity at the hole where he got a month’s schooling.

Born and dragged up, the young life experiences of Edmund Kean were exactly opposite to those of William Henry West Betty. He had indeed, because of his childish beauty, been allowed at three years old to stand or lie as Cupid in one of Noverre’s ballets; and he had, as an unlucky imp in the witches’ scene of ‘Macbeth,’ been rebuked by the offended John Kemble. Since then he had rolled or been kicked about the world. When Master Betty, at the age of eleven, or nearly twelve, was laying the foundations of his fortune at Belfast, Edmund Kean was fifteen, and had often laid himself to sleep on the lee side of a haystack, for want of wherewith to pay for a better lodging. He had danced and tumbled at fairs, and had sung in taverns; he had tramped about the country, carrying Nance Carey’s box of falbalas for sale; he had been over sea and land; he had joined Richardson’s booth company, and, at Windsor, it is said that George III. had heard him recite, and had expressed his approbation in the shape of two guineas, which Miss Carey took from him.

It was for the benefit of a mother so different from Master Betty’s mother that he recited in private families. It is a matter of history that by one of these recitations he inspired another boy, two years older than himself, with a taste for the stage and a determination to gain thereon an honourable position. This third boy was Charles Young. His son and biographer has told us, that as Charles was one evening at Christmas time descending the stairs of his father’s house full dressed for dessert—his father, a London surgeon, lived in rather high style—he saw a slatternly woman seated on one of the chairs in the hall, with a boy standing by her side dressed in fantastic garb, with the blackest and most penetrating eyes he had ever beheld in human head. His first impression was that the two were strolling gipsies who had come for medical advice. Charles Young, we are told, ‘was soon undeceived, for he had no sooner taken his place by his father’s side than, to his surprise, the master, instead of manifesting displeasure, smirked and smiled, and, with an air of self-complacent patronage, desired his butler to bring in the boy. On his entry he was taken by the hand, patted on the head, and requested to favour the company with a specimen of his histrionic ability. With a self-possession marvellous in one so young he stood forth, knitted his brows, hunched up one shoulder-blade, and with sardonic grin and husky voice spouted forth Gloster’s opening soliloquy in “Richard the Third.” He then recited selections from some of our minor British poets, both grave and gay; danced a hornpipe; sang songs, both comic and pathetic; and, for fully an hour, displayed such versatility as to elicit vociferous applause from his auditory and substantial evidence of its sincerity by a shower of crown pieces and shillings, a napkin having been opened and spread upon the floor for their reception. The accumulated treasury having been poured into the gaping pockets of the lad’s trousers, with a smile of gratified vanity and grateful acknowledgment he withdrew, rejoined his tatterdemalion friend in the hall, and left the house rejoicing. The door was no sooner closed than the guests desired to know the name of the youthful prodigy who had so astonished them. The host replied that this was not the first time he had had him to amuse his friends; that he knew nothing of the lad’s history or antecedents, but that his name was Edmund Kean, and that of the woman who seemed to have charge of him and was his supposititious mother, Carey.’ This pretty scene, described by the Rev. Julian Young, had a supplement to it of which he was not aware. ‘She took all from me,’ was Edmund Kean’s cry when he used to tell similar incidents of his hard youthful times.

While Edmund was thus struggling, Master Betty had leaped into fame. Irish managers were ready to fight duels for the possession of him. When the announcement went forth that Mr. Frederick Jones, of the Crow Street Theatre, Dublin, was the possessor of the youthful phenomenon for nine nights, there was a rush of multitudes to secure places, with twenty times more applicants than places. There was ferocious fighting for what could be secured, and much spoliation, with peril of life and damage to limb, and an atmosphere filled with thunder and lightning, delightful to the Dublin mind.

On November 29, 1803, Master Betty, not in his own name, but simply as a ‘young gentleman, only twelve years of age,’ made his début in Dublin as Douglas. The play-bill, indeed, did add, ‘his admirable talents have procured him the deserved appellation of the Infant Roscius.’ As there were sensitive people in Dublin who remembered that Dublin itself was in what would now be called a state of siege, and that it was unlawful to be out after a certain hour in the evening, these were won over by this delicious announcement: ‘The public are respectfully informed that no person coming from the theatre will be stopped till after eleven o’clock.’ This was the time, too, when travellers were induced to trust themselves to mail and stagecoaches by the assurance that the vehicles were made proof against shot. There was no certainty the travellers would not be fired at, but the comfort was that if the bullets did not go through the window and kill the travellers, they could not much injure the vehicle itself!

There was the unheard-of sum of four hundred pounds in that old Crow Street Theatre on that November night. The university students in the gallery, who generally made it rattle with their wit, were silent as soon as the curtain rose. The Dublin audience was by no means an audience easy to please, or one that would befool itself by passing mediocrity with the stamp of genius upon it. ‘Douglas,’ too, is a tragedy that must be attentively listened to, to be enjoyed, and enjoyment is out of the question if the poetry of the piece be a lost beauty to the deliverer of the lines. On this night, Dublin ratified the Belfast verdict. The graceful boy excited the utmost enthusiasm, and the manager offered him an engagement at an increasing salary, for any number of years. The offer was wisely declined by Master Betty’s father, and the ‘Infant Roscius’ went on his bright career. He played one other part, admirably suited to him in every respect, Prince Arthur, in ‘King John,’ and he fairly drowned the house in tears with it. Frederick, in ‘Lovers’ Vows,’ and Romeo, were only a trifle beyond his age, not at all beyond his grasp, though love-making was the circumstance which he could the least satisfactorily portray. A boy sighing like furnace to young beauty must have seemed as ridiculous as a Juliet of fifty, looking older than the Nurse, and who, one would think, ought to be ashamed of herself to be out in a balcony at that time of night, talking nonsense with that young fellow with a feather in his cap and a sword on his thigh! Dublin wits made fun of Master Betty’s wooing, and were epigrammatic upon it in the style of Martial, and saucy actresses seized the same theme to air their saucy wit. These casters of stones from the roadside could not impede the boy’s triumph. He produced immense effect, even in Thomson’s dreary ‘Tancred,’ but I am sorry to find it asserted that he acted Hamlet, after learning the part in three days. The great Betterton, greatest of the great masters of their art, used to say that he had acted Hamlet and studied it for fifty years, and had not got to the bottom of its philosophy even then. However, the boy’s remarkable gifts made his Hamlet successful. There was a rare comedian who played with him, Richard Jones, with a cast in one eye. Accomplished Dick, whose only serious fault was excess in peppermint lozenges, acted Osric, Count Cassel, and Mercutio, in three of the pieces in which Master Betty played the principal characters. What a glorious true comedian was Dick! After delighting a whole generation with his comedy, Jones retired. He taught clergymen to read the Lord’s Prayer as if they were in earnest, and to deliver the messages of the Gospel as if they believed in them; and in this way Dick Jones did as much for the church as any of the bishops or archbishops of his time.

It is to be noted here that Master Betty’s first appearance in Dublin in 1803 was a more triumphant matter than John Kemble’s in 1781. This was in the older Smock Alley Theatre. The alley was so called from the Sallys who most did congregate there. He played high comedy as well as tragedy; but, says Mr. Gilbert, in his ‘History of Dublin,’ ‘his negligent delivery and heaviness of deportment impeded his progress until these defects were removed by the instruction of his friend, Captain Jephson.’ Is not this delicious? Fancy John Kemble being made an actor by a half-pay captain who had written a tragedy! This tragedy was called the ‘Count of Narbonne,’ and therein, says Gilbert, ‘Kemble’s reputation was first established.’ It was not on a very firm basis, for John was engaged only on the modest salary of 5l. a week!

Master Betty’s progress through the other parts of Ireland was as completely successful as at Dublin and Belfast. Mrs. Pero engaged him for six nights at Cork. His terms here were one-fourth of the receipts and one clear benefit, that is to say, the whole of the receipts free of expense. As the receipts rarely exceeded ten pounds, the prospects were not brilliant. But, with Master Betty, the ‘houses’ reached one hundred pounds. The smaller receipts may have arisen from a circumstance sufficient to keep an audience away. There was a Cork tailor hanged for robbery; but, after he was cut down, a Cork actor, named Glover, succeeded, by friction and other means, in bringing him to life again! On the same night, and for many nights, the tailor, drunk and unhanged, would go to the theatre and publicly acknowledge the service of Mr. Glover in bringing him to life again! And it is said that he was the third tailor who had outlived hanging during ten years!

There was no ghastly interruption of the performance of the Roscius. The engagement was extended to nine nights, and the one which followed at Waterford was equally successful. As he proceeded, Master Betty studied and extended his répertoire. He added to his list Octavian, and on his benefit nights he played in the farce, on one occasion Don Carlos in ‘Lovers’ Quarrels,’ on another Captain Flash in ‘Miss in her Teens.’ Subsequently, in Londonderry, the flood of success still increasing, the pit could only be entered at box prices. Master Betty played in Londonderry long before the time when a Mr. MacTaggart, an old citizen, used to be called upon between the acts to give his unbiassed critical opinions on the performances. It was the rarest fun for the house, and the most painful wholesomeness for the actors, Frank Connor and his father, Villars, Fitzsimons, Cunningham, O’Callaghan, and clever Miss M’Keevor (with her pretty voice and sparkling one eye), to hear the stern and salubrious criticism of Mr. MacTaggart, at the end of which there was a cry for the tune of ‘No Surrender!’ Not to wound certain susceptibilities, and yet be national, the key-bugle gentleman, who was half the orchestra, generally played ‘Norah Creena,’ and thus the play proceeded merrily.

Master Betty played Zanga at Londonderry, and he passed thence to Glasgow, where for fourteen nights he attracted crowded audiences, and added to his other parts Richard the Third, which he must have learnt as he sailed from Belfast up the Clyde. Jackson, the manager, went all but mad with delight and full houses. He wrote an account of his new treasure in terms more transcendent than ‘the transcendent boy’ himself could accept. Had Young Roscius been a divinity descended upon earth, the rhapsody could not have been more highly pitched; but it was fully endorsed by nine-tenths of the Glasgow people, and when a bold fellow ventured to write a satirical philippic against the divine idol of the hour, he was driven out of the city as guilty of something like sacrilege, profanation, and general unutterable wickedness.

On May 21, 1804, the transcendental Mr. Jackson was walking on the High Bridge, Edinburgh, when he met an old gentleman of some celebrity, the Rev. Mr. Home. ‘Sir,’ said Jackson, ‘your play, “Douglas,” is to be acted to-night with a new and wonderful actor. I hope you will come down to the house.’ Forty-eight years before (1756) Home had gone joyously down to the Edinburgh Theatre to see his ‘Douglas’ represented for the first time. West Digges (not Henry West Betty) was the Norval, and the house was half full of ministers of the Kirk, who got into a sea of troubles for presuming to see acted a play written by a fellow in the ministry.

The Lady Randolph was Mrs. Ward, daughter of a player of the Betterton period, and mother, I think, of Mrs. Roger Kemble. On that night one enthusiastic Scotsman was so delighted that at the end of the fourth act he arose and roared aloud, ‘Where’s Wully Shakespeare noo?’ Home had also seen Spranger Barry in the hero (he was the original Norval (Douglas) on the play being first acted in 1757 in London). Home was an aged man in 1804, and lived in retirement. He did not know his ‘Douglas’ was to be played, nor had he ever heard of Master Betty! Never heard of him whom Jackson said he had been presented to Earth by Heaven and Nature! ‘The pleasing movements of his perfect and divine nature,’ said Jackson, ‘were incorporated in his person previous to his birth.’ Home could not refuse to go and see this phenomenon. He stipulated to have his old place at the wing, that is, behind the stage door, partially opened, so that he could see up the stage. The old man was entirely overcome. Digges and Barry, he declared, were leather and prunella compared with this inspired child who acted his Norval as he the author had conceived it. Home’s enthusiasm was so excited that, when Master Betty was summoned by the ‘thunders’ of applause and the ‘hurricane’ of approbation to appear before the audience, Home tottered forward also, tears streaming from his eyes, and rapture beaming on his venerable countenance. The triumph was complete. The most impartial critics especially praised the boy’s conception of the poet, and it was the highest praise they could give. Between June 28 and August 9 he acted fifteen times, often under the most august patronage that could be found in Edinburgh. For the first time he played Selim (Achmet) in ‘Barbarossa’ during this engagement, and with such effect as to make him more the ‘darling’ than ever of duchesses and ladies in general. Four days after the later date named above, the marvellous boy stood before a Birmingham audience, whither he had gone covered with kisses from Scottish beauties, and laden with the approval, counsel, and blessing of Lords of Session.

Mr. Macready, father of the lately deceased actor, bargained for the Roscius, and overreached himself. He thought 10l. a night too much! He proposed that he should deduct 60l. from each night’s receipts, and that Master Betty should take half of what remained. The result was that Roscius got 50l. nightly instead of 10l. The first four nights were not overcrowded, but the boy grew on the town, and at last upon the whole country. Stage-coaches were advertised specially to carry parties from various distances to the Birmingham Theatre. The highest receipt was 266l. to his Richard. Selim was the next. 261l. The lowest receipt was also to his Richard. On the first night he played it there was only 80l. in the house. He left Birmingham with the assurance of a local poet that he was Cooke, Kemble, Holman, Garrick, all in one. Sheffield was delighted to have him at raised prices of admission. He made his first appearance to deliver a rhymed deprecatory address, in reference to wide-cast ridicule on his being a mere boy, in which were these lines: