on ^fijiiijuieyt uuii iiwya-) m&mmammiMn 1 * I ill u am liliiHMli nil nniti tiiii ;!}( mb\ i( boi .' 'i' ,",11 'I'll '^1 I'. : ± > ' i' 'II- "L ",ii 1 1 ii hC I'll '-' I' Tr- ^i.' iifiyii "I", 1 1' iWi! TiftrKFoitn ':■ NEAF\ WILMINGTON, DELAWAI^E. Cornell University Library PN 2205.M38 1906 3 1924 027 264 153 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Gift of Samuel B. Bird '21 The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027264153 MONOGRAPHS GARRICK, MACREADY, RACHEL, AND BARON STOCKMAR BY SIR THEODORE MARTIN. K.C.B., K.C.V.O. '^Z^- AUTHOR OF ' THE LIFE OF THE PRINCE CONSORT,' ETC. NEW YORK P. DUTTON AND COMPANY 1906 \ Printed in Great Britain / '^ 7 '1^ > P> [These monographs are in substance reprints of articles published some years ago : three of them in the Quarterly Review — • David Garrick ' in June, 1868, 'Baron Stockmar' in November, 1872, ' Macready ' in June, 1875 — and ' Rachel ' in Black- wood's Magazine for September, 1882. The studies were carefully made, and the only alteration in them is the addition of certain details, with a view to giving more completeness to the original sketches.] CONTENTS J'AGB DAVID GARRICK - - - . . i WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY - - - - 99 RACHEL 193 BARON STOCKMAR - - - - - 272 Vll LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS DAVID GARRICK - ... Frontispiece From a contemporary portrait in the possession of the Author. WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY - To face p. 99 As Henry IV., from a lithograph by Richard Lane after the picture by J. Jackson, E. A. ELIZABETH PfiLIX [RACHEL] - - . „ 193 From a medallion in the possession of the Author. CHRISTIAN FRIEDRICH, BARON STOCKMAR - „ 272 From an engraving by F. HoU, after the picture in possession of His Majesty the King, painted by F. Winterhalter IX DAVID GAKErCK In the familiar group of statesmen, wits, authors, and artists, who represent the intellectual activity and best society of England between 1740 and 1780, there is no more prominent or interesting figure than that of David Garrick. It is con- tinually brought before us in the correspondence of Walpole and Gray ; in the memoirs of Cumber- land, Madame d'Arblay, and Hannah More ; and it is his name and doings which lend the chief interest to the biographies of Macklin, Mrs. Cibber, Mrs. Bellamy, Tate WUkinson, Charles Dibdin, and others of his stage contemporaries. In Boswell's ' Life of Johnson ' he is a con- spicuous figure. Boswell in his very first interview with his hero, being then ignorant of Johnson's strangely inverted love for the great actor, which was constantly venting itself in splenetic sallies against Garrick, but would never listen with patience to a word said in disparagement of him by anybody else> drew down upon himself one of those surly rebuffs of which he was afterwards to have so many. ' What do you think of Garrick ?' 1 2 DAVID GARRICK said Johnson to Tom Davies, actor and bookseller, and the future biographer of Garrick, in whose shop the meeting took place. ' He has refused me an order to the play for Miss Williams, because he knows the house will be full, and that an order would be worth three shilhngs.' Garrick had given the lady a free benefit at his theatre a few years before, by which she had realized £200. ' Oh, sir,' broke in the fussy Scotsman, not dreaming how little Johnson meant by this saUy, ' 1 cannot think Mr. Garrick would grudge such a trifle to you.^ ' Sir,' said Johnson, turning to him with a stem look, ' I have known David Garrick longer than you have done, and I know no right you have to talk to me on the subject.' The incident was typical. All through Boswell's book Garrick's name provokes Johnson's sarcasm, if other people praise ; or stimulates his praise, if other people censure. But in which of the two moods he was the more sincere we soon discover. Johnson, it is true, never quite forgave his old pupil and friend for a success so much more rapid, and, in a worldly sense, so much more brUliant, than his own. Garrick, on the other hand, under- stood and made liberal allowance for the feeUng, stung although he often was, when the latent grudge found vent in such phrases as ' AVhat ! respect a player !' ' Feelings ! Pooh ! Punch has no feelings.' But in a life of very diversified ex- perience of what men are, Garrick had learned to JOHNSON AND GARRICK 3 think more of a friend's virtues than of his failings. He knew how much Johnson had had to bear, both from the world and within himself. It was not difficult for his sympathetic nature to com- prehend, that Johnson would have been more than human, had he felt no soreness when he contrasted his own social position and unattractive person and manners with those of the handsome and vivacious actor, to whom not England only, but Europe also, was continually offering up incense ; whose society was courted by the ablest and best men and most gifted and beautiful women of his time ; who had achieved wealth honourably, and graced it by the refinement of his tastes, and by the charm and bounteousness of his hospitahty. And, then, he could not liut be conscious that Johnson loved him at heart, and in his better moods did him full justice in such phrases as — ' Garrick has written more good prologues than Dryden,' ' He is the first man in the world for sprightly conversation. ' Echoes of such sentences as these were certain to reach Garrick 's ears, and we may be very sure, that in one way or another he had many proofs of sincere esteem and respect from a man, who spoke from the warmth of conviction when he said, ' Garrick has made a player a higher character,' and all his successes, public and social, 'supported by great wealth of his own acquisition. If all this had happened to me, I should have had a couple of fellows with long poles walking before me to knock 1—2 4 DAVID GARRICK down everybody that stood in the way. Consider : if this had happened to Gibber or Quin, they'd have jumped over the moon. Yet Garrick speaks to us I' Garrick has not been fortunate in his biographers. He has had several, Murphy, Davies, and Boaden being the most important. The two first wrote hves of him, which have gone through several editions ; the last wrote a memoir, prefixed to two bulky quartos of Garrick's correspondence, which were published in 1831. Murphy and Da\'ies knew the great actor. They were members of his com- pany at Drury Lane — Murphy during a period which, though brief, was long enough to satisfy even his vanity that the stage was not the true sphere for his versatile and ambitious genius, and also to secure him an unenviable niche in Churchill's 'Rosciad'; and Davies fi:om 1752 to 1762, when he quitted the boards, partly through dread of Churchill's sarcastic pen, partly because he found he could not attend both to his shop and to the business of the stage. ' Nobody,' said Johnson, • can write the Ufe of a man but those who have ate and drank and lived in social inter- course with him.' But a man may have done all these things, and yet ^\Tite a hfe very badly. So It was with both Murphy and Davies, for there was bitterness in their hearts of an old standing. Murphy as a dramatic author, and Davies as an actor, had fancied wrongs to avenge, UNSATISFACTORY ' LIVES ' 5 and also the humiliation to resent of benefits received and injuries forgiven ; and the leaven of their ancient grudges tainted both their works. But Murphy's, besides being venomous, is in- accurate, and, what is more surprising in a man whose dialogue in comedy was terse and sparkling, it is extremely prosy. That of Davies, while much less coloured by prejudice, and upon the whole sensibly and agreeably written, is often incorrect in its details, and far from complete in its treatment of the subject. It was written at Johnson's insti- gation, but it gave great offence to Mrs. Garrick, who was not likely to forget that her husband had good cause to cut off the biographer from his acquaintanceship. We should have had very different books from both Murphy and Davies could they have dreamed that their own letters to Garrick, with the drafts of his replies, had been preserved, and were one day to rise up in judgment against their ingratitude and injustice to one who had shown them signal forbearance and loaded them with repeated favours. These letters, with the rest of Garrick's most voluminous correspondence, which he had carefully preserved and docketed, probably with a view to an autobiography at some future date, were placed in Boaden's hands to edit and preface with a memoir. He had not known Garrick either on the stage or in private. But these documents, with such information as he might have obtained from 6 DAVID GARRICK Mrs. Garrick, whom he did know, were enough to enable him to produce a satisfactory hfe. Boaden, however, was not the man for the work. He had neither the sympathetic imagination, the dis- criminating judgment, nor the vivacity of style, which it demanded ; and his memoir is meagre in details, and most colourless and jejune in treat- ment. That he did not even make a judicious selection of the correspondence which he edited is now certain. Most valuable much of it is, but not a little could weU have been spared to make room for what he omitted. The whole correspondence having very fortunately come many years after- wards into the hands of the late Mr. John Forster, was turned to excellent account in his elaborate essays on Churchill and Foote, and also in his ' Life of Goldsmith,' where he speaks of the letters as forming the most striking and valuable contri- bution that has yet been made to the great actor's history. These documents, and many other letters both to and from Garrick which have since come to light, together with the mass of pamphlets, abusive as well as laudatory, of which Garrick, while alive, was the theme, as weU as the excellent criticisms on his histrionic powers, both at home and from abroad, furnish the materials for a biography of the great actor and the stage of his time in absolutely embarrassing profusion. But to BIRTH 7 most readers a monograph on a smaller scale will probably be more welcome, if only it shows the man as he was known in his home and to his friends, and also as the public saw him — the great artist who influenced the English stage and the pubhc taste more than any other actor has done, and who by his natural gift of genius, cultivated to its highest point by close observation and constant study of life and character, reached the summit of perfection in what Voltaire calls ' the most difficult of aU the arts.' David Garrick was born at the Angel Inn, Hereford, on February 19, 1716. He was French by descent. His paternal grandfather, David Garric, or Garrique, a French Protestant of good family, had escaped to England after the revoca- tion of the Edict of Nantes, reaching London on October 5, 1685. There he was joined in the following December by his wife, who had taken a month to make the passage from Bordeaux in a wretched barque of 14 tons, 'with strong tempests and at great peril of being lost.' Such was the inveteracy of their persecutors that, in effecting their own escape, these poor people had to leave behind them their only child, a boy called Peter, who was out at nurse at Bastide, near Bordeaux.* * Madame Garric had been compelled openly to abjure her religion, but she lost no time after her arrival in England in making confession and atonement for having done so, as appears from the following entry in the ' Livres des Actes 8 DAVID GARRICK It was not till May, 1687, that little Peter was restored to them by his nurse, Mary Mougnier, who came over to London with him. By this time a daughter had been born, and other sons and daughters followed ; but of a numerous family three alone survived — Peter, Jane, and David. David settled at Lisbon as a wine merchant, and Peter entered the army in 1706. His regiment was quartered at Lichfield, and some eighteen months after he received his commission he married Arabella, the daughter of the Rev. Mr. Clough, Vicar Choral of the cathedral there. There was no fortune on either side, but much affection. The usual result followed. Ten children were bom in rapid succession, of whom seven survived. Of these the third was David, who made his appearance somewhat inopportunely, while his father, then a Lieutenant of Dragoons, was at Hereford on re- cruiting service.* Lichfield was the home of the family. There du Consistoire ' (the governing body of the French Protestant church in St. Maxtin's Lane): ' D^"^ 13, 1685. U^^ Jeanne Sarrazin femme de M' David Garric ayaiit etc forcee de signer a Bourdeaux Tabjuration de notre religion, sans etre pourtant jamais allee a la Messe, en a temoigne a la Com- pagnie un sensible deplaisir, et a consenti d'en faire publique- ment la recognaissance, ce qu'elle fera Dimanche prochaine.'' * This same city claims the doubtful honour of giving birth, sixty-six years before (February 2, 1650), to another histrionic celebrity— Nell Gwymi. One of her grandsons was a Bishop of Hereford. EARLY AMBITIONS 9 was good blood on both sides of it, and they were admitted into the best society of the place, and held in deserved respect. David was a clever, bright boy, of quidk observation, apt at mimicry, and of an engaging temper. Such learning as the grammar- school of the town could give he obtained ; and his training here, and at Edial some years afterwards under his townsman Samuel Johnson, produced more of the fruits of a liberal education than commonly results even from schooling of a more elaborate and costly kind. The occasional visits of a stroUing troop of players gave the future Roscius his first taste of the fascinations of the drama. To see was to resolve to emulate, and before he was eleven years old he distinguished himself in the part of Sergeant Kite in a performance of Farquhar's ' Recruiting Officer,' organized for the amusement of their friends by his companions and himself. Meanwhile the cares of a numerous family were growing upon his parents. To meet its expenses, his father exchanged from the Dragoons into a marching regiment, and went upon half-pay. Peter, the eldest boy, had gone into the navy ; and upon the invitation of the uncle, whose name he bore, young David, then only eleven, was sent to Lisbon, apparently with the expectation that a provision for life would be made for him in his uncle's business. But either his uncle had no such inten- tion or the boy found the occupation distasteful, for his stay in Portugal did not extend over many 10 DAVID GARRICK months. Short as it was, he succeeded in making himself popular there by his vivacity and talents. After dinner he would be set upon the table to recite to the guests passages from the plays they were familiar with at home. A very pleasant inmate he must have been in the house of his well-to-do bachelor uncle. No doubt he was sent home with something handsome in his pocket ; and when, a few years afterwards, the uncle came back to England to die, he left his nephew £l,000 — twice as much as he gave to any others of the family. GaiTick's father, who had for some years been making an ineffectual struggle to keep his head above water upon his half-pay, found he could do so no longer, and in 1731 he joined his regiment, which had been sent out to garrison Gibraltar, leavmg behind him his wife, broken in health, to face single-handed the debts and duns, the worries and anxieties, of a large family. In her son Da\'id she found the best support. His heart and head were ever at work to soften her trials, and his gay spirit doubtless brightened with many a smUe the sad wistfulness of her anxious face. The fare in her home was meagre, and the dresses of its imnates scanty and well worn ; still there were loWng hearts in it, which were drawn closer together by their very privations. But the poor lady's heart was away with the father. ' I must tell my dear life and soul,' she writes to him in a letter which reads like a bit of Thackeray TAUGHT BY JOHNSON 11 or Sterne, 'that I am not able to live any longer without him ; for I grow very jealous. But in the midst of all this I do not blame my dear. I have very sad dreams for you . . . but I have the pleasure when I am up, to think, were 1 with you, how tender . . . my dear would be to me ; nay, was when I was with you last. O ! that I had you in my arms ! I would tell my dear life how much I am his. — A. G.' Her husband had then been only two years gone. Three more weary years were to pass before she was to see him again. This was in 1736, and he returned, shattered in health and spirits, to die within little more than a year. One year more, and she, too, the sad, faithful mother, whose ' dear life ' was restored to her arms only to be taken from them by a sterner parting, was herself at rest. During his father's absence Garrick had not been idle. His busy brain and restless fancy had been laying up stores of observation for future use. He was a general favourite in the Lichfield circle — amusing the old, and heading the sports of the young — winning the hearts of all. Gilbeil; Walmsley, Registrar of the Ecclesiastical Court, a good and wise friend, who had known and loved him from childhood, took him under his special care. On his suggestion, possibly by his help, David and his brother George were sent as pupils to Johnson's academy at Edial, to complete their studies in Latin and French. Garrick and Johnson had been friends before, and there was indeed but 12 DAVID GARRICK seven years' difference in their ages. But Johnson even then impressed his pupil with a sense of superiority, which never afterwards left him ; while Garrick estabhshed an equally lasting hold upon the somewhat capricious heart of his ungainly master. From time to time he was taken by friends to London, where, in the theatres that were to be the scenes of his friture triumphs, he had opportunities of studying some of the leading per- formers, whom he was afterwards to ecUpse. Even in these early days the dream of coping with these favourites of the town had taken possession of him. But he kept it to himself, well knowing the shock he would have inflicted on the kind hearts at home had he suggested to them the possibUity of such a career for himself. By the time his father returned from Gibraltar Garrick was nineteen. A profession must be chosen, and the Bar appears to have been thought the fittest for a youth of so much readiness and address, and with an obviously unusual faculty of speech. Some further prehminary studies were, however, indis- pensable. He could not afford to go to either University, and in this strait his friend AA^almsley bethought him of a ' dear old friend ' at Rochester, the Rev. TNIr. Colson, afterward Lucasian Professor at Cambridge, a man of eminence in science, as a person most likely to give young Garrick the instruction in ' mathematics, philosophy, and humane learning' which was deemed requisite to FROM LICHFIELD TO LONDON 13 complete his education. To him, therefore, a letter was despatched, asking him to undertake the charge, from which we get an authentic and agreeable picture of. the young fellow's character : ' He is a very sensible fellow, and a good scholar, nineteen, of sober and good dispositions, and is as ingenious and promising a young man as ever I knew in my life. Few instructions on your side will do, and in the intervals of study he wiU be an agreeable companion for you. This young gentle- man has been much with me, ever since he was a child, and I have taken much pleasure in instruct- ing him, and have a great aiFection and esteem for him' ('Garrick Correspondence,' vol. i., p. 1). Mr. Colson accepted the proposal ; but, by the time the terms had been arranged, another young native of Lichfield, in whom Walmsley felt no slight interest, had determined to move southward to try his fortunes, and was also to be brought under Mr. Colson's notice. This was Samuel Johnson, whose Edial academy had by this time been starved out, but for whom London, the last hope of ambitious scholars, was still open. He had written his tragedy of ' Irene,' and it had found provincial admirers, Walmsley among the number, who thought a tragedy in verse the open sesame to fame and fortune. For London, therefore, Johnson and Garrick started together — Johnson, as he used afterwards to say, vsdth twopence-halfpenny in his pocket, and Garrick with three hal^ence in his, a mocking exaggeration, not very wide, however, 14 DAVID GARRICK of the truth. Walmsley announced their departure to Mr. Colson on March 2, 1737, in the often-quoted words : ' He (Garrick) and another neighbour of mine, one Mr. Johnson,* set out this morning for London together ; Davy Garrick to be with you early next week ; and Mr. .Johnson to try his fate with a tragedy, and to see to get himself employed ^nth some translation, either from the Latin or the French. Johnson is a very good scholar and poet, and I have great hopes will turn out a fine tragedy writer' ('Garrick Correspondence,' vol. i., p. 2). For some reason not now kno^Ti Garrick did not go to Mr. Colson in a week. On reaching towTi he lost no time in getting himself admitted to the Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn (March 19, 1737) by payment of the admission fee of £3 3s. 4d., the only act of membership which he appears ever to have performed. He stayed in London with Johnson for some time, and their finances fell so low that they had to borrow £j on their joint note from one Wilcox, a bookseller and acquaintance of * In 1769, when Garrick was one of the most notable men in England, the letters of Walmsley to Colson were published by Mrs. Newling, Colson's daughter. She sent the originals at the same time to Garrick's friend Mr. Sharp, to be forwarded to the great actor. In the very charming letter to Garrick which accompanied them, Mr. Sharp says : ' If I had called, as I sometimes do, on Dr. Johnson, and showed him one of them where he is mentioned as one Johnson, I should have risked, perhaps, the sneer of one of his ghastly smiles' ('Garrick Correspondence," vol. i., p. 334). ROCHESTER 15 Garrick's, who afterwards proved one of Johnson's best friends. Most probably Garrick's plans of study under Mr. Colson were disconcerted by the illness of his father, who died within a month after Garrick had started from Lichfield. Nor was it until the death soon afterwards of the Lisbon uncle, and the opening to Garrick of his £ 1,000 legacy, that he found himself in a condition to incur that expense. Late in 1737 he went to Rochester, and remained with Mr. Colson for some months, but with what advantage can be only matter of conjecture. Colson, like the Rev. Josiah Cargill, as described by Meg Dods in Scott's 'St. Ronan's Well,' was 'just dung donnart wi' learning,' a man too much absorbed in abstruse scientific studies to be the fittest of tutors for a youth of the mercurial temperament and social habits of Garrick. But there was so much of honest ambition and natural goodness of disposition in his pupil, that it may safely be assumed he did not fail to profit by the learning of the man, of whose peculiarities he must have been quite aware before he placed himself under his charge. Whatever his progress in the literoe humaniores, Rochester was as good a field as any for such a student of character and manners. He certainly made himself liked in the family, and Colson's daughter, Mrs. Newling, recalling herself to Garrick's notice twenty years afterwards, speaks of the great pleasure with which she reflects ' upon 16 DAVID GARRICK the happy minutes his vivacity caused ' during his stay with them. Early in 1738 Garrick returned to Lichfield. By this time his brother Peter had left the navy and returned home. There were five brothers and sisters to be provided for, so Peter and he clubbed their little fortunes, and set up in business as wine merchants in Lichfield and London. David, by this time tolerably familiar with the ways of town, and not unknown at the coffee-houses where his wines might be in demand, took charge of the London business. Vaults were taken in Durham Yard, between the Strand and the river, where the Adelphi Terrace now stands, and here Foote, in his usual vein of grotesque exaggeration, used to say he had known the great actor ' with three quarts of vinegar in the cellar calling himself a wine merchant.' Of Garrick at this period we get a vivid glimpse from MackHn, an established actor, who was then Garrick's inseparable friend, but was afterwards to prove a constant thorn in his side through fife, and his most malignant detractor after death. Garrick ' was then,' as Macldin told his own biographer Cooke, * a very sprightly young man, neatly made, of an expressive countenance, and most agreeable manners.' Mr. Cooke adds, upon the same authority : ' The stage possessed him whoUy ; he could talk or think of nothing but the theatre ; and as they EARLY LITERARY EFFORTS 17 often dined together in select parties, Garrick rendered himself the idol of the meeting by his mimicry, anecdotes, etc. With other funds of information, he possessed a number of good travel- ling stories ' (with which his youthful voyage to Lisbon had apparently supplied him), ' which he narrated, sir ' (added the veteran), ' in such a vein of pleasantry and rich humour as I have seldom seen equalled ' (Cooke's ' Life of Macklin,' p. 96). There could be only one conclusion to such a state of things. The wine business languished. That it was not wholly ruined, and Garrick with it, shows that with all his love of society he was able to exercise great prudence and self-restraint. ' Though on pleasure bent, he had a frugal mind.' Early habits of self-denial, and the thought of the young brothers and sisters at Lichfield, were enough to check everything Uke extravagance, though they could not control the passion which was hourly feeding itself upon the study of plays and intercourse with players, and bearing him onwards to the inevitable goal. Their society, and that of the wits and critics about town, were the natural element for talents such as his. He could even then turn an epigram or copy of verses, for which his friend Johnson would secure a place in the Gentleman s Magazine. Paragraphs of dramatic criticism frequently exercised his pen. He had a farce, 'Lethe,' accepted at Drury Lane, and another, 'The Lying Valet,' ready for the stage. Actors and managers were among his intimates. 2 18 DAVID GARRICK He had the entree behind the scenes at the two great houses, Drury Lane and Covent Garden, and his histrionic powers were so well recognised that one evening in 1740, when Yates was too ill to go on as harlequin at the httle theatre in Good- man's Fields, Garrick was allowed to take his place for the early scenes, and got through them so well that the substitution was not surmised by the audience. Nor had his been a mere lounger's delight in the pleasures of the theatre. The axiom, that the stage is nought which does not ' hold the mirror up to Nature,' had taken deep hold upon his mind ; but from the actual stage he found that Nature, especi- ally in the poetical drama, had aU but vanished, and in its place had come a purely conventional and monotonous style of declamation, with a stereotyped system of action no less formal and unreal. There was a noble opening for anyone who should have the courage and the gifts to return to Nature and to Truth, and Garrick felt that it was ' in him ' to effect the desired revolution. That the pubhc were prepared to welcome a reform had been demonstrated by the success, in February, 1741, of his fi-iend INlacklin at Drury Lane, in the part of Shylock, which the public had up to that time been accustomed to see treated on the stage as a comic part.^ Pushing aside Lord * ' I cannot but think the chai-acter was tragically designed,' is the hesitating suggestion of a Shakespearian A RETURN TO NATURE 19 Lansdowne's ' Jew of Venice,' which had long supplanted the original play, and reading Shake- speare's play by the light of his vigorous intellect, Macklin saw the immense scope the character aflfbrded for the display of varied passion and emotion. Nature had given him the Shylock look, and in his heart he had ' the irrevocable hate and study of revenge,' of which the character is so grand an expression. In the early scenes he riveted the audience by the hard, cutting force of his manner and utterance. The third act came, and here he says : ' I knew I should have the pull and reserved myself accordingly. At this period I threw out all my fire, and, as the contrasted passions of joy for the merchant's losses and grief for the elope- ment of Jessica open a fine field for an actor's powers, I had the good fortune to please beyond my warmest expectations. The whole house was in an uproar of applause, and I was obhged to pause between the speeches to give it vent, so as to be heard.' ' No money, no title,' added the veteran, as he editor — Rowe, himself a poet. The playbill of Macklin's first night's appearance in the part records that Mrs. Clive was Portia, and Mrs. Pritchard, Nerissa. Strange that an actress whose strength lay in low comedy should on this occasion, and for years afterwards, have done her best, as she did, to bring down the great lady of Belmont from the high level on which Shakespeare placed her to that of a vulgar flirt, who sought, among other horrors, to catch the applause of the ' groundlings ' by burlesquing in the Trial scene the manners of a flippant barrister. 2—2 20 DAVID GARRICK recited his triumph, 'could purchase what I felt. And let no man tell me after this, what fame will not inspire a man to do, and how far the attain- ment of it will not remunerate his greatest labours. By God, sir, though I was not worth £50 in the world at this time, yet, let me tell you, I was Charles the Great for that night' (Cooke's "Life of Macklin,' p. 93). Mackhn's powers were of an exceptional kind. He wanted variety and flexibility, and those graces of person and manner which are indispensable to a great actor. His success was, therefore, only momentary, and it was left to his young ftiend and companion to complete the reform of which his own treatment of Shylock was the first indication. Nor was that reform far distant. The very next summer was to decide Garrick's career. His broodings were now to take actual shape. But before hazarding an appearance in London he wisely resolved to test his powers in the country, and with this view he went down to Ips\\'ich with the company of GifFard, the manager of the Good- man's Fields Theatre, and made his appearance under the name of Lyddal as Aboan in Southern's tragedy of ' Oroonoko.'* This he followed up by several other characters, both tragic and comic, none of them of first importance, but sufficient ^ On July 21, 1741, he played at the same theatre Captain Dui-etete in ' The Inconstant,' and Caius on the 28th. POWER OF HIS GENIUS 21 to give him ease on the stage, and at the same time enable him to ascertain wherein his strength lay. His success was unquestionable, and decided him on appealing to a London audience. The quality in which Garrick then and through- out his career surpassed all his contemporaries was the power of kindhng with the exigencies of the scene. He lost himself in his part. It spoke through him, and the greater the play of emotion and passion which it demanded, the more diversified the expression and action for which it gave scope, the more brilliantly did his genius assert itself. His face answered to his feelings, and its workings gave warning of his words before he uttered them ; his voice, melodious and full of tone, though far from strong, had the penetrating quahty hard to define, but which is never wanting either in the great orator or the great actor ; and his figure, light, graceful, and well balanced, though under the average size, was equal to every demand which his impulsive nature made upon it. We can see all this in the portraits of him even at this early period. Only in those of a later date do we get some idea of the commanding power of his eyes, which not only held his audience like a spell, but controlled, with a power almost beyond endurance, his fellow-performers in the scene. But from the first the power must have been there. He had noted well all that was good in the professors of the art he was destined to revolutionize, and he 22 DAVID GARRICK had learned, as men of ability do learn, even from their very defects, in what direction true excellence was to be sought for. Long afterwards he used to say that his own chief successes in ' Richard III.' were due to what he had learned through watching Ryan, a very indifferent actor, in the same part. Richard was the character he chose for his first London trial, a choice made with a wise estimate of his own powers, for the display of which it was eminently fitted. At this time the part was in the possession of Quin, whose ' manner of heaving up his words and laboured action,' as described by Davies, were the best of foils to the fiery energy and subtle varieties of expression with which Garrick was soon to make the public familiar. He ap- peared, by the usual venial fiction on similar occasions, as a ' gentleman who never appeared on any stage.' The theatre, a \-ery small one (see Appendix, p. 93), was far from full ; stiU, the audience was numerous enough to make the actor feel his triumph, and to spread the report of it widely. They were taken by surprise at first by a style at once so new and so consonant to Xature. ' To the just modulation of the words,' says Davies, * and concurring expression of the features, from the genuine workings of Nature, they had been strangers, at least for some time. But, after Mr. Garrick had gone through a \-ariety of scenes, in which he gave evident proofs of consummate art and perfect knowledge of character, their doubts were turned into surprise and astonish- TRIUMPH 23 ment, from which they relieved themselves in loud and reiterated applause ' (' Life of Garrick,' vol. i., p. 45). Macklin, of course, was there, and often spoke of the pleasure that night's performance gave him, ' It was amazing how, without any example, but, on the contrary, with great prejudices against him, he could throw such spirit and novelty into the part as to convince every impartial person, on the very first impression, that he was right. In short, sir, he at once decided the public taste ; and though the players formed a cabal against him, with Quin at their head, it was a puff to thunder. The east and west end of the town made head against them, and the Httle fellow in this and about half a dozen other characters secured his own immortality' (Cooke's ' Life of Macklin,' p. 99). The Daily Post announced his reception next day in terms which, however little they would be worthy of belief in any journal of the present day, at that time were enough to arrest attention, as 'the most extraordinary and great that was ever known on such an occasion ' as a first appearance. Another critic, in the Champion, who obviously was equal to his work, a phenomenon at no time common in newspaper critics of the stage, called attention to his nice proportions, his clear and penetrating voice, sweet and harmonious, with- out monotony, drawling, or affectation ; ' neither whining, bellowing, or grumbling' — tragedians of those days must have been marvellously like our 24 DAVID GARRICK own — ' but perfectly easy in its transitions, natural in its cadence, and beautiful in its elocution.' ' He is not less happy in his mien and gait, in which he is neither strutting nor mincing, neither stiff nor slouching. When three or four are on the stage with him he is attentive to whatever is spoke, and never drops his character when he has finished his speech by either looking contemptu- ously on an inferior performer, unnecessary spit- ting, or suffering his eyes to wander through the whole circle of spectators. His action is never superfluous, awkward, or too frequently repeated, but graceful, decent, and becoming.' This is invaluable, both as showing what Garrick was and what the actors of that time — in this also, unhappily, too like the actors of our own — were not. He listened as well as he spoke. 'What passed on the stage was to him as real as if it were a scene in actual life. He was, in fact, 'terribly in earnest.' He did not play with his work. He had transported himself into the ideal Richard, and his strong conception spoke in e^'ery flash of his eyes, every change of his features, every motion of his body. It is characteristic of the ferAour with which he threw himself into the part, that before the fourth act was over he had all but run out of voice, and was indebted to the seasonable relief of a Seville orange from a chance loiterer behind the scenes for getting articulately to the end of the play. This failure of the \'oice often happened to him afterwards, and from the same cause. It is FASHION IN GOODMAN'S FIELDS 25 one of 'the characteristics of a sensitive organiza- tion, and did not arise in him from any undue vehemence, but evidently from the intensity which he threw into his delivery. A power like this was sure of rapid recognition in those days, when theatres formed a sort of fourth estate. Garrick's first appearance was on October 19, 1741. He repeated the character the seven following nights, then changed it for Aboan, his first part of the Ipswich series. The audiences were still moderate, and his salary — a guinea a night — moderate in proportion. But fame had carried the report of the new wonder from the obscure corner of the city, near the Minories, in which his friend Giffard's theatre was situated, to the wits and fashionable people in the West End. ' Richard ' was restored to the biUs. ' Goodman's Fields,' says Davies, ' was full of the splendours of St. James's and Grosvenor Squares ; the coaches of the nobility filled up the space from Temple Bar to Whitechapel.' What Garrick valued more than all this concourse of fashionables, men of high character and undoubted taste flocked to hear him ; and on November 2, Pope, ill and failing, who had come out early in the year to see Macklin's Shylock, and had recognised its excellence, was again tempted from his easy-chair at Twickenham by the rumour of a worthy successor having arisen to the Betterton and Booth of his early admiration. 26 DAVID GARRICK ' I saw,' said Garrick, describing the event long afterwards to the somewhat magniloquent Percival Stockdale, ' our httle poetical hero, dressed in black, seated in a side- box near the stage, and viewing me with a serious and earnest attention. His look shot and thrilled hke lightning through my frame, and I had some hesitation in proceeding from anxiety and from joy. As Richard gradually blazed forth, the house was in a roar of applause, and the conspiring hand of Pope showered me with laurels ' (' Stockdale 's Memoirs,' vol. ii., p. 152). Pope returned to see him twice, and his verdict, which reached Garrick through Lord Orrery, shows how deeply he was impressed by Garrick's fresh and forcible style, and by the genuine inspiration which animated his performance. ' That young man never had his equal as an actor, and he will never have a rival.' Pope dreaded that success would spoil him ; but Garrick's genius was not of the ungenuine kind which is spoiled by success. He knew only too well how far his best achieve- ments fell short of what his imagination conceived. Others might think his dehneations could not be improved. Not so he ; for act as long as he might, there was no great part, in Shakespeare especially, which would not constantly present new details to elaborate, or suggest shades of significance or contrast which had previously escaped hun. The praise of old Mrs. Porter, herself the greatest tragedian of her time, who had come up to town to see him from her retirement in the country. •SUPERIOR TO BETTERTON' 27 must have spoken more eloquently to him than even Pope's broad eulogium, and in it, too, there was the prophecy of the ' All haU, hereafter.' ' He is bom an actor, and does more at his first appear- ance than ever anybody did with twenty years' practice ; and, good God ! what wiU he be in time ?'* The Duke of Argyle (the MacCallum More whom Scott has immortalized in 'The Heart of Midlothian ') and Lord Cobham, great authorities in stage matters, pronounced him superior to Betterton. The very conflicts of opinion to which such high commendations gave rise were the best of fame for the young artist. They drew crowds to the theatre, and even before the end of 1741 it was often far too small to accommodate the numbers that flocked for admittance. The humble salary of a guinea a night was clearly no adequate return for such merits. Giffard offered him a share in the management upon equal terms, and within the next few months the foundation of the actor's ultimate great fortune was laid. Such success could not fail to provoke the jealousy of those performers who had hitherto occupied the foremost ranks. It was a virtual condemnation of all they had trained themselves to think true acting. 'If this young fellow is right, then we have all been wrong,' said one, as * This speech was conveyed to Garrick in a letter, dated April 26, 1742, from his friend the Rev. T. Newton (' Garrick Correspondence,' vol. i., p. 8). 28 DAVID GARRICK if in that statement were included a final verdict against him. 'This,' remarked the sententious Quin, ' is the wonder of a day ; Garrick is a new religion ; the people follow him as another White- field ; but they will soon return to church again.'* Return, however, they did not. A new era had begun, and Garrick, whose ready pen did not always do him such good service, was able to retort the sarcasm in a smart epigram, of which these two lines have kept their place in literature : ' When doctrines meet with general approbation, It is not heresy, but reformation.'' When Dukes by the dozen, great Parliament men, Mr. Pitt and others, and even Cabinet Ministers, were to be seen in the front boxes applauding, and were known to court the young actor's acquaintance, the adverse whispers of the few, who are always too wise to believe in what all the rest of mankind believe in, were of small account. The poet Gray might pooh-pooh the new genius — * Quin and Garrick became excellent friends. Leaving a coffee-house one night together, only one sedan-chair was to be had. ' Put Davie in the lantern,' said Quin, stepping into it. ' Happy to give Wr. Quin light in anything,' was Garrick's rejoinder. After Quin left the stage, he often came up from Bath to visit Mr. and Mi-s. Garrick at their country house at Hampton. Garrick ^vrote the lines for Quin's monument in Bath Cathedral, but they are not in his best vein. They smack of the ilepressing influence of a bad attack of gout under which he was suffering when they were written. COLLEY GIBBER APPROVES 29 its freshness and fire probably jarred his finely-strung nerves — and Horace Walpole insinuate that he * saw nothing wonderful in him.' When did he ever recognise anything truly great ? But they felt themselves to be the heretics, and powerless against the overwhelming tide of popularity which had set in. Even CoUey Gibber, whose adaptation of ' Richard III.' was Garrick's assay piece, and whose preconceived notions of the character must have received a rude shock from the new soul put into it by the young actor, was reluctantly driven to admit to Mrs. Bracegirdle, ' Gadso, Bracey, the little fellow is clever.' The praise of so good a critic and so experienced an actor was indeed valuable, and in recounting his successes to his brother Peter, Garrick writes with obvious pride (December 22, 1741), ' Old Gibber has spoken with the greatest commendation of my acting.' While people were still in admiration at the tragic force of his Richard, he surprised them by the display of comic powers, scarcely less remark- able, in Glodio in the ' Fop's Fortune,' Fondlewife in Gongreve's ' Old Bachelor,' and other characters, thus early demonstrating his own doctrine that ' there must be comedy in the perfect actor of tragedy,' of which he was afterwards to furnish so brilliant an example. His lively farce of ' The Lying Valet' (produced in December, 1741) estab- lished his reputation as a writer, at the same time that it gave him in the part of Sharp a field for the 30 DAVID GARRICK airy vivacity, the ever-bubbling gaiety of tone, the talent of making witty things doubly witty by the way of sajdng them, for which he was afterwards so famous. Some of his friends (his townsman Newton, the future Bishop, then tutor to Lord Carpenter's son, among the number) thought his appearance in such parts a mistake. 'You, who are equal to the greatest parts, strangely demean yourself in acting anything that is low or little,' he wrote, January 18, 1742. ' There are abundance of people who hit off low humour and succeed in the coxcomb and the buffoon very well ; but there is scarce one in an age who is capable of acting the hero in tragedy and the fine gentleman in comedy. Though you perform these parts never so well, yet there is not half the merit in excelling in them as in the others.' Sound enough advice in the main and to actors of limited scope, and most politic as a warning, by which Garrick profited, not to let himself down by plajdng merely farce parts. But there is no good reason why an actor of the requisite genius should not play Touchstone as well as Othello, Sir Toby Belch as well as Corio- lanus, with no more loss of caste than Shakespeare for having written them. But then there must be the requisite genius to justify the attempt. This Garrick had, as was soon afterwai-ds proved, when he passed from King Lear to Abel Drugger in Ben Jonson's ' Alchemist,' from Hamlet to Bayes in * The Rehearsal,' and left his severest critics in doubt HIS INFINITE VARIETY 31 in which he was most to be admired. 'Future times,' Wilks writes, ' will scarcely credit the amazing contrast between his Lear and Schoolboy, or his Richard and his Fribble. He gives us not resemblances, but realities.' Indeed, it was just this wide range of power, this Shakespearian multiformity of conception, which was the secret of Garrick's greatness, and, after his death, made even the cynical Walpole confess that he was 'the greatest actor that ever hved, both in comedy and tragedy.' Newton himself was struck by this a few months later. He had just seen Garrick's Lear, and after giving him the opinion of certain friends that he far ex- ceeded Booth in that character, and even equalled Betterton, he goes oh to say : ' The thing that strikes me above all others is that variety in your acting, and your being so totally a different man in Lear from what you are in Richard. There is a sameness in every other actor. Gibber is something of a coxcomb in every- thing; and Wolsey, Syphax, and lago, all smell strong of the essence of Lord Foppington. Booth was a philosopher in Cato, and was a philosopher in everything else ! His passion in Hotspur, I hear, was much of the same nature, whereas yours was an old man's passion, and an old man's voice and action ; and, in the four parts wherein I have seen you, Richard, Chamont, Bayes, and Lear, I never saw four actors more different from one another than you are from yourself (' Garrick Correspondence,' vol. i., p. 7). 32 DAVID GARRICK His Lear, like his Richard, seems from the first to have been superb. Cooke, indeed, in his * Memoir of Macklin,' says the first and second performances of the part disappointed that severe critic. It did not sufficiently indicate the infirmities of the man ' fourscore and upwards ' ; the curse did not break down, as it should have done, in the impotence of rage ; there was a lack of dignity in the prison scene, and so forth. Garrick took notes of Macklin 's criticisms on all these points, withdrew the play for six weeks, and restudied the character in the interval. Of the result on his next appear- ance Macklin always spoke with rapture. The curse in particular exceeded all he could have imagined ; it seemed to electrify the audience with horror. The words ' KiU — ^kill — kill,' echoed all the revenge of a frantic King, 'whilst his pathos on discovering his daughter Cordelia drew tears of commiseration fi-om the whole house. In short. sir, the Uttle dog made it a chef-cTceuvre, and a chef-d'oeuvre it continued to the end of his Ufe.' While the town was ringing with his triumphs, and his brain was still on fire with the fulfilment of his cherished dreams, Garrick did not forget his sober partner in business nor the other good folks at Lichfield, to whose genteel notions his becoming a stage-player, he knew, would be a terrible shock. The Ipswich performances had escaped their notice ; and Brother Peter, when in town soon afterwards, found him out of health and spirits. He was then ART BEFORE COMMERCE 33 in the miserable interim ' between the acting of a dreadful thing and the first motion ' of it. Garrick, though he had quite made up his mind to go on the stage, was afraid to break the news to his family. But he broke it in a letter to his brother and partner* the day after his debut at Goodman's Fields, while the plaudits of his audience were yet sounding in his ears, deprecating his censure with an un- assuming earnestness which speaks volumes for the modesty of the artist, and the simple and loving nature of the man. ' My mind,' he writes, ' (as you must know) has been always inchned to the stage, nay, so strongly so, that all my illness and lowness of spirits was owing to my want of resolution to tell you my thoughts when here. Finding at last both my inclination and interest required some new way of life, I have chose the most agreeable to myself, and though I know you will be much displeased at me, yet I hope when you shall find that I may have the genius of an actor, without the vices, you will think the less severely of me, and not be ashamed to own me for a brother. . . . Last night I play'd Richard the Third to the surprise of everybody, and as I shall make very near £300 per annum by it, and as it is really what I doat upon, I am resolved to pursue it.' The wine business at Durham Yard, he explained, had not prospered — £400 of Garrick's small capital had been lost — and he saw no prospect of retrieving * The letter is dated October 19, written, no doubt, before he went to bed on the night of his diibut. 34 DAVID GARRICK it. He was prepared to make every reasonable arrangement with his brother about their partner- ship, and in his new career better fortune awaited him, of which his family should share the fruits. But the news spread dismay in the old home at Lichfield ; their respectability was compromised by one of their blood becoming ' a harlotry player,' and getting mixed up with the loose morals and shifty ways of the theatrical fraternity. Before Peter's reply reached him, Garrick must have known that his fame was secure. But the tone of his rejoinder is still modest, though firm. Writing again, on October 27, 1741, he assures his brother that even his friends, ' who were at first surprised at my intent, by seeing me on the stage, are now well convinced it was impossible for me to keep off it.' As to company, ' the best in town ' were desirous of his, and he had received more ci\-ihties since he came on the stage than he ever did in all his hfe before. ' Leonidas ' Glover has been to see him every night, and goes about saying he had not seen acting for ten years before. ' In short, were I to tell you what they say about me, 'twould be too vain, though I am now \\Titing to a brother. ... I am sorry my sisters are under such uneasiness, and, as I really love both them and you, will ever make it ray study to appear your affectionate brother, D. Garrick.' A less modest or more selfish man would have thrown off with some impatience the weak scruples SCRUPLES OF THE FAMILY 35 of his family about loss of caste. How could he be doing wrong in following the irresistible bent of a genius for what he knew to be one of the most difficult as well as noblest of the arts, however much it might have been discredited by the folly or the vice of some of its followers, or disparaged as an ' idle trade ' in the opinion of the unreflecting ? But Garrick's kindly heart and no less excellent temper determined him to pursue a conciliatory course. He reminded his brother, therefore, ' how handsomely and how reputably some have lived, as Booth, Mills, Wilks, Gibber, etc., admitted into and admired by the best companies.' In a future letter (November 10, 1741) he told him that ' Mr. Pitt, who is reckoned the greatest orator in the House of Commons, said I was the best actor the English stage had produced, and he sent a gentleman to let me know he and the other gentle- man would be glad to see me. The Prince has heard so great a character of me, that we are in daily expectation of his coming to see me.' This sort of thing was calculated to impress the rather dull brain of Peter and the timid souls of the sisters, which would have been impervious to any appeal on the score of the intrinsic nobility of the actor's art. Garrick could feel within himself, and might have told them, that he had his vocation as clearly as ever poet or painter had his, and that it no more rested with himself what ' he should do or what refuse ' than with a Milton to write, or a 3—2 36 DAVID GARRICK Raphael to design. But to have written to the good people at Lichfield of these things would have been to talk to stone walls. He therefore keeps steadily before their eyes the numbers of great folks who are pressing for his acquaintance — ' the great Mr. Murray, counsellor' (afterwards Lord Mans- field), Pope, Mr. Littleton, the Prince's favourite, with all of whom he has supped, and who have all treated him ' with the highest ci\dlity and com- plaisance.' ' Mr. Littleton,' he writes to his brother Peter (April 19, 1741), 'told me he never knew what acting was till I appeared, and said I was born to act what Shakespeare wrote.' He has dined with Lords Hahfax, Sandwich, and Chester- field. * In short, I beheve nobody (as an actor) was ever more caressed, and my character as a private man makes 'em more desirous of my company.' * When they found their brother making his way in the highest quarters, and becoming well to do at the same time, the views of his family underwent a change. It was not, however, till December 2, 1741, that Garrick threw off the mask, and performed under his own name. By this time e^en they must have begun to doubt, whether honour was not more likely to accrue to them than discredit fi-om the step which he had taken. But it must have been no small pain to him to have the Aulgar estimate * The details of this pait of GaiTick's correspondence are fully given in Book III., cap. ii., of Goldsmith's Life, by Mr. Forster. CLERICAL APPROVAL 37 of his profession thrown so remorselessly in his teeth by his own kindred ; and that even in the first excitement of his success he had misgivings as to what would be his social position, and had expressed them to his clerical friend Newton,* may be inferred from a letter of that wise and liberally-minded man. ' You need make no apology,' he writes to Garrick, December 7, 1741, ' for your profession, at least to me. I always thought that you were born an actor, if ever any man was so ; and it will be your own indiscretion (and I hope and believe you will hardly be guilty of such indiscretion) if coming upon the stage hurts your reputation, and does not make your fortune. As great talents are required for acting well, as for almost anything ; and an excellent actor, if at the same time he is an honest, worthy man, is a fit companion for anybody. You know Roscius was familiar with Cicero, and the greatest men of his time ; and Betterton used frequently to visit Bishops Sprat and Atterbury, and other divines, as well as the best of the nobility and gentry, not as a mimic and buffoon, to make diversion for the company, but as an agreeable friend and companion.' This was encouragement of a very commonplace kind to a man who respected his art and himself. But still it was encouragement, and encouragement not to be despised. For it was not alone the many- headed vulgar who thought themselves entitled to look with a kind of scorn upon a player, but the * Afterwards Bishop Newton, the editor of what was at one time the standard edition of the ' Paradise Lost.' 38 DAVID GARRICK so-called men of letters, with Johnson at their head, who above all others should have been superior to such prejudice, lost no opportunity of letting Garrick feel that they regarded the actor as of an inferior order to themselves. It was only men of the highest gifts, like Burke, Warburton, Camden, or Reynolds, or of the highest social position, Uke the Dukes of Devonshire or Portland, or the Spencers, who never wounded his self-respect by airs of superiority or condescension. Garrick paid the actor's accustomed penalty for success by being overworked. Between his first appearance in October, 1741, and the following May, when the Goodman's Fields Theatre closed, he played no less than 138 times, and for the most part in characters of the greatest weight and im- portance in both tragedy and comedy. Among the former were Richard, Lear, Pierre ; among the latter. Lord Foppington, in Gibber's ' Careless Husband,' Fondlewife, and Bayes. The range of character and passion which these parts covered was immense. To have played them at all, new as he was to the stage, was no common feat of in- dustry, but only genius of the most remarkable kind could have carried him through them, not only without injury, but \nth positive increase, to the high reputation his first performances had created. In Bayes of * The Rehearsal ' he was nearly as popular as in Richard and I^ear ; and he made the part subser\ient to his purpose A VISIT TO DUBLIN 39 of exposing the false and unnatural style into which actors had fallen, by making Bayes speak his turgid heroics in imitation of some of the leading performers. But when he found how the men whose faults he burlesqued — good, worthy men in their way — were made wretched by seeing themselves and what they did in all serious- ness held up to derision, his naturally kind heart and good taste made him drop these imitations. Garrick's true vocation was to teach his brethren a purer style by his own example, not to dishearten them by ridicule. Mimicry, besides, as he well knew, is the lowest form of the actor's art, and no mere mimic can be a great actor, for sincerity, not simulation, is at the root of all greatness on the stage. The success of Garrick at Goodman's Fields emptied the patent houses at Covent Garden and Drury Lane, and the patentees had recourse to the law to compel GifFard to close his theatre. Garrick was secured for the next season at Drury Lane. But as that house did not open till September, and the people of Dublin were impatient to see him, he started off for that city early in June, and remained there, playing a round of his leading parts, till the middle of August. An epidemic which raged during the greater part of this time, caused by distress among the poor and by the great heat, got the name of the ' Garrick fever.' But the epidemic which he really caused was not among the poor, but 40 DAVID GARRICK among the wits and fine ladies of that then fashion- able and lively city, who were not likely to be behind his English admirers in enthusiasm. He was berhymed and feted on all hands, and from them he got the title of Roscius, which to this hour is coupled with his name. During this en- gagement he added Hamlet to his list of characters. I^ike his Richard and his Lear, it was treated in a manner quite his own, and, like them, it was from the fii'st a success, but was, of course, much elabo- rated and modified in future years. At Drury Lane Garrick found himself asso- ciated with his old friend Macklin, who was deputy- manager, and with Peg AVoffington, that ' dallying and dangerous beauty,' under whose spell he appears to have fallen as early as 1740. As an actress she was admirable for the Ufe, the nature, and the grace which she threw into aU she did, set off by a fine person and a face, wliich, as her portraits show, though habitually pensive in its expression, was capable of kindling into passion, or beaming with the sudden and fitful lights of feeling and fancy. She had been literally picked out of the streets of Dubhn as a child crying • halfpenny salads,* * ' I have met with more than one in Dublin who assured me that they remember to have seen lovelv Peggy with a little dish on her head, and without shoes to cover her delicate feet, crying through College Green, Dame Street, and other parts of that end of the town, " All this fine spring salad for a halfpenny — all for a halfpenny — all for a halfpenny — here!"' ('Memoirs of Lee Lewis,' vol. ii., p. 16). PEG WOFFINGTON 41 and trained by a rope-dancer, Madame Violante, as one of a Lilliputian company, in which she figured in such parts as Captain Macheath in Gay's 'Beggar's Opera.' Like Rachel and many other celebrated women, she contrived — it is hard to say how — to educate herself, so that she could hold her own in conversation in any society ; and such was her natural grace that she excelled in characters like Millamant and Lady Townley, for which the well-bred air of good society was essential. Frank, kindly and impulsive, she had also wit at will to give piquancy to the expressions of a very independent turn of mind. She never scrupled to avow that she pre- ferred the company of men to that of women, who ' talked,' she said, ' of nothing but silks and scandal.' The men returned the compliment by being very fond of her company. ' Forgive her one female error,' says Murphy, ' and it might fairly be said of her that she was adorned with every virtue ' — a truly modest plea, when it is considered that Peg was not more chaste, and certainly not less mercenary, than Horace's Barine, to whom, indeed, she was likened in some pointed but very heartless verses by one of her many lovers. Sir C. Hanbury Williams. ' By Jove !' she exclaimed, as she ran into the greenroom one night from the stage, when she had left the house cheering her exit as Sir Harry Wildair, ' they are in such delight, I believe one half of them fancy I am a man.' ' Madam,' 42 DAVID GARRICK rejoined Quin, ' the other half, then, has the best reason for knowing to the contrary.' But when Garrick first fell under her fascination these frailties had not been developed. She was then in the bloom of her beauty — and how charm- ing that was we can see from Hogarth's exquisite portrait (in the Marquis of Lansdowne's collection) — and though suitors of wealth and rank surrounded her, genius and youth had probably more charms for her than gold and fine hving. Garrick was deeply smitten by her, and he seems for a time to have thought her worthy of an honourable love. For one season he kept house together with her and Macklin, and they were \'isited by his friends, Johnson and Dr. Hoadley among the number. It was thought he would marry her, but Peg's aberrations — her ' one female error ' — grew too serious. She was in truth an incurable coquette. It was the old story of Lesbia and Catullus. Garrick's heart was touched, hers was not. It cost him a good many struggles to break his chains, but he broke them at last, and left her finally in 1745 to the rakes and fools who were outbidding each other for her favours. He was worthy of a better mate, and he was to find one before very long ; for in INIarch of the following year (1746) the lady came to England who was to replace his feverish passion for the wayward \\^offington by a devotion wliich gi-ew stronger and deeper with every yeju- of his life. EVA MARIA VEIGEL 48 This was the fair Eva Maria Veigel, which latter name she had changed for its French equivalent, Violette. She was then twenty-one, a dancer, and had come from Vienna with recommendations from the Empress Theresa, who was said to have found her too beautiful to be allowed to remain within reach of the Emperor Frederick I. Jupiter Carlyle, returning from his studies at Leyden, found himself in the same packet with her, crossing from Helvoet to Harwich. She was disguised in male attire, and this although travelling under the protection of a person who called himself her father and two other foreigners. Carlyle took the seeming youth for ' a Hanoverian Baron coming to Britain to pay his court at St. James's.' But the lady becoming alarmed by a storm during the passage, her voice, no less than her fears, at once betrayed her to Carlyle. This led to an avowal of her profession and of the object of her journey, and the young, hand- some Scotsman took care not to leave London without seeing his fair fellow-traveller on the opera stage, where he found her dancing to be * exquisite.'* Such was the general verdict. The dancing of * 'Autobiography of Carlyle,' pp. 183, 197. Twelve years afterwards Dr. Carlyle dined with the lady and her husband at their villa. ' She did not seem to recognise me,' he writes, * which was no wonder at the end of twelve years, having thrown away my bag-wig and sword, and appearing in my own grisly hairs and in parson's clothes.' 44 DAVID GARKICK those days was not a thing in which every womanly feeling, every refined grace, was violated. It aspired to delight by the poetry of motion, not to amaze by complexities of distortion or brilliant marvels of muscular force. Beautiful, modest, accomplished, the Violette not only charmed on the stage, but soon found her way into fashionable society. So early as June, 1746, Horace Walpole writes to his friend Montague : ' The fame of the Violette increases daily. The sister Countesses of Burlington and Talbot exert aU their stores of sullen partiality and competition for her.' The Countess of Burlington took her to hve with her, and was in the habit of attending her to the theatre, and waiting at the side-wings to throw a shawl over her as she left the stage. These attentions, due solely to the charm of the young lady and the enthusiasm of her patroness, were quite enough to set in motion the tongues of the Mrs. Candours and Sir Benjamin Backbites of society. The "\'^iolette, they began to whisper, was a daughter of Lord Burlington, by a Florentine of rank ; and when, upon her marriage wdth Garrick in 1749, she received a handsome marriage portion from the Countess, this was considered conclusive evidence of the scandal. It was not, however, from the Earl, but from the Countess, that the dowry came. It consisted of a sum of £5,000, secured on one of her ladyship's Lincolnshix-e estates ; Garrick on his part settling £10,000 on COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE 45 his bride, with £70 a year of pin-money.* It is quite possible that the security for £5,000 granted by the Countess was simply an equivalent for some such sum previously handed over to her by the young lady. But the parties kept their own counsel in their arrangements, and so left the busy- bodies at fault. ' The chapter of this history is a little obscure and uncertain as to the protecting Countess, and whether she gives her a fortune or not,' Horace Walpole wrote out to a friend in Florence a few days after the marriage, and specu- lation has since gone on mystifying what was probably in itself a very simple affair. Who was the father of the fair Violette was a secret to the last, even to Garrick's relations. ' Lord Burlington was not my father,' Mrs. Garrick said late in Ufe to one of them, 'but I was of noble birth' (Smith's ' Book for a Rainy Day,' p. 270). The Countess, it is said, looked higher for her young friend than the great player, as a Countess with so celebrated a beauty in hand was likely to do ; and it was not without difficulty that Garrick won what proved to be the great prize of his life. He had on one occasion to disguise himself as a woman in order to convey a letter to his mistress. But the * The evidence of this is before us in a copy of the marriage articles, to which the Countess is a party. They are dated June 20, 1747, two days before the marriage, and disprove all that is said on the subject by Garrick's biographers. 46 DAVID GARRICK fact of her receiving it bespeaks the foregone con- clusion that he had won her heart, and, that fact once ascertained, the Countess was probably too wise to oppose further resistance. How attractive in person the young dancer was her portraits sur- vive to tell us. What her lover thought of her appears from some Aerses which he wrote in the first happiness of what we cannot caU his honey- moon, for their whole married life was one honey- moon. ' 'Tis not, my friend, her speaking face, Her shape, her youth, her winning grace, Have reached my heart ; the fair one's mind, Quick as her eyes, yet soft and kind — A gaiety with innocence, A soft address, with manly sense ; Ravishing manners, void of art, A cheerful, firm, yet feeling heart, Beauty that charms all public gaze, And humble, amid pomp and praise.' That this charming picture owed little or nothing to the exaggeration of the lover is confirmed by the uniform testimony of aU who knew her. A\"ilks, no mean judge, called her ' the first,' and Churchill 'the most agreeable woman in England.' 'Her temper,' says Stockdale, ' was amiable and festive, her understanding discriminating and A'igorous, her humour and her wit were easy and brilliant. Sterne, writing from Paris in 1702. while fully appreciating the beauties who thronged the Tuileries Gardens, said : ' Had she been there THE ' BEST OF WOMEN AND WIVES ' 47 last night she would have annihilated a thousand French goddesses in one single turn.' Three years later he writes of her as ' the best and wisest of the daughters of Eve. She is his Minerva, whom he is prepared to maintain against the world as peerless. ' To David Hume,' as Madame Riccoboni tells us, ' elle rappelait au souvenir ces illustres dames Romaines dont on se forme une id^e si majestueuse.' Beaumarchais speaks of her ' sourires fins et pleins d'expression.' To her husband Gibbon writes : ' May I beg to be remembered to Mrs. Garriek ? By this time she has probably discovered the philosopher's stone. She has long possessed a more valuable secret — that of gaining the hearts of all who have the happiness of knowing her.' Horace Walpole drops his cynicism in speaking of her. ' I like her,' he says, ' exceedingly ; her behaviour is all sense and all sweetness too.' Of this ' best of women and wives,' as Garriek called her, he proved himself worthy by a lover-like wakefulness of aiFection which no familiarity ever dulled. During the twenty-eight years of their married hfe they were never one day apart. His friends were hers ; where he went she went, and by the grace of her presence made his doubly welcome. ' His wit, humour, and constant gaiety at home,' says his friend Dr. Burney, * and Mrs. Garrick's good sense, good breeding, and obliging desire to please, rendered their Hampton villa' — where he 48 DAVID GARRICK was a constant visitor — ' a terrestrial paradise.' The beaux esprits of Paris were only restrained from throwing themselves at her feet by the unusual spectacle of a lover husband — ' Vheureux mari,' as Madame Riccoboni calls him, ' dont les regards lui disent sans cesse, I love you !' Even Foote, brutal in his contempt of constancy and the home virtues, was touched by the beautiful oneness of their lives. In February, 1766, when he was recovering from a terrible accident which cost him one of his legs, and, face to face with pain and sorrow, could hsten to the dictates of his better nature, he wrote to Garrick : ' It has been my misfortune not to know Mrs. Garrick ; but from what I have seen, and all I have heard, you wiU have more to regret when either she or you die than any man in the kingdom.' Seven years later, and when he had enjoyed the privilege of knowing her better, the same reckless wit, who spared no friend, however kind, respected no nature, however noble, and from whom, as the event proved, a thousand MTongs were unable to alienate Garrick 's forgi^dng nature, MTote of the lady to her husband in these terms : ' She has the merit of making me constant and uniform in perhaps the only constant part of my life — my esteem and veneration for her.' Singularly enough, the finest portrait of this charming woman is associated with Foote. It was painted by Hogarth for Garrick, and is now one ot the Windsor Castle pictures. It presents Garrick HAPPY HOME-LIFE 49 in the act of composition, his eyes rapt in thought, and his wife steaUng behind him and about to snatch the pen from his upraised hand. He is in the act of writing, so says the catalogue of his sale, his prologue to Foote's farce of ' Taste.' This supplies the date, ' Taste ' having appeared in 1752, just two years after their marriage. The picture is the very poetry of portraiture. The character, as well as the lineaments, of both are there, and it needs no stretch of fancy to imagine Garrick on the point of illustrating the virtuoso's passion for the antique by the line — ' His Venus must be old, and want a nose,' when his reverie is broken by the saucy challenge of as pretty a mouth and sweet a pair of eyes as ever made a husband's heart happy. What Garrick owed to the happy circumstances of his marriage can scarcely be rated too highly. In his home he found all the solace which grace, refinement, keen intelligence, and entire sympathy could give. As artist, these were invaluable to him ; as manager, a man of his sensibilities must have broken down without them. In 1747, two years before his marriage, he had, along with Mr. Lacy, become patentee of Drury Lane Theatre, to which his performances had been confined, with the exception of a second visit to Dublin in 1745-1746, and a short engagement at Covent Garden in 1746- 1747. So well had he husbanded his means since 50 DAVID GARRICK his debut at the end of 1741, that he was able, with some help from friends, to find £8,000 of the £12,000 which were required for the enterprise. Lacy took charge of the business details, while all that related to the performances devolved upon Garrick. He got together the very best company that could be had, for, to use his own words, he ' thought it the interest of the best actors to be together,' knowing well that, apart from the great gain in general effect, this combination brings out all that is best in the actors themselves. On the stage, as elsewhere, power kindles by contact with power ; and to the great actor it is especially important to secure himself, as far as he can, against being dragged down by the imbecility of those who share the stage \\'ith him. Sham genius naturally goes upon the principle of ma f'cmme et cinq poupces ; real inspiration, on the contrary, delights in measuring its strength against kindred power. This was Garrick's feeling. At starting, therefore, he drew round him Mrs. Gibber, Mrs. Pritchard, Mrs. Chxe, Mrs. A\'oflington, among the women ; Barry, JNlacklin, Delane, Havard, Sparks, Shuter, among the men. Later on he secured Quin and AA'^oodward, and, whenever he could, he drew into his company whatever ability was in the market. He determined to bring back the pubUc taste, if possible, from pantomime and farce to performances of a more intellectual stamp. Johnson wrote his tine Prologue to announce the ENTHUSIASM AND HARD WORK 51 principles on which the theatre was to be conducted, and threw upon the public, and with justice, the responsibility, should these miscarry, by the well- known lines : ' The drama's laws the drama's patrons give, For those who live to please must please to live.' The public, as usual, fell back after a time upon its love for 'inexplicable dumb show and noise,' and Garrick had no choice but to indulge its taste. But in these early days the array of varied ability which his company presented, backed by his own genius, filled, as it well might, the theatre nightly.* Garrick purchased his success, however, by an amount of personal labour, for which only his own passionate enthusiasm for his art could have repaid him. To keep such forces in order was no common task ; to reconcile their jealousies, to conciliate their vanity, to get their best work out of them, demanded rare temper, rare firmness, and extraordinary tact. Even with all these, which Garrick certainly possessed in an eminent degree, his best efforts frequently provoked the spleen and shallow irrita- * We have before us an extract from the books of the theatre, from which it appears that the net profits of the two first years of Garrick's management were dC"! 6,000. The nightly receipts, which varied from dfi'lOO to ^£'150 when he did not play, invariably exceeded ^PSOO when he did. Besides his share of the profits, Garrick received ,i&500 a year for acting, dCSOO for managing, and J'200 for extras. 4—2 52 DAVID GARRICK bility of those about him. Nor was it only the airs of his tragic queens that upset his plans and put his chivalry to sore trial. Woffington and Clive — one the fine lady of comedy, the other the liveliest of Abigails — kept him in continual hot water. But his bonhomie was not to be shaken ; and when Clive had written him a more scolding letter than usual, he took it as a symptom of better health, and his salutation to her when they next met would be : ' I am very glad, madam, you are come to your usual spirits.' Even the fiery Kitty could not resist such invincible good-humour. Of course, malicious stories in abundance were propagated against him, many of them due, beyond aU question, to his very virtues as a manager. He worked from too high a point of view to be under- stood by many of the people who siurounded him. Excellence was his aim, and he allowed no one to trifle with the work he assigned them. Strict and elaborate rehearsals, under his own direction, were insisted on, much to the annoyance of some of the older actors, who had grown habitually careless as to the words of their pai-ts. His own presiding mind arranged the business of the scene, and ensured ensemble and completeness. He took in- finite pains to put his own ideas into the heads of performers who had no ideas of their own, so that liis actors often made great hits, which were mainly due to the soul he had contrived to infuse into them at rehearsal. TURNING LAMBS INTO LIONS 53 'Wonderful, sir,' Kitty Clive wrote to him (January 23, 1774), ' you have for these thirty years been contradicting the old proverb that you cannot make bricks without straw, by doing what is infinitely more difficult, making actors and actresses without genius.' Again, on January 23, 1776, when the stage was about to lose him, she writes from CUeveden (Clive's Den, as her friend Walpole calls it) with her usual delightful heartiness : ' I have seen you with your magical hammer in your hand endeavouring to beat your ideas into the heads of creatures who had none of their own. I have seen you, with lamb-like patience, endeavour- ing to make them comprehend you ; and when that could not be done, I have seen your lamb turned into a hon. By this, your great labour and pains, the public were entertained ; they thought they all acted very fine — they did not see you pull the wires. There are people now on the stage to whom you gave their consequence ; they think themselves very great : now let them go on in their new parts, without their leading-strings, and they will soon convince the world what their genius is. I have always said this to everybody, even when your horses and mine were in their highest prancing. While I was under your control, I did not say half the fine things I thought of you, because it looked like flattery ; and you know your Pivy* was always proud ; besides, I thought you did not like me then ; but now I am sure you do, which makes me send you this letter' ('Garrick Correspondence,' vol, ii., p. 128). * A friendly nickname, which appears to have been given to her by Garrick. 54 DAVID GARRICK It was only human nature, and not actors' nature especially, that Garrick should be pulled to pieces by the very members of his company to whom he had been most serviceable. Obsequiously servile to his face, behind his back they persecuted him with the shafts of slander. ' I have not always,' as he wrote in 1764, ' met with gratitude in a playhouse.' These were the people who whispered about that he was not the great actor the world supposed, but that he maintained his pre-eminence by stifling the gifts of other people, and letting nobody have a chance of popularity but himself. This was singularly untrue. All other considerations apart, Garrick was too good a man of business not to make the very best use he could of the abihties of his company. An opposite course meant empty houses and a faihng exchequer, besides double work to himself as an actor. As he \\Tote to Mrs. Pritchard's husband (July 11, 1747), in answer to some querulous suspicions that she was to be sacrificed to Mrs. Cibber : ' It is my interest (putting friendship out of the case) that your wife should maintain her character upon the stage ; if she does not, shall not the managers be great losers ? . . . I have a great stake, and must seciu-e my property and my friends to tlie best of my judgment.' But (iarrick was also governed by higher motives. He had a true artist's delight in excellence, and a kind-hearted man's sympathy with well-merited RELATIONS WITH OTHER ACTORS 55 success. His whole relations to his actors prove this. Nor has a word of blame on this score been left on record against him by any of his really great compeers, such as Mrs. Gibber, Mrs. Pritchard, Mrs. Woffington, Quin, Barry, Sheridan, King, Smith, or Weston. The charge rests upon the insinuations of the smaller fry of players, egotists like Mrs. Bellamy or Tate Wilkinson, who charged him with the meanness which was congenial to their own instincts. Horace Walpole, delighting as usual in detrac- tion, echoed their complaints of Garrick's ' envy and jealousy'; and Mrs. Siddons very unwisely encouraged the charge by insinuating that her comparative failure during her first engagement in London, in 1775-1776, was due to this cause. After she had become the rage of the town in 1782, three years after Garrick's death, her answer, when ques- tioned as to her relations with him, according to Walpole, was to the effect that ' he did nothing but put her out ; that he told her she moved her right hand, when it should have been her left. In short, I found I must not shade the tip of his nose.' This was an ingenious way of accounting for that being so indifferent in 1776 which the town was raving about in 1782. But what are the facts ? In that first engagement Mrs. Siddons, recently a mother, was weak and much out of health ; most certainly she gave no e\ddence of the remarkable powers which she afterwards developed. Yet she 56 DAVID GARRICK was so especially favoured by the manager that she got the name of Garrick's Venus. At that time he had in his theatre two actresses, Mrs. Yates and Miss Younge, both justly high in favour with the town ; yet he put Mrs. Siddons into several of their parts, and selected her to act with him repeatedly in his farewell performances — a distinction of infinite value to so young an actress. Garrick obviously liked and took pains with her, and his suggestions could not have been otherwise than beneficial to a performer whose Lady Anne, in ' Richard III.,' was pronounced by the London magazine of the day to be ' lamentable.' And no doubt she did profit by them, although she had not the generosity to own it. WeU might Garrick say, ' I have not always met with gratitude in a playhouse.' But, in truth, Garrick never had any real cause to be either envious or jealous of anyone. The success of his rivals Quin, Barry, Sheridan, JNIossop, never dimmed the splendour of his own for one hour. His only dangerous rival as to popularity at any time was Powell, and this popularity, as the event proved, was chiefly due to the fact that Garrick was out of England for the time. ' A sub- stitute shines brightly as a king until a king be by.' AA^orn out with the fatigues of his profession, Garrick had gone abroad in September, 1763, to make the grand tour. The previous summer he had come across Po\vell, then a merchant's clerk in the city, and had taken great pains to instruct him. POWELL 57 Such was his promise that Garrick engaged him to play the juvenile tragedy parts in his absence. Powell had a good voice and figure, and consider- able power of tragic expression, and he became a great favourite, filling Drury Lane, and enabling Lacy to write abroad to his brother manager, that they were doing so well he need be in no hurry to return. Garrick would have been more than mortal had such tidings been altogether welcome. No one likes to think he is not missed in the circle of which he has been the ' observed of all observers,' least of all an actor, ever too conscious of the fickle- ness of popular favour, and naturally loth to resign his hold upon the public. But we find no trace of either jealousy or chagrin on Garrick's part. On the contrary, he was annoyed at Powell for en- dangering his reputation by playing mere fustian : ' I am very angry with Powell,' he writes to Colman, ' for playing that detestable part of Alexander ; every genius must despise such fustian. If a man can act it well, I mean, to please the people, he has something in him that a good actor should not have. He might have served Pritchard and himself, too, in some good natural character. T hate your roarers. Damn the part. I fear it will hurt him.' To Powell himself he wrote from Paris (Decem- ber 12, 1764) in terms the generous warmth of which it is impossible to mistake, that the news of his great success had given him ' a very sensible pleasure.* The gratitude which Powell had expressed for ' what little service ' he had done him by his 58 DAVID GARRICK instructions last summer ' has attached me to you as a man who shall always have my best wishes for his welfare, and my best endeavours to promote it.' He warns him against playing too many parts, and the dangers of haste : ' Give to study, and an accurate consideration of your characters, those hours which young men too generally give to their friends and flatterers. . . . When the public has marked you for a favourite (and their favour must be purchased with sweat and labour), yoic may choose what company you please, and none but the best can be of service to you.' The admirable words with which he concludes this letter cannot be too often quoted : ' The famous Baron of France used to say that an actor " should be nursed in the lap of queens,'' by which he means that the best accomphshments were necessary to form a great actor. Study hard, my friend, for seven years, and you may play the rest of your life. . . . Never let your Shakespeare be out of your hands ; keep him about you as a charm ; the more you read him, the more you wUl like him, and the better you wiU act him. . . . Guard against splitting the ears of the groundlings - — do not sacrifice your taste and feelings to the applause of the multitude ; a true genius -aill con- vert an audience to his manner, ratlicr than be con- verted by them to ichat is false and jinnaturaV (' Garrick Correspondence,' vol. i., p. 177). Powell was not ' a true genius.' There is weak- ness in every line of his comely face, as we see it in TROUBLES WITH AUTHORS 59 the fine mezzotint by Dixon after Laurenson, and he did not profit by these golden precepts. He had sensibility, which ran over into the extreme of lachrymose weakness on the one hand and of furious rant on the other. Intellectual culture, which alone might have cured this defect, he made no effort to obtain, and growing too well satisfied with himself to serve in the ranks, he deserted to Covent Garden, to Garrick's great vexation, and died soon afterw'^ards at Bath (July 3, 1769) of a raging fever, at the age of thirty-two. Much as Garrick was worried by his actors, the fraternity of authors caused him even greater dis- gust. Every scribbler who had put together some- thing he chose to caU a play thought himself entitled to regard the refusal of his rubbish as a personal wrong, dictated by the meanest motives. Garrick's weak dread of the power of this class of persons to injure him by attacks in the press con- stantly led him to act in defiance of his sounder judgment. Men like Murphy avowedly traded on this weakness. ' That gentleman,' says Tate Wilkinson, with his wonted elegance, ' could tease his soul and gall his gizzard, whenever he judged himself wronged,' his means being, in Murphy's own words, ' a fierce campaign ' in the papers. Garrick was, moreover, too sensitive himself not to be tender to the sensitiveness of an author. Often, therefore, when his answer should have been a simple refusal, he would give a qualified denial. 60 DAVID GARRICK which was used to justify further importunity, or a complaint of injustice when the decided negative came, as it often did come at last. The insolence of tone assumed by these writers towards Garrick is indeed incredible. It constantly implied the question, What right had a mere player to sit in judgment upon their literary skill ? The gifted creature who had compiled five acts of dreary morality or fiery fustian was not to be amenable to the puppet to whom he offered the honour of mouthing it. If a refusal came, although accom- panied as it generally was by a letter of criticism, admirable for literary acumen and rich with the experience of years of practical study of the stage, it was set down to jealousy, or private dislike, or some other contemptible motive. Horace AValpole was only echoing the complaints of this class of persons when, in writing to his friend Montague about his own impossible play of ' The IVIysterious Mother,' he said (April 15, 1768) : ' Nor am I disposed to expose myself to the impertinences of that jackanapes Garrick,* ic/io left nothing appear but his own nretched stuff', or that of creatures still duller, tvho suffer him to alter their pieces as he pleases.' * Yet did Walpole, in 1775, present the great player with a beautifully-chased gold repeater, which we saw in the possession of the late well-known bookseller, jNlr. Toovey, of 177, Piccadilly, inscribed in a circle round Walpole's crest ' Horace \Valpole to his esteemed friend David Garrick 1775; HIS CHOICE OF PLAYS 61 By passages such as these much wrong has been done to Garrick's reputation for fairness. His assailants and detractors, it must be remembered, have always had the command of the press, and much of their abuse, by sheer dint of repetition, has stuck to his name. Garrick's real mistake was in putting on the stage and wasting his own and his actors' powers upon too many bad pieces. Did he refuse any that have lived ? Not one, except ' The Good-natured Man' of Goldsmith. He offered to play ' She Stoops to Conquer '; and, although these pieces are now classical, let it not be forgotten, so contrary were they to the prevailing taste, that on their first production they narrowly escaped being damned. ' " She Stoops to Conquer," a comedy !' says Walpole ; ' no, it is the lowest of farces !' One instance will suffice to show how unfairly Garrick was treated in matters of this sort. He refused Home's ' Tragedy of Douglas ' ' as totally unfit for the stage.' Home's Edinburgh friends were indignant, and went into absurd raptures about the piece, when it was soon afterwards pro- duced on their local boards. Even Sir Walter Scott, writing seventy years afterwards, cannot deal with the subject without insinuating that Garrick refused the piece because there was no part in it in which he could appear with advantage !* And Jupiter Carlyle, alluding to Garrick's subsequent * ' Miscellaneous Works,' vol. xix., p. 309. 62 DAVID GARRICK kindness to Home, chooses to find the explanation of it in the fact that ' he had observed what a hold Home had got of I^ord Bute, and, by his means, of the Prince of Wales.' But Carlyle suppresses what he must have knovtTi, that Home altered his play materially to cure the defects Garrick had pointed out, and that all Lord Bute's influence, if he had any, was brought to bear on Garrick before he rejected the play. It was through Lord Bute the play was sent to him, and the foUovdng portions of a letter from Garrick to his lordship, once in the writer's possession, establish conclusively that, whether right or wrong in his decision, Garrick came to it solely on the literary merits of the piece, and took unusual pains to point out its defects. Only a regard for Home would ha^'e induced him to do so. ' Jidy ye \Qih, 1756. ' My Lord, ' It is with the greatest uneasiness that I trouble your Lordship with my sentiments of jSIr. Hume's tragedy. The httle knowledge I had of him gave me the warmest inchnation to serve him, which I should have done most sincerely had the means been put into my hands ; but upon my word and credit it is not in my power to introduce Douglas upon the stage with the least advantage to the author and the managers. ***** * I am obliged, my Lord, to be free in the deUvery of my opinion upon this subject, as I think both Mr. Hume's and my reputation concern 'd in it: I should ha^'e had the highest pleasure in forwarding any performance which jr. Lordship should please HOME'S ' TRAGEDY OF DOUGLAS ' 63 to recommend ; but nobody knows so well as you do that all the endeavours of a patron and the skill of a manager will avail nothing, if the dramatic requisites and tragic force are wanting. ***** 'The story is radically defective and most im- probable in those circumstances which produce the dramatic action — for instance, Lady Barnet* con- tinuing seven years together in the melancholy, miserable state just as if it happen'd the week before, without discovering the real cause ; and on a sudden opening the whole affair to Anna without any stronger reason than what might have happen'd at any other time since the day of her misfortunes. This, I think, which is the foundation of the whole, weak and unaccountable. The two first acts pass in tedious narratives, without anything of moment being plan'd or done. The introducing Douglas is the chief circumstance ; and yet, as it is manag'd, it has no effect. It is romantic for want of those probable strokes of art which the first poets make use of to reconcile strange events to the minds of an audience. Lady Barnefs speaking to Glenalvon immediately in behalf of Randolph, forgetting her own indelible sorrows, and Glenalvon s suspicions and jealousy upon it (without saying anything of his violent love for the lady, who cannot be of a love-inspiring age), are premature and unnatural. But these and many other defects, which I wiU not trouble yr. Lordp. with, might be palliated and alter 'd perhaps ; but the unafFecting conduct of the whole, and which will always be the case when the story is rather told than represented ; when the characters do not talk or behave suitably to the passions imputed to them, and the situation in which they are placed ; when the events are such * Afterwards changed by Home to Lady Randolph. 64 DAVID GARRICK as cannot naturally be suppos'd to rise ; and the language is too often below the most familiar dialogue ; these are the insurmountable objections which, in my opinion, will ever make Douglas unfit for the stage. In short, there is no one character or passion which is strongly interesting and sup- ported through the five acts. Glenalvon is a villain without plan or force. He raises our expectations in a soliloquy at the first, but sinks ever after. Lord Barnet is unaccountably work'd upon by Glenalvon, and the youth is unaccountably attack'd by Lord Barnet, and loses his life for a suppos'd injury which he has done to him, whose life he just before preserv'd. And what is this injury ? NVhy, love for a lady who is old enough to be his mother, whom he has scarcely seen, and with whom it was impossible to indulge any passion, there not being time, from his entrance to his death, ev'n to conceive one. ' I have consider 'd the performance by myself ; and I have read it to a friend or two with aU the energy and spirit I was master of, but without the wish'd for effect. The scenes are long, without action. The characters want strength and pathos, and the catastrophe is brought about without the necessary and interesting preparations for so great an event. * * * * * ' I have undertaken this office of critic and manager with great reluctance. ... If I am so happy to agree with Lord Bute in opinion, it would be a less grievance to Mr. Hume to find my senti- ments of his play not contradicted by so well-known ii judge of theatrical compositions. ' I am, my Lord, yi-. Lordship's most humble and most obedt. servant, ' D. Garrick.' HOME'S 'DOUGLAS' 65 The verdict of our own day, at least, will be with Garrick ; for although the play had a great success in Scotland, partly from local feeling and more from the fact that the author was driven by the bigots out of the Church for having written it ; and although the grand voice and presence of Mrs. Siddons kept it for many years upon the stage, it has long since disappeared, beyond the powers of any actress to recall. In London it never had a great success, and even when first produced at Covent Garden, in March, 1757, with its northern fame fresh upon it, and supported by Barry and Mrs. Woffington, Tate Wilkinson tells us ' the play pleased, but no more.' Goldsmith, in the Monthly Review, practically confirmed Garrick's opinion. Gray and David Hume, the historian, had cried up the play as a ' masterpiece.' ' Mediocrity ' was the highest praise even the good-natured Goldsmith could allow. In general Garrick's tact in divining what would or would not go down with the public was unfailing. Dr. Brown, the author of ' Barbarossa ' and ' Athel- stane,' two successful plays, told Stockdale that, before they were acted, ' Mr. Garrick distinguished to him all the passages that would meet with pecuUar and warm approba- tion ; to the respective passages he even assigned their different degrees of applause. The success exactly corresponded with the predictions.' No wonder, therefore, if authors eagerly availed 5 6G DAVID GARRICK themselves of this invaluable faculty, which Garrick was always ready to place at their disposal. These were, however, in the complacent Walpole's estima- tion, ' creatures still duller than himself, who suffer him to alter their pieces as he pleases,' and the whole tribe of ' the unactable ' were ready to catch up and repeat the strain. Had GaiTick's alterations been confined to the works of the Browns, the Francklins, the Hills, and the like, it would have been better for his fame. But he took to altering Shakespeare with what we, who are better able to estimate the workmanship of the great dramatist, can only regard as sacrilegious audacity. M^e must not, however, forget that if he mutUated he also restored ; and, in making the alterations he did, he probably secured a warmer verdict for the whole piece, ifi the then state of the j)ublic taste, than if he had played Shakespeare pure and simple. ' The Winter's Tale,' for example, was cut down by him into three acts. But the play had for many years wholly vanished from the stage. To have played it as Shakespeare wrote it Garrick knew very well would never do. But it ^vas worth an effort to get people's attention recalled to its most important parts — to bring Ilermione, that purest and hohest and most wronged of Shakespeare's women, in living form before their eyes, and to elevate their taste by that most exquisite of pastorals in which the loves of Florizel and Perdita are set. That he acted on this principle is clear from the RESTORES SHAKESPEARE'S TEXT 67 concluding lines of his prologue to the altered piece : ' The five long acts from which our three are taken, Stretch'd out to sixteen years, lay by forsaken. Lest, then, this precious liquor run to waste, Tis now confined and bottled to your taste. 'Tis my chief wish, my joy, my only plan. To lose no drop of that immortal man !' No man in Garrick's position would now venture to write additions to Shakespeare. But are our own managers and actors less culpable when they elbow him out of his own pieces by omission or transposition of important scenes, by overdone scenic splendour, and by readings of his characters false to the spirit in which they were conceived ? There may be worse things on the stage, where Shakespeare is concerned, than a garbled text. To Garrick, at all events, it is mainly due that the genuine text was restored to the stage. He knew his Shakespeare, not from acting editions, like Quin, Barry, Pritchard, and others, but from the original folios and quartos. With true literary enthusiasm he made a fine collection of first editions of all the great early dramatists, which, under the provisions of his will, now forms one of the treasures of the British Museum. Thomas Warton and George Steevens used it largely, and it was Johnson's own fault that it was not equally available to him for his ' Shakespeare.' Garrick's sympathies with literature and literary 5—2 68 DAVID GARRICK men were very great. He formed a fine library, and not only formed but used it. He was well versed in the literature of Europe, especially of Italy and France. He wrote weU himself. His prologues and vers de societe are even now pleasant reading. He would turn off one of his prologues or epilogues in two hours. As a rule, an epigram — such as his famous one on Goldsmith — took him five minutes. There was no man of literary eminence in England with whom he was not on a friendly footing. ' It has been the business, and ever will be, of my life,' he wrote to Goldsmith (July 25, 1757), 'to hve on the best terms with men of genius.' When such men wanted money, his purse was always at their command, and in the handsomest way. Sterne, ChurchUl, Johnson, Goldsmith, Murphy, Foote, had many proofs of this helpful sympathy, not to speak of men of lesser note. And yet the two last were constantly denouncing his avarice and meanness. Happily, IMurphy's own letters survive to convict him of injustice. To quote one of many : ' I am coua inced,' he "WTote to Garrick (September 20, 1770), ' that you look upon the loan of two or three hundred pounds to a friend as a small favour ; and I am furtlier persuaded that I am welcome to be in your debt as long as I please. Having said this, and said it from conviction,' etc. This letter was apropos of a sum of £200, which Garrick had lent him idthotit ack?ioii'ledgnient of HIS GENEROSITY 69 any kind. And yet this was the man who, from Garrick's death down to his own, went about saying, ' Off the stage, sir, he was a httle, sneaking rascal ; but on the stage, oh, my great God !' It is pitiful to think a good man's name should be at the mercy of such a creature.* Foote's sarcasms on Garrick's parsimony are preserved by the anecdote - mongers. ' Stingy hound !' if we are to believe Tate Wilkinson, was Foote's favourite epithet for him. But Foote was constantly appealing to Garrick for money in con- siderable sums, and people do not go to 'mean' men for that. What is more, there is no instance of its having ever been refused ; although no man had better reason to turn his back upon another. ' You must know — to my credit be it spoken — that Foote hates me,' he writes to Mrs. Montague, under * Equally characteristic is the following letter from Murphy to Garrick (March 6, 1777) : ' I began in friendship with you, and I am happy to feel that I end my career in the same sentiments. Jealousies have intervened, but I hope they are vanished from both our minds. From mine they certainly are, and it is with the greatest cordiality I thank you for your extreme politeness upon the last occasion that I shall present myself to the theatrical world. — Believe me to be, dear Sir, your admirer, friend, and most obliged humble servant, Arthur Murphy.' Garrick wrote the prologue to 'The Apprentice,' one of Murphy's earliest pieces, and the epilogue to 'Know Your Own Mind,' his last and one of his best. No man had more reasons for subscribing himself Garrick's * most obliged servant.' 70 DAVID GARRICK the provocation of a charge of meanness made at the table of a common friend. Yet, when Foote most needed help, all his manifold oiFences were forgotten, and Garrick stood by him with the most loyal devotion. ' There was not a step,' says Mr. Forster, ' in the preparation of his defence ' against the infamous charge trumped up against him by the Duchess of Kingston, ' which was not solicitously watched by Garrick.' And to Garrick himself Foote wrote about this time : 'My dear kind friend, ten thousand thanks for your note ! . . . May nothing but halcyon days and nights crown the rest of your life ! is the sincere prayer of S. Foote.' The iteration of this charge of meanness as to money, in the face of tlie clearest evidence to the contrary, has influenced even INIr. Forster into lending his countenance to^ it. In a note to his essay on Churchill he prints extracts fi-om two letters by Garrick to his brother George, written from Paris, immediately after hearing of the poet's death, telling him to put in a claim for money lent to Churchill. ' Mr. Wilkes,' he writes, ' tells me there is jiionei/ enough for all his debts, and ynoney besides for his nv'/'c, 3liss Cuit, tvho?n he lived ttvY//,' etc. ' You'll do what is proper ; but put in your claim.' ' I think,' he says, in a subsequent letter, ' and am almost sure, that Churchill ga\e me his bond. / (tsked him for ?iothi>i