*f 
 
 t'l **
 
 OCCASIONAL PAPERS 
 
 DRAMATIC AND HISTORICAL
 
 OCCASIONAL PAPERS 
 
 DRAMATIC AND HISTORICAL 
 
 BV 
 
 H. B. IRVING, M.A. OXON. 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 " LIFE OF JUDGE JEFFREYS," AND 
 " STUDIES OF FRENCH CRIMINALS " 
 
 LONDON 
 BICKERS AND SON 
 
 1906 
 
 [All rights rtstrvtd]
 
 The Publishers desire to express their 
 thanks to Sir James Knowles, W. 
 L. Courtney, Esq., and Messrs. Smith 
 Elder & Co. for permission to reprint 
 such of these essays as have appeared 
 in The Nineteenth Century, Fortnightly 
 Review, and Cornhill Magazine,
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE ENGLISH STAGE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CEN- 
 TURY 1 
 
 THE ART AND STATUS OF THE ACTOR ... 65 
 
 COLLEY GIBBER'S APOLOGY " 91 
 
 THE CALLING OF THE ACTOR 123 
 
 THE TRUE STORY OF EUGENE ARAM . . .139 
 THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF GOODERE . . .161 
 
 THE FUALDES CASE 185 
 
 THE EARLY LIFE OF CHIEF JUSTICE SCROGGS 227
 
 The English Stage in the 
 Eighteenth Century
 
 I HAVE selected as the subject of the two lectures which 
 I am to have the honour of delivering to you the history 
 of our English stage in the eighteenth century. The 
 history of our theatre has been as glorious as it has been 
 brief. For the three centuries of its existence as a part of 
 our national life, our stage can point, with justifiable pride, 
 to a record, splendid in is achievement, in some respects 
 unsurpassed, a history that may well rank in quality and 
 distinction with those of literature and art, and compare 
 worthily with the annals of any of the European theatres. 
 I think, roughly speaking, we may say that of those three 
 centuries the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth the 
 first was the century of great drama, the greatest drama 
 the world has ever known ; the second a century in which the 
 interest shifts from the drama to its exponents, the players ; 
 the third a century which at any rate we may venture to say, 
 even though we are yet so close to it, will be noteworthy 
 for the extraordinary advance made in the presentation of 
 plays on the stage, the realisation of the utmost that the 
 theatre can do in the way of giving to the work of the 
 dramatist a worthy setting ; a century in which painting, 
 music, history, and archaeology have all been pressed into 
 the service of the theatre, in a degree never thought or 
 
 1 Two lectures delivered at the Royal Institution in February, 1906. 
 Reprinted from The. Fortnightly Review. 
 
 3
 
 THE ENGLISH STAGE 
 
 dreamed of by our forefathers. Of these periods of theatrical 
 history, general reasons point to the eighteenth century as 
 the one which will at present best repay study and con- 
 sideration. For the actual history of the theatre in the 
 seventeenth century, for the lives of the dramatists and 
 actors of those days, our materials are very scanty ; to one 
 seeking to gain a real knowledge of the great men of the 
 Elizabethan and Restoration theatres, investigation can 
 only yield very inadequate and therefore disappointing 
 results. The nineteenth is too near to us to make it in the 
 present instance either profitable or expedient to deal with 
 its achievement. But the eighteenth century is not open 
 to these objections ; in this case the materials are sufficient ; 
 our stage becomes for the first time in some measure living, 
 we can form some idea of the personalities of those who 
 make its history, and we are so far removed in point of 
 time as to be able to view their proceedings with 
 impartiality. And there is one supreme reason why an 
 actor is drawn irresistibly to study, if he does study, the 
 history of the theatre in this eighteenth century. It is, in 
 theatrical history, the century of the actor ; he and not the 
 dramatist is the dominating figure, his the achievement 
 that survives, his art that finds in this century its highest 
 opportunity for distinction. It is the player, not the 
 author, that fixes the attention of posterity in the history 
 of the Georgian theatre. For all those plays that attracted 
 audiences in the eighteenth century are for the most part 
 dead things. We can name on the fingers of one hand 
 those plays that have survived and still hold their place on 
 the stage. Home and Rowe, Murphy and Colman, Hill 
 and D'Urfey, more or less popular authors of the day, they 
 and their works have passed into oblivion ; to read them 
 with patience is beyond human power ; while as for 
 Addison and Steele, Fielding and Dr. Johnson, Gibber and 
 Smollett, their dramatic efforts, successful or unsuccessful, 
 would be buried in as dark oblivion, but for the undying 
 
 4
 
 IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 fame of their authors in other branches of literature. 
 Congreve, Farquhar, and Vanbrugh live to-day as literature 
 and nothing else, while such once-popular plays as Home's 
 Douglas, The Gamester, The Honeymoon, Holcroft's Road 
 to Ruin, and Lille's George Bamwett, that survived at any 
 rate their own immediate popularity, have to-day all but 
 passed out of recollection ; indeed, Goldsmith and Sheridan 
 alone, of all these eighteenth-century dramatists, have given 
 to posterity imperishable works of genius. The tragic 
 writing of the eighteenth century is devoid of inspiration ; 
 it is the true product of that Augustan age of English 
 literature, the age of noble prose, or regular, uniform, 
 correct, but unimpassioned poetry. Tragedy, bound hand 
 and foot by the trammels of poetical orthodoxy, is lifeless 
 and ponderous to the last degree ; Dr. Johnson's Irene is 
 the reductio ad absurdum of such attempts. The comedies 
 are not so insufferable as the tragedies, but they are for 
 the most part purely ephemeral productions, mechanical 
 in construction, laboured in utterance. Gibber and Colman 
 do little more than mark time between the brilliant impro- 
 priety of the age of Wycherley and Congreve and their more 
 decorous and skilful successors, Goldsmith and Sheridan. 
 
 If, however, posterity can find nothing to kindle its 
 interest in the contemporary plays of the eighteenth 
 century, it is not so with the players. For the first time 
 in our history we begin to know something of our actors, 
 and very interesting and entertaining people they turn out 
 to be ; interesting because of the conditions under which 
 they work, entertaining because of their agreeable or 
 disagreeable personalities. Never as an artist has the 
 actor in this country enjoyed such opportunities for dis- 
 tinction, or occupied so prominent a place in the art of the 
 theatre. Many causes contributed to this state of things. 
 Foremost of all, perhaps, was the absence of long runs 
 the bane, from the actor's point of view, of our modern 
 stage ; the constant change of bill enabled the successful 
 
 5
 
 THE ENGLISH STAGE 
 
 actor in the eighteenth century to cultivate and exhibit his 
 versatility ; whilst the fact that he never played a long or 
 exacting part more than three or four times a week enabled 
 him to husband his strength, maintain his freshness, and 
 escape that monotony of work which it is difficult for an 
 actor not to experience in the conditions of our present-day 
 theatre, when business considerations compel the theatrical 
 manager to give seven or eight performances a week of a 
 successful play. Mrs. Woffington, one of the most indus- 
 trious of eighteenth-century actresses, was considered to 
 have greatly impaired her health and hastened her 
 premature death by frequently playing six times a week. 
 What would her contemporaries have said to the labour of 
 some of our modern actors, who, up to the very end of their 
 career, have played arduous and exacting characters unin- 
 terruptedly season after season ? Garrick, throughout his 
 career, never played more than 138 nights in one year, and 
 that the year of his debut ; during his management of 
 Drury Lane he played on an average about 70 times 
 a year. The run of Addison's Cato in 1713, which lasted 
 twenty nights, of the Beggar's Opera in 1728, lasting 
 sixty-two, were considered phenomenal in their length ; 
 and when in 1750 Garrick and Barry, as rival Roineos, 
 played Shakepeare's tragedy at the two theatres, Drury 
 Lane and Covent Garden, for eight successive perform- 
 ances, the indignation of the public found vent in epigram. 
 This very rivalry of Garrick and Barry in Romeo and Juliet, 
 and the excitement it created, is a very striking instance of 
 the keen emulation of the actors of that day in following 
 one another in classical parts, and of the critical enthusiasm 
 that was stirred in the public, whenever a new Othello, or 
 Hamlet, or Falstaff challenged comparison with illustrious 
 predecessors. And the opportunity given to these 
 eighteenth-century actors of exhibiting their skill was 
 rendered glorious by the proudest feature in the history 
 of the Georgian theatre the return of Shakespeare to the 
 
 6
 
 IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 stage. If the contemporary drama offered them but poor 
 material for the exercise of their art, they found in the 
 revival of the great poet's fame all they could desire. 
 Coincidently with the appearance of David Garrick in 
 1741, by the labours of Pope, Theobald, Warburton, 
 Johnson, and others, Shakespeare had begun to take his 
 supreme place in English literature ; withih the previous 
 forty years nine editions of his works had been published, 
 and some ladies of rank had formed a club to encourage 
 and support the performance of his plays. This change 
 found its immediate reflection in the theatre. Whereas 
 during the early part of the century but eight or nine 
 sorely mutilated plays of Shakespeare had held the stage, 
 Garrick, when he went into the management, gave the 
 public seventeen or eighteen of them annually. Apart 
 from his own admiration of Shakespeare, which did not 
 hinder him from perpetrating some outrageous improve- 
 ments in his acting versions of the master's plays, Garrick 
 found that he best consulted his own interests as a manager 
 in giving his patrons frequent Shakespearean performances. 
 There was another and a very strong reason why the actor 
 of the eighteenth century was encouraged, nay, driven, to 
 exert his powers to the utmost ; it lay in the conditions 
 under which he was compelled to exercise his art. In the 
 first place, he was deprived of most of those accessories of 
 scenery and costume which to-day have become part of our 
 theatre. It was not until the end of the eighteenth 
 century that any real attempt was made by the actor to 
 dress his characters in the costumes proper to the period 
 of the play in which they figured. When in 1773 Macklin, 
 to the incidental accompaniment of the Coldstream March, 
 appeared as Macbeth, dressed in a kilt, he incurred all 
 the ridicule and opprobrium of a daring innovator. The 
 ordinary costume and wig of the day, richer or poorer in 
 style according to the station of the character represented, 
 was the only theatrical dress of the eighteenth-century 
 
 7
 
 THE ENGLISH STAGE 
 
 actors. If we look at the pictures in the Garrick Club 
 of Garrick and Mrs. Pritchard in Macbeth, of Garrick and 
 Mrs. Gibber in Venice Preserved, or Barry and Mrs. Barry 
 in Hamlet, we can get some idea of the illusion that the 
 actor was called on to create, and could only create, by the 
 magic of his art. Barry, as Hamlet, is dressed in a black 
 court suit, with the ribbon of the Danish Order of the 
 " Elephant " across his breast. Garrick as Macbeth wears 
 a blue and red suit, richly trimmed with gold, and short 
 powdered wig ; while the ladies, whether as Queen Gertrude 
 or Lady Macbeth, are gorgeous in hoops and feathers. 
 Occasionally some attempt would be made to dress 
 Turkish or classical tragedies with some approach to 
 realism ; but such attempts were usually rather less 
 convincing than powdered wigs and court suits. 
 
 It was not only on the stage that the actor of this day 
 had to contend against formidable difficulties. He had all 
 his work cut out to fix and hold the attention of his 
 audience. Until 1762 he played on a stage surrounded by 
 fops and fine gentlemen, " unlick'd cubs of condition," as 
 Gibber terms them. These persons, lolling in the wings, 
 frequently interrupted the actors, and occasionally fought 
 with them. In 1721 a noble but drunken earl, standing 
 in the wings during a performance of Macbeth, crossed 
 the stage to talk to a friend. Rich, the manager, 
 expostulated with the nobleman for his breach of decorum, 
 and he promptly slapped the manager's face. Thereupon 
 Quin and two of the other actors drew their swords and 
 drove the earl and his friends from the stage. But the 
 gentlemen, not to be defeated, rushed into the boxes and, 
 cutting and slashing right and left, proceeded to destroy 
 the furniture ; they were only stopped from doing further 
 damage by the resolute action of Quin, who, calling the 
 watch to his assistance, arrested the rioters and haled them 
 before the magistrates. A less disastrous instance of these 
 curious interruptions was that of a gentleman who was so 
 
 8
 
 IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 stirred by the beauty of Mrs. Woffington's performance of 
 Cordelia in King Lear that he could not refrain from 
 coming on to the stage and embracing her in the sight of 
 the audience. Gibber, during his management, did some- 
 thing to mitigate the intrusion of these lollers in the 
 wings ; but it was left to Garrick to abolish them. 
 
 In these days the pit was looked on as containing the 
 critical part of the audience. It occupied the whole of 
 the floor of the theatre, right up to the orchestra. With 
 the exception of the boxes where the ladies and people of 
 quality sat, which cost four shillings, the pit seats at half 
 a crown were the most expensive in the theatre. Macklin, 
 in his old age, has left us a description of these pittites 
 which gives some notion of the awe in which they were 
 held by the actors. " You then saw," he said, speaking of 
 his own day, " no red cloaks, and heard no pattens in the 
 pit, but you saw merchants from the city with big-wigs, 
 lawyers from the Temple with big-wigs, and physicians 
 from the coffee-houses with big-wigs, and the whole 
 exhibited such a formidable grizzle as might well shake the 
 nerves of actors and authors." Here, in the pit, Dr. 
 Johnson would, on occasion, sit in judgment ; it was leaning 
 forward in the front row of the pit that the players would 
 descry, with apprehension, the burly form of the poet 
 Churchill, whose satire in The Rosciad had stung not a few 
 of them to the quick. 
 
 And these gentlemen of the pit gave their criticisms very 
 freely, and often conveyed them very audibly to the 
 persons on the stage. When four theatres at most served 
 the needs of the town and the number of playgoers was 
 very limited, there grew up quite a happy, if at times 
 inconvenient, family feeling between actor and audience. 
 In the prologue that was always spoken before any new 
 play, or on any unique occasion, the actor speaking it 
 would frequently take the audience into his confidence, ask 
 their indulgence for his wife, who was that night making 
 
 9
 
 THE ENGLISH STAGE 
 
 her first appearance in a new part, or apologise for the 
 absence of some artist who had quarrelled with the 
 management. It was this same intimacy of the player 
 with his public that betrayed Garrick into the bad taste of 
 selecting Benedick as the part in which to make his first 
 appearance at Drury Lane after his honeymoon. But it is 
 only fair to say that the audience thoroughly enjoyed the 
 suggestiveness of the situation. 
 
 jf an actor, however popular, was considered by the 
 critics of the pit to be ill-suited to some particular part 
 for which he had been cast, or had cast himself, they very 
 soon hissed him out of it. Gibber, a fine comedian, who, 
 however, fancied himself in tragedy, to which his piping 
 voice and insignificant appearance were quite unsuited, 
 elected on one occasion to appear in the dignified character 
 of Scipio in Thomson's Sophonisba. After being roundly 
 hissed for two nights, he wisely desisted, and surrendered 
 the part to another actor, Williams. When, the following 
 night, the audience saw in the distance Scipio advancing 
 to the front of the stage with stately strides, thinking it 
 was still Gibber they immediately broke into violent hisses 
 and cat-calls, and it was only when they recognised 
 Williams that they changed their hisses to loud applause. 
 
 If players fell out and they did sometimes their 
 quarrels became at once the talk of the town, and the pit 
 was quick to take sides. In 1743 the actors at Drury 
 Lane, headed by Garrick and Macklin, revolted against 
 the reckless and discreditable administration of the 
 manager, Fleetwood, whose dissipation and incompetence 
 were bringing the theatre to ruin. Failing, however, to 
 obtain from the Lord Chamberlain then the Duke of 
 Grafton a licence to appear elsewhere, the players were 
 obliged to return to Fleetwood, who agreed to receive 
 them all back, with the exception of Macklin. Garrick, on 
 behalf of his colleagues, accepted the manager's terms, and 
 Macklin was left out in the cold. The friends of the 
 
 10
 
 IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 latter chose to consider that he had been betrayed by 
 Garrick, though an examination into the circumstances of 
 the negotiations hardly bears out such a charge. In any 
 case, on Gar-rick's first re-appearance at Drury Lane, the 
 Macklinites, headed by a certain Dr. Barrowby, "a monster 
 of lewdness and prophaneness," according to some authori- 
 ties, but a keen playgoer and critic, assembled in great 
 force to express their indignation at their hero's treatment. 
 On Garrick's appearance they greeted him with loud cries 
 of " Off' ! Off ! " and pelted him so vigorously with peas, 
 rotten eggs, and apples that he was compelled to leave the 
 stage. This treatment continued for two nights, until 
 Fleetwood put a party of prize-fighters into the pit, who 
 so pounded and pummelled the uproarious Macklinites 
 that they fled in confusion, and order was restored. 
 
 Even the private characters or personal peculiarities of 
 the actors and actresses were not sacred to the witlings of 
 the pit. If an actress of notoriously immodest reputation 
 uttered modest sentiments on the stage she was liable to 
 be greeted with sarcastic jeers ; if another with a plain 
 face undertook a character whose personal beauty was 
 emphasised throughout the play, she would be fortunate 
 to escape without flouts from the gentlemen of the pit. 
 At the same time, these critics were prodigal of applause 
 when moved or delighted by a great actor. Aaron Hill, 
 in endeavouring to persuade Garrick to appear as Caesar in 
 his adaptation of Voltaire's Death of Cccsar, told him that 
 Booth, in the rather similar character of Cato in Addison's 
 tragedy, raised forty-eight to fifty thundering claps for 
 delivering various noble sentiments to the audience ; and 
 that when Quin played the same part the claps dwindled to 
 half a dozen. Davies says that Hill's statements are 
 excessive, and they make one a little doubtful of a style of 
 acting the excellence of which was measured by interrup- 
 tions of this kind. At the same time they prove the 
 eagerness and attention with which the delivery of the 
 
 11
 
 THE ENGLISH STAGE 
 
 lines of some well-known or classical part by succeeding 
 actors was followed by the critical portion of the audience. 
 On the night of November 14th, 1746, the excitement 
 of all good playgoers was stirred in an unwonted degree, 
 and criticism prepared itself for a great effort in judgment 
 and discrimination. The occasion was the appearance of 
 Garrick and Quin at Drury Lane in Howe's tragedy, The 
 Fair Penitent. It was the first time that the two famous 
 actors had played together in the same piece. Garrick 
 was then in the early years of his extraordinary success. 
 He had come as something of a revelation to those 
 accustomed to the solemn methods of ponderous and 
 declamatory tragedians. Quin was the great representative 
 of this older school. " If this young fellow is right, we 
 have all been wrong," he had said of Garrick's Richard 
 III. ; he, the portentous Cato and Brutus, stood in surly 
 opposition to the lively Hamlet and Richard of the younger 
 man, that were drawing all the town. 
 
 Quin, from afar, lured by the scent of fame, 
 A stage Leviathan, put in his claim," 
 
 writes Churchill in The Rescind, in enumerating the rivals 
 of Garrick. He pays Quin the compliment of saying : 
 
 No actor ever greater heights could reach 
 In all the labour'd artifice of speech. 
 
 But he qualifies his praise : 
 
 His eyes in gloomy socket taught to roll, 
 Proclaim'd the sullen habit of his soul, 
 Heavy and phlegmatic he trod the stage, 
 Too proud for tenderness, too dull for rage. 
 
 And as Hector making love to Andromache, or Horatio 
 rebuking the gay Lothario, Churchill declares that Quin 
 was still Quin and nothing else. 
 
 With the same cast of features he is seen 
 To chide the libertine and court the queen. 
 
 12
 
 IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 And now as Horatio and Lothario in The Fair Penitent 
 Quin and Garrick were to try conclusions. Such an 
 occasion as this gives us some conception of the position 
 which the actor held as an artist in the theatre of the 
 eighteenth century ; the noble emulation that fired his 
 efforts ; the closeness, the keenness of the criticism that, 
 undistracted by extraneous and adventitious aids, was 
 focussed on every detail of the player's performance. Acting 
 to-day has, to all intents and purposes, ceased to be closely 
 criticised, nor will it be closely criticised again until the 
 conditions of the eighteenth-century theatre can be in 
 some form or other reproduced. When, on this particular 
 occasion, Garrick and Quin met for the first time on the 
 stage, the applause of the audience was so prolonged that 
 the two rivals were unnerved. Quin is said to have 
 changed colour ; Garrick was ill at ease and embarrassed. 
 Quin, as Horatio, played the part of an honest and coura- 
 geous friend ; Garrick, as Lothario, that of a dissolute and 
 heartless libertine. Victory rested with Garrick. To him 
 it was no effort to be easy, graceful, and insolent ; but Quin 
 laboured heavily and ineffectually through the part of 
 Horatio ; every word was gravely and ponderously empha- 
 sised. When Lothario challenges him to meet him in 
 deadly combat, 
 
 West of the town, a mile among the rocks, 
 Two hours ere noon, to-morrow I expect thee, 
 Thy single hand in mine, 
 
 Quin, as Horatio, had merely to reply with calm courage : 
 I'll meet thee there. 
 
 But that was not Quin's way. After Garrick had spoken 
 his challenge, a tremendous pause ensued so long that at 
 last one in the gallery called out to Quin : " Why don't 
 you tell the gentleman whether you'll meet him or not ? " 
 When at length the long-delayed answer was given, it was 
 
 13
 
 THE ENGLISH STAGE 
 
 delivered with such slowness and elaboration as to be 
 ridiculous. Garrick came off* victorious in The, Fair 
 Penitent. And he was equally victorious in Jane Shore ; 
 his Hastings was declared to be a fine performance, whilst 
 Quin, as the Duke of Gloucester, made such impression as 
 might be expected in a character which he himself always 
 spoke of as one of his " whisker " parts. But in the first 
 part of Henry IV. success lay undoubtedly with Quin. It 
 was in the character of Falstaff, and not in tragedy, that 
 Quin had established his position as a first-rate actor, 
 whilst Garrick found himself physically unable to cope 
 with the rough, soldierly passion of Hotspur ; his fine and 
 flexible voice, unable to sustain the loud vehemence of the 
 character, gave out after five nights, and he had to retire 
 from the cast. Critics considered also that he had not 
 dressed the part with propriety ; a laced frock and a 
 Rarnillies wig were held to be too insignificant for the 
 dignity of the character. 
 
 That the audiences of the eighteenth century should have 
 been freer in their criticisms and in their method of express- 
 ing them than our modern audiences is in no way surprising 
 if we recollect that there was in the eighteenth century no 
 written dramatic criticism in the sense that we understand 
 it now. The newspapers of the day did not follow or 
 criticise theatrical performances with any regularity ; this 
 form of criticism was not instituted until early in the nine- 
 teenth century, when Leigh Hunt became the dramatic 
 critic of a paper called The News. Occasional pamphlets 
 would deal with actors' performances, but as they were 
 generally written to attack one actor at the expense of 
 another, or were the spiteful retort of some disappointed 
 dramatist, they could be. of little value as criticisms. 
 Indeed, a successful actor like Garrick had far more to 
 dread from blackmailing libels on his private character 
 than from strictures on his acting. It was an age when 
 scurrilous personalities were the accustomed weapons of 
 
 14
 
 IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 literary and artistic quarrels ; and Gibber and Garrick 
 came in for their full share of such things. But of reviews 
 and sane criticism there was little enough. What we learn 
 of the art of the actors of the eighteenth century we learn 
 from books such as Gibber's Apology, GhurchilFs Rosciad. 
 Davies's Life of Garriclc, and his Dramatic Miscellanies, 
 and the various letters and memoirs of the time. Occasion- 
 ally an enthusiastic playgoer would publish an elaborate 
 treatise on the art of the " Actor," as that in which the 
 author propounds and answers such interesting questions as 
 whether an actor can have too much fire ; whether, if he 
 be a comedian, he must possess what the author terms the 
 " interior qualification " of a gay and happy disposition ; 
 or whether he who plays the hero of tragedy should have 
 the " interior qualification " of an elevated soul ; whether 
 players who are naturally amorous are the only ones who 
 should impersonate lovers on the stage ; and the most 
 important and delicate question, whether there should be 
 a real or apparent conformity between the age of the actor 
 and that of the character he is representing. This exhaus- 
 tive treatise, entitled The Actor, WAS published anonymously, 
 but it has been attributed to Aaron Hill, one of the most 
 ardent devotees of theatrical art in the eighteenth century, 
 a warm-hearted and benevolent gentleman, who lost a 
 fortune in various schemes that were to benefit his fellow- 
 men. The theatre was his ruling passion. His love of 
 classical tragedy led him not only to christen his children 
 Julius Caesar, Calliope, Urania, and Minerva, but to trans- 
 late Voltaire's Merope and Mori de Cesar; his keen interest 
 in acting prompted him to bestow advice and instruction so 
 liberally on the players that they came to regard him as 
 something of a nuisance. If he be the author of The Actor 
 their impatience is not to be wondered at, for he is mighty 
 severe in his strictures on some of the players and tiresome 
 in his praises of others. He does not hesitate to attribute 
 the shortcomings of Mrs. Bellamy on the stage to the hurry 
 
 15
 
 THE ENGLISH STAGE 
 
 of her passions and the multitude of her lovers at home ; 
 whilst the improvement he has discerned in Mrs. Woffing- 
 ton's acting is, in his opinion, to be set down to the fact 
 that, for the last two years, her domestic arrangements have 
 been in a more tranquil state. She, too, is sharply rebuked 
 for taking too much pains about her face and too little 
 about her mind ; the author prophesies that, if she is not 
 more careful, when " her face (as in time it will be) is not 
 worth a farthing, her mind will not be worth a fiftieth part 
 of one." 
 
 Some of his reflections are pertinent enough, as when he 
 speaks of the many who thoughtlessly adopt the calling 
 of the actor, when they can have no more hope of succeed- 
 ing in it " than a fat fellow wheezing with asthma could 
 hope to win the prize in a foot-race," or of that " set of 
 wretches, the perfunctory players, who deliver their parts 
 as if they were easing themselves of a burden which they 
 were hired for carrying, and in pain till they were rid of." 
 " Let a man not think," he writes, " that all an actor needs 
 is to have a memory and the power of speaking, walking, 
 and tossing his arms about." His concluding sentiments 
 are applicable to other centuries as well as his own. He 
 protests against the tendency of the critics of his own day 
 to discourage young players who attempt great characters ; 
 aspiring genius which has " some merit and the necessary 
 requisites from nature " should, he thinks, be stimulated, 
 not depressed ; he deprecates the common folly of admiring 
 the actors of the past much more than they were admired 
 when they were alive, in order to dash the spirits of their 
 successors, five or six of whom he declares to be equal to 
 any of those old actors so greatly commended. 
 
 This treatise is instructive, because it illustrates the close 
 attention with which the work of actors was scrutinised by 
 a critical playgoer. But it will not bear comparison with 
 the two classics of theatrical literature in the eighteenth 
 century, Colley Gibber's Apology for His Life and 
 
 16
 
 IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 Churchill's poem of The Rosdad. These two works, 
 though comparatively little known to modern readers, 
 are both of them remarkable, the former as a lively 
 autobiography that delighted such opposite critics as Swift 
 and Horace Walpole, the latter as one of the happiest 
 prod actions of that genius for satire which is the dis- 
 tinguishing characteristic of the poetic literature of the 
 century. 
 
 Colley Gibber, actor, manager, poet, and dramatist, holds 
 an unique position among the players of his time. His 
 versatility is in itself remarkable. As an actor, if he failed 
 in tragedy, in comedy he was the creator of characters now 
 forgotten, but in his own time celebrated and admired ; he 
 was the original Lord Foppington and Sir Novelty Fashion. 
 These two characters belonged to plays of his own making, 
 for Gibber was also a prolific dramatist. He turned out 
 a number of comedies, very popular and successful in their 
 day, some tragedies that were less popular, a few masques 
 and interludes, and adapted for the stage two of Shake- 
 speare's plays, one an outrageous mutilation of King John 
 with the cumbrous title of Papal Tyranny in the Reign of 
 King John, the other a version of Richard III. which, until 
 about thirty years ago, held the stage in preference to the 
 original. As a poet, Gibber attained to the office of 
 Laureate, and that is all that need be said. It is as 
 a theatrical manager that, with all his faults, he extorts 
 our admiration and respect. His management of Drury 
 Lane Theatre, extending over more than twenty years, from 
 1711 to 1733, is a memorable epoch in theatrical history. 
 At the opening of the eighteenth century the state of the 
 theatre was anything but palmy. The stage was still 
 staggering under Jeremy Collier's vehement and well-merited 
 denunciation of its impropriety; the older generation of 
 actors, with the exception of Betterton, had passed away, 
 and had as yet left no successors. The actors were divided 
 into two companies : one was at Lincoln's Inn Fields, under 
 
 17 c
 
 THE ENGLISH STAGE 
 
 Betterton, where, says Gibber, " the players were most of 
 them too advanced in years to mend " Betterton himself 
 was seventy the other was at Drury Lane, under Rich ; 
 and here the actors, Gibber himself among them, he 
 described as "too young to be excellent." But the 
 younger company was the more successful of the two, 
 and all would have gone well with them but for the 
 impossible character of their manager, Christopher Rich. 
 Originally a lawyer, he was one of those persons who enter 
 into theatrical business with the sole purpose of getting as 
 much money as they can out of it, regardless of the claims 
 of art or the feelings of their artists. To this excusable 
 insensibility Rich added positive dishonesty. His ambition 
 as a manager was to cheat his actors out of as much of their 
 legitimate gains as he could ; and as a lawyer he was able 
 to do this with some skill. At length, however, his mis- 
 conduct led to a revolt, and after considerable negotiation, 
 Drury Lane came for the first time under the management 
 of three actors Gibber, Wilks, and Doggett. Now, for 
 the first time for many years, the theatre was properly and 
 honestly administered. The credit of this is due chiefly to 
 Gibber himself. Wilks, an accomplished actor, cared for 
 nothing so long as he had good parts and plenty of them ; 
 Doggett retired from the partnership early in its history, 
 and was succeeded by Barton Booth, the tragedian and 
 original representative of Addison's Cato, an amiable, 
 indulgent, and easy-going gentleman. Gibber was quite 
 equal to the task imposed on him. His natural gaiety of 
 disposition, his impudent self-confidence, his shrewdness, 
 his sensible appreciation of facts, which his ingenuous 
 vanity never impaired, well fitted him for the task of 
 smoothing down difficult colleagues, facing reverses, over- 
 coming hostility, and making money. With j ustifiable pride 
 he declared that, during his management, bills were paid 
 regularly, that no actor ever required a written agreement, 
 and that the work of the theatre was carried on with order 
 
 18
 
 IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 and propriety. The much-tried actor-manager comes in 
 for a great deal of unsympathetic criticism ; by some he is 
 even represented as the great bane of theatrical art in this 
 country. But history shows us conclusively that, so far, it 
 is to the actor-manager we owe all the most worthy achieve- 
 ment of our theatre, the preservation from decay and 
 disorder of all that is highest in theatrical art. To Gibber, 
 Garrick, and John Kemble, as actor-managers, is due the 
 credit of rescuing the theatres of the eighteenth century 
 from the dishonesty or incompetence or extravagance of 
 such worthless managers as Rich, or Fleetwood, or Sheridan. 
 Gibber says truly of his own record and it applies to those 
 of his immediate successors "our being actors ourselves was 
 an advantage to our government, which all former managers 
 who were only idle gentlemen wanted." In the absence 
 of a State theatre, it has fallen to the task of individual 
 actors to do what they can to uphold the finer traditions 
 of our stage ; and history proves to us that, in face of 
 difficulties that time has increased rather than diminished, 
 these actors have not failed in their duty. Whether it 
 has brought them profit or loss, prosperity or ruin, they 
 have successively devoted themselves to an enterprise which, 
 in almost every other country but our own, has been deemed 
 not unworthy of the assistance of the State. If, as some 
 tell us, we are to see in the future a great extension of 
 State control in our domestic concerns, it will be 
 interesting 'to see if that extension spreads as far as 
 the theatre. 
 
 Gibber sums up very fairly the history of his own 
 management. "Though,"" he says, "our best merit as 
 actors was never equal to that of our predecessors, yet I 
 will venture to say that in all its branches the stage had 
 never been under so just, so prosperous, and so settled a 
 regulation for forty years before. 11 It is true that in 
 Gibber's time no actor of genius appeared who could 
 challenge, to those who remembered him, the supreme 
 
 19
 
 THE ENGLISH STAGE 
 
 excellence of Betterton. Though the best part of his 
 career belongs to the seventeenth century, Betterton was 
 still playing Hamlet in 1709 at the advanced age of 
 seventy-four, and playing it with a successful assumption 
 of youth that extorted the admiration of Steele. Gibber 
 does his best to give posterity some notion of the extra- 
 ordinary powers of this great actor, and, as far as such 
 a thing is possible, he is not altogether unsuccessful. 
 Though Betterton's voice was manly rather than sweet, his 
 figure short and inclining to corpulence, his limbs athletic 
 rather than delicate, yet with these disadvantages he had 
 that personality, that something indefinable in bearing and 
 countenance, which, from the moment of his appearance 
 on the stage, seemed to seize and rivet the attention of the 
 audience, the eyes and ears of even the giddy and the 
 inadvertent. Betterton must have had just that quality of 
 personal magnetism there seems no better word by which 
 to describe this peculiar attribute which is as essential to 
 the great actor as it is to the great orator, the great 
 statesman, the great soldier, which is, indeed, a part of 
 what men call greatness. As an actual instance of the 
 method of Betterton's art, Gibber describes for us his 
 treatment of the scene in Hamlet, in which the Prince first 
 sees his father's spirit. It was the custom, he says, of most 
 actors, on seeing the ghost, to throw themselves into a 
 strained and violent tone of voice expressive of rage and 
 fury, and bring down thunders of applause by the force of 
 their declamation. Betterton was the first to give to the 
 scene its real significance ; it was with mute amazement he 
 first looked on his dear father's spirit, and then in a solemn, 
 trembling voice, which made the ghost as terrible to the 
 spectator as to himself, with awe and reverence, from which 
 all thought of violence or defiance was banished, he 
 addressed the spirit. One writer avers that in this scene 
 Betterton's countenance, which was naturally ruddy and 
 sanguine, turned as white as his neckcloth in the stress of 
 
 20
 
 IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 his emotion. If this be true, he was not only a great, but 
 peculiarly gifted, actor. But the whole description is 
 perhaps a little highly coloured, for the same author says 
 that at the sight of Betterton's horror and distress the 
 blood of the audience seemed to shudder in their veins. 
 More convincing than such criticism as this, is the testi- 
 mony of Barton Booth, the tragedian, who succeeded 
 Betterton in " many of his characters." " When I acted 
 the ghost with Betterton, 1 ' 1 said Booth, "instead of my 
 aweing him, he terrified me. But divinity hung round 
 that man ! " Truly there must have been about Betterton 
 a grandeur, a nobility of soul, that on the stage and in 
 private life alike compelled the love and veneration of the 
 men who knew him. It was this love and respect that 
 took Steele to Westminster Abbey to see the last office 
 done to one whom, he wrote in The Taller, " I have always 
 very much admired, and from whose action I had received 
 more strong expressions of what is great and noble in 
 human nature than from the arguments of the most solid 
 philosophers, or the descriptions of the most charming 
 poets I have ever read." A greater, a finer tribute was 
 never paid to an actor. If the eighteenth century produced 
 in Garrick Betterton's equal as a player, perhaps his 
 superior in some respects, Garrick never held in men's 
 hearts the place that Betterton held in the love and esteem 
 of his contemporaries. 
 
 History repeats itself in the theatre as elsewhere. The 
 treatment of this very scene with his father's ghost which 
 made Betterton's Hamlet something of a revelation in his 
 day, is the same that impressed a German critic who witnessed 
 the Hamlet of David Garrick, and made Fielding put into 
 the mouth of Partridge in Tom Jones the famous criticism 
 of Garrick's deportment in this scene. The secret of all 
 these striking and immediate successes by which in the 
 past actors have suddenly leapt into fame has at all times 
 been a return to nature in the presentment of some
 
 THE ENGLISH STAGE 
 
 character, a revolt against the staginess and unreality of a 
 hide-bound convention, a treatment of a character or a 
 scene that, instead of calling down the customary applause 
 which an experienced actor can always provoke by tricks of 
 declamation, quite regardless of good sense, produces 
 rather that mute astonishment in an audience which is 
 more eloquent to the artist than the clapping of hands. 
 And just as Garrick in Richard III. and Hamlet, by a 
 return to nature brought back on to the stage the true spirit 
 and genius of acting which had died for a time with 
 Betterton, so did Edmund Kean repeat, more than seventy 
 years after, the striking success which, in 1741, Charles 
 Macklin had made in the character of Shylock by playing 
 the Jew for the first time as a real and serious human 
 being. Kean was a genius and Macklin was not ; Kean 
 leapt into a fame which did not depend only on his 
 conception of Shylock ; Macklin made no deep impression 
 in any other Shakespearean character. But both these 
 actors were courageous enough to depart from tradition in 
 their reading of this particular part, to face at rehearsal 
 nothing but discouragement, ridicule, or contempt from 
 their fellow-actors, and were sufficiently gifted, sufficiently 
 masters of their art, to convince audiences accustomed to 
 laugh at the grotesque and comic Jew of stage conven- 
 tion that Shylock, whatever the unreality, the fancifulness 
 of the fable of the play, was a living, breathing embodi- 
 ment of a type conceived and executed by the dramatist in 
 all seriousness and earnestness. 
 
 II 
 
 ROBERT WILKS, Barton Booth, and Mrs. Oldfield are the 
 principal figures in stage history during Gibber's time, and, 
 if not three of the greatest, they are three of the most 
 amiable and distinguished persons who have ever adopted 
 the calling of a player. Many are apt to think that the 
 
 22
 
 IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 actors of the past were people of obscure and vulgar 
 origin, mere strollers, who sacrificed little in following an 
 ignoble and despised occupation. Such a view is incorrect. 
 The majority of those players who attained to fame were 
 of gentle birth, many of them the equals in manners and 
 culture of the distinguished persons with whom the 
 successful actor or actress of the day was invited to 
 associate. Of the three just alluded to, Wilks was grand- 
 son of a judge, and gave up a lucrative post in the War 
 Office at Dublin to become an actor ; Booth was the son of 
 a country gentleman, related to the Earls of Warrington ; 
 and Mrs. Oldfield the daughter of a captain in the Army. 
 Gibber, Quin, Garrick, Foote, Macklin, Henderson, Mrs. 
 Barry, and Mrs. Clive all came of what we may call 
 respectable antecedents. 
 
 Robert Wilks excelled as an actor by the refinement, the 
 grace, the charm of his personality. He could not rise to 
 great heights, but in such a character as Prince Hal in 
 Henry IV. he was the embodiment of elegance, gallantry, 
 and high spirit. Wilks had feeling as well as charm ; " to 
 beseech gracefully, to approach respectfully, to pity, to 
 mourn, to love," said Steele, " are the places wherein Wilks 
 may be said to shine with the utmost beauty." Though 
 his love of his calling made him in the theatre too greedy 
 of work, too impatient of rivals, and so a constant source 
 of trouble to his colleague Gibber, Wilks was in private 
 life a generous, warm-hearted gentleman of high character, 
 whose kindness to Farquhar and Savage testifies to the 
 unfeigned goodness and liberality of his disposition. 
 
 His colleague in management, and in some parts his 
 rival, Barton Booth, was the great tragedian of his day. 
 A man of scholarly tastes, educated at Westminster and 
 Cambridge, he fled from these highly respectable sur- 
 roundings to join a company of strolling players. His fine 
 voice and dignified bearing soon brought him to the front. 
 He had no sense of humour ; comedy he was unable to 
 
 23
 
 THE ENGLISH STAGE 
 
 appreciate ; but in such parts as the Ghost in Hamlet, 
 Othello, Cato, in which a sense of humour is hardly a 
 necessity, he was unrivalled in his day. It was Addison's 
 Cato which made Booth's reputation and fortune. No one 
 reads Cato now, but when it was produced, in 1713, its 
 success was phenomenal ; it ran for the < then astonishingly 
 long period of thirty-five nights ; and Booth's performance 
 so pleased Lord Bolingbroke that he used his influence to 
 get him made one of the managers of Drury Lane. The 
 refined solemnity of Booth must have found full scope for 
 its employment in the title-role of Addison's tragedy ; one 
 can see him sitting in the last act, according to the stage 
 directions, " in a thoughtful posture, in his hand Plato's 
 book on the Immortality of the Soul" a drawn sword on 
 the table beside him ; one can hear Gate's groans off 
 stage : 
 
 But hark ! what means that groan ? 
 says his son : 
 
 Oh ! give me way ! 
 
 He rushes oft' to his father's aid. One of those left on the 
 stage exclaims : 
 
 Ha ! a second groan. Heaven guard us all ! 
 
 Cato is brought on dying from a self-inflicted wound. At 
 the end of a long speech he at length gives up the ghost 
 with the words : 
 
 Oh ! ye powers that search 
 
 The heart of man, and weigh his inmost thoughts, 
 
 If I have done amiss, impute it not ! 
 
 The best may err ; but you are good and oh ! 
 
 This final: " and oh ! " of Cato is worthy to rank with the 
 more famous " Oh, Sophonisba, Sophonisba, oh ! '" of 
 Thomson's tragedy, as typical of the stilted, mechanical, 
 
 24
 
 IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 uninspired muse of these eighteenth-century writers of 
 tragedy. It must have indeed demanded a genius such as 
 Garrick to give life and animation to the soulless characters 
 that fill the prolix tragedies of Rowe and Henry Jones and 
 the Rev. Mr. Miller. But men were quite satisfied in his 
 day with such plays, and with the grave and rounded 
 utterance with which Booth spoke their inanimate lines ; 
 though at times, we are told, the popular tragedian 
 would have a lethargic fit on him, and then would not 
 choose to exert himself in the part he was playing. 
 With that freedom of criticism which distinguishes the 
 audiences of the eighteenth century, when Booth, on one 
 occasion, was acting with unusual apathy, a gentleman in 
 a stage-box sent him a polite note asking him whether he 
 was acting for his own diversion or that of the public. At 
 other times the sight of a friend of Addison's sitting in 
 the pit, or an Oxford man whose judgment he respected, 
 would be sufficient to rouse Booth to exert his full powers. 
 Booth, like Wilks, was a man of an open and generous 
 disposition, loved and respected by many friends. 
 
 Indeed, there would seem to have been no more popular 
 people in their day than these three prime favourites of the 
 stage Wilks, Booth, and Mrs. Oldfield. Mrs. Oldfield 
 was perhaps the most remarkable of the three. What 
 Fielding termed her "ravishing perfection,"" her beauty, 
 the fire and spirit of her acting, the charm and refinement 
 of her personality, made her, both on and off the stage, the 
 idol of friends and public. " Women of the first ranks," 
 writes Horace Walpole, " might have borrowed some part 
 of her behaviour without the least diminution of their 
 sense of dignity." As an artist she took high rank both in 
 comedy and tragedy, though her inclination lay towards 
 the former ; she hated, she said, as a tragedy queen, to 
 have a page dragging her train about, and would rather 
 such parts were given to her rival, Mrs. Porter. Her 
 countenance, benevolent like her heart, was capable of 
 
 25
 
 THE ENGLISH STAGE 
 
 expressing the most varied passions. When an impudent 
 beau, for some private grudge, rose and hissed her from the 
 pit, she turned to him, paused, and uttered the words, 
 " Poor creature ! " with such withering contempt that the 
 unmannerly interrupter was glad to sit down again. 
 " Even her amours," says one writer, " seemed to lose that 
 glare which appears round the persons of the failing fair ; 
 neither was it ever known that she troubled the repose of 
 any lady's lawful claim ; and was far more constant than 
 millions in the conjugal noose." Generous to her friends, 
 faithful to her lovers, consummate in her art, Mrs. Oldn'eld 
 attended royal levees, and was buried in Westminster 
 Abbey. 
 
 Her death in 1730, the death of Wilks two years later, 
 the retirement of Booth, and finally that of Gibber in 
 1732, closed a period in stage history which, if not 
 glorious, marked an improvement in the general admini- 
 stration and conduct of the theatre that reflects credit on 
 the three managers of Drury Lane. If they did not train 
 up any younger players of conspicuous talent to take the 
 place of Wilks and Booth, Gibber defends them by 
 reminding his critics that making actors is not as easy as 
 planting cabbages. Obscure, unsuccessful, disappointed 
 authors uttered bitter complaints against the arrogance 
 of Gibber towards struggling playwrights, and the vanity 
 of Wilks in rejecting plays that afforded him no oppor- 
 tunity for personal distinction. There may have been 
 some justice in such complaints, but I think we may safely 
 assume that the judgment of Gibber and his colleagues, 
 which was respected by Congreve, Steele, and Farquhar, 
 did not oppress or neglect much real talent. The cry 
 of the disappointed dramatist goes up unceasingly through 
 the eighteenth century. It was generally uttered in 
 pamphlet form, and made up of diatribes against the 
 stage, its actors and its managers. 
 
 Gibber pleads guilty to one reproach, that of encouraging 
 
 26
 
 IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 such new-fangled foppery to draw the multitude, such 
 " monstrous medleys " as the popular pantomimes, pieces 
 like The Harlequin Sorcerer, in which music, dancing, and 
 novel scenic effects were employed to attract the more 
 giddy spectators. As an actor Gibber had been so 
 scandalised by Christopher Rich's attempt to bring 
 elephants and rope-dancers on to the stage of Drury Lane 
 Theatre, that he had gone down into the pit and asked his 
 patrons to excuse him from appearing any longer on a stage 
 degraded by such unseemly exhibitions. But as a manager, 
 Gibber found himself compelled to fall back on these very 
 meretricious shows, which, as an actor, he had so gravely 
 resented ; he frankly acknowledges his apostasy and pleads 
 managerial necessity as his excuse. Here, he says, was one 
 of the deplorable consequences of the re-division of the 
 actors and actresses of London into two companies. When 
 Gibber first went on the stage, there had been only the 
 one company of players at Drury Lane, a condition that 
 lasted for eleven yeai-s, until 1695. In that year Betterton 
 seceded from Drury Lane, and obtained from William III. 
 a licence to open a new theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. 
 Then, according to Gibber, began the deterioration in 
 theatrical entertainment. The least successful of the two 
 theatres was bound, sooner or later, to resort to illegitimate 
 means in order to make head against its rival. Thus 
 it was that pantomime, and, what Gibber regards with 
 almost equal indignation, Italian opera, found its way on 
 to the English stage. But the cause of these dangerous 
 innovations is surely more general than Gibber is willing to 
 admit. There must always be a majority of the public 
 who prefer what is light and thoughtless in theatrical 
 entertainment to what is grave and thoughtful, and as life 
 becomes more strenuous and exacting, their number is not 
 likely to diminish. The serious drama will always have 
 a harder fight for existence than the gay and frivolous, and 
 will yield less profit to those who devote themselves to its 
 
 27
 
 THE ENGLISH STAGE 
 
 cause. It fared better in the eighteenth century than it 
 does now ; but we can see that in Gibber's day the time 
 had come when it was not to have things all its own way, 
 as in the days of Shakespeare and Pepys. The more 
 generally popular the theatre became, the sooner it was 
 obliged to cater for all forms of popular taste, and popular 
 taste responded joyfully when it opened its doors to 
 elephants, rope-dancers, and Italian warblers. 
 
 The drama's laws, the drama's patrons give, 
 
 and Gibber, and Garrick after him, found themselves, as 
 managers, obliged to sandwich the legitimate drama between 
 opera and pantomime. They did so with reluctance ; but 
 managers such as Christopher Rich and his son John, men 
 utterly unsympathetic towards actors, threw themselves 
 with ardour into the development of spectacular entertain- 
 ments. In 1732 John Rich moved his company of players 
 from the old theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields to the new 
 playhouse in Covent Garden, and from this date Covent 
 Garden and Drury Lane became the two principal London 
 theatres. It was at Covent Garden that John Rich, under 
 the name of " Mr. Lun," made himself famous as the first 
 and greatest of English harlequins. Says Churchill, 
 
 See from afar, 
 
 The hero seated in fantastic car, 
 Wedded to novelty, his only arms 
 Are wooden swords, wands, talismans, and charms ; 
 On one side Folly sits, by some called Fun, 
 And on the other his arch-patron Lun. 
 Behind, for liberty athirst in vain, 
 Sense, helpless captive ! drags the galling chain. 
 
 Pope, Dr. Johnson, Cibber, and Churchill might satirise or 
 denounce these trivial exhibitions, and lament that the 
 stage should be given over to flying chariots, grinning 
 dragons, and practicable eggs, but they were powerless 
 
 28
 
 IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 to confine the public appetite to the plain fare of tragedy 
 and comedy, unable to persuade them 
 
 To chase the charms of sound, the pomp of show, 
 For useful mirth and salutary woe. 
 
 It was in a magnificent attempt to outdo the spectacular 
 triumphs of John Rich at Covent Garden, called the 
 Chinese Festival, that Garrick brought on his head riotous 
 demonstrations of indignation at Drury Lane. He had 
 engaged for this pantomime some French performers, and, 
 as England was at the time at war with France, the 
 Jingoes of the day thought they could not better display 
 their rampant patriotism than by inflicting a thousand 
 pounds' 1 worth of damage on the property of a manager 
 who had dared to engage a handful of French artists. 
 
 A riot and the demolition of the front of his house were 
 contingencies that a theatrical manager in the eighteenth 
 century had to be prepared to face ; instances of such pro- 
 ceedings abound in the theatrical memoirs of the time ; 
 an alteration in prices, an unpopular regulation by the 
 managers, the employment of foreigners, the non-appearance 
 of an artist, the reported ill-usage of a popular actor, the 
 resentment of a player at some act of aristocratic imper- 
 tinence, all these trivial causes on different occasions led to 
 violent tumults, the tearing up of seats, the wanton 
 destruction of furniture and decorations. Resolute men 
 like Quin and Beard, the managers of Covent Garden, 
 would withstand the rioters ; the more timorous Garrick 
 would bend before the storm ; but it was on very rare 
 occasions that the managers received any compensation for 
 their loss. Apart from the fact that the punishment of 
 having his theatre gutted was quite out of proportion to 
 the offence the manager might have committed, this riotous 
 disposition of certain portions of the audience was some- 
 times made use of by some mean and worthless individual 
 to gratify as in the case of the rascally Fitzpatrick some 
 
 29
 
 THE ENGLISH STAGE 
 
 private spite. Quarrels and controversies of any kind in 
 the eighteenth century, literary or theatrical, were fought 
 out with a vigour, an absence of decorum, and an 
 unscrupulousness of attack that enliven, if they do not 
 always edify, the reader. 
 
 One who bore himself stoutly on all such occasions 
 a sturdy and hard-hitting adversary, who killed two of his 
 fellow-actors in duels, not, be it said, of his own seeking, 
 was James Quin. He fills the most prominent place in the 
 theatrical history of those nine years that elapsed between 
 the retirement of Gibber in 1732 and the first appearance 
 of David Garrick in 1741. The son of an Irish barrister, 
 himself intended for the Bar, lack of means and con- 
 sciousness of ability sent Quin on to the stage. He made 
 his first success in 1720, when he persuaded Christopher 
 Rich to allow him to appear as FalstafF in the Merry 
 Wives of Windsor. After Booth's death he advanced still 
 further in public esteem by what he modestly described on 
 the play-bill as " his attempt" to follow that tragedian in 
 his greatest part of Cato. He so delighted the audience 
 by his attempt that, after his delivery of the line : 
 
 Thanks to the gods my boy has done his duty ! 
 
 they cried " Booth outdone ! Booth outdone ! " and after 
 he had spoken the then famous soliloquy on the immor- 
 tality of the soul, the enthusiasm reached such a pitch that, 
 in answer to a vociferous demand for an " encore," Quin 
 was obliged to repeat the speech. From this night Quin, 
 as an actor, reigned supreme for ten years. It was a solemn 
 reign, dignified, weighty, traditional ; he was unsurpassed 
 in such characters as FalstafF and Sir John Brute, but in 
 tragedy he did no more than uphold, with fine elocution, 
 ponderous majesty, and rugged independence, that solemn 
 unreality of speech and action which, both in England and 
 France, was then considered the appropriate expression of 
 tragic sentiment. As in France Le Kain was the first to 
 
 30
 
 IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 restore nature to tragic acting, so did Garrick in England, 
 by a similar return to nature, expose the dulness, the life- 
 lessness of the settled methods of the actors of the type of 
 Quin. And Quin had too much good sense not to see it 
 himself, for as a man he was the rather coarse embodiment 
 of that rough but ready-witted, prejudiced but generous 
 and warm-hearted disposition which we admire and respect 
 in Dr. Johnson. The few of Quints sayings preserved to 
 us almost make one regret that he had no Boswell by his 
 side. Lords and bishops, clergy and gentry, all were 
 represented in the circles of Quin's many friends who 
 delighted in his wit and conversation. He could hold his 
 own in argument with any man. One instance must 
 suffice. At some gathering Bishop Warburton, dictatorial 
 and overbearing, was arguing in support of royal pre- 
 rogative. Quin said he was a republican, and thought 
 that perhaps even the execution of Charles I. by his subjects 
 might be justified : " Ay, 1 ' asked the indignant Warburton, 
 "by what law?" "By all the laws he had left them," 
 answered Quin. The shocked Bishop then cited the wrath 
 of the divine judgment as visited upon the regicides ; they 
 all, he said (though it is not strictly true) had come to 
 violent ends. " I would not advise your lordship," said 
 Quin, " to make use of that inference, for, if I am not 
 mistaken, that was the case with the twelve apostles." 
 Horace Walpole greatly admired this instance of the 
 player's readiness and aptness of retort. 
 
 Quin's kindness and generosity to Thomson, the poet, 
 and the unfortunate Mrs. Bellamy, eloquently attest the 
 real worth of the vigorous, downright, resolute old actor, 
 who said, on his deathbed, after drinking a bottle of claret, 
 " I could wish that the last tragic scene was over ; and I 
 hope I may be enabled to meet and pass through it with 
 dignity." 
 
 Quin had retired from the stage some fifteen years before 
 his death ; he had become the warm friend of his rival, 
 
 31
 
 THE ENGLISH STAGE 
 
 Garrick, who wrote the epitaph engraved on his monument 
 in the Abbey church at Bath : 
 
 That tongue which set the table in a roar, 
 
 And charmed the public ear, is heard no more ! 
 
 Closed are those eyes, the harbingers of wit, 
 
 Which spake before the tongue what Shakespeare writ : 
 
 Cold is that hand, which, living, was stretched forth 
 
 At Friendship's call, to succour modest worth. 
 
 Here lies James Quin Deign, reader, to be taught 
 
 Whate'er thy strength of body, force of thought, 
 
 In Nature's happiest mould however cast, 
 
 To this complexion thou must come at last. 
 
 If the period of Quin's popularity had reared no great 
 actors, four actresses, who were to contribute in no slight 
 degree to the splendour of the reign of Garrick, had, in 
 those ten years, been advancing rapidly to the very front 
 of their profession. Mrs. Gibber, Mrs. Pritchard, Mrs. 
 Clive, and Margaret Woffington, all these ladies had 
 already established their artistic reputations when, in 
 the year 1741, a young man of twenty-three, who, said 
 the play-bill, had never appeared on any stage before, leapt 
 into fame by his performance of Richard III. at a second- 
 rate London theatre. Mrs. Gibber was a sister of Dr. Arne, 
 the celebrated musician. Charmed by her singing voice, 
 her brother had sent her into opera. Colley Gibber heard 
 her ; he was disappointed with her singing, but convinced 
 that her speaking voice would, if properly trained, carry 
 her far in the legitimate drama. He set about instructing 
 her, was astonished at her rapid progress, and permitted 
 her to make her first appearance at Drury Lane in 1736, 
 in the character of Zara in an adaptation of Voltaire's 
 Zaire. Before this event, Miss Arne had had the misfor- 
 tune to marry her teacher's son, Theophilus. Than this 
 Theophilus Gibber a more despicable scoundrel has seldom 
 disgraced any calling ; mean and contemptible to the last 
 degree, a bully and a coward, the younger Gibber has only
 
 IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 found one apologist for his turpitude. This writer 
 attributes the peculiar baseness of Theophilus to the 
 unhappy fact that he was born during the progress of 
 the awful and memorable storm that raged over London 
 on the night of November 26th, 1703. Such a convulsion 
 of nature occurring at his birth may explain, if it cannot 
 reconcile us to, the depravity of Theophilus Gibber. In 
 Goldsmith's opinion it required a somewhat similar inter- 
 position of nature to save Theophilus Gibber from his 
 ultimate fate, the gallows ; he was drowned at sea during 
 a violent storm in the Irish Channel. When his wife made 
 her debut at Drury Lane they had only been married two 
 years, and Theophilus in the prologue pleaded for the 
 indulgence of the audience : 
 
 But now the Player, 
 
 With trembling heart, prefers his humble prayer. 
 To-night the greatest venture of her life 
 Is lost, or saved, as you receive a wife. 
 
 If she conveys the pleasing passions right, 
 
 Guard and support her this decisive night. 
 
 If she mistakes or finds her strength too small, 
 
 Let interposing pity break her fall. 
 
 In you it rests to save her or destroy ; 
 
 If she draws tears from you, I weep for joy. 
 
 We may presume that Theophilus did on this occasion 
 shed tears of joy, for his wife's success was immediate, and 
 in those days a wife's independent earnings were her 
 husband's property. Gibber's profligacy and extravagance 
 were as shameless as they were insatiate. He soon made 
 wreck of his married life. Having connived at his wife's 
 dishonour in order to get money from her lover, he then 
 sued the gentlemen for damages, and so persecuted Mrs. 
 Gibber, that for two years she left the London stage. A 
 truce having been patched up, she returned in 1742, and 
 appeared as Desdemona at Covent Garden. She played
 
 THE ENGLISH STAGE 
 
 the part of the ill-used wife with such real fervour and 
 pathos, that the audience, quick to recognise the signifi- 
 cance of the occasion, overwhelmed her with unwonted 
 applause. From that moment Mrs. Gibber was restored 
 to her place in the public favour. As an actress Mrs. 
 Gibber was remarkable for an extreme sensibility to all that 
 was tender and pathetic. As Constance in King John no 
 actress could approach her ; her delivery of the lines : 
 
 Here I and sorrow sit ; 
 This is my throne, bid kings come bow to it ; 
 
 her scream of agony as she left the stage exclaiming : 
 Oh, Lord ! my boy ! my Arthur ! my fair son ! 
 
 these things lived in the memory of those who witnessed 
 them as supremely tragic in their expression. The great 
 fault of Mrs. Gibber's acting, -less intolerable then than 
 now, was the highpitched " demi-chant," as it was called, 
 in which she recited rather than spoke her lines ; she must 
 have learnt this method of speaking from old Gibber, who 
 tried to force it on his daughter-in-law's rival, Mrs. 
 Pritchard, when she was to play Gonstance in his adapta- 
 tion of King John. Mrs. Pritchard, an actress of great, 
 if somewhat rough and unrefined, power, would have none 
 of Gibber's instruction ; she preferred untutored nature to 
 antiquated art ; she opposed to the charm and tenderness 
 of Mrs. Gibber in Juliet and Desdemona the tragic force 
 of her Hermione and Lady Macbeth in the opinion of 
 Mrs. Siddons the greatest of all Lady Macbeths. Mrs. 
 Pritchard was a player born and bred. Her first appear- 
 ance had been made at Bartholomew Fair ; with her acting 
 was an instinct ; it was said that she had never read more 
 of the play of Macbeth than her own part. Rachel has 
 been accused of somewhat similar ignorance. Talma, the 
 great French actor, declares that sensibility of tempera- 
 ment and intelligence are the two principal ingredients 
 
 34
 
 IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 that go to the making of an actor, but claims the first to 
 be more essential to the artist than the second. If he had 
 to choose between the actor of sensibility and the actor of 
 intelligence, Talma declares he would unhesitatingly select 
 the former. Dr. Johnson said that Mrs. Pritchard in 
 private life was a " vulgar idiot," but on the stage seemed 
 inspired by gentility and understanding. Here surely is 
 a striking instance of what Talma says can be achieved by 
 sensibility of temperament, uninformed by any great intelli- 
 gence. Mrs. Pritchard was a woman of umblemished virtue. 
 To those who are inclined to believe that the lives of 
 players are little more than a series of scandalous chronicles, 
 the private lives of these eighteenth-century actors and 
 actresses would come, if they took the trouble to read 
 them, as something of a surprise; to some readers, perhaps, 
 something of a disappointment. They hardly yield as 
 much scandalous entertainment as those of the princes and 
 noblemen of the day. When we consider the great tempta- 
 tion that beset the actresses of this time, the fierce light 
 that beat upon the most private concerns of the popular 
 player, the history of the eighteenth-century theatre pro- 
 vokes fewer blushes than we might suppose. Occasionally 
 an unhappy career, like that of the unfortunate Miss 
 Bellamy, would tempt some hack writer to put together 
 a spurious memoir of her frailties ; Mrs. Baddeley might, 
 for a price, lend her name to an account of her singular 
 adventures ; but, broadly speaking, we shall find the lives 
 of these famous actors and actresses Betterton, Wilks, 
 Booth, Garrick, Macklin, Barry, Henderson, John Kemble, 
 Mrs. Clive, Mrs. Pritchard, and Mrs. Siddons as decorous 
 as those of other people ; while even Mrs. Oldfield, Mrs. 
 Gibber, and Mrs. Woffington ladies of not wholly un- 
 blemished reputation were quite seemly in the uncon- 
 ventionality of their private circumstances, and not less 
 popular and acceptable in society than their more 
 respectable colleagues. 
 
 35
 
 THE ENGLISH STAGE 
 
 While Mrs. Gibber and Mrs. Pritchard were winning 
 their way to fame as tragic actresses, Mrs. Woffington and 
 Mrs. Clive were proving themselves to be rare comedians. 
 Mrs. Woffington captivated a London audience in 1740 by 
 her appearance as Sir Harry Wildair in Farquhar's play 
 of that name. This had been one of Wilks's great parts ; 
 but the piquancy and charm of Margaret Woffington's 
 performance of this dashing young spark eclipsed all former 
 memories. From that night till her premature death at 
 forty-two, Mrs. Woffington reigned supreme in the higher 
 comedy. She could play Ophelia, Jane Shore, Hermione, 
 and play them well ; but it was in such parts as Rosalind, 
 in portraying fine ladies of high degree, that this daughter 
 of a Dublin bricklayer was unequalled by any rival. The 
 actress who so shocked the Duchess of Queensberry on her 
 visit to the green-room by shouting, with a pot of porter 
 in her hand, " Confusion to all order ! " was the ideal 
 representative of the Lady Townleys and Lady Betty 
 Modishes of polite comedy. Mrs. Clive, also an Irish- 
 woman, but of gentle birth, could not approach Mrs. 
 Woffington in characters that called for refinement and 
 distinction of bearing ; she was rather a low than a high 
 comedian, the best " romp," Dr. Johnson declared, he ever 
 saw ; the first of " chambermaids," a type of character 
 almost extinct on the modern stage, but a favourite one 
 in the comedies and farces of the eighteenth century. Mrs. 
 Clive was one of the fortunate few who escaped the awful 
 censure of Churchill : 
 
 First giggling, plotting chambermaids arrive, 
 
 Hoydens and romps, led on by General Clive. 
 
 In spite of outward blemishes, she shone, 
 
 For humour famed, and humour all her own : 
 
 Easy as if at home the stage she trod, 
 
 Nor sought the critic's praise, nor feared his rod 
 
 Original in spirit and in ease, 
 
 She pleased, by hiding all attempts to please. 
 
 36
 
 IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 One attempt of Olive's to please, and that a blatant one, 
 must have made the judicious shudder, though we are told 
 she carried it through successfully. When she played 
 Portia the actress sought to enliven the part by giving in 
 the trial scene imitations of some of the leading advocates 
 of the day. With a burlesque Portia and, as was then the 
 fashion, a comic Shylock, the trial scene in The Merchant 
 of Venice must have afforded in these days quite a 
 rollicking entertainment. 
 
 Both Mrs. Clive and Mrs. Woffington were generous, 
 good-hearted women, who spent the greater part of their 
 earnings in supporting poor relations ; very troublesome in 
 the theatre, worrying the life out of their managers, and 
 quarrelling violently at times with each other. On one 
 occasion the two Irish ladies fell out in the green-room 
 about their respective powers to draw good houses ; they 
 used most violent language to each other, and Mrs. dive's 
 brother caught hold of the jaw of an Irish admirer of 
 Mrs. Woffington, Mr. MacSwiney. " Let go my jaw, you 
 villain ! " exclaimed MacSwiney. " Throw down your 
 cane ! " cried Mrs. dive's brother ; and the ladies abused 
 each other roundly, until the manager, fearing their voices 
 would be heard on the stage, put an end to the scene. 
 But, in spite of occasional outbursts of spleen, which in 
 ladies of uncertain temper the atmosphere of the theatre 
 is liable to provoke, Mrs. Woffington and Mrs. Clive were 
 both lovable creatures. " Forgive her one female error," 
 said a friend and contemporary of Margaret Woffington, 
 " and she was adorned with every virtue ; honour, truth, 
 benevolence, and charity were her distinguishing qualities." 
 Her last appearance was strangely pathetic. She was in 
 no condition of health on the night of May 3rd, 1757, to 
 play Rosalind ; but she had never disappointed an audience, 
 and, like many an actor before and since, her pride would 
 not allow her to fail in her duty to the public. She went 
 on to the stage and played the part as saucily and prettily 
 
 37
 
 as ever until she reached the epilogue. Then, as she spoke 
 to the audience the lines, " If I were among you, I would 
 kiss as many of you as had beards that pleased me," she 
 paused, lost all power of speech, and fell stricken with 
 paralysis. She lingered for two years a hopeless invalid, 
 two years which " partook," says one author, " of all that 
 was blameless in her previous life." 
 
 The year 1741 was memorable in the great theatre of 
 European history for the first appearance, as a leading actor 
 in the affairs of Europe, of the great Frederick ; in the 
 small world of the London stage this year was no less 
 memorable for the first appearance of a player who not 
 only in his own country was to reign supreme as the 
 greatest actor and most accomplished manager of his time, 
 but was to be famous and admired in Europe as no English 
 actor had ever been before. In the history of the English 
 drama there are two great occasions on which an actor, 
 hitherto unknown to the London public, won an immediate 
 triumph on his first appearance before a scanty and 
 sceptical audience, converted, by the force of his genius, 
 cold critics into astonished admirers, and achieved this 
 signal success in a play which had in it no element of 
 novelty, but depended almost entirely for its interest that 
 night on the performance of the particular player. 
 One such occasion was David Garrick's performance of 
 Richard III. at the Goodman's Fields Theatre, on October 
 19th, 1741 ; a second the first appearance of Edmund 
 Kean as Shylock at Drury Lane, on January 26th, 1814. 
 Garrick was only twenty-three years of age at the time of 
 his first appearance, Kean twenty-seven. But Kean had 
 been on the stage since his childhood ; Garrick had only 
 played a short season at Ipswich before he faced the ordeal 
 at Goodman's Fields. Garrick was an actor born, if ever 
 there was one, " an actor, a complete actor, and nothing 
 but an actor," says Dibdin, " as Pope, during the whole 
 course of his life, was a poet and nothing but a poet." 
 
 38
 
 IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 It was Pope \vho, on seeing Garrick play, declared the 
 young rnan never had his equal as an actor, and never 
 would have a rival. Garrick had rivals, plenty of them, 
 during his career, Quin, Macklin, Barry, Mossop, Henderson ; 
 but they never seriously affected his position ; they may 
 have played some parts better than he, but they could not 
 challenge his versatility, the fire and rapidity, the liveliness 
 and spirit of all that he did and said on the stage. The 
 moment of his appeai'ance was undoubtedly propitious for 
 the success of one gifted as he was ; there is something 
 naive in the reasons assigned by the writers of the day for 
 the peculiar impression made by the young actor ; they 
 reveal a deplorable condition of the stage, the prevalence 
 of a thoroughly vicious and meaningless style of acting. 
 The critics are astonished that Mr. Garrick should identify 
 himself so completely with his part, that he should speak 
 naturally and not in the accustomed " demi-chant," his 
 voice neither whining, bellowing, nor grumbling : he neither 
 struts nor minces, is neither stiff nor slouching. " When 
 others are on the stage with him,"' they remark with 
 astonishment, "he is attentive to whatever is spoke, and 
 never drops his character when he has finished his speech, 
 by either looking contemptuously on an inferior performer, 
 unnecessary spitting, or suffering his eyes to wander through 
 the whole circle of spectators." Here was indeed a Daniel 
 come to judgment, if these virtues in Garrick attest the 
 vices of the older actors ; the success of this mercurial 
 youth, the grandson, be it remembered, of French refugees, 
 graceful, easy, vivacious in an unwonted degree, is less 
 surprising when it comes as a relief from such a style of 
 acting as these criticisms suggest. Macklin, an actor of far 
 less spirit, had, earlier in the same year, made a profound 
 impression by breaking away from theatrical convention in 
 his performance of Shylock. He, as I described in my 
 previous lecture, made the Jew for the first time a serious 
 character. Physically a man of strong and rugged feature, 
 
 39
 
 THE ENGLISH STAGE 
 
 rough, a " sour-faced dog," according to Fielding, Macklin 
 imported into the part of Shylock an element of the strong 
 and terrible that has never been equalled. When Sir 
 Robert Walpole lamented to King George II. that there 
 was no way of frightening the House of Commons, the 
 King, who had the night before visited Drury Lane, and 
 been greatly impressed by Macklin's performance, replied, 
 " What do you think of sending them to the theatre to see 
 that Irishman play Shylock ? " But Macklin was an actor 
 very limited in his capacity ; hard, without charm, ill- 
 suited to any but unsympathetic and strongly marked 
 characters a vain, quarrelsome, and disappointed man, 
 who for a time became a tavern-keeper in order that he 
 might deliver lectures to his customers, after they had dined, 
 on theatrical history and the art of acting ; who taught 
 elocution, and taught it well, and at eighty-two wrote 
 a much-admired comedy, The Man of the World, in which 
 he himself created the famous part of Sir Pertinax 
 McSycophant. Macklin was the very antithesis to 
 Garrick ; the surly, grudging actor of ability, opposed 
 to the polite and insinuating actor of genius. 
 
 Of this genius of Gar-rick's how difficult it is to form for 
 one's self, much more to convey to others, any adequate 
 notion ! A rather short figure, but perfectly symmetrical 
 and graceful in all its movements, dark, restless piercing 
 eyes, and a face mobile in every feature ; these would seem 
 to have been the physical characteristics of the player. 
 Many critics dwell on the completeness of his physical 
 equipment, the perfect harmony of voice, feature, and 
 figure, that made them unite with imperceptible ease to 
 give expression to the actor's thought. Grimm, the French 
 philosopher, describes with enthusiasm the skill and con- 
 viction with which Garrick got up in a drawing-room and, 
 after thrilling his hearers by his delivery of the " dagger " 
 speech in Macbeth, convulsed them with laughter by his 
 imitation of a baker's boy who, carrying a tray of cakes on 
 
 40
 
 IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 his head, lets it fall into the mud and bursts into tears at 
 his misfortune. This drawing-room performance epitomises 
 the whole art of the player who could achieve equal success 
 in the pathetic tragedy of Lear and the low comedy of 
 Abel Drugger. And this success was gained by a natural, 
 unforced, spontaneous method of playing that astonished 
 and delighted both an English and a French spectator, for 
 the French stage in those days suffered, as the English, from 
 the conventional actor's sing-song, mechanical habit of 
 ladling out his lines. In all probability Lear was Garrick's 
 greatest part. Here, in spite of his comparative shortness, 
 of the unsuitability of his attire he walked with a crutch 
 his delivery of the curse was held to be terrific, his madness 
 simple and pathetic. The testimony of his fellow-players 
 is perhaps the most conclusive of his extraordinary powers. 
 Mrs. Siddons was terrified by the power of his eye in 
 Richard III. ; Mrs. Clive swore he could act a gridiron ; 
 Bannister said that in Lear his very stick acted ; Smith 
 wrote, " I never can speak of him but with idolatry, and 
 have ever looked upon it as one of the greatest blessings 
 of my life to have lived in the days of Garrick/' Garrick 
 had his limitations; in parts such as Othello, Faulconbridge, 
 Hotspur, where physical force and powerful declamation 
 were demanded, he was inadequate. But these failures 
 were, as a contemporary critic observed, " spots on the sun, 
 only visible to long-sighted astronomers." As an actor 
 from the age of twenty-three till he retired at fifty-nine, 
 Garrick was the greatest master and exponent of his art. 
 
 Ill 
 
 WHEN we turn to the other side of his career, that of a 
 manager of a theatre, for thirty years joint-manager of 
 Drury Lane, the story wears a different aspect. In spite 
 of his triumphs as an artist, in spite of the success of his 
 management, the wealth and prosperity his calling brought 
 
 41
 
 THE ENGLISH STAGE 
 
 him, the reader of Garrick's biography cannot fail to be 
 surprised, astonished, indignant at the worries and mortifi- 
 cations that made the player's life as a theatrical manager 
 anxious and miserable. Never was man so tried, so ill- 
 treated, so badgered and worried by players, authors, 
 critics, even by those who called themselves his friends. 
 His peculiar, his phenomenal success, unequalled by that 
 of any previous actor, roused up all that envy and un- 
 charitableness which even religion has sometimes sanctioned 
 when it has been employed against the theatre. Prejudice 
 in the shape of Dr. Johnson, envy in the person of Macklin, 
 resentment in that of Churchill, disappointment in that of 
 Smollett, foppery in that of Fitzpatrick, and villainy in 
 that of Hifternan, all these mischievous qualities were at 
 different times exerted to injure or distress Garrick. As 
 Mr. Fitzgerald has justly observed, one of the most curious 
 features about Garrick's relations with certain of his con- 
 temporaries is the fact that men otherwise reputed decent 
 and honest by posterity, should, in their relations with 
 him, descend to all manner of meanness and dissimulation. 
 This is indeed a curious circumstance, only to be explained 
 if we consider the very peculiar position occupied by the 
 successful actor in the eighteenth century. Courted and 
 caressed by the greatest in the land on one side, he was 
 every now and then rudely reminded that he belonged to 
 what some were pleased to consider an inferior and despised 
 calling, and was held fair game for persecution and insult 
 at the hands of all sorts and conditions of men. When a 
 member of this calling was seen to be brilliantly successful, 
 popular and admired, and, above all, rich and prosperous, 
 envy filled the breasts of less prosperous persons who held 
 themselves to be vastly superior to mere players, rage 
 stirred up the bile of incompetent playwrights whose 
 wretched dramas the player had dared to reject, a desire 
 to pull down what they had set up seized hold of the more 
 malicious part of their audience; and so the most unworthy 
 
 42
 
 cause, the most human infirmity, the most trivial error, 
 would be seized upon as a weapon with which to strike at 
 the unprotected player. Fully allowing for their very 
 venial imperfections of character, humanity has seldom 
 displayed itself in more odious colours than in its treat- 
 ment of David Garrick and Mrs. Siddons at certain periods 
 of their careers ; success was dearly bought that could 
 bring with it such ignoble treatment, such underserved 
 humiliation. 
 
 But it is certain literary gentlemen and dramatists who, 
 above all others, cut such sorry figures in their dealings 
 with Garrick Smollett, Ralph the historian, Churchill, 
 even Goldsmith and Dr. Johnson. There has been at all 
 times a certain resentment on the part of some writers 
 against the player, against his immediate fame, the reward 
 he reaps in his own lifetime, -the adulation he receives in 
 his own person, even the high rate at which he is considered 
 to be paid for his labour. It is a form of jealousy that has 
 warped many otherwise enlightened minds ; an envy that 
 forgets that a capacity to act is a much rarer gift than a 
 capacity to write, that, ephemeral as is the actor's art, it 
 is by way of compensation more vivid in its appeal, more 
 immediate in its effect, than any other form of art. Bishop 
 Tillotson asked Betterton how it was that a player exercised 
 a vaster power over human sympathies than a preacher. 
 " You in the pulpit," was Betterton ""s answer, " only tell 
 a story ; I show facts." It is to the shower of facts that 
 the public heart goes out in a way that distresses, irritates, 
 provokes those who judge the worth of the player from 
 the impressive nonsense that Dr. Johnson talked about his 
 art, or the unsympathetic reflections of Charles Lamb. 
 Dr. Johnson's disparagement of play-acting may be allowed 
 to pass ; being short-sighted and hard of hearing, the 
 doctor could hardly have been in a position to appreciate 
 the full significance of what was passing on a stage ; but 
 his personal treatment of Garrick is difficult to explain on
 
 THE ENGLISH STAGE 
 
 any other ground than that of rather unworthy jealousy. 
 The friendship that Garrick had showed him in producing, 
 to the best of his ability, the sage's unendurable tragedy 
 of Irene, was poorly repaid by the ill-natured picture 
 Johnson drew of his friend in No. 200 of the Rambler, a 
 number published on the very morning that Garrick, always 
 sensitive and nervous, was to make his first appearance in 
 a new part. The spiteful depreciation of Garrick in the 
 character of Prospero is in no worse taste than the self- 
 glorification of Johnson as the rugged Asper. That 
 Johnson should have been a little envious of the wealth 
 that was being accumulated by his old friend is natural ; 
 they had started life together ; Garrick, the more energetic 
 of the two, had outstripped the indolent Johnson in the 
 acquisition of the good things of this world ; but, as Leslie 
 Stephen wrote, " a grave moral philosopher has no right 
 to look askance at the rewards which fashion lavishes upon 
 men of lighter and less lasting merit which he professes to 
 despise." Johnson's depreciation of acting is ignorant and 
 unfeeling the utterance of a Philistine ; his behaviour to 
 Garrick, in more ways than one, grudging and ungenerous ; 
 he was not philosopher enough to accept with equanimity 
 either the failure of his own tedious play, or the success of 
 his old schoolfellow. Throughout Johnson's life, by the 
 side of occasional commendation of Garrick, runs a constant 
 stream of depreciation of the man and unjust ridicule of 
 his art. 
 
 Smollett's conduct towards Garrick is a good specimen 
 of the kind of treatment the actor had to endure from even 
 a celebrated man. Garrick had politely, and with the 
 usual protestations of regret, rejected a bad play of 
 Smollett's called The Regicide. In Roderick Random the 
 author takes his revenge by drawing a portrait of Garrick 
 under the significant name of Mr. Marmo/et. Thus he 
 writes : " It is not for the qualities of his heart that 
 this little parasite is invited to the tables of dukes 
 
 44
 
 IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 and lords, who hire cooks for his entertainment ; his 
 avarice they see not, his ingratitude they feel not, his 
 hypocrisy accommodates itself to their humours, and is 
 of consequence pleasing ; but he is chiefly courted for 
 his buffoonery, and will be admitted into the choicest 
 parties for his talent of mimicking Punch and his 
 wife Joan." 
 
 This attack appeared in 1748; but in 1757 we find 
 Smollett, in his History of England, lauding Garrick to 
 the skies for his genius as an actor and the service which, 
 as a manager, he had done the English stage. What has 
 occurred in the interval to bring about this sudden change 
 from venomous attack to glowing panegyric ? Why, in 
 this same year, 1757, we find Garrick producing at Drury 
 Lane a patriotic farce of Smollett's called Reprisal, or the 
 Tars of Old England, and paying him well for it. From 
 this moment Smollett is his contrite friend. 
 
 Garrick's biography teems with unpleasant experiences 
 of this kind. He procures from Mr. Pelham the minister, 
 by his influence, and his influence alone, a pension for 
 Ralph the historian ; but because he will not perform 
 Ralph's stupid plays, all gratitude is forgotten, and the 
 author attacks the actor in a pamphlet in which he holds 
 Garrick responsible for the present deplorable state of a 
 theatre that rejects the masterpieces of Mr. Ralph. It 
 should be added that a play of Ralph's, called The 
 Astrologer, had been produced in 1744, and on the second 
 night of its run the theatre had to be closed for want of 
 an audience. 
 
 Again, Garrick helps with money one Hiffernan, an 
 Irish adventurer, and allows a play of his to be put on at 
 Drury Lane ; but it is so unsuccessful that it convinces 
 everybody but the author of his utter incapacity to please 
 an audience. Thereupon Hiffernan writes and threatens 
 to publish what Davies described as a " bloody libel " on 
 the private character of Garrick. As the name of his wife 
 
 45
 
 THE ENGLISH STAGE 
 
 was concerned in the libel, Garrick, on hearing of Hiffernan's 
 intention, paid the blackmailer to suppress it. 
 
 Dodsley, Hawkins, Mrs. Griffith, and many another 
 author whose merit neither Garrick nor anybody else 
 could perceive, vented their spleen against the manager 
 by ascribing to all manner of unworthy motives his rejec- 
 tion of their plays. 
 
 But the case of the poet Churchill is perhaps the most 
 interesting. In 1761 this very irregular clergyman woke 
 to find himself famous by the publication of his poem The 
 Rosciad, a dramatic review in satirical verse of all the 
 leading actors of the day. Small wonder that its publica- 
 tion caused a panic among the players, for some of them 
 were scourged cruelly, their imperfections ruthlessly exposed 
 in cutting verses. Poor Tom Davies, afterwards Garrick's 
 biographer, was driven from the stage by the lines : 
 
 Statesman all over, in plots famous grown, 
 He mouths a sentence as curs mouth a bone. 
 
 An assiduous but mediocre actor, one Havard, is thus 
 described : 
 
 His easy, vacant face proclaim'd a heart 
 Which could not feel emotions, nor impart. 
 
 Yates, an admirable comedian, whose only infirmity was 
 an imperfect memory, which he would try to conceal by 
 repeating his words over again, or using some such 
 expression as " Hark ye ! hark ye ! " until he could 
 remember what came next, is thus hit off': 
 
 Lo Yates ! Without the least finesse of art 
 He gets applause. I wish he'd get his part ! 
 When live Impatience is in full career, 
 How vilely " Hark ye ! hark ye ! " grates the ear ! 
 When active fancy from the brain is sent, 
 And stands on tip-toe for some wish'd event, 
 I hate those careless blunders, which recall 
 Suspended sense, and prove it fiction all. 
 
 46
 
 IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 Macklin is not Spared, Macklin, 
 
 Whose acting's hard, affected, and constrain'd, 
 Whose features, as each other they disdain'd, 
 At variance set, inflexible and coarse, 
 Ne'er know the workings of united force. 
 
 Mossop, an Irish actor of power and vehemence, but 
 awkward and ungainly in his movements, who, possessed 
 of a strong voice and unbounded vanity, was considered, 
 after Garrick and Barry, the leading tragedian of his day, 
 did not please the satirist ; he practised what was known 
 as the teapot attitude that is, he sawed the air too much 
 with the right hand : 
 
 Mossop, attach'd to military plan, 
 
 Still kept his eye fixed on his right-hand man ; 
 
 Whilst the mouth measures words with seeming skill, 
 
 The right hand labours, and the left lies still. 
 
 For he, resolved on Scripture grounds to go, 
 
 What the right doth, the left hand shall not know. 
 
 Mossop's emphasis was evidently eccentric : 
 
 With studied impropriety of speech, 
 
 He soars beyond the hackney critic's reach ; 
 
 To epithets allots emphatic state, 
 
 Whilst principals, ungraced, like lackeys, wait. 
 
 Conjunction, preposition, adverb join 
 
 To stamp new vigour on the nervous line ; 
 
 In monosyllables his thunders roll, 
 
 He, she, it, and, we, ye, they, fright the soul. 
 
 Even the elegant and admired Barry did not escape 
 censure. As Hamlet, in Churchill's opinion, he anticipated 
 too prematurely the appearance of his father's ghost : 
 
 Some dozen lines before the ghost is there, 
 
 Behold him for the solemn scene prepare ; 
 
 See IIOAV he frames his eyes, poises each limb, 
 
 Puts the whole body into proper trim 
 
 From whence we learn, with no great stretch of art, 
 
 Five lines hence comes a ghost, and ha ! a start. 
 
 47
 
 THE ENGLISH STAGE 
 
 Perhaps the most masterly lines, as they are certainly the 
 most severe in the whole poem, are those describing the 
 imperfections of an obscure actor named Jackson, after- 
 wards lessee of the Edinburgh theatre. 
 
 By Nature formed in her perversest mood, 
 
 With no one requisite of art endued, 
 
 Next Jackson came Observe that settled glare, 
 
 Which better speaks the puppet than the player ; 
 
 List to that voice did ever Discord hear 
 
 Sounds so well fitted to her untuned ear ? 
 
 When to enforce some very tender part 
 
 The right hand slips by instinct to the heart, 
 
 His soul, of every other thought bereft, 
 
 Is anxious only where to place the left. 
 
 Awkward, embarrass'd, stiff, without the skill 
 Of moving gracefully, or standing still, 
 One leg, as if suspicious of his brother, 
 Desirous seems to run away from t'other. 
 
 Fortunately Churchill was a burly man "the clumsy 
 curate of Clapham,"" Foote called him or some of the 
 players might have wreaked physical vengeance on their 
 assailant. As it was, Davies, who, although one of the 
 sufferers, gives a very candid account of the affair, describes 
 the censured actors as running about like " stricken deer." 
 Garrick found himself in an awkward position. He alone 
 of all the players was wholly praised by the poet, he alone 
 declared worthy to fill the chair once occupied by Roscius. 
 His colleagues, smarting under the lash, felt a natural 
 resentment at his immunity. Garrick, always anxious to 
 please all parties, affected to think lightly of Churchill's 
 eulogy, and ascribed it to a desire on Churchill's part to 
 obtain free admission to Drury Lane. Garrick's sentiments 
 were repeated to the poet, who resented them bitterly and 
 determined to punish such ingratitude. He sat down and 
 wrote The Apology, which was intended to reply to the 
 indignant actors and literary critics of The Rosciad, and at 
 
 48
 
 IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 the same time drag down Garrick from his former 
 eminence. Bitterly he poured contempt and ridicule on 
 the luckless strolling players of the day, from whose 
 necessitous ranks was soon to emerge the genius of Mrs. 
 Siddons ; players were the " lowest sons of earth " ; and 
 Garrick "a hero from a puppet-show." 
 
 Forgetful of himself, he rears his head, 
 
 And scorns the dunghill, where he first was bred. 
 
 Let the vain tyrant sit amidst his guards, 
 His puny green-room wits and venal bards, 
 Who meanly tremble at the puppet's frown, 
 And for a playhouse freedom lose their own. 
 
 Ne'er will I flatter, cringe, or bend the knee 
 To those who, slaves to all, are slaves to me. 
 
 Garrick, conscious that by his own indiscretion he had 
 incurred this scathing attack, affected to take it in good 
 part ; he wrote to a friend of Churchill expressing his 
 admiration of the poem : " I appear," he wrote, " as I once 
 saw a poor soldier on the parade, who was acting a 
 pleasantry of countenance, while his back was most 
 woefully striped with the cat-o^-nine-tails." From this 
 moment Churchill and Garrick became friends. There is a 
 strange irony in the poet who could pour such scorn upon 
 the straits and distresses of the poor strolling actor, writing, 
 when profligacy and extravagance had played havoc with 
 his fortune, to beg a loan from the player, Garrick : 
 
 "Half drunk, half mad, and quite stripped of all my 
 money, I should be much obliged if you would enclose and 
 send by the bearer five pieces, by way of adding to the 
 favours already received by yours sincerely, 
 
 " CHARLES CHURCHILL." 
 
 With his usual generosity, Garrick repeatedly assisted 
 the unfortunate poet, up to the hour of his untimely death, 
 in 1764, at the early age of thirty-three. 
 
 49
 
 THE ENGLISH STAGE 
 
 Of a very different type from Churchill was another of 
 Garrick^s tormentors, Mr. Fitzpatrick. His case affords 
 a striking instance of the power that lay in the hands 
 of any unworthy creature to use, or abuse, his opportunity 
 as one of the public to insult and degrade an actor against 
 whom he cherished resentment. Fitzpatrick was an 
 impudent and effeminate Irish fop, whose mincing and 
 wriggling manners were in unpleasant contrast to his 
 large and athletic build. Originally befriended and 
 encouraged by Garrick, he came to think himself a critic, and 
 in order to better display his critical acumen and serve the 
 interests of his fellow-countryman, the tragedian Mossop, 
 he soon turned on Garrick and attacked his acting. Not 
 content with writing his depreciation, he would go to the 
 pit of Drury Lane on the nights Garrick was playing ; if 
 it were a tragedy, he and his friends would talk and laugh 
 and utter scornful sounds ; if it were a comedy, they would 
 sit with grave and immovable features, while the rest of 
 the audience were laughing heartily. Even off' the stage 
 he pursued Garrick with his offensive conduct ; at the 
 Shakespeare Club, to which they both belonged, he grossly 
 insulted the great actor. Garrick was moved to retort ; 
 he published a passable satire in verse, The Fribbleriad, in 
 which Fitzpatrick was ridiculed as chief of the " fribble " 
 tribe of inane and insignificant dandies. Churchill, in The 
 Rosciad, took up the parable, and drew an awful picture 
 of the effeminate creature : 
 
 Nor male, nor female ; neither and yet both ; 
 Of neuter gender, though of Irish growth ; 
 A six-foot suckling, mincing in its gait ; 
 Affected, peevish, prim and delicate ; 
 Fearful it seem'd, though of athletic make, 
 Lest brutal breezes should too roughly shake 
 Its tender form, and savage motion spread, 
 O'er its pale cheeks, the horrid manly red. 
 
 No one will deny that Fitzpatrick had brought on him- 
 self this chastisement, which was well within the rules 
 
 50
 
 IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 of fair play, as literary controversy was conducted in these 
 days. But an actor who indulged in encounters of this 
 kind had a vulnerable spot in his armour at which a coward 
 would not hesitate to strike; he exposed himself, whenever he 
 appeared on the public stage, to any mean or unscrupulous 
 attack his adversary might organise against him. Fitzpatrick 
 found the desired opportunity when Garrick, as manager 
 of Drury Lane, decided to abolish the rule that allowed 
 persons to come into the theatre at half-price after the 
 third act of a play. The measure was, of course, unpopular 
 with a large section of playgoers ; to these Fitzpatrick 
 appealed and, under the cloak of public-spirited indigna- 
 tion, determined to gratify his private spite. He organised 
 a riot. On the night of January 25th, 1762, the audience, 
 led by Fitzpatrick, who addressed them in a speech from 
 the front of the boxes, refused Garrick a hearing, tore up 
 the benches, destroyed the furniture, and were only pre- 
 vented from setting fire to the theatre by the presence 
 of mind of Moody, an Irish player, who stopped a ruffian 
 in the act of setting fire to the scenery. Difficult as it is to 
 believe, Moody's conduct on this occasion was considered 
 most impudent, and when, the following night, he tried to 
 apologise to the audience in a jocular way by saying he was 
 sorry ;t he had displeased them by saving their lives, 11 they 
 shouted to him to go on his knees and ask pardon for his 
 effrontery. " I will not, by heaven ! " answered the resolute 
 Irishman, and walked off the stage. Fitzpatrick and his 
 friends declared Moody should never act again in London ; 
 but Moody, having no fear, went to see Fitzpatrick, told 
 him he intended to fight him, and by his firmness compelled 
 the dandy to put a stop to his persecution. 
 
 It was this miserable incident, combined with other causes 
 of mortification and disappointment, that impelled Garrick 
 to leave England in 1763 and travel abroad for two years. 
 It was a wise step ; not only did he meet with a reception on 
 the Continent such as no English actor before or since has 
 
 51
 
 THE ENGLISH STAGE 
 
 experienced, but when he returned in 1765 to Drury Lane, 
 he found a public ready to take him once more to their 
 hearts ; and until his retirement in 1776 he had no cause 
 to complain of their want of appreciation or respect. But 
 ignoble wretches to the last sought to get money from 
 Garrick by disturbing his peace of mind ; by threatening 
 him with the publication of gross libels, and hinting that 
 it was in his power to mitigate their severity by a timely 
 disbursement of ready money. Williams, a Welsh dis- 
 senting minister, wrote a scathing personal attack on 
 Garrick as actor and manager, but before publishing it, he 
 writes himself to Garrick, warning him that a pamphlet, 
 eloquently written by a young man of genius, and calculated 
 to do him irreparable mischief, is about to be issued, unless 
 Mr. Garrick " take some method to undeceive the young 
 man." During his last illness an anonymous writer, signing 
 himself "Curtius," threatened the publication of three 
 letters in which Garrick was to be humbled to the dust by 
 the public exposure of his true character, " But, 1 ' adds 
 " Curtius," in a letter privately sent to Garrick, " if, in the 
 swelling heap of charges they contain, you can obviate 
 some, they shall be expunged." This " Curtius " was a 
 dangerous assailant, no other than the Rev. William 
 Jackson, a disreputable Anglican clergyman, who had 
 killed by a hideous slander Foote, the actor. Foote had 
 caricatured Williams on the stage as " Dr. Viper," and 
 Williams revenged himself by suborning Foote's coachman 
 to bring an infamous charge against his master. The 
 misery of it had brought about Foote's death in 1777. 
 Now, two years later, this time without any provocation, 
 the Rev. William Jackson, alias Curtius, employs his foul 
 arts against the dying Garrick. But death outstripped his 
 villainous purposes, and spared Garrick the humiliation of 
 facing this clerical ruffian. Sixteen years after Garrick's 
 death, Jackson committed suicide in the dock in Dublin, 
 when he was about to be condemned to death as a French 
 
 52
 
 IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 spy. It is shocking to think that a man of Garrick's 
 refinement and high character should have been brought 
 into contact with such men as Williams and Jackson. 
 Here we have unabashed blackmailing, not by ordinary 
 criminals, but by reverend persons of education and 
 position, who should have known better than to approach 
 even a player in so vile a habit. 
 
 With the members of his own calling Garrick paid the 
 penalty of extraordinary success by encountering jealousy 
 and hostility open and avowed, treacherous and clandes- 
 tine ; but it never amounted to much, nor very seriously 
 disturbed his peace of mind, except in ono instance, 
 that of Samuel Foote. This ill-natured humorist was 
 a perpetual thorn in the side of Garrick, as he was in 
 those of a great number of persons. To Foote nothing 
 was sacred from the exercise of his unfeeling wit ; a heart- 
 less and cowardly buffoon, nothing but the threat of 
 physical chastisement could restrain his malice. Going 
 out to dinner immediately after his wife's death, he enter- 
 tained the table by an extravagantly comic assumption of 
 grief. " By Footers buffoonery and broad-faced merri- 
 ment," said Sir Joshua Reynolds, "private friendship, 
 public decency, and everything estimable among men, 
 were trod underfoot." 
 
 His strokes of humour and his bursts of sport, 
 says Churchill, 
 
 Are all contained in this one word, distort. 
 Doth a man stutter, look asquint, or halt? 
 Mimics draw humour out of nature's fault ; 
 With personal defects their mirth adorn, 
 And hang misfortune out to public scorn. 
 
 Garrick was not likely to escape from the malicious 
 ridicule of a jester who said of audiences in general : 
 " Who will give money to be told Mr. Such-a-one is 
 wiser and better than himself? Demolish a conspicuous 
 
 53
 
 THE ENGLISH STAGE 
 
 character, and sink him below our level ; then we are 
 pleased, then we chuckle and grin, and toss the half-crown 
 on the counter." Foote, at the Haymarket Theatre, 
 invited the ready half-crowns of his patrons by performing 
 pieces of his own composition, the characters in which 
 were thinly disguised burlesques of well-known persons. 
 Gratitude was a word unknown in the mimic's vocabulary ; 
 he might owe Garrick some hundreds of pounds ; borrow 
 his scenery, ask favours of him, place himself under all 
 manner of obligations to the other's good nature ; none 
 of these considerations could deter him from wounding his 
 benefactor's susceptibilities by holding him up to ridicule 
 on the stage, from scoffing behind his back at his so-called 
 stinginess, pouring contempt on his acting, and vilifying 
 his character. Yet in the hour of his awful misfortune, 
 when he had to defend himself against the vilest slander, 
 Foote found no more loyal friend, no more faithful sup- 
 porter, than David Garrick. 
 
 In considering the controversies, disputes, and misunder- 
 standings that affected the relations of Garrick with certain 
 of his contemporaries, it would be unfair to assert that in 
 many instances Garrick's own faults of character had not 
 contributed to exasperate his opponents, encourage their 
 attacks, provoke their jealousy. " Of inordinate vanity," 
 says one writer in describing Garrick, " at once the most 
 courteous, genial, sore, and sensitive of men ; full of 
 kindliness, yet ever quarrelling ; scheming for applause, 
 even in the society of his most intimate friends ; a clever 
 writer, a wit, and a friend of wits, yet capable of mutilat- 
 ing Hamlet and degrading A Midsummer Night's Dream 
 into a ballet-opera." This is no very unjust account of 
 the contradictions that are to be found in the character 
 of this remarkable man. Vain not perhaps inordinately 
 vain Garrick certainly was, but not half so vain as, in 
 the opinion of Dr. Johnson, he had a right to be; the 
 sage declared he would have had a couple of fellows with 
 
 54
 
 long poles walking before him to knock everybody down if 
 he had enjoyed as much applause and adulation as Garrick. 
 It is true that Garrick was too sensitive to criticism and 
 attack ; undoubtedly it was this extreme sensitiveness, his 
 eagerness to anticipate, if he could, unfavourable criti- 
 cism, even by writing it himself, that provoked envious, 
 malicious, or designing persons to torment him, to see him 
 writhe under their ill-treatment, in some cases to extract 
 money from him as the price of silence. Nor was Garrick 
 sufficiently straightforward and courageous in facing his 
 enemies ; he preferred to conciliate, to employ what he called 
 "finesse" with men whose ingratitude and baseness one 
 could have wished he had treated with the scorn and 
 indignation they deserved; his diplomacy, on which he 
 prided himself, only exasperated those on whom he prac- 
 tised it. His very good nature, that made it so difficult 
 for him to say " No, kd him to dodge and procrastinate, 
 until those he had not the determination to refuse were 
 worn out and irritated. Garrick loved the notice of the 
 great, the society of persons of rank. So did Dr. Johnson ; 
 but he had the courage to say so, whereas Garrick, in his 
 heart delighted, would affect to be unconcerned at a royal 
 command or a nobleman's invitation. Like many great men, 
 he liked to be surrounded by flatterers and dependants, 
 and as such persons are not to be found among men of 
 superior worth, Garrick was reproached for encouraging 
 the sycophancy of such an ignoble crew as the Kenricks 
 and Kellys and Woodfalls. 
 
 These were the great actor's failings. I have enumerated 
 them because, without them, it is impossible to do justice 
 to Garrick or his contemporaries ; but they were failings 
 in every sense venial and superficial, the natural imperfec- 
 tions of a human character. Had Garrick not been an 
 extraordinarily successful player, an object of envy and 
 resentment to bigoted and prejudiced minds, they would 
 not have been so severely visited on him in his lifetime,
 
 THE ENGLISH STAGE 
 
 and we should have heard less about them after his death. 
 " In the height of the public admiration for you," wrote 
 Mrs. Clive, who had acted and quarrelled with Garrick 
 all her life, " when you were never mentioned with any 
 other appellation but the Garrick, the charming man, the 
 fine fellow, the delightful creature, both by men and 
 ladies ; when they were admiring everything you did and 
 everything you scribbled at this time I was a livirg 
 witness that they did not know, nor could they be sensible, 
 of half your perfections." If Garrick were vain, ubiquitous, 
 affected, economical in trifles, he was at heart good- 
 natured, forgiving, and noble in his generosity. He gave 
 with a lavish hand to those needy and distressed ; they 
 repaid him by treachery and ingratitude ; he overlooked 
 their trespass and gave again. No man better deserved 
 his good fortune ; no man less deserved the detraction, the 
 envy, the malice that poisoned the cup of his happiness. 
 He raised the dignity of the player, he improved the con- 
 dition of the theatre. He was a generous and charitable 
 man in the highest sense of the words, a devoted husband, 
 an amiable and accomplished gentleman, in whom the 
 vanity, the sensitiveness, the restlessness of the artist, 
 obscured only from an unfriendly eye a heart that pitied 
 and forgave, a hand ever ready to succour the afflicted, a 
 gentle and a Christian spirit. Davies, who knew Garrick 
 well, no fulsome eulogist, closes his life of the great actor 
 with these words : " No man of his profession had ever 
 been so much the object of admiration ; few men were 
 ever more beloved ; nor was any man better formed to 
 adorn society, or more sincerely disposed and qualified to 
 serve mankind, than David Garrick." 
 
 Of the actors who were Garrick's contemporaries, only 
 one was ever seriously his rival, and that was Spranger 
 Barry. Originally a Dublin silversmith, his failure in 
 business obliged him to turn to some other means of 
 earning a living. His graceful figure, his handsome face, 
 
 56
 
 IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 his musical voice, tempted him to try his fortunes on the 
 stage. He first appeared at the Dublin theatre, then 
 the nursery of many famous players : Quin, Barry, Mossop, 
 Sheridan, Macklin, Mrs. Woffington, Mrs. Clive, and 
 Mrs. Bellamy, all hailed from Ireland. It was at Garrick's 
 suggestion that Barry came to London. His success was 
 immediate. Above all, he charmed the ladies " by the 
 soft melody of his love complaints and the noble ardour 
 of his courtship." He had not Garrick's fire or versatility ; 
 he had no gift for comedy ; but in such parts as Othello, 
 Romeo, and Alexander the Great, his superior physique, 
 his stately grace, his charming pathos, gave him victory. 
 Nothing can give us a better idea of the difference between 
 the two players than a lady's criticism of their respective 
 performances of Romeo. " Had I been Juliet," she said, 
 " to Garrick's Romeo, so ardent and impassioned was he, 
 I should have expected that he would come up to me in 
 the balcony ; but had I been Juliet to Barry's Romeo, 
 so tender, so eloquent, and so seductive was he, I should 
 certainly have gone down to him." It is no slight proof 
 of Garrick's freedom from jealousy that he was always 
 Barry's friend, and Barry dearly valued his friendship. 
 After a chequered career he lost a fortune in managing 
 one of the Dublin theatres Barry died the year after 
 Garrick's retirement, a martyr to gout. Two months later 
 his wife, an accomplished actress, made her re-appearance 
 at Covent Garden in her great part of Lady Randolph in 
 Dougia*. According to the curious custom of the day, 
 she spoke a prologue, in which she described her lone 
 condition to her audience : 
 
 Of the lov'd pilot of my life bereft, 
 Save your protection, not a hope is left. 
 
 The tree cut down on which she clung and grew, 
 Behold, the propless woodbine clings to you. 
 
 57
 
 THE ENGLISH STAGE 
 
 With the death of Barry in 1777, the retirement of 
 Garrick the year before, Mrs. Gibber and Mrs. Woffington 
 dead, Mrs. Pritchard and Mrs. Clive in retirement, a 
 generation of great players had passed from the stage. 
 But in 1782 the glory of the theatre was revived by the 
 first appearance of Mrs. Siddons as Isabella in The Fatal 
 Marriage at Drury Lane. It was not her first appearance 
 in London. Garrick had engaged her seven years before ; 
 but she had not been cast for parts that suited her ; her 
 genius was yet immature, and Garrick had failed to 
 detect even the promise of it. Now she astonished and 
 electrified her audience by the power of her declamation, 
 the intensity of her passion. In 1785 she reached the 
 zenith of her greatness by her performance of Lady 
 Macbeth. The year before, old Mrs. Clive, then over 
 seventy years of age, had come up from her retirement 
 at Twickenham to see the new actress who had so taken 
 the town by storm. She was eagerly asked what she 
 thought of her ; her reply is a truly delightful criticism : 
 "Think ! " she said, "why, I think it's all truth and day- 
 light ! " The year after Mrs. Siddons 1 appearance as 
 Isabella, her brother, John Kemble, had made a distinct 
 success at Drury Lane as Hamlet ; it was the beginning of 
 a career honourable and distinguished. The Kembles were 
 the first great players who had sprung from the itinerant 
 ranks of their calling. Their father, Roger, had been a 
 strolling player, and many were the hardships that John 
 Kemble and his brother Stephen would relate of their own 
 strolling days. The adversity of their early lives had given 
 the Kembles John and Mrs. Siddons strong and resolute 
 characters ; they were honourable, upright, worthy people, 
 with all their rather Crummies-like solemnity, players who 
 supported the dignity and independence of their calling. 
 Their history lies to a great extent in the nineteenth 
 century. The school of acting they introduced had neither 
 the fire and vivacity of that of Garrick, nor the fierceness 
 
 58
 
 IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 and intensity of that of Kean and George Frederick Cooke. 
 With some allowance for the prejudice of an actress whom 
 Mrs. Siddons eclipsed, Mrs. Barry's account of the Kemble 
 style of acting has some truth in it. " The Garrick school, 1 ' 1 
 she said, " was all rapidity and passion ; while the Kemble 
 school is so full of paw and pause, that, at first, the per- 
 formers, thinking their new competitors had either lost 
 their cues or forgotten their parts, used frequently to 
 prompt them."" That solemn pause, which in theatrical 
 history has become associated with the name of Macready, 
 would seem to have had its origin with the Kembles. But 
 the genius of Mrs. Siddons, the undoubted power of John 
 Kemble in all that was eloquent and dignified in tragedy, 
 these must not be confounded with, or judged by, the 
 mannerisms which their admirers or pupils copied and 
 converted into a habit of acting that had all the faults 
 but none of the genius of the originals. No actor or 
 actress has ever left so unmistakable an impress on those 
 who saw them, won such a unanimous tribute of praise 
 from the most diverse critics as Mrs. Siddons. In tragedy 
 she is supreme in the history of our English theatre. " Of 
 actors," said Lord Byron, " Cooke was the most natural, 
 Kemble the most supernatural, Kean the medium between 
 the two. But Mrs. Siddons was worth them all put 
 together."" We are apt to think to-day that there was 
 something mechanical, stagey, rather unnatural, about even 
 Mrs. Siddons, with all her greatness. Those who would 
 correct such an impression may refer to Charles Young, 
 the actor's, account of her entrance as Volumnia in 
 Coriolanus, in the scene of her son's triumph. Most 
 actresses had been content to follow the procession with 
 the conventional stately steps of the tragedy queen ; but 
 Mrs. Siddons recollected she was the proud mother of a 
 proud son: "Instead of dropping each foot at equi-distance 
 in cadence subservient to the orchestra, deaf to the guidance 
 of her woman's ear, with head erect and hands pressed 
 
 59
 
 firmly to her bosom, as if to repress by manual force its 
 triumphant swellings, she towered above all around her, and 
 almost reeled across the stage, her very soul, as it were, 
 dilating and rioting in its exultations, until her action lost 
 all grace and yet became so true to nature, so picturesque, 
 and so descriptive, that pit and gallery sprang to their 
 feet, electrified by the transcendent execution of the con- 
 ception." Few written criticisms can give any real picture 
 of a great piece of acting ; this one comes very near to it. 
 We catch a glimpse of the power and originality, the 
 "truth and daylight," 1 as Mrs. Clive called it, of Mrs. 
 Siddons 1 acting ; we see her doing a daring and difficult 
 thing that might well have been absurd or vulgar but for 
 the genius of the artist. 
 
 Mrs. Siddons, though a woman, could not escape the 
 penalty of success in those days, any more than Garrick. 
 No sooner had she won her great triumph in London than 
 scurrilous attacks were made on her private character and 
 that of her brother. Her morality being unassailable, 
 Mrs. Siddons was attacked and caricatured as an ungener- 
 ous, grasping woman, whose only desire as an artist was to 
 get money, who was deaf to all prayers of suffering or 
 distress, who would even suffer her relatives to starve or 
 subsist on public charity, sooner than give them a shilling 
 of her great earnings. She and her brother were falsely 
 accused of neglecting their aged father, and refusing assist- 
 ance to their most eccentric sister, Mrs. Curtis. Mrs. 
 Siddons may not have been as liberal with her money as 
 some of her fellow-artists, but we must always remember 
 that she was the mother of five children and supported her 
 husband. Even if there had been any truth in the charges 
 of meanness levelled against her, they were no concern of 
 the public ; but that is a later view. At the end of the 
 eighteenth century, in the very zenith of her success, such 
 libellous statements were sufficient to persuade an audience 
 at Drury Lane theatre to greet Mrs. Siddons with yells 
 
 60
 
 IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 and hoots of disapprobation, and compel her to address 
 them in her own defence. The actor was just as exposed at 
 the end of the century as in the time of Garrick to the 
 slander of some malicious penman, or the brutality of an 
 audience. But John Kemble was manfully indifferent to 
 such things, far more resolute in withstanding them than 
 David Garrick. Kemble, with all his affectation of Roman 
 dignity and solemn speech, had a nice sense of humour 
 and a stout heart. It was a happy omen for the theatre 
 when, towards the close of the century, John Kemble 
 became manager of Drury Lane. Though he could not 
 succeed in averting the ruin brought about by Sheridan's 
 disreputable administration, he preserved the stage itself 
 from many of the ill effects of the patentee's unscrupulous 
 extravagance. In 1802, weary of Sheridan, he took a share 
 in the management of Covent Garden Theatre, and 
 throughout the fifteen years that he governed its affairs, 
 upheld those high traditions of theatrical administration, 
 the legacy of Colley Gibber and David Garrick. 
 
 The traditions handed down to their successors by these 
 eighteenth-century actors are worthy of the beautiful art 
 they so faithfully pursued. The pure art of acting, 
 unassisted by the collaboration of other arts, received 
 in them its highest expression. The intention of all the 
 arts, says Sir Joshua Reynolds and he includes the art 
 of the actor among them is to supply the natural imper- 
 fection of things ; they are addressed not to the gross 
 senses, but to the desires of the mind, to that spark of 
 divinity which we have within, impatient of being circum- 
 scribed and pent up by the world that is about us ; painting 
 and acting are as far removed from the vulgar idea of 
 imitation as the refined civilised state in which we live 
 is removed from a gross state of nature. I believe that 
 the conditions of the eighteenth-century theatre were 
 peculiarly favourable to the realisation by the actor of 
 these, the highest possibilities of his art, that he had to 
 
 61
 
 THE ENGLISH STAGE 
 
 make a single, an individual appeal to the imagination, 
 the emotion of his audience which taxed to the full all 
 the resources of art, of temperament, of intelligence, that 
 he possessed. 
 
 And to follow his art in this eighteenth century, the 
 would-be player had to be prepared to face difficulties and 
 disadvantages which to-day have disappeared. I have in 
 these lectures been obliged to confine myself to the London 
 stage ; we have seen that there the actor had to endure 
 much that was odious, that he was exposed on occasions to 
 treatment which to-day is regarded by all sensible people 
 as a relic of Puritan barbarism. But the ambitious actor 
 who began his career as a strolling player had to endure, 
 if we may accept the reminiscences of John Kemble, such 
 humiliation, ignominy, actual suffering, as only a great 
 devotion to his work could have determined a man of 
 ordinary sensitiveness to go through. Towards the end 
 of the century, however, a great improvement in these 
 conditions took place. Ifcstead of booths and barns, the 
 provincial actor began to find in the more considerable 
 towns theatres ready to receive him. Within a period 
 of ten years, theatres were patented at Edinburgh, Bath, 
 Norwich, York, Hull, Liverpool, Manchester, Chester, and 
 Bristol, and at the end of the century we find the London 
 "stars," Kemble, Mrs. Siddons, and others, for the first 
 time making tours to the chief provincial centres. The 
 theatre was becoming more and more a part of the life of 
 the people, and, unprotected, unassisted by the State, more 
 and more at the mercy of popular taste. No art that is 
 left to the mercy of popular taste, that has to fight for its 
 existence, can escape some measure of corruption. In the 
 case of every other theatre in Europe, of every other art in 
 England save theatrical art, this truth has been realised. 
 It is the art of the actor that has suffered most in the 
 course of the struggle ; long runs, constant performances, 
 no reasonable man will deny, are baneful to the artist 
 
 62
 
 IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 Perhaps some persons in this country may be found who 
 will say that the art of the actor is not worthy of protec- 
 tion or encouragement ; there are persons to whom it gives 
 quite exceptional delight to call violinists " fiddlers," writers 
 " ink-slingers," painters " daubers, 11 and actors " mummers.'" 
 They are the Philistines, and belong to all centuries. We 
 see them at their fell work in the eighteenth as well as the 
 nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But an impartial 
 study of the history of this eighteenth-century theatre 
 proves to us conclusively that, under propitious conditions, 
 England is a soil as favourable to the production of fine 
 actors as any other, and that the traditions of the English 
 stage are as deserving as those of any other theatre of 
 fostering care and preservation. That any system 
 approaching the conditions of our eighteenth-century 
 theatres could ever be reproduced in our own time may 
 be a vain, a delusive hope ; and we shall be perhaps forced 
 to content ourselves with looking back with longing and 
 regret to the splendid vitality, the zealous emulation, the 
 spacious record of those great and palmy days of the 
 English actors.
 
 The Art and Status of the Actor 
 
 65
 
 THE ART AND STATUS OF THE 
 ACTORi 1 
 
 ON the only occasion on which I had the pleasure of 
 attending one of the ordinary meetings of the Playgoers' 1 
 Club, I heard a very entertaining paper read on the 
 subject of " The Overrated Drama," in which the extrava- 
 gant proportions to which the business of the theatre had 
 attained at the present moment were feelingly deplored 
 and pleasantly satirised. With your permission I would 
 to-night, for a short space, direct your attention to an 
 integral part of this inflated factor in our modern life 
 I mean the overrated actor ; and I would ask you 
 to look with me into some of the popular fallacies that 
 still lurk around the theatre, its art, and the exponents 
 of its art. 
 
 Though the art of the actor has become firmly fixed in 
 the respect and esteem of most thinking men, one is still 
 liable to meet with occasional outbursts of vigorous and 
 unsparing denunciation directed against this particular 
 art and the calling it employs. When these diatribes 
 are sincere, when they do not bear evident marks of 
 personal spleen or rancour, we are naturally led to ask 
 ourselves what is the cause or causes from which they 
 spring, for there must be some reason for manifestations 
 of this kind, however extravagant they may at first 
 appear. I believe that if we look into them we shall find 
 
 1 Read before the O. P. Club, April, 1901, and reprinted from 
 The Fortnightly Review. 
 
 67
 
 THE ART AND STATUS 
 
 that their origin is to be traced to the peculiar conditions 
 of the histrionic art, to illusions it cherishes in the minds 
 of many even of its admirers, to prejudices it excites in 
 the minds of persons ignorant of its real working, to the 
 envy and hostility it evokes from those who regard its 
 glittering triumphs and widespread popularity as unalloyed 
 with serious endeavour, with anxiety and disappointment, 
 with those cares and troubles that are the universal 
 accompaniments of every other form of human undertaking. 
 By examining some of these fallacies, by trying to see the 
 art and position of the actor as it really is, by seeing how 
 easily men may frame mistaken ideas of the purposes and 
 achievements of the theatre, it may be possible to explain, 
 if not to allay, these periodical bursts of indignation, to 
 disarm of some of their terrors the last eruptions of the 
 now almost extinct volcano of anti-theatrical prejudice. 
 
 If we are to pay attention to the note of alarm and 
 distress sounded by one or two writers, we must believe 
 that the inflation of the actor has reached a degree 
 of tumefaction that brings him very near to bursting 
 point ; in his efforts to swell himself out to the propor- 
 tions of other artists, or to emulate the ways and manners 
 of the real ladies and gentlemen with whom, by a 
 deplorable relaxation of social restraints, he has been 
 allowed to mingle, he is approaching within measurable 
 distance of the melancholy catastrophe that overtook the 
 too ambitious frog. For my own part, I believe that this 
 alarming picture of the aggrandisement of the actor is 
 rather a nightmare caused by an over-indulgence in trivial 
 gossip and unimportant newspaper paragraphs than a real 
 presentation of a crying evil. The public at large are, I 
 feel certain, practically unmoved by the case that has been 
 put before them. Those who have lent themselves to the 
 promotion of the actor from the outskirts of social 
 respectability, and have admitted him into the gilded 
 saloons of the aristocracy in which he is, by some people, 
 
 68
 
 OF THE ACTOR 
 
 supposed to uneasily disport himself, have acted in 
 obedience to the levelling spirit of an age that has broken 
 down barriers which class distinction or religious prejudice 
 had set up ; and as the actor has borne himself with a 
 sufficient grace and an abstention from actual outrage 
 equal to that displayed by successful merchants or 
 musicians under similar circumstances, our social leaders 
 are not likely to at present revoke the privilege accorded 
 to him, at the bidding of those who represent him as a 
 standing menace to a well-conducted household. For 
 playgoers, keenly interested in the actor as they see him 
 on the stage and follow him in the exercise of his art, it 
 is a matter, I am sure, of supreme indifference whether 
 the player's doings are assiduously and often indiscreetly 
 chronicled in the press, or whether he is received into 
 gilded saloons, be they those of noblemen or those not 
 infrequently associated with spirituous refreshment. To 
 most reasonable men, the social position of any body of 
 artists signifies little : it is to their achievements in their 
 respective fields of art that men look with interest and 
 anxiety. But if competent judges admire an actor's work, 
 if they see in it evidences of high intelligence and careful 
 study, they will be rather pleased than dissatisfied that 
 such work should meet with recognition from those who 
 are in a position to encourage and stimulate such talent 
 or genius as we may have amongst us, whatever the form 
 of artistic effort in which it chooses to manifest itself. 
 No unworthy feeling of envy would arise in their minds 
 on seeing an art that, in its higher manifestations, has a 
 long record of well-accredited genius, raised from an 
 unworthy obscurity, which had formerly re-acted with 
 baleful effect on the lives and characters of its exponents ; 
 they would rather rejoice that, in the words of Hazlitt, 
 " the actor has now an opportunity of being as respectable 
 as he may be, because his profession is respected as it ought 
 to be." 
 
 69
 
 THE ART AND STATUS 
 
 At the same time, it is not unnatural that the rapid 
 advancement in certain directions of a calling, long re- 
 garded with contempt and disapproval by a large section 
 of our countrymen, should have excited in some breasts 
 sincere feelings of astonishment and resentment ; in some 
 a feeling of jealousy that those they had, as the habit of 
 a lifetime, regarded as beneath them should, in some 
 respects, be promoted over their heads; in some, blind 
 to the higher aspects of the art and capable only of fixing 
 their gaze on its obvious imperfections, a regrettable spirit 
 of uncharitable hostility. It is from persons belonging 
 to these categories that come those attacks upon the actor 
 and his art which break out periodically, and which, if 
 they reflected public opinion, might seriously distract the 
 actor in the midst of his fancied security in public esteem. 
 Fortunately, these attacks are matters of supreme in- 
 difference to the public for reasons I have already indicated, 
 and that is why they meet with no considerable response 
 from the actors themselves. A newspaper, in reviewing 
 a work of this kind, remarked with some asperity that 
 actors were notoriously indifferent to attacks on their 
 profession. But I think the reason for this indifference 
 should provoke, on the part of those who make these 
 attacks, a reconsideration of the wisdom of their course 
 rather than resentment at the actor's silence. The 
 actor is indifferent to such attacks merely because the 
 public, his masters, are indifferent to them. They form 
 their own judgment of actors both in their public and 
 private capacities ; they are shrewd enough to exercise 
 their own discretion in the distribution of their favours, 
 and the actor will only be alarmed for the decline of 
 his prestige when he finds his art sunk and degraded in 
 the estimation of his honest fellow-countrymen. 
 
 One other topic suggests itself with regard to the 
 changes that have occurred in the relative status of the 
 actor. 
 
 70
 
 OF THE ACTOR 
 
 The resentment felt by some at his advance in public 
 esteem, or a spirit of blind conservatism that believes that 
 the actor finds his best intellectual development in tavern 
 bars or billiard saloons, is responsible for a sneer occasion- 
 ally levelled at our modern stage which is as unjust as it 
 is illogical. We sometimes come across the complaint, 
 not only outside but inside our calling, that the art of 
 acting is steadily deteriorating, because the stage is being 
 nowadays invaded by a number of well-born, well-bred, or 
 well-educated young men and women, who are represented 
 as being totally ignorant of their business, and apparently 
 incapable of ever learning it. Now if the art of acting is 
 nowadays really in a state of deterioration (a question 
 open to argument), it is, I venture to think, in the highest 
 degree fallacious to represent such deterioration as in any 
 way due to the influx into our calling of well-bred or 
 well-educated recruits. Of course the genius for acting is, 
 as any other form of artistic genius, conferred upon persons, 
 irrespective of their rank or education, of whether they 
 come from the palace or the plough, the board school or 
 the university ; and with such persons we have no concern ; 
 they may be trusted to look after themselves. But if the 
 ordinary level of acting appears to be in a depressed 
 condition that condition is due to the fact that our 
 modern actors lack the opportunities for acquiring training 
 and experience that were enjoyed by our predecessors, and 
 not to the fact that they now number among them a 
 greater percentage of well-educated men. It is, on the 
 other hand, difficult to believe that any profession or 
 calling or art does not indirectly benefit, in the general 
 level of its excellence, by being pursued by well-educated 
 men and women, and that that of the actor will not 
 appreciably suffer, but will rather gain in some respects, 
 by numbering among its exponents men and women who 
 enjoy such advantages as a good education confers on any 
 reasonable being. Birth and breeding and education will 
 
 71
 
 not make great actors, but they will not mar them. To 
 the many who are not great they will not take the place 
 of training and experience, but they will enable them to 
 satisfy the demands of those who expect to see accurately 
 represented on the stage every side of our social life, and 
 who believe that the stage, to fulfil that purpose, should 
 draw its exponents from all classes of the community. As 
 the prejudice against the theatre diminishes in intensity, 
 the calling of the actor will be necessarily open to classes 
 by whom it had been hitherto severely neglected. If this 
 stock of new blood does not materially add to our stock 
 of great actors, in other respects it will, I believe, be of 
 indirect benefit to our art. 
 
 We must not, however, forget that, according to some, 
 the performance of the actor is hardly to be dignified by 
 the name of an art, or, if it is, it is an art so paltry and 
 unintellectual as wholly unworthy to be ranked with its 
 sisters. The actor is usually subjected to destructive 
 criticism in his dual capacity of artist and man. As 
 an artist he is said to be the exponent of a form of 
 mimicry little raised above that practised by the ape, 
 unworthy to be dignified by the name of art, demanding, 
 as it does, no exercise of study or intelligence ; as a man, 
 he is said to be so corrupted by the inherent immorality 
 of his calling and the vanity fostered in him by excessive 
 adulation that he is unfitted to hold social intercourse 
 with respectable or intellectual people. If this view of 
 the conduct and capacity of the actor can be successfully 
 established and generally accepted as the true one, it is 
 obvious that he will sink to a level in the social scale only 
 slightly above that occupied by the common hangman, 
 without, however, the excuse enjoyed by the latter artist 
 that, in pursuing his ignoble calling, he is conferring a 
 practical service on the community. Indeed, from the 
 extremely unamiable tone adopted by some recent critics 
 in their strictures on the unfortunate actor, one would be 
 
 72
 
 OF THE ACTOR 
 
 inclined to infer that if these gentlemen were obliged to 
 strike a balance between the respective claims of the great 
 actor Betterton and his famous contemporary, John Ketch, 
 to the respectful esteem of posterity, they would pronounce 
 unhesitatingly in favour of the latter. 
 
 But to pass to more serious criticism, criticism that is 
 not conspicuously wanting in that " sweetness and light " 
 which should be the first attribute of all such controversy, 
 there are one or two points raised by those who represent 
 the art of acting as an inferior and unworthy art that 
 claim passing consideration. It is true that Leigh Hunt 
 pronounced all such attempts to degrade the actor's art as 
 unworthy of argument ; and so for the most part they may 
 be. At the same time, by discussing some of them in a general 
 way, one may arrive at certain truths with regard to that 
 art, truths which at the present time, when, in the opinion 
 of many, the art of acting has lost something of that 
 distinct prominence which it enjoyed a hundred years ago, 
 may serve to remind us of its higher aspects and possi- 
 bilities, and stimulate those who are sincerely anxious that 
 it should not decline from its glorious past. 
 
 If the art of acting is to look for its credentials to our 
 admiration and respect, to the judgment of the world's 
 great critics of art, it finds arrayed on its side a wealth of 
 powerful testimony that is too frequently entirely ignored 
 oy modem writers in dealing with this question. At the 
 hands of his detractors, from Mr. Augustine Birrell down- 
 wards, the actor finds himself confronted at the outset 
 with lines penned by Shakespeare and Macready in those 
 moments of passing disappointment or depression that are 
 the almost inseparable accompaniments of the artistic 
 temperament, and is told that his art is irrevocably con- 
 demned out of the mouths of its greatest exponents. But 
 the reverse side of the picture is seldom presented to him. 
 He is not reminded that, in the words of Shakespeare's 
 latest and best biographer, such self-pity as the poet 
 
 78
 
 THE ART AND STATUS 
 
 expresses in the Sonnets on account of his pursuit of the 
 actor's calling is, if literally interpreted, the reflection of 
 an evanescent mood, that his interest in all that touched 
 the efficiency of his profession was permanently active, and 
 that he loyally and uninterruptedly pursued that pro- 
 fession until he had resigned all connection with the 
 theatre ; nor do we find invoked against the grumblings 
 of Macready his definition of the art of acting which, if 
 somewhat turgid in expression, is none the less dignified 
 and inspiring. Are we, in similar fashion, to condemn 
 the profession of the advocate because Mr. Birrell, K.C., 
 in his essay on " Actors," writes that Macready these are 
 his actual words "was always regretting heaven help 
 him! that he wasn't a barrister-at-law ? " Should we 
 not rather decide that Mr. Bin-ell's mournful exclamation 
 springs from a painful but evanescent recollection of early 
 brieflessness rather than from an enduring contempt for 
 the profession he adorns ? In the same spirit are an 
 actor's momentary expressions of a passing discontent 
 with his lot, such as are to be found in most auto- 
 biographical records, to stand against the considered 
 judgments of Goethe and Schiller, Voltaire and Lessing, 
 Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt, George Eliot and George 
 Henry Lewes ? all pronouncing in favour of the beauty 
 and dignity of an art "which Horace did not think it 
 beneath his genius to advise, Addison to recommend, and 
 Voltaire to practise as well as to protect." If the value 
 of an art is to be decided by the impression it makes in 
 its more perfected form on the highest intellects of its 
 time and it is perhaps difficult to find a more satisfactory 
 criterion for ordinary men then the art of acting comes 
 to us stamped with the respect of genius, confided to our 
 care by illustrious men as a product of the imagination 
 and intellect of mankind that is to be encouraged and 
 esteemed, not belittled and derided. 
 
 The commonest fallacy, cherished by many in regard to 
 
 74
 
 OF THE ACTOR 
 
 the actor's art, is that it is the art of the mimic and 
 nothing more, an art of sedulous imitation, offering no 
 scope to originality or independent, intellectual exertion. 
 A rough-and-ready answer to this common assertion is 
 contained in the fact that good mimics are as a rule 
 notoriously bad actors, and that obviously the sedulous 
 imitation of actual men and women in the circumstances 
 of our daily life can afford an actor little help in the 
 portrayal of such creations of imaginative genius as Hamlet 
 or Othello. That the art of acting had its origin, in 
 common with the pictorial arts, in an imitation of nature, 
 is possible and probable ; that it soon passed from mere 
 imitation to representation is certain ; and therefore 
 equally certain is it to my mind that, as a result of that 
 transition, the actor is called upon, in common with other 
 representative artists, to reproduce in idealised form that 
 branch of nature man which is his especial study. As 
 one great critic has tersely expressed it, " neither the poet 
 nor the actor pretends closely to copy nature, but only to 
 represent nature sublimated into the ideal," and it is this 
 process of idealism that the actor must apply to every 
 character he undertakes to portray, no matter how nearly 
 that character may seem to approach to everyday reality, 
 if he would present it conformably to those rules of correct 
 and beautiful expression that are as imperative in the art 
 of the theatre as they are in the arts that express them- 
 selves on canvas or in marble. The carrying out of this 
 process calls on him for gifts of insight and imagination 
 similar to those we look for in any other form of artist ; 
 and as insight and imagination of the highest order are 
 employed in the creation by the poet of such transcendent 
 beings as Hamlet or Lear, so in translating such beings 
 into action, in putting them before the spectator as 
 creatures of flesh and blood, insight and imagination of a 
 high order will alone enable the actor to achieve that 
 " union of grandeur without pomp, and nature without 
 
 75
 
 THE ART AND STATUS 
 
 triviality,"" that supreme idealisation of man in action as 
 we see him about us, which is the fitting and worthy 
 complement of the art of the dramatic poet. Without 
 in any way detracting from the share of the dramatist in 
 the productions of the theatre, it must, I think, be ad- 
 mitted by any one who takes the trouble to consider the 
 question from an enlightened standpoint, that the actor is 
 not the mere parrot-like reciter of the words of the play- 
 wright, that the higher the dramatist soars the greater is 
 his need of some kind of intellectual response on the part 
 of his actors, and that instead of setting up actor and 
 author as rivals who are perpetually endeavouring to 
 extend their frontiers at each other's expense, they should 
 be regarded as equal participators in the highest achieve- 
 ments of the theatre. 
 
 The answer of G. H. Lewes to the question propounded 
 by Diderot in his famous Parodoxe, How far does or 
 should the actor really feel the passion he expresses ? is not 
 only interesting as a correct solution of a rather simple 
 problem that has given rise to a good deal of ignorant 
 and thoughtless comment, but shows us very clearly the 
 point in his art where the actor is called upon to exercise 
 a faculty for intelligent selection similar to that demanded 
 from any other artist. "As in all art," writes Lewes, 
 "feeling lies at the root, but the foliage and flowers, 
 though deriving their sap from emotion, derive their form 
 and structure from the intellect." Poet and actor must 
 be capable of feeling the emotions they translate into 
 word or action, but must be so far masters of themselves 
 as to be able to select from their emotions those elements 
 that will serve as materials for their art. " The sudden 
 flash of suggestion which is called inspiration may be 
 valuable, it may be worthless ; the artistic intellect esti- 
 mates the value, and accepts or rejects it accordingly." 
 Passion and reflection are the two elements that, happily 
 combined, compose great acting; for passion alone pro- 
 
 76
 
 OF THE ACTOR 
 
 duces disordered results, reflection alone a cold and unreal 
 imitation. If the combination be a rare one, that is a 
 cause for constant regret ; we may lament the absence of 
 worthy exponents of an art to our heart's content ; but 
 we must not allow the absence of great acting to blind us 
 to the fact that acting is a great art ; those who deplore 
 our modern acting, and call for its reform, too often forfeit 
 our attention and respect by telling us at the same time 
 that our art is contemptible and an unworthy employment 
 for an intellectual man. Such criticism can only have the 
 effect of placing the modern actor, who seeks to improve 
 and develop his art, on the horns of a dilemma, from which, 
 however, a moderate exercise of reason and common sense 
 may successfully extricate him. 
 
 Another common objection urged against the claims of 
 the actor's art to occupy a place by the side of other arts, 
 is that the actor's is an art for which no special training 
 is required, his calling one into which anybody can enter 
 and, no matter how inferior his attainments, find immediate 
 employment. But the same might be said of the art of 
 literature, or the art of oratory. All those arts which 
 have not, like music and painting, a visible technique 
 written, so to speak, across their faces, which operates as 
 an immediate deterrent to thoughtless aspirants, are liable 
 to reckless invasion at the hands of people whose desires 
 and ambitions are hopelessly in excess of their gifts. To 
 write or to speak or to act seem uncommonly easy to a 
 number of over-confident persons ; some of these are 
 content with merely regarding the art from a disrespectful 
 distance, and nursing an obstinate conviction that they 
 could easily practise it if they only took the trouble to try ; 
 others do try, and in course of time go to swell the 
 melancholy army of those who have mistaken their 
 vocations in life. But because bad literature, bad oratory, 
 and bad acting are, like the poor, always with us, and 
 there are probably few here who at various times in their 
 
 77
 
 THE ART AND STATUS 
 
 armchair, at church, or in the theatre, have not suffered 
 distress at the hands of incompetence in one or all of these 
 forms, are we to deny that writing or speaking or acting, 
 if thoughtfully, instead of thoughtlessly practised, reveal 
 their rules of form and expression to those who cultivate 
 them seriously, and demand the same lifelong adherence 
 on the part of those who follow them in the hope of 
 attaining to some measure of perfection, as the arts whose 
 preliminaries are more obviously technical ? 
 
 At the same time it would be idle to deny that, of all 
 artistic callings, that of the actor offers most temptation 
 to loafers and those who have failed in almost every other 
 capacity in life. The term " actor " is a wide one, and 
 covers a multitude of persons who would no doubt frankly 
 confess that their presence on the stage was not due to 
 any desire to pursue acting as an art. For purposes of 
 legislation, and in everyday talk, all kinds of stage 
 representation, each excellent in its way, are lumped 
 together, and the exponents of these various forms of 
 entertainment, in some of which the art of acting plays 
 a comparatively subordinate part, are grouped together 
 generically as actors and actresses. And thus it is that 
 persons who have never acted in their lives, whose associa- 
 tion with the theatre has been dumb and fleeting, do not 
 hesitate to satisfy, when occasion demands, the exigencies 
 of their country^ justice by describing themselves on 
 charge sheets and other legal documents of a melancholy 
 character as actors and actresses. No calling is so rich 
 in sutlers and camp-followers, because no calling is so easy 
 to enter in some capacity or other, no term is so loosely 
 employed as that of actor, and no calling offers to the 
 outsider such seeming allurements to decoy the ignorant 
 and unwary. We all of us have known, in some form or 
 other, the glamour of the theatre to those who sit in front 
 of the curtain. How many really well-informed persons 
 find it difficult to believe that acting is not " such fun," 
 
 78
 
 OF THE ACTOR 
 
 and the whole business nothing but one long round of 
 applause and suppers. There are four prime fallacies that 
 I have found to be constantly entertained by intelligent 
 ladies and gentlemen with regard to the work of the 
 actor ; they are : firstly, that he is surrounded in the 
 theatre by a large staff' of intelligent and willing attendants 
 whose nightly duty it is to dress him and make up his face 
 for him ; secondly, that, in his performance, he speaks the 
 author's words or not, as his fancy may dictate ; thirdly, 
 that, during the run of a piece he can accept an invitation 
 to dinner by merely mentioning to his manager his in- 
 tention of absenting himself on that particular evening, 
 when his understudy will, as a matter of course, take his 
 place ; and, fourthly, that the evening's performance in- 
 variably terminates with a delightful supper served in the 
 green-room, to which all the actors and actresses concerned 
 in the piece are bidden. Let me assure you that not 
 one of these delightful suppositions has the least foundation 
 in fact, and that I have only cited them as instances of 
 the illusions cherished by rational persons as to the actual 
 conditions of the actor's calling. Further, they will explain 
 those attractions that the theatre offers to lazy, thoughtless, 
 vain, or indolent persons, who find their way behind the 
 curtain, not because they wish to take the first step in 
 pursuing an art for which they feel a genuine love, and in 
 which they have some reason to hope that they may, by 
 hard work, ultimately enjoy some measure of success, but 
 because they look forward to being highly paid for doing 
 little, much applauded for making fools of themselves, and 
 constantly supplied with opportunities for dissipation and 
 indulgence of every kind. 
 
 Illusions of this kind will be cherished in regard to the 
 business of the theatre as long as the theatre exists ; they 
 spring from the nature of things, from the glamour that 
 surrounds the actual representation of a play ; from the 
 ignorance of ordinary persons as to the real conditions of 
 
 79
 
 THE ART AND STATUS 
 
 such representation. What is more, they are the ground- 
 work of those reckless and uncharitable charges levelled 
 against men and women of the dramatic profession by 
 unblushing Pharisees who would hold up their hands in 
 horror if you asked them to enter a theatre, but who yet 
 continue to unsparingly denounce the sins and follies of 
 actors and actresses. These teachers and preachers who, 
 I am sorry to say, number among them more than one 
 religious minister of respectable eminence, seem to forget, 
 in their fervid zeal, that there is no sin more ugly and 
 unchristian than want of charity, no proceeding more 
 dishonest than to accuse without investigation and to 
 judge without evidence. If such persons are honestly bent 
 on correcting what they believe to be the evils that 
 corrupt the theatre, let them adopt the same methods for 
 reforming the theatre they would apply to Ratcliffe High- 
 way, or to the conversion of African savages ; let them 
 come amongst us, let them manfully face the perils and 
 dangers of the dark continent that lies behind the curtain, 
 let them watch in its actual working the life of the 
 theatre, let them satisfy themselves by personal investi- 
 gation of the evils they denounce ; then, having reformed 
 their methods of arriving at a judgment, they may, if there 
 be need, reform us ; then we may, if we require the lesson, 
 learn to be true to our profession, when they have shown 
 themselves true to theirs ; but unchristian anathema from 
 those who profess themselves followers of Christ will not 
 convince the simplest sinner of the error of his ways. It 
 was not a teacher of this kind who reformed the publican. 
 Speaking from my own experience, I would assure those 
 who are honestly anxious to see the calling of an actor as 
 it really is, that it is one in which a great deal of hard, 
 and at times, tiresome work has to be done, that its 
 advantages and its drawbacks are like those of any other 
 profession, equally divided ; that success in it is generally 
 proportionate to merit ; that it has its trials and tempta- 
 
 80
 
 OF THE ACTOR 
 
 tions and what profession has not trials and temptations 
 peculiar to itself? that it is a calling very varied in its 
 many forms of expression, some less dignified and intel- 
 lectual than others, but that if we regard its highest 
 examples, the examples of a Garrick or a Kean, as in 
 judging the real service of painting or poetry we should 
 regard the examples of Raphael and Milton as distinct 
 from those of the pot-boiler or the ballad-monger, it is 
 worthy to rank by the side of arts that rely on the 
 intellect or the imagination of man for their supreme 
 manifestation. Let men once free their minds from the 
 wealth of illusion and misrepresentation that hangs round 
 the glittering achievements of the theatre, and they will 
 come to regard the actor not as a kind of meretricious 
 bogey, but as in reality an ordinary worker in the field of 
 art, neither better nor worse than his fellows ; then, and 
 not till then, will they arrive at a juster and kindlier 
 estimate of the actor's work, and save themselves the 
 ineffectual labour of trying to bring into contempt an art 
 that has too long ministered to the higher pleasure of 
 mankind to be uprooted from their affection and esteem 
 by an ill-natured catalogue of the weaknesses of its ex- 
 ponents and the trivial side of its practice. The critic 
 who would obscure the intellectual importance of an art, 
 the real essence of its genius, by the slighting enumeration 
 of such accidents in its practice as that the actor paints 
 his face and shaves his chin, or by misrepresenting him as 
 a slavish mimic or an insincere mountebank, such a critic 
 merely confounds the accidents of an art with its essence, 
 its rude origin with the perfected form to which the 
 progress of the human intellect has brought it. 
 
 I have said that the actor is open to disparagement, 
 and receives it sometimes in the heartiest fashion both as 
 an artist and a man. We have dealt with him in his 
 former capacity ; what are we to say of him in the latter ? 
 What has the actor done as a man to deserve the re- 
 Si &
 
 THE ART AND STATUS 
 
 probation that we find some writers now and then so 
 cordially bestowing on him ? After careful examination 
 I find that the gravamen of the charge, the real cause 
 that agitates and distresses certain persons, is the extra- 
 ordinary publicity and adulation of which the actor is 
 made the object, publicity and adulation which, in their 
 opinion, he would not receive if his own vanity and love 
 of praise did not imperatively demand it. The actor is 
 represented as craving for and living upon puffs and 
 paragraphs, miserable if his most trivial doings escape 
 the notice of a reporter, elated if he find himself the hero 
 of some absurd adventure or puerile controversy. What- 
 ever the real causes of this exaggerated importance that 
 is said to be attached to the actor and his doings, and 
 however unfair to the actor the inferences that may be 
 drawn from it, it is, I think, undeniable that we frequently 
 read very foolish things written about actors, and some- 
 times very foolish words spoken by actors and actresses in 
 the course of interviews ; it would be idle to pretend that 
 the members of the dramatic profession have never 
 supplied food for laughter and ridicule by absurd examples 
 of disordered vanity or exaggerated self-importance. But 
 the broad question which underlies these manifestations 
 of human weakness, and is raised by the criticisms they 
 provoke, is the simple one of cause and effect. Are these 
 paragraphs and these interviews concerning the actor that 
 are prominent in almost any newspaper we may choose to 
 open, caused by his insatiate craving for publicity, or are 
 they printed and published by the newspapers themselves 
 in response to public curiosity which, penetrating as it 
 does by means of journalism into the privacy of any class 
 of public character, finds most gratification and amusement 
 in invading the seclusion of the actor ? I do not think 
 that anybody who regards the question from the stand- 
 point of the general conditions of our modern life, can be 
 in any doubt as to the true answer to be given. Are our 
 
 82
 
 OF THE ACTOR 
 
 newspapers, in giving so much space in their columns to 
 actors and their affairs, making themselves the agreeable 
 slaves of the actor's vanity, or are they acting as judicious 
 caterers for the entertainment of the public ? Are they 
 obliging or businesslike ? Without in any way detracting 
 from the genial benevolence of the journalist, I think we may 
 fairly say that considerations of business are as paramount 
 in journalism as in any other form of public enterprise, 
 and that if the journalist pays great attention to the 
 actor it is because it profits him to do so, because thereby 
 he is responding to a public demand. Indeed so urgent 
 is this demand, so paramount in the public mind is the 
 interest in the fortunes of actors, that the journalist is on 
 occasions obliged to forego considerations of good feeling 
 and good taste in his anxiety to make a paragraph to 
 catch the eye of the general reader as he hastily glances 
 over the columns of his newspaper. For it can only be 
 the all-important motive of arresting at all cost the 
 attention of a reader that induces even the best class of 
 newspaper to invariably head in large type, with a 
 conspicuous reference to their calling, the most trivial 
 errors or misfortunes of an actor or actress, and that in 
 a fashion that is not extended to other callings or 
 professions. The only possible justification for this 
 miserable privilege accorded to members, or so-called 
 members, of the dramatic profession is that paltry wrong- 
 doing or sordid misfortune acquires for the ordinary 
 reader a peculiar interest if it be associated, however 
 remotely, with an actor or actress. But as it would be 
 grossly unfair to attribute the glaring headlines of our 
 daily papers in these unfortunate circumstances to envy 
 or un charitableness on the part of the journalist towards 
 the actor, so is it equally unfair to entirely attribute to 
 the actor's greedy vanity and self-importance the interviews 
 and paragraphs that are usually extorted from him to 
 gratify a genuine thirst on the part of the public for 
 
 83
 
 THE ART AND STATUS 
 
 information relating to the most generally popular of all 
 their servants. 
 
 " There is no class of society," wrote Hazlitt nearly a 
 hundred years ago, " whom so many persons regard with 
 affection as actors," and it was the same critic who 
 declared that the public felt more respect for John 
 Kemble in a plain coat than the Lord Chancellor on the 
 woolsack. What was true then is equally true now, and 
 to withstand or endeavour to correct the affection with 
 which a great mass of people regard the theatre and its 
 artists, is to beat one's head against the proverbial brick 
 wall. There are many and obvious reasons for this 
 affection ; the immediate appeal made by the actor in the 
 exercise of his art to the imaginations of the spectators, 
 the fascination that the theatre possesses for persons of 
 all classes, the inevitable interest that an audience feels 
 in a man whom they see constantly placed in situations 
 that directly appeal either to their sense of beauty or to 
 their emotions, the feeling of gratitude that we all 
 experience towards an artist who delights us, which is 
 quite irrespective of our shilling paid at the turnstile or 
 the bookstall, or the gallery door. That the affection 
 and interest aroused by these circumstances should be 
 accompanied by a certain amount of silly and thoughtless 
 adulation and prying curiosity is only to be expected from 
 human nature. However worthy and justifiable may be 
 great outbursts of popular enthusiasm, when are they not 
 marred by much that is foolish and excessive ? In a lesser 
 degree the public admiration for and interest in the actor 
 will always exhibit a ridiculous side and an unpleasant 
 side. In the one respect it will show itself by the excessive 
 worship in an actor or an actress of qualities that are not, 
 strictly speaking, intellectual, in the other by a great deal 
 of wanton and mischievous gossip about the private lives 
 of popular favourites. But for all that the affection of 
 the public for its actors has in it little of which either 
 
 84
 
 OF THE ACTOR 
 
 party need be ashamed ; it is sincere, it is natural, it 
 springs from no unworthy cause, and it is but a fair 
 compensation for the comparative oblivion into which the 
 achievements of histrionic genius must ultimately sink. 
 To resent and seek to destroy it is not only a futile labour 
 but a niggardly and an ungracious one. Far be it from 
 me to deny that actors and public not unfrequently make 
 fools of themselves ; so do judges and bishops and states- 
 men, even, in these days of journalistic temptation ; but 
 the follies of men are not to be made the measure of the 
 fitting place of their work or employment in the scheme 
 of things, be they judges or bishops or statesmen or 
 actors. 
 
 There is one other topic dwelt on with some asperity 
 by opponents of the theatre with which I will deal as 
 briefly as it deserves. I mean the topic of the morals of 
 the theatre. The public discussion of the mean level 
 of morality in any profession, if pushed to inquisitorial 
 lengths, is a highly undesirable proceeding. I would 
 only suggest a few considerations which should be 
 preliminary to any investigation of this kind in relation 
 to the theatre. In the first place, it is commonly believed 
 by persons who have never entered a theatre, or at least 
 passed behind the curtain, that the tender emotions and 
 sentiments portrayed by actors and actresses towards each 
 other in the course of a play seldom stop short on the fall 
 of the curtain. The words of Mole, the French actor, are 
 sufficient answer to that ; he writes : " I am dissatisfied 
 with myself this evening ; I let myself go too much, I was 
 not master of myself ; I was the character itself, not the 
 actor playing it. 11 The actor or actress worthy of the 
 name are not the slaves but the masters of the emotions 
 they portray. As Voltaire pointed out there is, or 
 should be, no greater moral danger to the dramatic artist 
 who portrays the passions of the human heart, than to the 
 painter or sculptor who paints or models from the nude. 
 
 85
 
 THE ART AND STATUS 
 
 Unless we are sunk in the depths of Pharisaical pre- 
 judice and deliberate ignorance, we shall resent the moral 
 shortcomings that we may meet with in the accredited 
 biographies of our great actors and actresses, in the same 
 degree as we should resent them in those of poets and 
 musicians. But one word of warning. It is difficult for 
 those who have not personally experienced it, to credit the 
 amount of wanton and utterly unfounded scandal that is 
 spread abroad by tattling and uncharitable persons with 
 regard to the private lives of actors and actresses. Where 
 admiration and interest degenerate into mischievous 
 curiosity, or excite envy in inferior minds, there will be 
 found the source of many a lying tale or reckless invention 
 about those whom the theatre brings prominently before 
 the public. But this is a truth little realised, by many 
 hardly understood. The popular fallacy that the actor 
 lives the character he portrays not only on the stage but 
 in all the relations of everyday life, may seem to many 
 a very foolish and weak-minded one. But we must 
 remember that the audience in a theatre is for the 
 most part composed of persons entirely unfamiliar with 
 the real conditions of theatrical representation, hence - 
 and so far it is as it should be the illusion of the theatre 
 is to them complete, often unfortunately too complete ; 
 with many, from the very nature of the case, this illusion 
 follows the actor or actress after they have quitted the 
 scene ; it is difficult to many persons to believe that men 
 and women who have delighted an audience in extra- 
 ordinary and moving situations, who have represented 
 astonishing and impressive characters, are not at home 
 equally astonishing and impressive, or equally ludicrous or 
 wicked or amorous, according to the nature of the parts 
 they play. It is this afterglow of illusion that survives 
 the fall of the curtain, which tempts people to pry into 
 the actor's private concerns, and greedily swallow any 
 fantastic story that may suit their preconceived notions 
 
 86 

 
 OF THE ACTOR 
 
 of what his private life should be, which is at the root of 
 the many improbable stories and far-fetched inventions 
 about themselves that an actor or actress is occasionally 
 privileged to enjoy, and which makes it difficult for an 
 ordinary spectator to believe that the morals of theatres 
 are not as eccentric and disordered as those of the morally 
 eccentric or disordered persons actors and actresses are not 
 unfrequently called on to portray. How difficult to many 
 to believe that the man who is a charming representative 
 of the gay Lothario is not similarly employed during the 
 greater part of the daytime, or that the representative of 
 a brutal villain is not continually engaged in rehearsing 
 his brutality on his wife and children ! I could repeat 
 instances of such unfounded scandal ad nauseam ; some of 
 them so monstrous as to be incredible but for one^s 
 personal experience of them. How they arise and are 
 disseminated is a mystery ; but why they arise and spread 
 rapidly abroad is clear enough. Can the ambitious youth 
 who seeks social distinction in middle-class drawing-rooms 
 or at suburban dinner-tables better attract the attention 
 of his hearers and exalt his own reputation as a knowing 
 and popular man about town, than by retailing some choice 
 bit of gossip about a popular actor or actress ? I believe 
 there is no better receipt. As some people believe any- 
 thing they see in print, so many will believe anything they 
 hear of an actor or actress they have seen on the stage. 
 Although this readiness on the part of many persons to 
 swallow unreal stories of men and women whom they have 
 seen in unreal situations, springs from the conditions of 
 the theatre, no man or woman of ordinary courage is 
 likely to be deterred from pursuing the art of acting 
 because, if they are in any degree successful, all sorts of 
 pranks will be played with their private and domestic 
 concerns. At the same time the morals of a calling are 
 not to be judged by the irresponsible gossip that from its 
 very conditions it is bound to excite. We would not judge 
 
 87
 
 THE ART AND STATUS 
 
 the morals of princes from the pages of a scandalous 
 chronicle, or those of judges and barristers from the gossip 
 of a circuit mess-room ; on the same principle we must not 
 judge the morals of actors and actresses from the tattle of 
 clubs and drawing-rooms. I would not assert the im- 
 peccability of my own calling any more than I would assert 
 the impeccability of those other classes or professions 
 whose private lives are not public property in the sense 
 that ours are, but I would regard with peculiar mistrust 
 stories about any body of men and women that, like those 
 of the dramatic profession, are so entirely at the mercy of 
 malicious or thoughtless gossip, and I \ would, for the 
 reasons I have given, emphatically warn those who hear 
 scandal relating to the private lives of actors or actresses 
 that, of all gossip and all scandal, that which hangs round 
 the theatre is the most untrustworthy, that it is to a great 
 extent the outcome of an illusion which, if natural and 
 excusable, is none the less inconvenient, and that it is very 
 liable to reckless dissemination because of the peculiar, 
 sometimes unfortunately exaggerated interest of the public 
 in the affairs of its victims. One statement recently made 
 with regard to the moral aspect of the theatrical art was 
 to the effect that purity in a woman was a serious draw- 
 back to success as an actress a specious and invidious 
 statement, but one, I think, not very difficult to refute. 
 It really comes to this : as in literature, so in the theatre, 
 a woman who has been a wife and a mother is more likely 
 to be successful in dealing with human passions and 
 emotions than a nun. At the same time, if acting gains 
 so much from the actual experiences of passion, how is it 
 that men, whose opportunities of cultivating their passions 
 are so much more varied and extensive than those of 
 women, do not surpass in any extraordinary degree the 
 other sex in the delineation of those emotions that are 
 supposed to depend on actual experience for their true 
 expression ? The history of the stage has shown that 
 
 88
 
 OF THE ACTOR 
 
 they certainly do not. M. Coquelin's cadet's jesting re- 
 pudiation of the virgin actress has no deeper or more 
 unpleasant signification in regard to the efforts of a young 
 girl to achieve success as an actress than it would have in 
 regard to similar attempts in art or literature. 
 
 I am afraid I have dealt very incompletely with what 
 is, all said and done, a very extensive and not alto- 
 gether unimportant subject. I have left untouched 
 many topics suggested by the present conditions of our 
 modern stage, for I have been rather concerned in 
 endeavouring to dissipate certain fallacies that cling 
 round the questions of the status of the actor's art and 
 the general worthiness of his calling; of the present 
 state of that art, of its advance in some directions, its 
 retrogression in others, of its hopes and prospects in the 
 future I have not spoken ; there are others better fitted 
 to do so than myself. But I hope that any actor, how- 
 ever humble his position or modest his achievement, has 
 the right to uphold the dignity of the art which he 
 pursues. There is no question that, though greatly 
 diminished in extent and power of recent years, there still 
 exists a feeling of hostility on the part of certain classes 
 of men against the art and calling of the actor. Though 
 these feelings are, no doubt, shared to some extent, even 
 by a certain number of men of intellectual distinction, I 
 believe them to be, for the most part, the outcome of 
 ignorance of the real nature of the art and the real con- 
 ditions of the calling. The best proof, to my mind, that 
 they are not rooted in truth and justice is the fact that 
 the numbers of those who hold them are steadily de- 
 creasing, and that the position of the actor has been 
 advanced in this country to a higher level than in any other 
 country in the world. 
 
 89
 
 Colley Gibber's "Apology 
 
 91
 
 COLLEY GIBBER'S APOLOGY 
 
 A WRITER in the St. James's Gazette has said that if a 
 conspiracy of silence could be arranged by which the 
 theatrical world players, play-makers, and play-critics 
 were, like the good little boy, seen and not heard of for 
 a while, the rest of humanity would gain immeasurably, 
 while the stage and the drama would certainly not lose. 
 Indeed, it seems almost impossible to open any newspaper 
 or review without lighting on criticisms, reflections, stric- 
 tures mostly strictures on the condition of the drama, 
 the poverty of our dramatists, the unfitness of our actors, 
 the vulgarity of the public taste. Wise and unwise utter- 
 ances, some earnest and impartial, some bearing all the 
 marks of spleen and disappointment, meet one at every 
 turn, all proceeding from those advisers, professional and 
 unprofessional, who, ever since the theatre began to have 
 a history, have been gathered round the bed of the sick 
 drama, which, however, in spite of the many remedies that 
 are being perpetually administered to it, continues to live 
 after its own fashion, really far less hindered than might 
 be supposed by the attentions showered upon it by well- 
 meaning outsiders. The extraordinary and in no way 
 diminishing hold that the theatre has ever had on the 
 popular imagination an overflowing measure of popu- 
 larity which is the lasting despair of its enemies and 
 detractors will always expose it to a great deal of what 
 
 1 Read before the members of the O. P. Club, April 24th, 1904, 
 and reprinted from Tht Nineteenth Century. 
 
 93
 
 COLLEY GIBBER'S "APOLOGY 11 
 
 one cannot at times help feeling to be rather unnecessary 
 interference from promiscuous persons, eager to catch the 
 public ear by dealing with a topic irresistibly attractive to 
 the general run of mankind. Such interference must be 
 patiently endured as springing from the nature of things. 
 At the same time, it seems to me that it would be wiser, 
 more dignified, in those whose business in life it is to write 
 for, or to act on the stage, to refrain from taking part in 
 discussions of this kind ; their work will speak for them 
 with far greater eloquence than their words ; and if they 
 have complaints to make about the present conditions 
 under which they are called upon to do their work, let 
 them set about remedying these ills from within, by deeds, 
 not words, by practical assistance instead of the public 
 airing of grievances that may interest and amuse the 
 public but will never become to them matters of real 
 concern. 
 
 I am going to ask you to lend your consideration for a 
 short space to a book little known, indeed, to the ordinary 
 reader, little known, I have no doubt, at the present day 
 to many actors, authors, and critics ; a work not only 
 highly edifying and instructive to those interested in the 
 theatre, but one of the most brilliant and entertaining 
 autobiographies in our language ; a book that Dean Swift 
 found it impossible to lay down, that Horace Walpole 
 declared to be " inimitable," and that is to-day as fresh, as 
 true, and as pungent in many of its reflections and sugges- 
 tions as it was in its author's day. 
 
 The man who wrote this book this Apology for his 
 Life, as he called it may be accounted, if not one of the 
 great figures in the history of our actors, at least one of 
 the most conspicuous ; the most lively, irrepressible, and 
 good-humoured of those who as actor, author, and manager 
 have served the theatre. For over forty of the eighty-six 
 years of his life Colley Gibber was a busy actor ; for more 
 than twenty of these years a successful manager; and 
 
 94
 
 COLLEY GIBBER'S "APOLOGY 11 
 
 during that time the author of some thirty comedies, 
 tragedies, farces, adaptations, and personal interludes, all 
 more or less successful ; he was, moreover, for the last 
 twenty-seven years of his life, one of the worst of our many 
 indifferent Poets Laureate a record which for activity, for 
 quantity, if not quality of work, may stand alongside with 
 those of Shakespeare and Garrick. Pert, foppish, vain 
 and affected, loving the society of persons of quality, light 
 in his morals, Colley Gibber was at the same time an 
 honest, hard-working actor, proud of his calling, conscious 
 of the abuses to which the theatre of his day was subject, 
 and doing his best, when occasion offered, to mend them : 
 a straightforward and fair-dealing manager, a shrewd and 
 sensible man of the world, a good-humoured but dangerous 
 adversary, as Pope and Fielding found to their cost ; above 
 all, not a dull man, as Pope, goaded to madness by the 
 merited, if indecorous, retort that Gibber made to the 
 poet's insult, would have had posterity believe when 
 he deposed Theobald to make Gibber the hero of 
 The Dunciad. 
 
 Of Gibber's dramatic works not one, if we except his 
 adaptation of Richard III., now rarely played, holds the 
 stage in the present day. His comedies were written to 
 please the taste of his time, and often to furnish himself 
 with the kind of parts in which the public delighted to 
 see him : these were light, comic characters, chiefly of the 
 order of fops, " coxcombs and men of fashion," old and 
 young. In his playing of these parts, in dress, deport- 
 ment, and manner, he was a model to the beaux of his 
 day. He would have loved to have been accepted as a 
 tragedian, in spite of his weak voice and insignificant 
 appearance ; but he was wise enough to recognise wherein 
 his real excellence lay, and when he did essay tragedy, to 
 content himself with such characters as Richard III. and 
 lago, in which there was less call for harmony of voice and 
 majesty of bearing than in the Hamlets and Othellos. A 
 
 95
 
 COLLEY GIBBER'S "APOLOGY" 
 
 further reason he gives us for his choice of these parts 
 and his reasons in this instance smack somewhat of excuses 
 is that your villains are generally " better written, 
 thicker sown with sensible reflections, and come so much 
 nearer to common life and nature than characters pf 
 admiration, as vice is more the practice of mankind than 
 virtue." Be this as it may, there seems little doubt that 
 Justice Shallow, in which he would appear to have been 
 inimitable, and not lago or Richard, would have been 
 Shakespeare's measure of Gibber's quality as a player. 
 
 As a poet, and as laureate, Gibber was the laughing- 
 stock of his contemporaries : it pleased his vanity to think 
 his odes superior to those of Pindar, but it is hardly too 
 much to say that, in the twenty-seven years during which 
 he composed lyrics, he did not write one good line. In 
 literature he lives by his Apology, and by his Apology 
 alone. Though its style is often incorrect and affected, 
 and he makes at times curiously simple blunders, it has, 
 what no style is of any value if it lack, character. The 
 reader will find in its pages no little wit, no little know- 
 ledge of human nature, the ripe experience of a life 
 spent in humouring successfully the whims and tempers of 
 artistic colleagues, quaint and happy turns of expression, 
 much lively description, a good deal of self-revelation, and 
 the healthy, active spirit of the busy, tireless man to whom 
 Horace Walpole, on meeting him when he had already 
 passed his eighty years, exclaimed, " I am glad, sir, to see 
 you looking so well." "Egad, sir," replied the veteran, 
 "at eighty-four it is well for a man that he can look 
 at all." 
 
 Gibber went on the stage in the year 1690, being then 
 nineteen years of age. His father was a sculptor of some 
 note ; his mother belonged to an old Rutlandshire family, 
 her grandfather, Sir Anthony Colley, having ruined him- 
 self in the cause of King Charles I. His father had hoped 
 to have made a parson or a soldier of Colley, but, for 
 
 96
 
 COLLEY GIBBER'S "APOLOGY' 1 
 
 various reasons, these plans miscarried, to the secret joy of 
 the son, who had only entered the theatre to be at once 
 possessed with that strange and invincible fascination it 
 exercises alike over the capable and the incapable. 
 
 To be an actor instead of a clergyman or a soldier was, 
 in the seventeenth century, no small sacrifice to make in 
 the cause of dramatic art. Gibber sets forth very fairly 
 the advantages and disadvantages of the profession in his 
 own day, and tells one or two anecdotes of the ill repute 
 in which the theatre was then held. He cites a moving 
 tale of a lady of real title whose " female indiscretions had 
 occasioned her family to abandon her." The unfortunate 
 lady, anxious to make an honest penny out of what beauty 
 she had left, wanted to go on the stage. Her family, hearing 
 of this, advised the managers of the theatre not to engage 
 her, and they, unwilling " to make an honourable family 
 their unnecessary enemies," felt constrained to decline her 
 services. Gibber laments over the hard case of the lady, 
 who found herself denied by prejudice the means of earn- 
 ing an honest living. And he is no doubt just in his 
 reflection. At the same time it seems doubtful whether the 
 modern stage is to be congratulated upon the fact that 
 recruits of this kind will in our own day find little diffi- 
 culty in swelling at any time the ranks of the incompetent. 
 
 A more serious instance of the ignominious treatment 
 which actors were liable to suffer is that of Mr. William 
 Smith, a barrister turned actor, a man of high moral 
 character and very popular with people of rank. A 
 gentleman having grossly insulted Smith behind the 
 scenes, was dismissed the court by King James II., who 
 was a great admirer of the actor. The courtly gentleman 
 revenged himself upon the player by having him so soundly 
 hooted at his next appearance that Smith withdrew for a 
 time from the stage. But the actor showed his gratitude 
 to the king by joining his army as a volunteer on the 
 landing of William of Orange. 
 
 97 H
 
 COLLEY GIBBER'S "APOLOGY" 
 
 Certainly Smith's experience, coupled with other stories 
 of the insolence that characterised the attitude of many 
 so-called gentlemen in the playhouse, arouses indignation 
 in the mind of any man ; but at the same time we must 
 remember that there were good reasons in 1690 why the 
 stage should be regarded by respectable persons with some 
 disfavour, and actors should find it difficult to uphold their 
 right to common consideration. In the first place, the 
 gross indecency of the plays performed an indecency 
 which in 1698 inspired Jeremy Collier's extravagant 
 denunciation of the theatre degraded the actor's occupa- 
 tion ; and, in the second place, the familiarity that existed 
 between the actor and his audience seriously diminished 
 the independence of the artist. The very conditions under 
 which he acted, the wings crowded with gentlemen who 
 had the run of the stage-door (" those buzzing mosquitoes 
 who took their stand where they might best elbow the 
 actor and come in for their share of the auditor's atten- 
 tion"), the audience often noisy and intractable such 
 conditions as these were hardly calculated to inspire respect 
 for the art of the player. Again, the kind of happy 
 family feeling that naturally sprang up between actors 
 and audience when two theatres at most were sufficient 
 for the needs of no doubt a very limited number of play- 
 goers, had its inconveniences. A modest expression coming 
 from the mouth of some admirable artist of more or less 
 doubtful reputation, was apt to provoke " fleers from the 
 witlings of the pit." As a consequence of the sensitiveness 
 provoked by such impertinences, Gibber gives an instance 
 indeed, an extraordinary instance of an actress who, 
 conscious that beauty was not her strong point, desired 
 that the warmth of some lines she had to speak empha- 
 sising her personal beauty might be abated ; but he adds, 
 " in this discretion she was alone ; few others were afraid 
 of undeserving the finest things that could be said of 
 them." One actress, a Mrs. Rogers, justly proud of her 
 
 98
 
 COLLEY GIBBER'S " APOLOGY ' 
 
 virtue, was in the habit of announcing it to the public. 
 In an epilogue to an obscure play in which she acted a 
 part of impregnable chastity, she bespoke the favour of 
 the ladies in the audience by protesting that, in honour 
 of their goodness and virtue, she would dedicate her un- 
 blemished life to their example : 
 
 I'll copy you ; 
 
 At your own virtue's shrine my vows I'll pay, 
 Study to live the character I play. 
 
 That in her subsequent career she forgot her vow, only 
 shows how much wiser Mrs. Rogers would have been 
 to have let the subject alone. 
 
 If the treatment accorded to the actors in Gibber's day 
 was often familiar and impertinent, that of authors was far 
 worse. Gibber, himself be it remembered, a popular author, 
 complains bitterly of the severity and impatience of the 
 audiences in their reception of a new play. " The vivacity 
 of our modern critics is of late grown so riotous that an 
 unsuccessful author has no more mercy shown him than 
 a notorious cheat in a pillory ; every fool, the lowest 
 member of the mob, becomes a wit, and will have a fling 
 at him. They come now to a new play like hounds to a 
 carcase, and are all in a full cry, sometimes for an hour 
 together, before the curtain rises, to throw it amongst 
 them. ... In a word," he concludes, "this new race of 
 critics seem to me like the lion-whelps in the Tower, who 
 are so boisterously gamesome at their meals, that they 
 dash down the bowls of milk brought for their own break- 
 fast." We must be thankful indeed that to-day the bowls 
 of milk are at least consumed in quiet before the young 
 lions pass judgment on their fare. 
 
 Whilst Gibber enumerates those peculiar disadvantages 
 attaching to the calling of an actor in the late years of the 
 seventeenth century, he sets against them certain compen- 
 sations. Apart from the pleasure derived from the exercise 
 
 99
 
 COLLEY GIBBER'S " APOLOGY " 
 
 of an art in which, as he quaintly phrases it, "to excel 
 requires as ample endowments of nature as any one pro- 
 fession (that of holy institution excepted)," he notices the 
 fact that if an actor excel in his profession, he will be 
 received among people of condition with a social distinction 
 to which he would never have attained had he followed the 
 most profitable pursuits of trade ; and he cites Betterton, 
 Mrs. Bracegirdle, Nance Oldfield, and others as instances of 
 those thus distinguished. Let us suppose, he adds, that 
 these men had been eminent mercers and the women 
 famous milliners, can we imagine that merely as such, 
 though endowed with the same natural understanding, 
 they would have been called into the same honourable 
 parties of conversation in which, he affirms, these actors 
 and actresses were capable of sustaining their part with 
 spirit and variety, though the stage were never tne subject 
 of discussion ? Gibber here touches very happily on one of 
 the principal causes of the vulgar resentment cherished by 
 the mercers and milliners of different ages against a calling 
 which religious prejudice has taught them to despise, but 
 which they find to their astonishment encouraged and 
 courted by their social superiors a confusion of ideas 
 that in dull capacities aggravates rather than allays 
 resentment. 
 
 He takes, too, an opportunity of administering almost 
 contemporaneously witn Voltaire a well-deserved rebuke 
 to the Roman Catholic Church for its treatment of actors, 
 which was in his day one of the least charitable and 
 amiable features of that religion. He hits the nail on the 
 head, as Gibber often does, when he remarks that, in many 
 countries where the Papal religion prevails, the holy policy, 
 though it allows not an actor Christian burial, is so con- 
 scious of the usefulness of his art, that it will frequently 
 take in the assistance of the theatre to recommend sacred 
 history to the more pathetic regard of the people. How 
 then, he asks, can they refuse an actor Christian burial 
 
 100
 
 COLLEY GIBBER'S "APOLOGY 1 
 
 when they admit his profession to serve the solemn pur- 
 poses of religion ? How far, he asks, is such inhumanity 
 short of that famous painter's who, to make his crucifix a 
 masterpiece of nature, stabbed the innocent hireling from 
 whose body he drew it, and having heightened the holy 
 portrait with his victim's last agonies of life, sent the 
 picture to serve as the consecrated ornament of an altar ? 
 Never was a cruel prejudice more thoroughly and trench- 
 antly exposed. Happily such prejudice is for the most 
 part a thing of the past, and there are now few religious 
 bodies of any denomination that will not gladly accept the 
 gladly -given services of actors and actresses in support 
 of their charitable undertakings. 
 
 But, even since Gibber wrote, traces of such prejudice, 
 though in a more obscure form, are to be met with. 
 A recent writer, I believe a Roman Catholic, in a historical 
 monograph on " Robespierre," an admirable and picturesque, 
 if at times histrionic, biography, misses no opportunity of 
 insulting a profession of which he in all probability knows 
 nothing, and allows his prejudice at least, so it appears 
 to betray him into the most singular inaccuracy. The 
 violent and eccentric conduct of Tallien, the conventionalist 
 and contemporary of Robespierre, he appears to explain and 
 justify throughout by the fact that he had been a comedian, 
 an actor. I should very much like to know what evidence 
 he can produce that Tallien was ever an actor ? Is he not 
 thinking of Collot d'Herbois ? And if Tallien were an 
 actor and did flourish a dagger at Robespierre in the 
 Convention, a piece of "actor's foolery," as he describes it, 
 what, pray, of Edmund Burke and the Birmingham dagger 
 he flourished in the House of Commons? If the writer 
 means to imply that Tallien was an actor and it certainly 
 reads as if he did then he is incorrect ; if he means that 
 his conduct in flourishing a dagger in the Convention, in 
 shedding blood in Bordeaux, in lounging in drawing-rooms 
 posing as a southern voluptuary was the conduct of 
 
 101
 
 COLLEY GIBBER'S "APOLOGY' 1 
 
 an actor, then he is not only incorrect but unjust and 
 offensive into the bargain. 
 
 When the actor has recovered from his astonishment at 
 such gratuitous flouts, Gibber opportunely reminds him 
 that we actors can claim a canonised saint in the Roman 
 Martyrology, one Masculas, master of interludes, put to 
 death by Genseric the Vandal, with great torment and 
 reproach, for confession of the truth ; from which and other 
 instances, such as the fact that some ten noted actors took up 
 arms for King Charles I. when the Civil War shut the theatres, 
 Gibber concludes that "that there have been players of 
 worthy principles as to religion, loyalty, and other virtues ; 
 and if the major part of them fall under a different 
 character, it is the general unhappiness of mankind that 
 the most are the worst." One would hardly dwell on facts 
 of this kind, were it not for the amazing ignorance that is 
 at the bottom of the dregs of prejudice that still survive 
 against the theatre, and that one sees so egregiously dis- 
 played whenever some newspaper, reverting to a topic that 
 always " draws,"" opens its columns to the lucubrations of 
 the descendants of the dismal Prynne and the intemperate 
 Collier. Colley Gibber should always at such seasons be 
 referred to as a wholesome antidote to the doldrums and 
 megrims of those who can neither find nor permit satisfac- 
 tion in what he very justly describes as " the most rational 
 scheme that human wit can form to dissipate with 
 innocence the cares of life, to allure even the turbulent or 
 ill-disposed from worse meditations, and to give the leisure 
 hours of business and virtue an instructive recreation." 
 
 For twenty years Gibber remained a salaried actor, 
 playing for the most part at Drury Lane under the 
 management of Christopher Rich. He commenced work 
 at a salary of ten shillings a week, which just before he 
 went into management had risen to the then considerable 
 sum of 5 a week. This, with his benefit, brought him in 
 some 162 for the year 1708 1709, the largest sum made 
 
 102
 
 COLLEY GIBBER'S "APOLOGY" 
 
 by any actor in the company that year being ^259, earned 
 by the popular and industrious Wilks, who added to his 
 playing the duties of stage manager. The story of Gibber's 
 first salary is interesting. Hanging about the wings wait- 
 ing for employment Master Colley, as he was called by his 
 familiars, was sent on to the stage in the part of a 
 messenger charged to deliver his message to the great 
 actor, Thomas Betterton, perhaps the noblest figure in the 
 recorded annals of our players, a man whose pre-eminent 
 artistic and moral excellence made him in his day the un- 
 questioned leader of his profession and won the respect and 
 admiration of such various beholders as Steele, Pope, 
 and Gibber. If his artistic genius was surpassed by Garrick 
 and Kean, they neither of them could inspire that personal 
 affection and regard that the generous, simple nature of 
 Betterton extorted from his contemporaries. To this 
 commanding actor entered Master Colley with his message, 
 but so appalled was he to find himself in the presence of 
 the great tragedian, that he forgot entirely message and 
 everything. Betterton, annoyed at his confusion, asked 
 his name. " Master Colley ! " replied the prompter. 
 " Then forfeit him ! " " But," urged the prompter, " he 
 has no salary." " No," replied Betterton, " then put him 
 down ten shillings a week, and forfeit five ! " This ten 
 shillings, so pleasantly earned by Gibber, was shortly after 
 raised to twenty on the recommendation of Congreve, the 
 author, and then to thirty shillings on the secession of 
 Betterton and other of Mr. Rich's discontented actors. 
 
 It was little wonder that actors who could afford to 
 quarrel soon quitted a theatre of which Mr. Christopher 
 Rich was the chief director. Gibber's sketch of this 
 seventeenth-century manager is one of his happiest. The 
 great art of Mr. Rich as a manager seems to have been to 
 do his actors out of as much of their salary as he con- 
 veniently could. He was as sly a tyrant, says Gibber, as 
 ever was at the head of a theatre ; for he gave the actors 
 
 103
 
 COLLEY GIBBER'S "APOLOGY" 
 
 more liberty and fewer days' pay than any of his pre- 
 decessors ; he would laugh with them over a bottle and 
 bite them in their bargains. He would judge the merit of 
 a leading actor by his ability to keep the other actors 
 quiet when they had gone six weeks without any salary. He 
 was always promising his actors what he was pleased to 
 term " arrears," but in fifteen years Gibber declares he 
 never received more than nine days' of them. The actors 
 in Rich's day were paid by shares of the profits, ten going 
 to the management, ten to the actors ; but Rich so con- 
 trived it he had been a lawyer that " the actors were 
 limited sharers of loss., and he the sole proprietor of 
 profits." Much criticism is expended on our actor-managers 
 of to-day, but it is only fair to record in their favour that 
 it was not until Gibber, Wilks, and Dogget, three actors, 
 took over Drury Lane in 1710 and entered on their twenty 
 years of successful management, that a theatre was once 
 again honestly and decently administered. It is with 
 justifiable pride that Gibber tells us that, in the twenty 
 years of his management, he never had a creditor that had 
 occasion to come twice for his bill, that every Monday 
 morning discharged us of all demands before we took a 
 shilling for our own use : " we never asked any actor, nor 
 were desired by them, to sign any written agreement what- 
 soever." As he truly says, " Our being actors ourselves 
 was an advantage to our government, which all former 
 managers who were only idle gentlemen wanted." 
 
 Among the many reforms introduced by Gibber was the 
 closing of the stage-door to the idle gentlemen who were 
 accustomed to haunt the wings of the theatre and elbow 
 the actor during his performance ; and in this regard he 
 shrewdly touches on the inadvisability of actors making 
 themselves cheap, and allowing the curious to penetrate the 
 mystery that should to some extent shroud the practice of 
 their calling a mystery which it is, alas ! to-day almost 
 impossible to preserve. " In admitting these gentlemen 
 
 104
 
 COLLEY GIBBER'S "APOLOGY" 
 
 behind the scenes," says Gibber, " we too often showed 
 them the wrong side of our tapestry, and many a tolerable 
 actor was the less valued when it was known what ordinary 
 stuff he was made of." 
 
 Gibber and his colleagues had their share of good 
 fortune. It is not often that the author of a successful 
 play foregoes his fees, yet such was the case with Addjson 
 when he presented Cato, free of encumbrance, to the man- 
 agers of Drury Lane. Cato was perhaps the greatest 
 triumph of the Gibber management. Its production was 
 the occasion of intense excitement, both in the literary and 
 political world. Pope wrote a prologue for it, Garth an 
 epilogue ; Swift came to the rehearsals and, not being 
 accustomed to the ways of rehearsal, was very much 
 astonished to hear the " drab that acts Gate's daughter *" 
 stopping in the midst of a passionate part to call out to the 
 prompter, " What's next ? " By the term " drab " Swift 
 is describing the brilliant Mrs. Oldfield, from whom, said 
 Horace Walpole, no bad judge, women of the first rank 
 might have learnt behaviour, and whose morality was 
 sufficiently respectable to allow of her interment in West- 
 minster Abbey. Had Swift been versed in the conditions 
 of an art the ignorance of which seems to many a literary 
 critic the highest qualification for depreciating the art 
 itself, he might have known that imperfection at rehearsal 
 is sometimes the privilege of genius and no criterion of the 
 achievement of the first night. It must be indeed a warped 
 or unthinking prejudice that makes Pope incarnate dulness 
 in the person of the lively Gibber, and Swift style the elegant 
 and accomplished Mrs. Oldfield a drab. 
 
 But to-day, whatever the fate of our actors, our 
 actresses seem to be in no danger of such rude deprecia- 
 tion as Swift treated them to, in the person of Mrs. 
 Oldfield ; no " drabs " from the Dean are likely to affront 
 them ; they must rather be on their guard lest they 
 be lured to ruin by the subtle flattery of specious 
 
 105
 
 COLLEY GIBBER'S "APOLOGY" 
 
 wooers. Mr. Walkley, the accomplished critic of The 
 Times, most subtle and most specious, openly courts their 
 favours at the Royal Institution and the Playgoers 1 Club; 
 he tells these ladies that, while we actors are something 
 rather less than men, impaired citizens in the words of 
 Henley, neither masters of our fates nor captains of our 
 souls like, as I venture to think, the barrister and the 
 novelist, dealers in emotions not our own, states of feeling, 
 portrayals of character not our own ; our actresses, on the 
 other hand, are something more than women ; the practice 
 of their art induces a sublimation of their sex until they 
 pass to something beyond it, whether in the direction of 
 greater masculinity or some more ethereal class of being, 
 whether they put on the wings of angels or develop the 
 thews of men, I have never quite been able to understand. 
 But in any case I would venture to warn these ladies 
 against this apparently artless wooer. Beware this gay 
 and debonair suitor ! Beware lest he be merely piping 
 you on to ruin, until when you fall at his feet prostrate 
 with praise, worshipping this unexpected deliverer, he turn 
 upon you, and with the vftpw of the young Greek, the 
 insouciance of the flippant Gaul, spurn your advances, 
 and show you that, in becoming more than women, you 
 have been transformed into some unattractive and un- 
 natural cross between a Gorgon and a mermaid. I, for my 
 part, mistrust these dulcet attempts to lure our damsels 
 from the fold. We actors must stand together, lest our 
 women be torn from our unmanly arms and handed over 
 to the more virile protection of full citizens, complete 
 masters of their fate, perfect captains of their souls. 
 
 The first performance of Cato under Gibber's manage- 
 ment was wildly successful. Addison, nervous and excited, 
 sat in a box with Berkeley, the philosopher, fortifying his 
 spirits with burgundy and champagne. Political feeling 
 had been stirred by rumours of the play being a covert 
 attack on the Tory Government ; but that seemed only to 
 
 106
 
 COLLEY GIBBER'S "APOLOGY" 
 
 make the approval of the audience the more unanimous ; 
 for the Whigs applauded vociferously what they considered 
 a Whig play, whilst the Tories applauded no less vocifer- 
 ously to show that it was not. Lord Bolingbroke, then 
 Secretary of State, called Booth, who played Cato, into 
 his box and presented him with fifty guineas for his honest 
 opposition to a perpetual dictator, otherwise the Whig 
 Duke of Marlborough ; whereupon the Whigs vowed that 
 they also would get up a subscription of fifty guineas to 
 present to Booth, to show their appreciation of his services 
 to the Whig dramatist, Addison. But history does not 
 relate whether the fortunate tragedian ever received this 
 second dole ; he may well have been content with the first. 
 The play on its first production ran for thirty-five nights, 
 an unexempled record in those days. This long run was 
 followed by a visit of the actors to Oxford, and in this 
 connection Gibber sheds a pleasing light on his managerial 
 ways. It had been the custom for the actors when at 
 Oxford to play twice a day, and, as in those days there 
 were no half salaries for matinees, they consequently 
 received double pay. But on this occasion, as the Oxford 
 theatre had been enlarged and the London season so 
 successful, the managers, anxious to keep their players 
 fresh and make the visit pleasant and profitable to the 
 rest of their society, whilst only giving one performance 
 in the day, paid the actors the usual double salary ; and 
 they were no losers by their generosity. The visit was 
 both pleasant and profitable ; the three performances of 
 Cato were witnessed by overflowing audiences. Gibber's 
 criticism of the respective quality of the London and 
 Oxford audience is instructive. "A great deal," he writes, 
 " of that false, flashy wit and forced humour which had 
 been the delight of our metropolitan multitude, was only 
 rated there (at Oxford) at its bare, intrinsic value." Here, 
 he tells us, Shakespeare and Ben Jonson inspired as deep 
 a reverence as the Ethics of Aristotle ; from which account 
 
 107
 
 COLLEY GIBBER'S "APOLOGY" 
 
 we may gather that whilst Cato was received with 
 enthusiasm, the up-to-date fashionable London comedies, 
 some of them no doubt Gibber's own, fell rather flat. Such 
 was the Oxford of 1713. In the Oxford of 1904, whilst we 
 have no doubt that Shakespeare and Ben Jonson still inspire 
 the same reverence as the Ethics of Aristotle, our only fear 
 is lest that reverence become an awful regard, too solemn 
 to brook the rough intrusion of dramatic representation. 
 
 This was a great year, this 1713, to Gibber, Wilks, and 
 Dogget ; at the end of the season, when all expenses had 
 been paid, they found themselves the proud possessors of 
 <^?1,500 apiece. They left Oxford honoured with the 
 thanks of the Vice-Chancellor for the decency and order 
 observed by their company, an honour of which they 
 showed their appreciation by contributing fifty pounds 
 to the repair of St. Mary's church. 
 
 Prosperous as were the years of Gibber's management, 
 he did not escape the trials and anxieties inseparable from 
 such a situation. The authors of bad plays were a great 
 thorn in his side ; he complains of their persecution, and 
 their indignation against the actors for rejecting the 
 abortive piles of poetry that they sought to twist into 
 the likeness of a play. Who are these actors, the indignant 
 playwrights would exclaim, to judge of their merit? To 
 which Gibber retorts by asking these gentlemen how they 
 can suppose that actors can have risen to any excellence in 
 their calling without feeling or understanding the value of 
 such productions ? Would you have reduced them, he 
 asks, to the mere mimicry of parrots and monkeys that 
 can only prate and play tricks without reflection ? And 
 he concludes by asking these gentlemen authors the very 
 pertinent question, if neither Dryden nor Congreve, Steele 
 nor Addison complained of the actors' incapacity to judge 
 a play, who will believe that the slights you have met with 
 are undeserved or particular ? We can hardly wonder at 
 Gibber's pointed resentment against these gentlemen when 
 
 108
 
 COLLEY GIBBERS "APOLOGY" 
 
 we recall the fact that it was the usual custom of the 
 unsuccessful author of his day to publish his play, after 
 its failure, with a preface in which the actors of it were 
 roundly abused and charged with its want of success. 
 What Gibber says of his own day is equally applicable 
 to the present time. I have often known actors abused 
 by obscure and unsuccessful authors ; but it is very rarely 
 that the author of distinction finds fault publicly with his 
 players, even if he have cause. Both author and actor are 
 too well aware that the balance of failure and success will, 
 in the long run, generally hang fairly evenly between the 
 two of them ; that they are both working in most cases for 
 a common end, and that recrimination coming from either 
 side is not only undignified and useless, but is bound to be 
 frequently ill-considered and unjust. 
 
 Gibber narrates a pleasing anecdote of one of these fine 
 gentlemen, would-be authors, who, on the second night of 
 the performance of his poor play, came swaggering in fine 
 full-bottomed periwig into the lobby of the theatre with a 
 lady of condition on his arm, and called out to the box- 
 keeper to direct him to his seats. " Sir," replied Mr. Trott, 
 the then box-keeper, " we have dismissed the audience, 
 there was not company enough to pay candles ! " In 
 which " mortal astonishment," adds Gibber, we may leave 
 the worthy gentleman. 
 
 Another source of constant trouble to the assiduous 
 Colley were his partners in management, and of these 
 most especially Mr. Robert Wilks, their leading actor. 
 Wilks, a man of gentle birth holding, before he went on 
 the stage, a post in the office of the Irish Secretary at 
 Dublin, out of which his successor made some ,50,000, 
 was an accomplished actor, indefatigable in his passion for 
 work, but of a hasty and difficult temper. When, on the 
 death of Mountford, the famous light comedian, murdered 
 by Lord Mohun, he came to London in the hope of being 
 his successor, he found that place already filled by one 
 
 109
 
 COLLEY GIBBER'S "APOLOGY" 
 
 George Powell, son of an actor, himself an able but rough 
 and uncultivated player, of loose life and intemperate 
 habits. The story of the dethroning of Powell by Wilks, 
 who certainly, in the opinion of the critics of the day, had, 
 in comedy, the inestimable advantage over his rival of being 
 able to appear a gentleman, is the old story of the two 
 apprentices. Though Powell had a better voice, a better 
 ear for speaking than Wilks, as excellent and tenacious a 
 memory, and greater assurance, by an unheedful confidence, 
 an over-indulgence in Nantz brandy and perpetual impecuni- 
 osity, he was soon outstripped by his industrious com- 
 petitor, but not before the spectacle of his intemperance 
 had cured Barton Booth (then a young man) of a love of 
 drink which might have robbed the stage of a remarkably 
 fine actor. It is related of poor Powell, that being in 
 constant apprehension of Sheriff's officers, he would walk 
 the streets carrying a sheathed sword in his hand, and if 
 he sighted from afar a bailiff, would call out, " Get on the 
 other side of the way, you dog ! " to which the bailiff would 
 politely reply, " We do not want you now, Mr. Powell." 
 Such a man could not hope to stand long against the 
 assiduous Mr. Wilks, whose passion for work seems almost 
 unequalled in the history of the stage. Gibber tells us 
 how, on one occasion, Wilks had prevailed on an author 
 to cut out of his part a long and crabbed speech which he 
 found it difficult to master. The author consented, but 
 Wilks, thinking it an indignity to his memory that any- 
 thing should be considered too hard for it, went home and 
 made himself perfect in the speech, though well knowing 
 it was never to be spoken on the stage. Such perseverance, 
 added to a charming and sympathetic personality, enabled 
 Wilks to follow, though at a distance, in the steps of 
 Betterton. " To beseech gracefully," writes Steele in the 
 Tatler, "to approach respectfully, to pity, to mourn, to 
 love, are the places wherein Wilks may be made to shine 
 with the utmost beauty." 
 
 110
 
 COLLEY GIBBER'S "APOLOGY' 1 
 
 Such was Wilks as an actor ; but as manager, if we may 
 believe Gibber, he was a perpetual trial to his colleagues. 
 His temper was impossible, his jealousy, like that of many 
 artists, ever wakeful, his greed for parts insatiable. No 
 amount of money could compensate him for a bad part ; 
 the great success of the revival of the Tempest only dis- 
 gusted him, because it condemned him to go on playing 
 the indifferent role of Ferdinand. If he ever gave up one 
 of his parts, it was only to appear magnanimous, and by 
 surrendering it to some raw young actor, to be the more 
 regretted in it. In accordance with such a plan, he, on 
 one occasion, surrendered the part of Macduff, in which he 
 had won enthusiastic praise, to a young recruit to the com- 
 pany, one Charles Williams, contenting himself with what 
 was then considered the less effective part of Macbeth. 
 Booth, his fellow- manager and rival tragedian, was to 
 play Banquo, but, hearing of Wilks's change of characters 
 and suspecting the real motive, he went to Williams 
 and asked him to give him Macduff in exchange for 
 Banquo. Williams readily consented, but no sooner 
 did the news reach Wilks that the experienced Booth 
 and not the inexperienced Williams was to be his 
 successor in Macduff, than he immediately gave up 
 his projected appearance as Macbeth and resumed his 
 old part. 
 
 But Gibber gives a yet more amusing instance of the 
 difficult temper of his colleague. Wilks, it appears, was 
 in the habit of constantly complaining that he was over- 
 worked a drudge, in fact ; that he needed rest and repose. 
 At length Gibber and Booth, weary of these protestations, 
 determined to try their value. They were about to revive 
 Vanbrugh's comedy of The Provoked Wife. Here seemed 
 an excellent opportunity for testing the alleged fatigue of 
 Wilks. After the play, which had been in some degree 
 revised since its original production, had been read to the 
 company, Gibber turned to Wilks. Says Gibber, the part 
 
 111
 
 COLLEY GIBBER'S "APOLOGY 11 
 
 of Constant in this play being a character of less action 
 than he, Wilks, had generally appeared in, this seemed a 
 fitting occasion for him to ease himself by giving it to 
 another; here Wilks looked grave that, as the love 
 scenes, suggested Gibber, were rather serious than gay, 
 the part might sit very well on Booth ; down dropped 
 Wilks's brow, furled were his features that if, continued 
 Gibber, they were never to revive a play without him, 
 what would they do if he were indisposed ? here Wilks 
 pretended to stir the fire that for one, urged Gibber, in 
 Wilks's position it was unprofitable trouble to play so un- 
 important a part. At this point, says Gibber, the pill 
 began to gripe him ; Wilks, bursting into a passion, 
 charged his colleagues with a desire to ruin him with 
 the public, and, flinging the part on the table, sat knocking 
 his heel on the floor. Booth, to calm him down, said he 
 quite saw his point ; that, after all, acting was the most 
 wholesome exercise in the world in fact, it always gave 
 him, Booth, a good stomach. At this point Mrs. Oldfield, 
 who was to play the opposite part to Wilks's Constant, 
 began to titter behind her fan. The titter seemed to 
 suggest to Wilks a sudden way out of his embarrassment. 
 He turned to Mrs. Oldfield and said that if she would 
 choose her own Constant, he would readily give it up to 
 whomsoever she might select. Whereupon Mrs. Oldfield 
 jumped to her feet, took Gibber by the shoulder, with her 
 usual frankness called them all a parcel of fools to make 
 such a rout about nothing, and insisted on Wilks sticking 
 to the part. Thus, by help of a woman's ready wit, ended 
 happily a very quaint and amusing scene ; but Wilks had 
 been made to see that his fellow-managers understood the 
 proper value of his complaints. 
 
 Gibber, in spite of their disagreements and the frequent 
 trouble and offence caused by Wilks's irascible disposition, 
 acknowledges its service as a rod by which to keep in order 
 the hired actors, and prevent slackness and carelessness 
 
 112
 
 entering into the performances. The sharp authority 
 exercised by Wilks on the stage made the dreaming 
 idleness and jolly negligence of rehearsal, which had grown 
 up under Powell's casual supervision, things unknown while 
 Gibber and Wilks were managers of Drury Lane. Even 
 the great Betterton, from his gentle, easy temper, had 
 proved himself incapable of keeping order among his 
 players ; so that we may consider Mr. Wilks well worth 
 that extra 50 a year paid him by his colleagues nominally 
 for writing out the playbills, really for keeping order and 
 preserving discipline behind the scenes. 
 
 In another of his managerial troubles Gibber touches us 
 very nearly. We are accustomed to think to-day that never 
 was the legitimate drama in so parlous a condition, never 
 did the more serious forms of dramatic entertainment have 
 so hard a struggle for life. To mention only musical comedy, 
 the most powerful rival of the legitimate drama in the 
 affection of the public, here we have a highly delightful 
 species of theatrical fare spread before the public with a 
 skill, a luxury, a distinction that have never before been 
 bestowed on them ; artists of the highest quality are 
 engaged in its service ; nothing is spared to render it 
 attractive, and ample has been, and is, the reward of those 
 who have lavished so much pains on its adornment. And 
 in addition to this attractive competitor, we have on the 
 one side the opera, now an annual institution ; on the other 
 music halls and circuses flourishing in popular favour. 
 Certainly the conditions are difficult, more difficult than 
 ever before ; the legitimate drama has to battle bravely 
 to keep its head above the waters of public taste. But, 
 when we read Gibber's Apology, we are inclined to ask, 
 Was it not ever thus? Had not the purveyors of the 
 drama pure and simple ever the same contest with the 
 natural tendency of busy men to fly to forms of entertain- 
 ment that offer a few hours of thoughtless enjoyment, the 
 natural tendency of the crowd to the more frivolous forms 
 
 113 i
 
 COLLEY GIBBER'S "APOLOGY" 
 
 of relaxation ? Though the struggle may be more intense 
 now that men lead more rapid, strenuous lives, and con- 
 sequently require in a greater measure light and mentally 
 restful entertainment, may we not to-day take some con- 
 solation from the fact that it is no new struggle we are 
 watching, no peculiar affliction of our own generation, that 
 the successful exponents of serious drama in the past had 
 to fight the same battle, to hold up their heads against 
 the same competing forces, different in style, but similar 
 in kind. Gibber would have us believe such a struggle is 
 as old as the days of Terence, who in one of his prologues 
 reproves the Roman audience of his day for their fondness 
 for the " funambuli," or rope-dancers. It is certainly as 
 old as Horace. With Colley Gibber the wail of the injured 
 manager and dramatist is continuous throughout the pages 
 of the Apology, whilst we find Dryden, Pope, Steele, and 
 later Dr. Johnson complaining constantly of the degrada- 
 tion of the drama by the introduction of singers, dancers, 
 puppets, and elephants on a stage that should, in their 
 opinion, be reserved for the productions of pure tragedy 
 and comedy. Gibber reproaches Sir William Davenant 
 with being the first manager to try to combat the success 
 of a rival company of actors more popular than his own 
 by resorting to the production of dramatic operas, and ver- 
 sions of The Tempest and Macbeth decked out in expensive 
 scenes and habits, and lightened by the efforts of the 
 best singers and dancers ; says Gibber, it was little wonder 
 that these frivolous spectacles grew too hard for sense and 
 simple nature, when it is considered how many more people 
 there are that can see and hear than think and judge. 
 Later Betterton is rebuked for having brought over three 
 famous French dancers, " mimics and tumblers," and we 
 find an angry dramatist exclaiming in a prologue : 
 
 Must Shakespeare, Fletcher and laborious Ben 
 Be left for Scaramouch and Harlequin ? 
 
 134
 
 COLLEY GIBBER'S "APOLOGY 1 
 
 Anon, Italian opera steals in, in the person of one 
 Valentini, a true and sensible singer, according to Gibber, 
 but " of a throat too weak to sustain those melodious 
 warblings for which the fairer sex have since idolised his 
 successors."" Horror upon horror accumulates when Rich, 
 always anxious, as Gibber admits, to please the majority, 
 meditates the introduction on to his stage of a phenomen- 
 ally large elephant, and is only deterred from the outrage 
 by the bricklayer's assurance that if he takes down any 
 part of the wall to admit the beast, the elephant will 
 assuredly bring down the house. Cheated of his elephant, 
 Rich fell back on some rope-dancers. This was too much 
 for Gibber, then a member of Rich's company. On the 
 first night of the rope-dancers 1 performance the indignant 
 actor stepped down into the pit, and told those sitting near 
 him that he hoped they would excuse him if he declined 
 any longer to appear on a stage brought so low as it was 
 by that night's disgraceful entertainment ; and he tells us 
 the audience took the player's protest in good part, and 
 Rich was obliged shortly after to get rid of his rope-dancers. 
 
 From all quarters, it would appear, the actors of the 
 eighteenth century received sympathy in a predicament of 
 this kind. Gibber relates how a nobleman, indignant at 
 the attention an opera was attracting at one of the theatres, 
 told Gibber that it was shameful to take part of the actors 1 
 bread from them to support the silly diversion of people 
 of quality. One can hardly help contrasting with the 
 utterance of this nobleman that of the Viscount in Martin 
 Chuzzlewit. " What's the good of Shakespeare, Pip ? " 
 he asks. " I never read him. What the devil is it all 
 about, Pip ? There's a lot of feet in Shakespeare's verse, 
 but there ain't any legs worth mentioning in Shakespeare's 
 plays, are there, Pip ? Juliet, Desdemona, Lady Macbeth, 
 and all the rest of 'em, whatever their names are, might as 
 well have no legs at all, for anything the audience know 
 about it, Pip. . . . I'll tell you what it is. What the 
 
 115
 
 COLLEY GIBBER'S ''APOLOGY 11 
 
 people call dramatic poetry is a collection of sermons. Do 
 I go to the theatre to be lectured ? No, Pip. If I wanted 
 that, I'd go to church. What's the legitimate object of 
 the drama, Pip ? Human nature. What are legs ? Human 
 nature. Then let us have plenty of leg pieces, Pip, and 
 I'll stand by you, my buck ! " As to which of these two 
 noblemen are to be regarded as voicing the true sentiments 
 of the majority of their order at the present day towards 
 the relative merits of serious and light entertainments, we 
 cannot pause to determine ; we can only express a passing 
 hope that the Viscount has not got it all his own way. 
 
 But Nemesis, in the shape of managerial necessity, was 
 to overtake Gibber, and bring him to his knees for his 
 affronts to the singers and dancers. When he had been 
 manager of Drury Lane for some time he found himself 
 obliged, from the accustomed lack of sufficiently good 
 plays, to fight a rival theatre by resorting to these same 
 singers and dancers whom he had roundly censured, and 
 to all the arts and graces of pantomime. The Loves 
 of Mars and Venus was the first of these crutches, as he 
 calls them, to which he was driven for support ; thence 
 swiftly declining, we find him producing Harlequin 
 Sorcerer, in which Harlequin is hatched on the stage 
 from a huge egg, and so incurring the castigation of his 
 enemy, Pope, who, alluding to this entertainment and its 
 scenic triumphs, writes in The Dunciad : 
 
 The forests dance, the rivers upward rise, 
 Whales sport in woods, and dolphins in the skies ; 
 And last, to give the whole creation grace, 
 Lo ! one vast Egg produces human race ! 
 
 And again : 
 
 But, lo ! to dark encounter in mid air 
 
 New wizards rise : here Booth, and Gibber there, 
 
 Booth in his cloudy tabernacle shrin'd, 
 
 On grinning Dragons Cibber mounts the wind. 
 
 116
 
 COLLEY GIBBER'S "APOLOGY* 
 
 Gibber was much too shrewd and honest not to be con- 
 scious of his guilt in this respect, and confess his error in 
 making use of fooleries he had condemned. And he seeks 
 to excuse himself by drawing a parallel between his own 
 conduct and that of King Henry IV. of France in adopting 
 the Roman Catholic religion to suit the exigencies of his 
 political situation. " I was still in my heart," he writes, 
 " as much on the side of truth and sense as the French 
 King, but with this difference, that I had leave to quit 
 them when they could not support me ; for what equivalent 
 could I have found for falling a martyr to them ? " And 
 he goes on in a pleasant spirit to justify his vanity in 
 venturing to compare his conduct with that of so great 
 a man as Henry IV. " What I want of the king's 
 grandeur, nature has amply supplied to me in vanity, 
 a pleasure which neither the pertness of wit nor the 
 gravity of wisdom will ever persuade me to part with. 
 . . . Vanity is of all complexions, the growth of every 
 clime and capacity ; authors of all ages have had a tincture 
 of it ; and yet you read Horace, Montaigne, and Sir 
 William Temple with pleasure. Nor am I sure, if it 
 were curable by precept, that mankind would be mended 
 by it. Could vanity be eradicated from our nature, I am 
 afraid that the reward of most human virtues would not 
 be found in this world. And happy is he who has no 
 greater sin to answer for in the next ! "" 
 
 With this pleasing admission of a fault which, confessed, 
 loses half its mischief, let us leave old Gibber. Over his 
 sketches, brilliant many of them, of his brother actors, over 
 his quarrel with Pope, over the many incidents of his varied, 
 busy life that he narrates with such unfailing spirit, such 
 a humorous appreciation of the realities of things, of the 
 good and ill in human character, I have no time to linger ; 
 I can only advise those who read "me to turn to the book 
 itself, which will very pleasantly while away a leisure hour. 
 It is a book which must have an abiding interest for 
 
 117
 
 COLLEY GIBBER'S "APOLOGY" 
 
 those who are lovers of the theatre. Gibber has some- 
 thing to say to us after two hundred years have gone 
 by, because his book is written from the inside of the 
 theatre, not from without ; not by one ignorant of actors, 
 unsympathetic towards their art, but by a successful actor, 
 manager and author, a man who, whatever his faults of 
 character, at least loved and respected his profession, up- 
 held its dignity, reformed its abuses, and paid his way as 
 an honest man ; one of the best as he was one of the first 
 of actor-managers. Gibber's Apology is the shrewd 
 reply of the practical man of the world to the pedants 
 and theorists who, sitting in their studies, would fain 
 conduct from their desks the business of the theatre. 
 And it is the best reply to those who would have us 
 believe that the actor is a strange, peculiar being, 
 something rather less than a man, but possibly more 
 than a monkey, an impaired, unmanly citizen. Gibber's 
 actors and actresses, as he pictures them for us in his 
 book, are on the whole as good specimens of ordinary 
 men and women as we are likely to meet with in any 
 other society of his day ; and they are the same now. 
 There are, of course, and have been, actors and actors, 
 as there are varied specimens of every class ; actors, like 
 Betterton, great and worthy men ; like Scum Goodman 
 who, in addition to being an actor, was a cheat, a highway- 
 man, a traitor, and a would-be murderer ; the Addisons 
 and the Savages, the Johnsons and the Boyces of our 
 calling; but in their essential characteristics no different 
 from other men, neither better nor worse. 
 
 When I read these disquisitions on the natural inferiority 
 of the actor as a man, I am irresistibly reminded of 
 Mr. Disraeli's famous speech before the Oxford Diocesan 
 Society on the Darwinian theory of the descent of man, 
 when he asked, " What is the question placed before society 
 with such glib assurance ? Is man an ape or an angel ? 
 My Lord," he replied, addressing the bishop who presided, 
 
 118
 
 COLLEY GIBBER'S "APOLOGY 11 
 
 " I am on the side of the angels." When we hear it 
 asked whether the actor is rather less than a man, a 
 damaged specimen of humanity, or whether he is a man 
 and an artist in the ordinary acceptance of the terms, 
 may we not range ourselves on the side of the angels, on 
 the side of such great and glorious men of genius as 
 Goethe and Voltaire, Lessing and Hazlitt, who admired 
 and respected the art of the player, the achievements of 
 the theatre ; on the side of those two good archbishops, 
 Bancroft and Tillotson, who admitted actors to their 
 society and enjoyed the friendship of the great players 
 of their day ? To deny the full privilege of manhood to 
 the actor, to take from him but one jot or tittle of 
 full citizenship in whatever state he has his place, is, in 
 the words of Mr. Disraeli, foreign to the conscience of 
 humanity, a conclusion that from the strictest intellectual 
 point of view cannot be sustained. The history of the 
 theatre, of the careers of those whose lives have been 
 devoted to its service, furnishes abundant and overwhelming 
 proof, that, if we are to quote Henley's poem in this 
 relation, to live a few hours on the stage in those 
 "knightly years that have gone with the old world to 
 the grave," be it as King in Babylon or Christian slave, 
 does not unsex the player or impair his character ; that 
 he is as much the master of his fate, the captain of 
 his soul, as the advocate who pleads for the man he 
 cannot help knowing to be guilty, the journalist who 
 has to sustain a cause against which his inward conviction 
 rebels, or the novelist who throws the full energy of his 
 genius into the creation of some splendid type of human 
 villainy. 
 
 The prejudice against the actor is dying, but, like any 
 prejudice that has religion to support it, it is dying hard. 
 A prejudice that can cite pulpit justification for uncharit- 
 able conduct is such is the inconsistency of human nature 
 strangely hard to kill ; any opportunity that a Chadband 
 
 119
 
 COLLEY GIBBER'S APOLOGY" 
 
 can enjoy of looking down on and anathematising one not 
 too obviously his inferior, will be ever welcome to crawling 
 minds. But that such a prejudice is anything but one 
 of those many unsightly masks by which in past ages 
 human weakness has hidden the face of true religion 
 I refuse to believe. And the religion of the future will 
 wonder at those who have shuddered and held up their 
 hands at what Gibber has well described as " the most 
 rational scheme that human wit could form to dissipate 
 with innocence the cares of life," and will consider the 
 man who has devoted his life to such a cause no mean 
 citizen, no unworthy servant to the public good. 
 
 Of course, we actors must not look to all men for 
 sympathy, nor expect it from them. As some men of 
 high ability, of refined taste in many things, are deaf 
 to the charms of music, it has no appeal to them, the 
 sense of it is lacking in their natures ; so are there 
 men of culture and attainment, men of genius like 
 Rousseau, to whom the art of acting makes no appeal, 
 who have no sympathy with the actor's work. Such 
 men have, no doubt, at different times been called on 
 to write about the theatre, and that they should write 
 with little sympathy is all that we can expect ; nor 
 should we resent what we cannot correct. But we have 
 at least the right to ask that such a want of sympathy 
 should be the strongest reason for making any man 
 pause and consider before he proclaims himself to be 
 the constant witness or judge of what, if it be true that 
 to act unmans a man, must be a degrading spectacle, 
 before he even suggests, however ingeniously, against 
 any section of his fellow-men that, in comparison with 
 himself, in comparison with those who watch and enjoy 
 their achievements, they are impaired and unmanly citizens. 
 In all times and ages since the theatre has been established, 
 and never more so than at the present day, the actor, to 
 succeed and hold his own, to encounter the difficulties, the 
 
 120
 
 COLLEY GIBBER'S "APOLOGY 
 
 chances, the, at times, cruel anxieties of his calling, has 
 required, shall I say, a greater mastery of his fate, a higher 
 captaincy of soul, than many another man is called on to 
 exercise whose work is done in more peaceful and secure 
 surroundings ; and when I look around on the careers of 
 those who are to-day at the head of my profession, I feel 
 that, whatever the varieties of their artistic achievement, 
 to reach the positions to which they have attained they 
 have had to exercise those same qualities of endurance, 
 pluck, determination and self-control that we look for 
 in all men who have made their mark, in however modest 
 a sphere, on the history of their time. 
 
 121
 
 The Calling of the Actor 
 
 123
 
 THE CALLING OF THE ACTOR 
 
 I RECEIVED, not very long ago, in a provincial town, a 
 letter from a young lady, who wished to adopt the stage 
 as a profession but was troubled in her mind by certain 
 anxieties and uncertainties. These she desired me to 
 relieve. The questions asked by my correspondent are 
 rather typical questions questions that are generally asked 
 by those who, approaching the stage from the outside, in 
 the light of prejudice and misrepresentation, believe the 
 calling of the actor to be one morally dangerous and intel- 
 lectually contemptible ; one in which it is equally easy to 
 succeed as an artist and degenerate as an individual. She 
 begins by telling me that she has a " fancy for the stage," 
 and has " heard a great many things about it." Now, for 
 any man or woman to become an actor or actress because 
 they have a " fancy for the stage " is in itself the height 
 of folly. There is no calling, I would venture to say, 
 which demands on the part of the aspirant greater search- 
 ing of heart, thought, deliberation, real assurance of fitness, 
 reasonable prospect of success before deciding to follow it, 
 than that of the actor. And not the least advantage of 
 a dramatic school lies in the fact that some of its pupils 
 may learn to reconsider their determination to go on the 
 stage, become convinced of their own unfitness, recognise 
 in time that they will be wise to abandon a career which 
 must always be hazardous and difficult even to those who 
 
 1 A lecture given to the students of the Academy of Dramatic 
 Art, reprinted from The Fortnightly Review. 
 
 125
 
 THE CALLING OF THE ACTOR 
 
 are successful, and cruel to those who fail. Let it be 
 something far sterner and stronger than mere fancy that 
 decides you to try your fortunes in the theatre. 
 
 My correspondent says she has "heard a great many 
 things about the stage." If I might presume to offer a 
 piece of advice, it would be this : " Never believe anything 
 you hear about actors and actresses from those who are 
 not actually familiar with them." The amount of nonsense 
 and untruth (sometimes mischievous, often silly) talked by 
 otherwise rational people about the theatre, would be in- 
 conceivable were it not for one^s own personal experience. 
 It is one of the penalties of the glamour, the illusion of 
 the actor's art, that the public who see men and women in 
 fictitious but highly exciting and moving situations on 
 the stage, cannot believe that when they quit the theatre, 
 they leave behind them the emotions, the actions they 
 have portrayed there. And as there is no class of public 
 servants in whom the public they serve take so keen an 
 interest as actors and actresses, the wildest inventions about 
 their private lives and domestic behaviour pass as current, 
 and are eagerly retailed at afternoon teas in suburban 
 drawing-rooms. 
 
 Now, the first question my correspondent asks me is 
 this : " Does a young woman going on the stage need a 
 good education and also to know languages ? " To answer 
 the first part of the question is not, I think, very difficult. 
 The supremely great actor or actress of natural genius 
 need have no education or knowledge of languages ; it 
 will be immaterial whether he or she has enjoyed all the 
 advantages of birth and education or has been picked up 
 in the streets ; genius, the highest talent, will assert itself 
 irrespective of antecedents. But I should say that any 
 sort of education was of the greatest value to an actor or 
 actress of average ability, and that the fact that the ranks 
 of the stage are recruited to-day to a certain extent from 
 our great schools and universities, from among classes of 
 
 126
 
 THE CALLING OF THE ACTOR 
 
 people who fifty years ago would never have dreamed of 
 entering our calling, is one on which we may congratulate 
 ourselves. Though the production of great actors and 
 actresses will not be affected either one way or the other 
 by these circumstances, at the same time our calling must 
 benefit in the general level of its excellence, in its fitness 
 to represent all grades of society on the stage, if those who 
 follow it are picked from all classes, if the stage has ceased 
 to be regarded as a calling unfit for a man or woman of 
 breeding or education. 
 
 The second question this lady asks me is this : " Does 
 she need to have her voice trained, and about what age 
 do people generally commence to go on the stage ? " The 
 first part of this question as to voice training touches on 
 the value of an Academy of Acting. Of the value the 
 practical value of such an institution, rightly conducted, 
 there can be no doubt. That acting cannot be taught is 
 a well-worn maxim, and perhaps a true one ; but acting 
 can be disciplined ; the ebullient, sometimes eccentric and 
 disordered manifestations of budding talent may be modi- 
 fied by the art of the teacher ; those rudiments, which many 
 so often acquire painfully in the course of rehearsal, the 
 pupils who leave an academy should be already masters of, 
 and so they will save much time and trouble to those whose 
 business it is to produce plays. The want of any means 
 of training the beginner, of coping at all with the floods 
 of men and women, fit and unfit, who are ever clamouring 
 at the doors of the theatre, has been a long-crying and 
 much-felt grievance. The establishment of this academy 
 should go far to remove what has been by no means an 
 unjust reproach to our theatrical system. As to the age 
 at which a person should begin a theatrical career, I do 
 not think there is any actor or actress who would not say 
 that it is impossible to begin too early at least, as early 
 as a police magistrate will allow. That art is long and 
 life short applies quite as truthfully to the actor's as to 
 
 127
 
 THE CALLING OF THE ACTOR 
 
 any other art, and as the years go on there must be many 
 who regret that they did not sooner decide to follow a 
 calling which seems to carry one all too quickly through 
 the flight of time. 
 
 My correspondent also asks me a question which I shall 
 answer very briefly, but which it is as well should be 
 answered. She writes : " Are there many temptations for 
 a girl on the stage, and need she necessarily fall into 
 them ? " Of course there are such temptations on the 
 stage, as there must be in any calling in which men and 
 women are brought into contact on a footing of equality ; 
 perhaps these temptations are somewhat intensified in the 
 theatre. At the same time I would venture to say, from 
 my own experience of that branch of theatrical business 
 with which I have been connected and in such matters 
 one can only speak from personal experience that any 
 woman yielding to these temptations has only herself to 
 blame, that any well-brought-up, sensible girl will, and 
 can, avoid them altogether, and that I should not make 
 these temptations a ground for dissuading any young 
 woman in whom I might be interested from joining our 
 calling. To say, as a writer once said, that it was im- 
 possible for a girl to succeed on the stage without impaired 
 morals, is a statement as untrue as to say that no man can 
 succeed as a lawyer unless he be a rogue, a doctor unless 
 he be a quack, a parson unless he be a hypocrite. 
 
 To all who intend to become actors and actresses, my 
 first word of advice would be : Respect this calling you 
 have chosen to pursue. You will often in your experience 
 hear it, see it in print, slighted and contemned. There 
 are many reasons for this. Religious prejudice, fostered 
 by the traditions of a by no means obsolete Puritanism, is 
 one ; the envy of those who, forgetting the disadvantages, 
 the difficulties, the uncertainty of the actor's life, see 
 only the glare of popular adulation, the glitter of the 
 comparatively large salaries paid to a few such 
 
 128
 
 THE CALLING OF THE ACTOR 
 
 unreasoning envy as this is another ; and the want of 
 sympathy of some writers with the art itself, who, unable 
 to pray with Goethe and Voltaire, remain to scoff with 
 Jeremy Collier, is a third. There are causes from without 
 that will always keep alive a certain measure of hostility 
 towards the player. The public regard for the actor 
 provokes in some instances the resentment of those whose 
 achievements in art appeal less immediately, less strikingly, 
 to their audience. But if they would only pause to 
 consider, surely they might lay to their souls the unction 
 that the immediate reward of the actor in his lifetime is 
 merely nature's compensation to him for the comparative 
 oblivion of his achievements when he has ceased to be. 
 Imagine for one moment Shakespeare and Garrick con- 
 templating at the present moment from the heights the 
 spectacle of their fame. Who would grudge the actor 
 the few years of fervid admiration he was privileged 
 to enjoy some hundred and fifty years ago as compared 
 with the centuries of living glory that have fallen to 
 the great poet? 
 
 Sometimes you may hear your calling sneered at by 
 those who pursue it. There are few professions that are 
 not similarly girded at by some of their own members, 
 either from disappointment or some ingrained discontent. 
 When you hear such detraction, fix your thoughts not on 
 the paltry accidents of your art, such as the use of cos- 
 metics and other little infirmities of its practice, things 
 that are obvious marks for the cheap sneer, but look rather 
 to what that art is capable of in its highest forms to 
 what is the essence of the actor's achievement, what he 
 can do and has done to win the genuine admiration and 
 respect of those whose admiration and respect have been 
 worth the having. 
 
 You will read and hear, no doubt, in your experience, 
 that acting is in reality no art at all, that it is mere 
 sedulous copying of nature, demanding neither thought nor 
 
 129 K
 
 THE CALLING OF THE ACTOR 
 
 originality. I will only cite in reply a passage from a 
 letter of the poet Coleridge to the elder Charles Mathews, 
 which, I venture to think, goes some way to settle the 
 question. "A great actor,"" he writes, "comic or tragic, 
 is not to be a mere copy, a fac-simile, but an imitation of 
 nature ; now an imitation differs from a copy in this, that 
 it of necessity implies and demands a difference, whereas 
 a copy aims at identity ; and what a marble peach on the 
 mantelpiece, that you take up deluded and put down with 
 a pettish disgust, is compared with a fruit-piece of Van- 
 huysen's, even such is a mere copy of nature, with a true 
 histrionic imitation. A good actor is Pygmalion's statue, 
 a work of exquisite art, animated and gifted with motion ; 
 but still art, still a species of poetry." So writes Cole- 
 ridge. Raphael, speaking of painting, expresses the same 
 thought, equally applicable to the art of acting. "To 
 paint a fair one," he says, " it is necessary for me to see 
 many fair ones ; but because there is so great a scarcity of 
 lovely women, I am constrained to make use of one certain 
 ideal, which I have formed to myself in my own fancy." 
 So the actor who has to portray Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth 
 any great dramatic character has to form an ideal of 
 such a character in his own fancy, in fact, to employ an 
 exercise of imagination similar to that of the painter 
 who seeks to depict an ideal man or woman ; the actor 
 certainly will not meet his types of Hamlet and Othello in 
 the street. 
 
 But, whilst in your hearts you should cherish a firm 
 respect for the calling, the art you pursue, let that respect 
 be a silent and modest regard ; it will be all the stronger 
 for that. I have known actors and actresses who were 
 always talking about their art with a big A, their " art- 
 life,"" their "life- work," their careers and futures, and so 
 on. Keep these things to yourselves, for I have observed 
 that eloquence and hyper-earnestness of this kind not 
 infrequently go with rather disappointing achievement. 
 
 130
 
 THE CALLING OF THE ACTOR 
 
 Think, act, but don't talk about it. And, above all, be- 
 cause you are actors and actresses, for that very reason be 
 sincere and unaffected ; avoid rather than court publicity, 
 for you will have quite enough of it if you get on in your 
 profession ; the successful actor is being constantly tempted 
 to indiscretion. Do not yield too readily to the blandish- 
 ments of the photographer or the enterprising editor who 
 asks you what are the love scenes you have most enjoyed 
 playing on the stage, and whether an actor or actress can 
 be happy though married. Be natural on the stage, and 
 be just as natural off it ; regard the thing you have to do 
 as work that has to be done to the best of your power ; 
 if it be well done it will bring its own reward. It may 
 not be an immediate reward, but have faith, keep your 
 purpose serious, so serious as to be almost a secret ; bear 
 in mind that ordinary people expect you, just because you 
 are actors and actresses, to be extraordinary, unnatural, 
 peculiar ; do your utmost at all times and seasons to dis- 
 appoint such expectations. 
 
 English actors and actresses should remember that they 
 are fortunate at least in one respect ; in no country in the 
 world are actors so well considered, so socially acceptable 
 as here in England. This was true more than a hundred 
 years ago, when Voltaire bitterly compared the refusal of 
 the Roman Catholic Church in France to bury with decency 
 the famous actress, Adrienne Lecouvreur, with the fact 
 that our Nance Oldfield was laid to rest in Westminster 
 Abbey. It is equally true in, of course, a modified form 
 to-day. Whilst, abroad, in some countries the actor and 
 actress are barely regarded as ordinary citizens, here in 
 England they labour under few serious disabilities. To 
 the successful actor society, if he desire it, offers a warm 
 and cordial welcome. The fact of a man being an actor 
 does not debar him from such gratification as he may 
 find in the social pleasures. And I believe that the effect 
 of such a raising of the actor's status as has been witnessed 
 
 131
 
 THE CALLING OF THE ACTOR 
 
 in the last fifty years has been to elevate the general tone 
 of our calling and bring into it men and women of 
 education and refinement. 
 
 At the same time, remember that social enjoyments 
 should always be a secondary consideration to the actor, 
 something of a luxury to be sparingly indulged in. An 
 actor should never let himself be beguiled into the belief 
 that society, generally speaking, is seriously interested in 
 what he does, or that popularity in drawing-rooms con- 
 notes success in the theatre. It does nothing of the kind. 
 Always remember that you can hope to have but few, very 
 few, friends or admirers of any class who will pay to see 
 you in a failure ; you will be lucky if a certain number do 
 not ask you for free admission to see you in a success. 
 
 It is to a public far larger, far more real and genuine 
 than this, that you will one day have to appeal. It is in 
 their presence that you will finish your education. The 
 final school for the actor is his audience ; they are the 
 necessary complement to the exercise of his art, and it is 
 by the impression he produces on them that he will 
 ultimately stand or fall ; on their verdict, and on their 
 verdict alone, will his success or failure as an artist depend. 
 But, if you have followed carefully, assiduously, the course 
 of instruction now open to you, when the time has arrived 
 for you to face an audience you will start with a very 
 considerable handicap in your favour. If you have learnt 
 to move well and to speak well, to be clear in your enuncia- 
 tion and graceful in your bearing, you are bound to arrest 
 at once the attention of any audience, no matter where it 
 may be, before whom you appear. Obvious and necessary 
 as are these two acquirements of graceful bearing and 
 correct diction, they are not so generally diffused as to 
 cease to be remarkable. Consequently, however modest 
 your beginning on the stage, however short the part you 
 may be called upon to play, you should find immediately 
 the benefit of your training. You may have to unlearn 
 
 132
 
 THE CALLING OF THE ACTOR 
 
 a certain amount, or rather to mould and shape what you 
 have learnt to your new conditions ; but if you have been 
 well grounded in the essential elements of an actor's 
 education, you will start with an enormous advantage over 
 such of your competitors as have waited till they go into 
 a theatre to learn what can be acquired just as well, better, 
 more thoroughly, outside it. 
 
 It has been my object to deal generally with the actor's 
 calling, a calling difficult and hazardous in character, 
 demanding much patience, self-reliance, determination, and 
 good temper. This last is not one of its least important 
 demands on your character. Remember that the actor is 
 not in one sense of the word an independent artist ; it is 
 his misfortune that the practice of his art is absolutely 
 dependent on the fulfilment of elaborate external con- 
 ditions. The painter, the musician, so long as they can 
 find paint and canvas, ink and paper, can work at their 
 art, alone, independent of external circumstances. Not 
 so the actor. Before he can act, the theatre, the play, 
 scenery, fellow -actors, these requisites, not by any means too 
 easy to find, must be provided. And then it is in the 
 company of others, his colleagues, that his work has to be 
 done. Consequently patience, good temper, fairness, un- 
 selfishness, are qualities he will do well to cultivate, and 
 he will lose nothing, rather gain, by the exercise of them. 
 The selfish actor is not a popular person, and, in my 
 experience, not as a rule a successful one. " Give and 
 take," in this little world of the theatre, and you will be 
 no losers by it. 
 
 Learn to bear failure and criticism patiently. They are 
 part of the actor's lot in life. Critics are rarely animated 
 by any personal hostility in what they may write about 
 us, though we are always inclined when we read an 
 unfavourable criticism, to set it down to anything but 
 our own deserving. I heard a great actor once say that 
 we should never read criticisms of ourselves till a week 
 
 133
 
 THE CALLING OF THE ACTOR 
 
 after they were written admirable counsel but I fear 
 we have not, many of us, yet reached that pitch of self- 
 restraint that would enable us to overcome our curiosity 
 for seven days. It is, however, a state of equanimity to 
 look forward to. In the meantime, content yourselves 
 with the recollection that ridicule and damning criticism 
 have been the lot at some time in their lives of the most 
 famous actors and actresses, that the unfavourable verdict 
 of to-day may be reversed to-morrow. It is no good 
 resenting failure ; turn it to account rather ; try to 
 understand it, and learn something from it. The uses 
 of theatrical adversity may not be sweet, but, rightly 
 understood, they may be very salutary. 
 
 Do not let failure make you despond. Ours is a calling 
 of ups and downs ; it is an advantage of its uncertainty 
 that you never know what may happen next ; the darkest 
 hour may be very near the dawn. This is where Bohemian- 
 ism, in the best sense of the term, will serve the actor. I 
 do not mean by Bohemianism chronic intemperance and 
 insolvency ; I mean the gay spirit of daring and enterprise 
 that greets failure as graciously as success, the love of 
 your own calling and your comrades in that calling a love 
 that, no matter what your measure of success, will ever 
 remain constant and enduring ; the recognition of the fact 
 that, as an actor, you but consult your own dignity in 
 placing your own calling as a thing apart, in leading such 
 a life as the necessities of that calling may demand, and 
 choosing your friends among those who regard you for 
 yourself, not those to whom an actor is a social puppet, to 
 be taken up and dropped as he happens for the moment 
 to be more or less prominent in the public eye. If this 
 kind of Bohemianism has some root in your character, you 
 will find the changes and chances of your calling the easier 
 to endure. 
 
 Do not despond in failure, neither be over-exalted by 
 success. Remember one success is as nothing in the history 
 
 134
 
 THE CALLING OF THE ACTOR 
 
 of an actor's career ; he has to make many before he can 
 lay claim to any measure of fame ; and over-confidence, an 
 inability to estimate rightly the value of a passing triumph, 
 has before now harmed incalculably many an actor or 
 actress. You will only cease to learn your business when 
 you quit it ; look on success as but another lesson learnt 
 to be turned to account in learning the next. The art of 
 the actor is no less difficult, no less long in comparison 
 with life, than any other art. In the intoxicating hour 
 of success let this chastening thought have some place in 
 your recollection. 
 
 When you begin work as actors or actresses, act when- 
 ever you can and whatever you can. Remember that the 
 great thing for the actor is to be seen as often as possible, 
 to be before the public as much as he can, no matter how 
 modest the part, how insignificant the production. It is 
 only when an actor has reached a position very secure in 
 the public esteem that he can afford, or that it may be 
 his duty, to be careful as to what he undertakes. But 
 before such a time is reached his one supreme object must 
 be to get himself known to the public, to let them see his 
 work under all conditions, until they find something to 
 identify as peculiarly his own ; he should think nothing 
 too small or unimportant to do, too tiresome or laborious 
 to undergo. Work well and conscientiously done must 
 attract attention ; there is a great deal of lolling and idle- 
 ness among the many thoughtless and indifferent persons 
 who drift on to the stage as the last refuge of the negligent 
 or incompetent. The stage will always attract a certain 
 number of worthless recruits because it is so easy to get 
 into the theatre somehow or other ; there is no examina- 
 tion to be passed, no qualification to be proved before a 
 person is entitled to call himself an actor. And then the 
 life of an actor is unfortunately, in these days of long runs, 
 one that lends itself to a good deal of idleness and waste 
 of time, unless a man or woman be very determined to 
 
 135
 
 THE CALLING OF THE ACTOR 
 
 employ their spare time profitably. For this reason, I 
 should advise any actor or actress, especially in London, 
 to cultivate some rational hobby or interest by the side of 
 their work ; for until the time comes for an actor to assume 
 the cares and labours of management, he must have a great 
 deal of time on his hands that can be better employed 
 than in hanging about clubs or lolling in drawing-rooms. 
 At any rate, the actor or actress who thinks no work too 
 small to do, and to do to the utmost of his or her ability, 
 who neglects no opportunity that may be turned to account 
 and every line he or she speaks is an opportunity must 
 outstrip those young persons who, though they may be 
 pleased to call themselves actors and actresses, never learn 
 to regard the theatre as anything but a kind of enlarged 
 back drawing-room, in which they are invited to amuse 
 themselves at an altogether inadequate salary. 
 
 In regard to salary, when you start in your profession, 
 do not make money your first consideration ; do not suffer 
 a few shillings or a pound or two to stand between you and 
 work. This is a consideration you may keep well in mind, 
 even when you have achieved some measure of success. 
 Apart from the natural tendency of the individual to place 
 a higher value on his services than that attached to them 
 by others, it is often well to take something less than you 
 ask, if the work offered you is useful. Remember that the 
 public judge you by your work ; they know nothing and 
 care little about what is being paid you for doing it., 
 To some people their own affairs are of such supreme 
 importance that they cannot believe that their personal 
 concerns are unknown to, and unregarded by, the outside 
 world. The intensely personal, individual character of the 
 actor's work is bound to induce a certain temptation to an 
 exaggerated egotism. We are all egotists, and it is right 
 that we should be, up to a point. But I would urge the 
 young actor or actress to be always on the watch against 
 developing, especially in success, an extreme egotism which 
 
 136
 
 THE CALLING OF THE ACTOR 
 
 induces a selfishness of outlook, an egregious vanity that 
 in the long run weakens the character, induces disappoint- 
 ment and discontent, and bores to extinction other persons. 
 Disraeli on one occasion, when asked to speak words of 
 pregnant wisdom to the small child of an admirer, laid his 
 hand on the infant's head, and said, " My dear child, never 
 ask who cut off the head of King Charles I., or wrote 
 The Letters of Junius ; for, if you do, people will regard 
 you as a bore, and that is the worst thing that can befall 
 any man. 1 ' I cannot help thinking that had Disraeli 
 encountered some of those actors and actresses whose one 
 absorbing topic is themselves, their careers, their futures, 
 their triumphs, and their grievances, he would have said, 
 " Do by all means ask who cut off Charles I.'s head, or who 
 wrote The Letters of Junius ; study the questions exhaus- 
 tively, and talk about them at every opportunity ; anything, 
 any subject, however trite or well worn, would be preferable 
 to the very limited and comparatively uninteresting topic 
 of yourself." I would not for one moment advise an actor 
 never to talk " shop " ; it is a great mistake to think that 
 men and women should never talk in public or private 
 about the thing to which they devote their lives ; people, 
 as a rule, are most interesting on the subject of their own 
 particular business in life. Talk about the affairs of the 
 theatre within reason, and with due regard to the amenities 
 of polite conversation, but do not confuse the affairs of the 
 theatre, broadly speaking, with your own. The one is 
 lasting, general ; the other particular and fleeting. " II n'y 
 a pas de Thomme necessaire." Many persons would be 
 strangely surprised if they could see how rapidly their 
 place is filled after they are gone, no matter how consider- 
 able their achievement. It may not be filled in the same 
 way, as well, as fittingly, but it will be filled, and humanity 
 will content itself very fairly well with the substitute. 
 This is especially true of the work of the actor. He can 
 but live as a memory, and memory is proverbially short. 
 
 137
 
 The True Story of Eugene Aram 
 
 139
 
 THE TRUE STORY OF EUGENE 
 ARAM 1 
 
 THE poet, the novelist, and the dramatist have vied with 
 one another in lending the charm of romance to the history 
 of Eugene Aram ; love and remorse have spread their 
 becoming cloaks over his misdeeds ; the commonplace of 
 fiction has adorned the commonplace of fact. But it not 
 infrequently happens that, in disengaging fact from fable, 
 the plain truth from the attractive lie, real circumstances 
 come to light as interesting and extraordinary as any that 
 can be invented by the imagination of the story-teller. 
 To record as distinct and yet present in the one man the 
 attributes of the thoughtful and gifted scholar and those 
 of the sordid and deliberate murderer must surely yield 
 a more profitable and singular result than the endeavour 
 to blend the two into a sympathetic whole, by melting 
 together in the crucible of lachrymose heroism those dis- 
 crepancies which lie at the very root of character, and 
 everlastingly mock the efforts of the methodical biographer 
 to force consistency upon the inconsistent. 
 
 Eugene Aram was born at Netherdale, in Yorkshire, in 
 the year 1704. His father was a gardener, but a gardener 
 of more than ordinary skill ; he possessed a remarkable 
 knowledge of botany, and was an excellent draughtsman. 
 He had originally been in the service of Dr. Compton, the 
 Bishop of London, famous for his resistance to James II., 
 and, on leaving the bishop, had gone into the service of 
 
 1 Reprinted from The Nineteenth Century. 
 141
 
 THE TRUE STORY 
 
 Sir Edward Blackett, at Newby, in Yorkshire. Yorkshire 
 was the native county of the Arams, who had not always 
 been gardeners. Their name they derived from the village of 
 Aram or Haram, on the south bank of the Tees. In the reign 
 of Edward III. the family was possessed of three knights' 
 fees near Newark. They would seem to have gradually 
 gone further south until one Aram is found a professor of 
 divinity at Oxford ; another, whom Eugene saw, a Commis- 
 sioner of the Salt Tax under Queen Anne, living at his seat 
 in Hertfordshire. The branch to which Eugene belonged, 
 and 'which had apparently remained in Yorkshire, must 
 have fallen from the high estate of their ancestors, or had 
 never emerged like the others from their original obscurity. 
 The first is the more likely supposition ; for Eugene 
 Aram, though driven by circumstances to associate with 
 the shopkeepers and ale-drapers of Yorkshire villages, was 
 always feared and respected as a very high, proud man, 
 solitary and retiring. He was himself fully conscious of 
 his superiority in respect of birth and lineage, for it is to 
 his investigations that we owe these details of his ancestry; 
 and his assiduous study of antiquities makes his information 
 on this point the more reliable. His portrait, too, in The 
 Newgate Calendar, said by those who had seen him to be a 
 very accurate likeness, shows a face in which there is little 
 trace of the rough and homely ; and throughout his life he 
 seems to have attracted the regard and confidence of those 
 whose stations in life were above his own. 
 
 Whilst working at Newby with Sir Edward Blackett, 
 Eugene's father had bought a little house at Bondgate, 
 near Ripon, in which he installed his wife and child, visit- 
 ing them in his intervals of leisure. Here Eugene was sent 
 to school and instructed in the Testament. At the age of 
 fourteen he joined his father at Newby, and, with the help 
 of Sir Edward Blackett, who seems to have been attracted 
 by his intelligence and zeal for study, entered upon that 
 career of intense and unwearied application to various 
 
 142
 
 OP EUGENE ARAM 
 
 branches of learning on which rests his real claim to 
 honourable recognition, and which only the misfortune 
 of circumstance has rendered fruitless of a great result. 
 He first applied himself to mathematics, and, self-taught, 
 mastered the ghastly problems of the higher algebra. 
 But his studies were interrupted at the age of sixteen 
 by his being sent to London to fill the place of bookkeeper 
 in the counting-house of a relative of Sir Edward's, a 
 Mr. Christopher Blackett. After remaining two years in 
 the counting-house Aram was attacked by a very severe 
 form of small-pox. His mother's anxiety was so great at 
 her son's illness that she was only prevented from journey- 
 ing to London by Eugene's giving up the counting-house 
 and returning home. Here the young man resumed his 
 mathematical studies, and at the same time dived into 
 poetry, history, and antiquities. But these new mistresses 
 quite seduced him from his boyish love ; poor mathematics 
 were cruelly deserted : " The charms of the other three," 
 he writes, " quite destroyed all the heavier beauties of 
 numbers and lines, whose applications and properties I now 
 pursued no longer." 
 
 As the time had come when Eugene must choose a pro- 
 fession, he settled upon that of a schoolmaster as the one 
 for which he was best fitted. With that intention he 
 returned to Netherdale, his birthplace, and there engaged 
 himself as teacher in the village school. At Netherdale, 
 according to Aram, he committed the first great error of 
 his life, took the first unfortunate step which started him 
 on his progress to the gibbet he married. Of his wife's 
 family nothing is known, except that Aram thought her 
 very much beneath him, shunned her in the street, and 
 never spoke to her in public. Those who remembered her 
 described her as a tidy little body, a very weak, soft kind 
 of woman, to whom Aram made an indifferent husband, 
 a kind of woman who can hardly have affected the destiny 
 of Aram so powerfully as he afterwards asked his friends 
 
 143
 
 THE TRUE STORY 
 
 to believe. One friend, more indiscreet and reckless than 
 the rest, speaks of Mrs. Aram as low, mean, and vulgar, 
 unworthy the lofty intellect of her husband, f<jr whom a 
 Newton and Erasmus could alone have been worthy com- 
 panions. But we shall see that the sublime visionary 
 could stoop at times and for purposes of his own to 
 society that would have been very distasteful to Newton or 
 Erasmus, and far lower and meaner than that of his vulgar 
 wife. Not that this inconsistency should be any reproach 
 to Aram, for it is always the privilege of a husband to 
 suffer in his companions what he resents in his wife ; but, 
 when we are confronted with the high pride of the profound 
 and solitary scholar shocked and wounded by the vulgarity 
 of the tidy little body, we must make very sure that the 
 high pride is not selfish vanity, and the domestic picture 
 presented the canting old story of the great man who is 
 unhappy and unappreciated at home. 
 
 Whatever the joys or disappointments of his early 
 married life, Aram's zeal for learning was increased ten- 
 fold. A consciousness of his deficiencies which he acquired 
 as soon as he began to teach others, and an irresistible 
 covetousness for knowledge, drove him to unexampled 
 industry. He taught himself English and Greek grammar 
 from Lilly and Camden by learning the entire books by 
 heart. He then entered on Latin, puzzling out the mean- 
 ing of the language for himself, spending sometimes a 
 whole day over five lines and never leaving a passage till 
 he had perfectly comprehended it. Then followed the 
 Greek Testament, of which he parsed every word as he 
 proceeded. When he had done this he felt himself strong 
 enough to read Hesiod, Homer, Theocritus, Herodotus, 
 and Thucydides. These labours, the achievements be it 
 remembered of a self-taught, comparatively uneducated 
 man, occupied some ten years. In the study of language 
 he had hit on the true bent of his intellect, the department 
 of learning in which he could hope to achieve something ; 
 
 144
 
 OF EUGENE ARAM 
 
 and neither change of place nor force of circumstances 
 ever from this moment hindered his continual researches. 
 
 When, in 1734, " William Norton, Esquire," his friend, 
 sent a horse and man to fetch the learned schoolmaster to 
 Knaresborough, the change of scene only meant a change 
 of study ; Hebrew succeeded Greek, and he began to 
 go through the Pentateuch in the original tongue as at 
 Netherdale he had gone through the Greek Testament. 
 And, he writes, he would have done more during the ten 
 years he kept the school at Knaresborough if other things 
 had not encroached on his time. 
 
 What were those other things ? There was the school, 
 there was a family of six children, and there was pecuniary 
 embarrassment. The ten years'" schoolmastering in Knares- 
 borough had not been profitable ; by the end of the year 
 1744 Aram had mortgaged the house at Bondgate which 
 he had inherited from his father, and owed a considerable 
 sum of money to his friend Mr. Norton, who had probably 
 put him into the school in the first instance. But, in the 
 face of subsequent events, the question suggests itself, 
 Had these debts arisen only from the failure of the 
 school ? Was Aram's course of life during these ten years 
 confined to the study of Hebrew and to the instruction of 
 the youth of Knaresborough ? There is mystery surround- 
 ing these ten years at Knaresborough. In 1744, without 
 a word of warning or preparation, without a hint as to the 
 development of such a catastrophe, we find Aram, the 
 solitary student, the man of high pride, who cannot even 
 condescend to acknowledge his wife in the street, this man 
 of learning, respected by all classes by the lettered for the 
 real depths of his acquirements, by the unlettered for 
 the enormous profundity of thought which in their eyes 
 constant solitude betokens we find this same Aram the 
 associate of the lowest villains in the perpetration of a 
 monstrous fraud, and the accomplice of the greatest villain 
 of them all in the murder of their fellow-conspirator. 
 
 145 L
 
 THE TRUE STORY 
 
 Next door to Aram's school in Knaresborough, was the 
 shop of a flax-dresser by the name of Richard Houseman. 
 This Houseman was a dark, ill-looking fellow, broad-set, 
 round-shouldered, and wearing a brown wig, " the real 
 picture of a murderer," as a neighbour described him. His 
 only companion in his flax-dressing was a large black raven 
 that perched itself at the top of the steps leading into his 
 shop. He was looked upon as belonging to the thoroughly 
 bad set in Knaresborough, a set which included Daniel 
 Clarke the shoemaker, Terry the ale-draper, lies the 
 usurer, and Levi the Jew. These men were regarded 
 by the good people of Knaresborough as equal to any 
 villainy. When, at the beginning of 1744, a Jew pedlar 
 boy who travelled with jewelry in the neighbourhood dis- 
 appeared, report said that Houseman and Daniel Clarke 
 had murdered him. That may or may not have been ; but 
 certain it is that about this time Houseman and Clarke 
 had hit on a very much more profitable form of enterprise 
 than murdering a pedlar boy for a few trumpery provincial 
 trinkets. The new scheme was no rough-and-ready high- 
 way murder, such as might spring from the brain of the 
 flax-dresser or the shoemaker ; it was a subtle and ingenious 
 fraud, and argues the presence of a superior intellect in the 
 councils of the criminals. This was the scheme : Clarke 
 had married a wife who was possessed of a fortune of 
 .200 ; the money remained for the present in the hands 
 of her relatives, who seem to have been unwilling to give 
 it up until they were satisfied that Clarke was a man of 
 some substance, and not an impecunious person who would 
 spend his wife's fortune as soon as she got it. Clarke and 
 his advisers saw in this reluctance of the relatives to part 
 with the fortune a means of securing not only the c J 200, 
 but a substantial sum of money in addition to it. On the 
 strength of his wife's reputed fortune on the one hand, and 
 to impress the reluctant relatives on the other with an idea 
 of his substance, Clarke was to order from various trades- 
 
 146
 
 OF EUGENE ARAM 
 
 men plate, linen, jewelry, watches, rings, and other articles. 
 On the strength of these extensive purchases, which would 
 argue substantial means, the relatives would part with the 
 money. As soon as Clarke had the money and the unpaid 
 goods on his hands, he was to disappear with his share of 
 the booty, leaving the rest in the hands of his confederates. 
 The guilt of the fraud would thus attach to Clarke alone, 
 who would be safe away, while his accomplices would wait 
 a convenient time to realise their shares of the profit. 
 This plan, excellent in itself, is only imperfect as regards 
 Clarke, who is condemned thereby to a perpetual exile, 
 whilst his friends remain at home rejoicing. However, he 
 appears to have been weak enough to have accepted it, 
 and to have been prepared to say good-bye to Knares- 
 borough for ever. 
 
 Such was the main plot ; but there was an under-plot 
 also, in which Daniel Clarke's part called for an even 
 greater sacrifice and a more compendious farewell. As 
 soon as the fraud was accomplished, the booty in Clarke's 
 hands, Houseman and the third party, the latest recruit 
 in the rascality of Knaresborough, were to murder the shoe- 
 maker and share among two instead of three Mrs. Clarke's 
 money and the unpaid articles. The disappearance of 
 Clarke and his property would favour with the public the 
 idea that he had absconded, and so divert suspicion from 
 his murderers. 
 
 His murderers ! Richard Houseman and Eugene Aram ! 
 For it was the schoolmaster who had joined the flax-dresser 
 and the shoemaker in their latest venture, and, with his 
 neighbour Houseman, was to remove Daniel Clarke out 
 of harm's way. Somehow or other in what exact manner 
 it is impossible 'to say the studious recluse had drifted 
 into an alliance with the murderous-looking shopkeeper 
 next door, and had become sufficiently intimate with him 
 to engage in the darkest of his designs. Aram had made 
 Clarke's acquaintance in his love of botany ; Clarke was a 
 
 147
 
 THE TRUE STORY 
 
 skilled florist, and he and Aram spent many delightful 
 hours in scaring away cats from the schoolmaster's garden. 
 In these hours it may have been that Aram learnt some- 
 thing of his companion's projects, and was perhaps through 
 him introduced to Houseman. Himself under the stress 
 of financial difficulties, he saw in the rude designs of these 
 rascals a means of relieving his own embarrassments, and, 
 in the perfection of an intelligent plan, built up murder on 
 robbery. " Mankind is never corrupted at once ; villainy 
 is progressive and declines from right, step by step, till 
 every regard of probity is lost, and every sense of all moral 
 obligation perishes. 11 Thus spake Eugene Aram in his own 
 defence, and certainly, in his case, these downward steps 
 are hidden from us ; suddenly, to our infinite amazement, 
 the callous murderer emerges from the pensive seclusion of 
 the student. 
 
 Aram has not, however, left us without any apology. 
 After his conviction and sentence, he told the clergyman 
 who visited him, that he murdered Clarke because he 
 suspected him of an intrigue with his wife, and that at 
 the time he considered he was doing right. Either Aram 
 is here telling the truth, or, on the threshold of death, 
 deliberately blackening his wife's character to justify his 
 own conduct. He can only be judged in this circum- 
 stantially. Whilst local report is silent as to any connec- 
 tion between Clarke and Mrs. Aram, it is not silent on the 
 unfeeling indifference with which she was treated by her 
 husband an indifference which makes his sensitiveness as 
 to her moral conduct rather fantastic. The Gentleman's 
 Magazine of 1759, the year of his execution, describes his 
 conduct towards her as inhuman. The murder of Clarke, 
 too, is surrounded by circumstances that, to a great extent, 
 soil its character as an act of retribution on the part of a 
 wronged husband. His devoted apologist says that all his 
 children but one took after their mother, and that con- 
 sequently Aram never considered them as his) own a 
 
 148
 
 OF EUGENE ARAM 
 
 rather severe conclusion. Vanity, if it does not cause 
 crime, seldom fails to accompany it, for there is no surer 
 extinguisher of remorse. If, in his early treatment of his 
 wife, Aram's vanity of birth and talent made him shun 
 her in the public place, and asperse his children for their 
 likeness to their mother, may not the same presumptuous 
 vanity that wrote on the eve of his execution the lines : 
 
 Calm and composed my soul her journey takes, 
 No guilt that troubles and no heart that aches, 
 
 have prompted him to preserve his reputation among men, 
 by vilifying the reputation of a woman whom to the very 
 last he treated with dislike and contempt ? 
 
 The best apology offered on Aram's behalf comes from 
 an admirer who, comparing him with Houseman, exclaims : 
 " How much greater the temptation to murder to a man 
 like Aram, with a miserable wife and six children, than to 
 a wretch like Houseman, who could carry all his family 
 under his hat ! " There is a greater semblance of truth in 
 this excuse than in the plea of the faithless wife. 
 
 By February 7th, 1745, Clarke, Houseman, and Aram 
 had, in pursuance of their plan, procured the goods, plate, 
 linen, and jewelry from various tradesmen, and Mrs. 
 Clarke's money from her relatives ; the following day 
 Clarke was to quit Knaresborough with his share. But, 
 before doing so, the spoil had to be divided, and for that 
 purpose Aram and Houseman invited Clarke to come with 
 them to St. Robert's Cave, outside Knaresborough, where 
 the division could be made in greater secrecy. About six 
 o'clock on the evening of the 7th, Aram came home and 
 told his wife to light a good fire in the room upstairs. He 
 then went out and did not return until two in the morning 
 with Clarke and Houseman. Something had happened to 
 Houseman's wig, for Aram asked his wife for a handker- 
 chief to tie about " Dicky's " head. They did not stop 
 long ; Clarke was impatient to be gone ; " It will soon be 
 
 149
 
 THE TRUE STORY 
 
 morning ; we must get off," he said. The three men went 
 out, and Mrs. Aram saw that Clarke carried a sack on 
 his back. 
 
 At four o'clock two hours after Houseman and Aram 
 returned, but this time without Clarke. They came 
 upstairs to the room where the fire was. Mrs. Aram 
 asked what had become of Clarke, to which Aram replied 
 by telling her to go to bed. She refused, and the two 
 men, who seemed to be very anxious to have the fire to 
 themselves, were obliged to go downstairs and light 
 another. Filled with misgiving, Mrs. Aram determined 
 to find out the nature of this mysterious business. As 
 she descended the stairs, she heard Houseman say, " She 
 is coming. 11 " We'll not let her," answered Aram. " If 
 she does, shell tell," said Houseman. " What can she 
 tell ? " replied her husband, " poor simple thing ! she 
 knows nothing ! " to which Houseman made answer, " If 
 she tells that I am here, that will be enough ! " Aram 
 offered to hold the door to prevent her coming in, a 
 suggestion that by no means satisfied Houseman ; if she 
 did not tell then, he urged, she might at some other time. 
 This reasoning quite dissipated Aram's amiable scruples. 
 " We will coax her a little till her passion be off,'" he said, 
 " and then take an opportunity to shoot her." Mrs. Aram 
 had heard enough ; she crept upstairs and, terrified out of 
 her wits, waited until seven o'clock, when she heard the 
 two men go out. As soon as they had gone Mrs. Aram 
 came downstairs again and closely examined the fireplace. 
 There were only ashes in the grate^ then ; but on the 
 dunghill outside she found some burnt wearing apparel, 
 and the handkerchief she had lent Dicky to tie round his 
 head, now bloodstained. She could not help concluding 
 from this that something bad had happened to Clarke ; 
 but when she expressed this natural misgiving to Dicky, 
 he was surprised, and could not imagine what she meant. 
 
 She was right all the same, in spite of Dicky's amaze- 
 
 150
 
 OF EUGENE ARAM 
 
 ment. Between two and four o'clock on the morning of 
 February 8th, 1745, Daniel Clarke had been murdered by 
 Aram and Houseman, and his body buried in St. Robert's 
 Cave. How he was killed, or who struck the fatal blow, 
 is uncertain ; each man charged the other with actually 
 breaking Clarke's skull, but to Aram in all probability 
 belongs the credit of that performance. At any rate, from 
 Mrs. Aram's account, it is clear that both participated in 
 the crime, and from the ordering of the fire by Aram at six 
 on the evening of the 7th, and the use to which the fire 
 was subsequently put, it is also clear that, whatever the 
 motive or variety of motives, the crime was premeditated. 
 When Clarke's disappearance became known in Knares- 
 borough, and the fraud that had been practised in con- 
 nection with it, Aram and Houseman did not escape 
 suspicion. In order that Aram might not be out of the 
 way if he were wanted, he was arrested for the debt he 
 owed to Norton ; and the public was hardly reassured 
 when he promptly obtained release by paying off the debt, 
 and also the mortgage on the house at Bondgate. In 
 addition to these peculiar circumstances, some of the 
 goods obtained by Clarke were found buried in Aram's 
 and Houseman's gardens. Once more the law laid hands 
 on the schoolmaster, and charged him with a misdemeanour 
 in the matter of Clarke's fraudulent proceedings ; but Aram 
 was discharged in a short time for want of sufficient 
 evidence. As soon as he was released, he hastily quitted 
 Knaresborough without even waiting to take advantage of 
 his redeemed mortgage on the Bondgate house, leaving 
 behind him his wife and family to shift as best they could. 
 There was no repose for etymological study in Knares- 
 borough, with that ugly reminiscence mouldering in St. 
 Robert's Cave. 
 
 The next fourteen years of Aram's life, from his quitting 
 Knaresborough in 1745 to his execution at York in 1759, 
 were the years during which, in spite of frequent wander- 
 
 151
 
 THE TRUE STORY 
 
 ings and changes of scene and occupation, he completed 
 his study of language and lighted on the etymological 
 discovery which, if not original, as he himself admitted, 
 was at least the realisation of a truth at that time unima- 
 gined or unappreciated by his contemporaries. London 
 was the first resting-place of the wandering scholar. Here 
 he remained for two years and a half, as usher at a school 
 in Piccadilly kept by a Mr. Painblanc. This gentleman, 
 he says, in addition to a salary, further rewarded his 
 services by teaching the eager linguist French. In London 
 Aram found means of realising what was left to him of 
 the Clarke booty ; his profits from that transaction are 
 said to have amounted to about .160, of which he must 
 have already spent a considerable portion in meeting his 
 liabilities at Knaresborough. On leaving Mr. Painblanc, 
 Aram went to a school at Hayes, where he was engaged 
 as writing-master. He remained there some three or four 
 years, after which he spent short periods at various other 
 schools in the south of England, returning finally to 
 London. His circumstances at this time can have been 
 far from prosperous, for on his second visit to London we 
 find him earning money by transcribing Acts of Parlia- 
 ment for registration in Chancery. Ultimately he got an 
 engagement as usher at the free grammar school of Lynn in 
 Norfolk, where, at the end of seven months, he was arrested 
 for the crime he had committed fourteen years before. 
 
 It is this period, between the murder and his arrest, 
 that has been seized on by writers of fiction as a period 
 of remorse and mental agony, made more poignant and 
 terrible by the added distresses of a great passion. Of the 
 latter no trace is to be found except in the scandalous 
 whispers of Lynn that accuse the usher of living there 
 with a young lady he described as his niece, but who, on 
 his departure thence, was discovered to have been his 
 mistress. Scatcherd, the rhapsodical apologist already 
 alluded to, indignantly repudiates this anecdote, and 
 
 152
 
 OF EUGENE ARAM 
 
 refutes it by declaring that the pseudo-niece was no other 
 than his ever faithful and devoted daughter Sally, who 
 accompanied him through all his wanderings, and, after 
 her father's death, was so overcome with despair that her 
 morals forsook her and she became the mistress of a gentle- 
 man in London. From this dire situation she was rescued 
 by an honest publican in the Westminster Bridge Road, 
 who married her. Of her father she ever entertained 
 devoted and loving memories, believing that his dear spirit 
 " was traversing the Elysian fields with the kindred shades 
 of his beloved Homer and Virgil. 1 ' 
 
 In the letter Aram wrote describing his wanderings 
 he is silent as to his daughter's companionship ; indeed, 
 the story of his niece at Lynn is the only possible reference 
 to it. Those who remember his arrest and his arrival at 
 Knaresborough say nothing of any companion ; and Sally's 
 rapturous visions of the Elysian fields has a suspicious 
 flavour of the gushing Scatcherd. Aram was a man of 
 forty when he left Knaresborough, fifty-four at the time 
 of his execution. The extent of his studies and the re- 
 collections of the few who have any remembrance of the 
 usher suggest rather the moody scholar of Hood's poem 
 than the passionate youth of Bulwer Lytton. 
 
 But on the remorseful tortures of the Aram of " The 
 Dream" history is silent. Such evidence as exists of 
 Aram's bearing after the murder and during the time 
 of his trial and punishment points, not to a man of in- 
 trinsically noble nature riven by the pangs of sorrow for 
 a crime committed under the stress of a dire temptation, 
 but to a cold and deliberate murderer justifying his act to 
 himself by a kind of sentimental vanity which does not 
 hesitate before slander and falsehood to accomplish its 
 pitiful end. There is not in Aram's conduct, from the 
 moment of his return to Knaresborough, a prisoner charged 
 with murder, the slightest evidence of any feeling of re- 
 morse. He is calm, confident of his acquittal, unmoved 
 
 153
 
 THE TRUE STORY 
 
 altogether by the painful circumstance of his situation ; 
 and when, after his sentence, all hope of earthly salvation 
 is at an end, he contemplates with sublime self-composure 
 the approaching journey of his calm and guiltless soul. 
 If, during fourteen years of absence from the scene of his 
 crime, his first feelings of remorse had become dulled, 
 surely they would have returned with all their former 
 acuteness when the hour of expiation had arrived. 
 
 Study, continuous and unwearied, was always with him 
 in his years of exile. From the French taught him by 
 Mr. Painblanc he passed to Chaldee and Arabic, con- 
 cluding with Celtic. When he had completed the study 
 of the last-named language and had compared some three 
 thousand words in that tongue with their equivalents in 
 the Latin, Greek, and other languages, he was able to 
 determine the affinity of the Celtic with the other Euro- 
 pean languages, and, by recognising this truth, to raise 
 himself from The Newgate Calendar into every respectable 
 biographical dictionary. All his papers, all the written 
 records of his work, are lost, but his claim to recognition 
 in this respect has never been disputed. 
 
 His interest in botany, to which he owed his acquaintance 
 with his victim Clarke, continued with him during his 
 wanderings, and in the Botanical Gardens at Chelsea he 
 spent many delightful and instructive hours. A gentleman 
 who used sometimes to accompany Aram on his visits to 
 Chelsea remembers the humane solicitude with which he 
 would remove from the path any snail or worm for fear of 
 treading on it a delightful trait. But Eugene Aram 
 is not the first scoundrel who has found smashing in a 
 man's head quite consistent with kindness to dumb animals ; 
 people, the inferiority of whose natures has prevented them 
 from finding any good in their fellow-men, are very apt to 
 believe that true human nature resides only in cats and dogs. 
 Lynn was the last resting-place of Eugene Aram before 
 the final catastrophe. He is better remembered here than 
 
 154
 
 OF EUGENE ARAM 
 
 anywhere else. He is spoken of as sullen and reserved 
 straying alone among the flat uninteresting marshes by 
 the river Ouse, dressed in a horseman's great coat, a great 
 flapped hat drawn over his eyes ; and a singular pecu- 
 liarity if he heard any noise behind him, he would not 
 merely turn his head, but swing himself round bodily ', as if 
 to confront an enemy. After Aram's arrest the head master 
 of the grammar school recollected meeting the usher one 
 night outside his bedroom door under vry suspicious cir- 
 cumstances, and ever after congratulated himself on a lucky 
 escape from murder ; but the boys liked Aram very well, and 
 he made a good many friends among the neighbouring gentry. 
 
 He was stopping one day with a Dr. Weatherhead, a 
 parson living near Lynn. It was a winter's morning ; but 
 Aram, always devoted to plants and flowers, was out in the 
 garden helping the doctor with his flower-beds. Whilst 
 they were engaged in this occupation, a horse-dealer called 
 to see the doctor, who was anxious to sell a horse. The 
 dealer happened to come from Yorkshire, and, as he was 
 talking over the bargain with the parson, he caught sight 
 of the figure of Aram working in the garden. He imme- 
 diately recognised him and told the doctor that he knew 
 his friend. The horse-dealer, his business completed, re- 
 turned to Yorkshire, and was able to tell his customers at 
 Knaresborough the whereabouts of Eugene Aram. For 
 the moment the information was interesting ; in a month 
 or two it became useful. 
 
 Early in the year 1758 a labourer, digging stone at 
 Thistle Hill, near Knaresborough, came across a human 
 skeleton. The people of Knaresborough with one voice 
 declared that these must be the bones of Daniel Clarke. 
 Mrs. Aram had already dropped some hints as to the fate 
 of Clarke ; now, at the coroner's inquest on the newly 
 found skeleton, she told her story of the night of the 
 murder. Houseman was apprehended on her evidence, 
 and confronted with the bones. The coroner, seeing him 
 
 155
 
 THE TRUE STORY 
 
 pale and trembling with fear, bade him take up a bone. 
 Houseman obeyed, but, to the general astonishment, 
 declared that the bone was no more Daniel Clarke's than 
 it was his. Asked to explain himself, he said that Eugene 
 Aram had murdered Clarke, whose bones were not those 
 found on Thistle Hill, but were lying buried in St. 
 Robert's Cave. There the skeleton of Clarke was un- 
 earthed, according to Houseman's indication. Furnished 
 with the horse-dealer's information, now valuable indeed, 
 Barker and Moore, two Knaresborough constables, set out 
 for Lynn disguised as Yorkshire cattle-dealers. 
 
 Arrived at Lynn, the constables made inquiries at the 
 local inn, where they were soon able to satisfy themselves 
 that the man they wanted and the usher at the grammar 
 school were one and the same person. Aram was standing 
 in a corner of the playground when he was apprehended, 
 handcuffed, and, amidst the tears of his pupils, driven off 
 in a chaise to Knaresborough with his two captors. It 
 will be seen from this that he did not walk between the 
 two stern-faced men, whose proceedings are so graphically 
 described in Hood's poem. 
 
 His arrival at Knaresborough had been eagerly awaited. 
 As he stepped from the chaise at the door of the Bell Inn, 
 the rustic crowd observed with admiration his genteel suit 
 of clothes and the elegant frills hanging from his wrists 
 a very different figure to the impecunious schoolmaster 
 who had left them fourteen years before. Since then 
 Eugene Aram had been courted and respected by men 
 who were of a position to appreciate the learned and 
 ingenious scholar, who had known nothing of the obscure 
 and nefarious past, who would have been shocked and 
 startled indeed to have seen the elegant frills of the 
 meditative usher trailing over the handcuffs. 
 
 In the parlour of the inn Aram found the vicar and a 
 number of local gentlemen whom the singular circum- 
 stances of the crime and the personality of the criminal 
 
 156
 
 OF EUGENE ARAM 
 
 had brought together. Aram conversed freely and calmly 
 with the assembled company, and assured them of his 
 ability to meet the charges made against him. In the 
 midst of his conversation his wife, who had been told of 
 her husband's arrival, entered the room with her children. 
 He took no notice of them till he had finished his con- 
 versation with the gentry ; then, turning to her, said 
 coldly, " Well, how do you do ? " He then asked after 
 one of his sons, an idiot ; his wife answered that the boy 
 was worse ; he told her that if she had followed his 
 instructions, he would have been better. 
 
 A year passed between Aram's return to Knaresborough 
 and his trial at York in the August of 1759. The interval 
 of time was occupied, presumably, in some attempt to 
 procure such evidence as would convict both Aram and 
 Houseman without having to accept the testimony of 
 either man against the other. Not that Aram would 
 have offered himself as a witness against his accomplice : 
 his firmness and courage if such a word may be used 
 are as remarkable as the trembling cowardice of House- 
 man. Of the latter he spoke with bitter contempt. 
 " Young woman," he said to a girl who served him with 
 his meals in York Castle, " if you ever get married, don't 
 take a man that has got a hen's heart, but choose one that 
 has a cock's." His mind was so composed that even the 
 parting agony of his dear daughter Sally did not prevent 
 him from giving her a receipt for removing freckles. As 
 she stood sobbing at the gates of the Castle he noticed she 
 had become tanned and freckled with the sun. Poor Sally 
 in the midst of her tears admitted the soft impeachment, 
 but said she didn't know how to get rid of them. " Oh, 
 make a wash with lemon juice, that will cure them," 
 answered her father. 
 
 The trial of Eugene Aram took place at York before 
 Mr. Justice Noel on August 13th, 1759. To the surprise of 
 Aram, Houseman, who had been previously arraigned and 
 
 157
 
 THE TRUE STORY 
 
 acquitted for want of evidence, appeared in the box as a 
 witness for the Crown. It may be partly due to his sur- 
 prise at this proceeding that in his now famous defence 
 Aram made no effort to reply to the evidence given against 
 him ; in all probability the evidence was sufficiently clear 
 to make an effective answer impossible. There is no report 
 of the trial ; Aram's speech is the only part preserved to 
 us, and in this he is altogether silent as to any of the 
 witnesses called by the prosecution. Scatcherd says that, 
 though the wisest of men, Aram was too much of a child 
 in a law court to make a defence that would have satisfied 
 a judge and jury. Certainly Aram laboured under the 
 usual disadvantages of prisoners in those days ; but it is 
 difficult to believe, from his previous career, or the 
 ingeniousness of the defence which he did make, that he 
 was so childlike as to have been unable to offer a refutation 
 of the case against him, if it had been in his power to do so. 
 His defence, as it stands, admirable in the modesty of its 
 expression and the ingenuity of its arguments, is absolutely 
 unconvincing. 1 It consists entirely of an attempt to show 
 that the bones of Clarke might be the bones of some long- 
 buried hermit, and he cites a number of instances in which 
 such bones have been found in a similar state of preserva- 
 tion, in spite of a much longer interment than fourteen 
 years. He dwells, too, with becoming diffidence on his 
 irreproachable character and reputation, and the impro- 
 bability of a man of such conduct suddenly, without any 
 previous experience in crime, committing a horrid murder. 
 In this argument Eugene Aram touches the very mystery 
 of his own career. He has offered a solution of this sudden 
 impulse to crime by accusing his wife of infidelity ; we 
 have already commented on the dubious character of that 
 explanation. At the last let Eugene Aram speak for 
 
 1 This was the opinion of Paley, author of the Evidences, who 
 was present in court during Aram's trial, and listened with admira- 
 tion to his speech. 
 
 158
 
 OF EUGENE ARAM 
 
 himself. Convicted and condemned to death, he attempted 
 suicide in York Castle the night before his execution. 
 Before opening the veins of his arm with a razor he had 
 concealed for the purpose, he wrote: 
 
 " What am I better than my fathers ? To die is natural 
 and necessary. Perfectly sensible of this, I fear no more to 
 die than I did to be born. But the manner of it is some- 
 thing which should in my opinion be decent and manly. 
 I think I have regarded both these points. Certainly 
 nobody has a better right to dispose of a man's life than 
 himself ; and he, not others, should determine how. As to 
 any indignities offered to my body, or silly reflections on 
 my faith and morals, they are (as they always were) things 
 indifferent to me. I think, though contrary to the common 
 way of thinking ; I wrong no man by this, and hope it is 
 not offensive to that eternal Being that formed me and 
 the world ; and as by this I injure no man, no man can be 
 reasonably offended. I solicitously recommend myself to 
 that eternal and almighty Being, the God of nature, if I 
 have done amiss. But perhaps I have not, and I hope this 
 thing will never be imputed to me. Though I am now 
 stained by malevolence and suffer by prejudice, I hope to 
 rise fair and unblemished. My life was not polluted, my 
 morals irreproachable, and my opinions orthodox. 1 I slept 
 sound till three o'clock, awaked, and then writ these lines : 
 
 Come, pleasing rest, eternal slumbers fall, 
 Seal mine, that once must seal the eyes of all ; 
 Calm and composed, my soul her journey takes, 
 No guilt that troubles and no heart that aches. 
 Adieu ! thou sun, all bright like her arise. 
 Adieu ! fair friends, and all that's good and wise. ' 
 
 Are these lines the dignified farewell of a martyred 
 
 1 I should think it was very doubtful whether a prison chaplain 
 would assent to Aram's claim to orthodoxy. There is a suspicious 
 flavour of eighteenth-century deism in his conception of God. How- 
 ever, the God of the Bible and the God of the philosopher are equally 
 odious on the lips of an unrepentant murderer. 
 
 159
 
 THE TRUE STORY OF EUGENE ARAM 
 
 philosopher, or the egotistical exit of a criminal posing as 
 martyr and philosopher ? Would not a word or two of 
 greeting to Mrs. Aram, of apology to Clarke, have been 
 more seemly on such an occasion than six lines of indifferent 
 verse in praise of his own sublime departure from this 
 world ? Over Aram's farewell, one can exclaim with 
 Joseph Surface, " Ah, my dear sir, 'tis this very conscious 
 innocence that is of the greatest prejudice to you." One 
 would be so grateful for just some little acknowledgment 
 of human weakness from this consciously irreproachable 
 assassin. 
 
 Was Eugene Aram a good man struggling against 
 adversity, as his most zealous apologist would have us 
 believe ? We are inclined to answer the question in the 
 negative. All we can say with absolute certainty is that 
 he murdered Daniel Clarke and discovered a European 
 affinity in Celtic roots. For the latter achievement he is 
 entitled to rank with scholars as well as murderers ; for 
 the former he was hanged at York, half fainting from his 
 attempt at suicide which had been happily, or unhappily, 
 frustrated, and his body hung in chains near Knares- 
 borough. One of his daughters, Betty, described as a 
 " wild girl," saw the corpse swinging in its chains on 
 Thistle Hill and ran gleefully to tell her mother that she 
 had seen father hanging up on the hill ; the sight seemed 
 to give her satisfaction. 
 
 Houseman withdrew with his raven from his native 
 village, loathed and dejected, his windows having been 
 smashed by old pupils of Aram, and died in his bed at 
 a place called Marton. 
 
 Mrs. Aram kept a pie and sausage shop in Knares- 
 borough, and picked up her husband's bones as they fell 
 from the gibbet. 
 
 160
 
 The Fall of the House of Goodere 
 
 161
 
 THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF 
 GOODERE 1 
 
 THE Gooderes were a Herefordshire family. The first 
 of them to emerge from the purely local importance of 
 respectable country squires was Edward Goodere, of 
 Burhope, who represented his county in the Parliament 
 of 1709, and was made a baronet by Queen Anne. Rather 
 more than twenty years before Sir Edward had married a 
 Miss Dinely, the only daughter and heiress of Sir Edward 
 Dinely, Bart., of Charlton, in Worcestershire. This young 
 lady was worth < J 3,000 a year, and for that reason appeared 
 to be an excellent match to the young Goodere, whose own 
 estate brought him in an annual income of barely ,1,000. 
 Fearing lest the parents of the young lady should consider 
 him an unsuitable husband for so comfortable an heiress, 
 Edward Goodere at first addressed his suit to Miss Dinely 
 without the knowledge of her father and mother, and it 
 was only when he was sure of her affections that he dared 
 openly to claim her hand. His discretion was rewarded. 
 He secured the heiress as his wife, and the enjoyment of 
 her fortune during her lifetime ; but it was settled and 
 
 1 The materials for this tragic chapter in the history of a family 
 are to be found in vol. xvii. of Howell's State Trials, and in a few 
 contemporary pamphlets dealing with the case which are referred 
 to in the catalogue of the British Museum Library under the 
 heading " Goodere." One of these pamphlets is the work of 
 Samuel Foote, the celebrated comedian, who through his mother 
 was nephew to the two brothers whose story is here told. 
 
 1 Reprinted from The Cornhill Magazine. 
 
 163
 
 THE FALL OF THE 
 
 this is important in view of subsequent events that on 
 her death her fortune was to go to her eldest son. This 
 settlement became effective by the birth of an heir, which 
 was followed by the birth of two other sons, John and 
 Samuel, born in 1687. As the boys grew to manhood the 
 eldest was kept at home and educated in a way befitting 
 his prospects, while John and Samuel were sent to sea. 
 The first catastrophe occurring in the family, and the 
 prelude to the bloody drama which destroyed the honour 
 and fortunes of the house, was the untimely death of the 
 eldest son. An amiable and accomplished youth of happy 
 promise, he was killed in a duel in Ireland, whereupon 
 John, the second son, was recalled from his ship, the 
 Diamond (1708), to take over the responsibilities of 
 heirship. 
 
 In the meantime the youngest, Samuel, had remained at 
 sea, and served as a lieutenant in the navy throughout the 
 war of the Spanish Succession. As an officer he showed 
 himself valorous and insubordinate ; though report spoke 
 of him as acting with great bravery at Ferrol and St. 
 Sebastian, he was convicted by a court-martial, on 
 December 24th, 1719, of having been " very much 
 wanting in the performance of his duty" in the latter 
 engagement, and dismissed his ship. After this he 
 returned home ; and the next twenty years witnessed 
 the growth and development of the feud between the 
 two brothers which united them finally in violent death, 
 and left to a poor eccentric the pitiful task of ringing 
 down the curtain on the tragedy of the Gooderes with 
 the sorrowful farce of the half-witted Knight of Windsor. 
 
 When Samuel, in consequence of the court-martial on 
 his conduct at St. Sebastian, retired temporarily from the 
 navy he found elements of discord already present in his 
 family. John, since his return home on his brother's 
 death, had not succeeded in hitting it off with his father. 
 His short experience as a sailor had roughened a character 
 
 164
 
 HOUSE OF GOODERE 
 
 already marked by an unpleasing eccentricity, the first sign 
 of that degeneracy in the family wits which reached a climax 
 in the mad offspring of his brother. Sir Edward declared 
 John fitter to be a boatswain than a baronet; consequently 
 it was not difficult for Samuel, when he returned from sea, 
 to win not only his father's confidence and support, but 
 the general good opinion of the neighbouring gentry, who 
 were quick to compare his attractive manners with the 
 stubborn uncouthness of his elder brother. John rejected 
 all his father's attempts to make him a gentleman ; Samuel 
 charmed all by his candour and good-nature, and acquired 
 a delightful reputation for being "as gallant a young 
 fellow as any in the navy." Certainly there were those 
 who hinted that Samuel, with all his good-humour, was a 
 man of violent and unscrupulous temper, and stories were 
 told of how, as a boy, he had robbed his father's house and 
 clapped a pistol to his mother's breast, while on another 
 occasion he had threatened to put a brace of bullets 
 through his father's heart if he did not supply him 
 immediately with money to gratify his extravagant habits. 
 The friends of John declared the elder to be a sane, 
 upright, conscientious man, and Samuel a mischievous and 
 daring rascal, whilst the friends of Samuel protested that 
 the younger was the upright, dutiful, and charming son, 
 John a cruel, grasping, irresponsible boor. The sequel 
 would seem to show that John was the madder and more 
 honest of the two, Samuel the saner and unquestionably 
 the more dangerous ; both in a like degree passionate, 
 vindictive, avaricious, and rather more indifferent towards 
 each other than brothers usually are. 
 
 The hostility of these two brothers was no private thing, 
 one of those painfully stifled disagreements that only break 
 out in the domestic circle. It sought public expression, 
 and found it in a contest between them for a neighbouring 
 mayoralty. The brothers were rival candidates, and each 
 chose to consider himself elected. Accordingly, on the 
 
 165
 
 THE FALL OF THE 
 
 Sunday after the election, John and Samuel, in civic robes, 
 and with accompanying trains, raced to church in their 
 official capacities. John arrived first, and took his place 
 in the mayor's seat of honour. Samuel hurried after him 
 and, having more resolute attendants, turned out his elder 
 brother. In a Parliamentary election Samuel, by siding 
 against the family candidate, procured his own reinstate- 
 ment in the navy, and was posted to the ship Antelope for 
 a fortnight with a view to obtaining promotion in rank. 
 Such were the preliminaries in a struggle which family 
 affairs soon hastened to a desperate conclusion. 
 
 The brothers had married John a Miss Lawford, a 
 Bristol heiress, who brought him <! 0,000 and bore him 
 a son ; Samuel a Miss Watts, by whom he had two sons 
 and three daughters. Both these marriages were more or 
 less unfortunate in their results. John disagreed with his 
 wife for the same reason that he had disagreed with his 
 father his inability to behave like a gentleman ; Samuel's 
 two sons were weak-minded in varying degree. Sir Edward 
 would seem to have attempted to reconcile some measure 
 of impartiality in his sons' disputes with a decided leaning 
 towards Samuel ; but, on the death of Lady Goodere, the 
 family greed of gold estranged him completely from the 
 cause of John. According to his marriage settlement, 
 Lady Goodere's separate property went on her death to 
 her eldest surviving son. Sir Edward now found his income 
 diminished by some 3,000. Though John allowed his 
 father to retain the estate of Henley, in Worcestershire, 
 to the value of 500 a year, even this concession failed 
 to reconcile Sir Edward to the inevitable ; Samuel was 
 always at his side to remind him of his diminished income 
 and his enforced dependence on the parsimonious John. 
 
 Jacob-like, the younger brother now set himself to 
 supplant the elder in the inheritance of Burhope, the 
 family property in Herefordshire, which it lay with Sir 
 Edward to dispose of at his death. When that event 
 
 166
 
 HOUSE OF GOODERE 
 
 occurred, in 1739, the will of the late baronet showed that 
 he had made an attempt to heal the now flagrant enmity 
 of his sons by a not unfair compromise. To John, who 
 was already well provided for, he left the enjoyment of 
 the Burhope estate during his lifetime, with remainder 
 to Samuel and his heirs. But, however well meant, this 
 attempt to heal the family jars was a complete failure. 
 Each of the brothers desired all for himself and nothing 
 for the other. John accused his father of ingratitude in 
 so poorly repaying his kindness in allowing him the use of 
 the Henley property during his lifetime ; Samuel was 
 merely disappointed and enraged that Sir Edward's 
 obvious preference for him in his latter days had received 
 such inadequate expression in his will. John showed h : s 
 sense of injury by giving his father a cheap and unwort y 
 funeral, much to Samuel's horror ; Samuel displayed his 
 loss of self-control by hurrying down to Burhope with six 
 ruffians, and flourishing in his brother's face a lease which 
 he said Sir Edward had granted him before his death ; he 
 was only prevented from further acts of violence by Sir John 
 running upstairs and taking refuge behind a blunderbuss. 
 
 In a family composed of such warring and discordant 
 elements, in which envy, greed, and the beginnings of 
 mental alienation are teased into mischievous activity 
 by the manifold vexations of succession and inheritance, 
 one cause of quarrel follows with startling rapidity on the 
 heels of another. Sir John's eccentricity of character had 
 not been without its effect on his married life ; he treated 
 his son with unaccountable neglect, and did everything to 
 provoke his wife to seek consolation for her trying situation 
 in the arms of another. Whether she had actually done 
 so is uncertain ; in any case Sir John accused her of mis- 
 conduct with a neighbouring baronet, Sir Robert Jason, 
 and by the suborned evidence of servants and tenants, if 
 the partisans of the lady are to be believed, obtained 
 ^500 damages against the defendant. This victory 
 
 167
 
 THE FALL OF THE 
 
 Sir John followed up by indicting Lady Goodere in the 
 King's Bench for conspiring against his life, and she was 
 sentenced to a year's imprisonment. In the light of subse- 
 quent events one is inclined to ask whether this last charge 
 of conspiracy to murder was merely the fabrication of a 
 vindictive eccentric supported by the evidence of hirelings, 
 or should be regarded as the actual outcome of the evil 
 influence of Samuel, who had espoused Lady Goodere's 
 cause, and was now perhaps endeavouring to execute with 
 her assistance the murderous design which he afterwards 
 carried out on his own account. Samuel had undoubtedly 
 intervened in his brother's marital affairs and, from the 
 nature of things, taken the wife's part. But it is distinctly 
 in favour of the lady's innocence that, when Sir John 
 followed up his two previous actions by applying to the 
 House of Lords for a divorce, the Lords, notwithstanding 
 the judgment in the Common Pleas and the sentence of 
 the King's Bench, refused to grant it. Sir John had more- 
 over shown a distinctly vindictive spirit by suing for his 
 divorce while his wife was still undergoing her sentence of 
 imprisonment, and it was only through the efforts of her 
 friends, chief among them Samuel, that she was enabled 
 successfully to resist his suit. These facts would suggest 
 that Lady Goodere was really suffering some sort of per- 
 secution at the hands of her peculiar husband, and that, 
 whatever Captain Samuel's motives, he was in this instance 
 on the side of justice. 
 
 But a circumstance befell at this time that wrought so 
 dismal a consequence in the soul of Captain Samuel Goodere 
 that all other causes of quarrel, secret grudges, and open 
 hatreds paled their ineffectual fire before the flame of this 
 new mortification. As the death of a son and heir had 
 first brought the two brothers face to face, and made them 
 hate each other with a deadly hate, so the death of another 
 son and heir removed the last human being that could 
 stand between the house of Goodere and The Newgate 
 
 168
 
 HOUSE OF GOODERE 
 
 Calendar. Sir John's only son, neglected all his life by 
 his singular father, who had apprenticed him to a saddler, 
 and spoilt by his easy mother, had completely wrecked 
 his youth in dissipation, with the result that he died in 
 miserable circumstances in the year 1740. His father 
 showed his sense of his affliction by himself driving to the 
 grave the hearse that contained the last remains of his 
 posterity. Drive on, anomalous baronet ! tumble young 
 hopeful into his grave! but have a care lest your own 
 hearse journey be not so very far away in point of time, 
 and Brother Samuel's too ! Such a nodding of plumes as 
 there will be on the road from Bristol to Hereford before 
 many months are past. Bristol is now a city of some 
 interest to the Goodere family, for about November, 1 740, 
 Captain Samuel Goodere, R.N., is gazetted to his Majesty's 
 ship Ruby, lying in the King's road of that city. 
 
 Only son and heir of Sir John Dinely Goodere, Bart., 
 dead, the Dinely property in Worcestershire, left to Sir 
 John by his mother, should pass, on his death, to Captain 
 Samuel as next remainderman under the settlement, saving 
 always the right of the said Sir John to cut off the entail. 
 This right Sir John, towards the end of the year 1740, 
 suddenly announced his intention of exercising in favour 
 of his sister, Mrs. Foote, of Bristol, mother of Samuel 
 Foote, comedian that is to be. In the heart of a turbulent 
 sea captain, trained in what was then one of the finest 
 schools for breeding ruffians from gentlemen that the world 
 has ever seen, this latest manoeuvre of a hated brother 
 stirred a vehement desire for a final settlement of all 
 points at issue by piratical expedients. The spirit of 
 Cain entered into the soul of Captain Samuel : his hand 
 is on his cutlass ; he clears his decks for action. 
 
 Now my anger's up, 
 
 Ten thousand virgins kneeling at my feet, 
 And with one general cry howling for mercy, 
 Shall not redeem thee. 
 
 169
 
 THE FALL OF THE 
 
 Captain Samuel withdraws himself to his good ship Ruby 
 at Bristol. Sir John, full of infirmities, has gone to Bath 
 to take the waters. These are the respective situations 
 of these two elderly gentlemen in the new year of 1741. 
 The captain is now fifty-three years old, the baronet 
 nearing sixty, gentlemen of ripe age to be about repeating 
 the story of the first murder. 
 
 Mr. Jarrit Smith was a Bristol solicitor, and in that 
 capacity had acted at different times for Sir John Goodere. 
 The baronet trusted Mr. Smith and relied on his judgment 
 in his business affairs. It was, therefore, quite natural 
 that Captain Goodere should confide to Mr. Smith a 
 desire that he alleged had sprung up in his heart to be 
 reconciled with his elder brother. This friendly spirit 
 had come over the captain towards the end of 1740, and 
 early in the following year Mr. Smith communicated it to 
 his client. After some demur Sir John allowed Mr. Smith 
 to persuade him to a meeting with his brother the next 
 time he should come to Bristol. He was then staying at 
 Bath, as " his heart was bad," and he was very deaf ; he 
 had been assured that the Bath waters would mend his 
 troubles. Tuesday, January 13th, was the day finally 
 fixed on for the meeting ; Sir John was to come to Mr. 
 Smith's house on College Green at nine o'clock in the 
 morning, and Mr. Smith warned the penitent captain to 
 be there in good time, as his brother was a man of exact 
 punctuality. 
 
 Mr. Smith's warning was evidently not lost on Captain 
 Goodere, who took rather extraordinary steps in order to 
 be up to time. Opposite Mr. Smith's house on College 
 Green stood the White Hart alehouse, kept by one Hobbs. 
 On the first floor of the alehouse was a little closet where 
 gentlemen were accustomed to sit and look out of the 
 window while drinking. This window commanded a view 
 of Mr. Smith's house. What more natural than that 
 Captain Goodere, anxious to fall in with Sir John's punctual 
 
 170
 
 HOUSE OF GOODERE 
 
 habits, should hire this room for Tuesday morning, so that 
 he could come on shore, take an early breakfast, and 
 await from the window his brother's coming? But it 
 was, perhaps, a little excessive on the captain's part to 
 expect that this scrupulous interest in his brother's 
 approach should be shared by Matthew Mahony, an Irish 
 sailor on his own ship, and half a dozen ill-behaved 
 ruffians from a privateersman then lying off Bristol. Be 
 that as it may, the captain did elect to entertain such 
 dubious persons on Tuesday morning, January 13th, at 
 the White Hart alehouse, while he himself breakfasted 
 off coffee and toast in the closet over the porch, looking 
 out for his brother. Punctual to the hour, Sir John rode 
 up to Mr. Smith's, followed by a mounted servant, and 
 went into the solicitor's office. He only stayed a few 
 moments and then rode off, saying he would be in Bristol 
 again the following Sunday, and that he had no time to 
 see his brother then. But his brother had seen him and 
 thought him " looking better than he used to do,'" so he 
 told Mr. Smith. He had also pointed out Sir John to 
 Mahony and his companions, and Mahony was so much 
 interested in the personality of the worthy baronet that 
 he had followed him a mile or two at some speed, return- 
 ing sweating to the alehouse in about an hour and a half. 
 " Look well at him, but don't touch him," the captain had 
 said to Mahony when he started; for the captain had 
 observed that the baronet was riding with pistols in front 
 of him and a mounted servant at his back. On his return 
 to the White Hart Mahony treated himself to some ale at 
 the captain's expense, and ordered the captain's room to 
 be ready, dusted, and a fire lighted over against the next 
 Saturday. 
 
 The captain in the meantime was determined not to be 
 frustrated in his brotherly approaches. He continued full 
 of compliment to good Mr. Smith, and was delighted when 
 that gentleman informed him that Sir John was to be with 
 
 171
 
 THE FALL OF THE 
 
 him again the next Sunday, the 18th, at three o'clock in 
 the afternoon. Mr. Smith showed him a letter from his 
 brother to that effect, and the captain remarked on the 
 improvement in the baronet's handwriting ; in Mr. Smith's 
 opinion all things promised well for an amicable settlement. 
 
 About three o'clock on the Sunday Mahony, in a short 
 jacket, trousers, and a leather cap, came into the White 
 Hart and sat down to drink ale with a scabby-faced man 
 from the Vernon privateer ; they were soon joined by two 
 other men, more or less ill-favoured, likewise from the 
 Vernon privateer. These shady persons had just seen an 
 old gentleman in black, with a scarlet cloak and broad- 
 brimmed hat, alight from horseback and go into Mr. 
 Jarrit Smith's house, opposite. He was wearing a black 
 velvet cap over his ears, to keep them warm, as he suffered 
 from deafness. They had recognised him as Sir John 
 Goodere, Bart., and this time they had observed that he 
 was without pistols and mounted servant. He had been 
 followed into Mr. Smith's house by Captain Goodere, 
 wearing a dark shag coat with yellow buttons and a gold- 
 trimmed waistcoat, and carrying sword and cane. Mahony 
 and friends were now passing the time noisily over their ale 
 until these two brothers should come out of Mr. Jarrit 
 Smith's house. From College Green there is a way leading 
 down to the river, which runs by St. Augustine's Bank and 
 the lime-kilns in the brickyard. Here Captain Goodere 
 has ordered the barge of the Ruby man-of-war to be moored 
 by three o'clock, and he is to be waited for, as he is 
 bringing some one on board with him that evening. 
 
 Until almost the last moment Mr. Smith had every 
 reason to be satisfied with the interview he had arranged 
 between the brothers. True, nothing very definite had 
 taken place in the way of a compromise; but the good 
 feeling, nay, the affection of Captain Samuel had been so 
 evident, Sir John so cordial and obliging, that the attorney 
 may well have hoped for a speedy and complete adjustment 
 
 172
 
 HOUSE OF GOODERE 
 
 of their differences. No sooner had the Captain entered 
 the room in which Sir John and Mr. Smith were talking 
 together than he went straight up to his brother and, 
 seemingly with all the affection in the world, kissed him 
 heartily. Mr. Smith made them sit down by the fire, one on 
 each side of him, and they drank to each other, Sir John in 
 water, being forbidden anything else, Samuel in a bumper of 
 wine. For some three-quarters of an hour the two brothers 
 sat opposite to each other, chatting in a friendly way. 
 The captain spoke of the family estate in Herefordshire, 
 and how good the land was. At length Sir John rose up 
 and said, " Brother, I wish you well," and, after arranging 
 to be with Mr. Smith again at half-past eight the following 
 morning, went out. Mr. Smith was brimming over with 
 joy at the happy result of the interview, and with pardon- 
 able self-importance turned to the captain. " I think," 
 he said, " I have done great things for you." But, to his 
 intense surprise, the captain abruptly replied, " By God, 
 it will not do ! " and ran very nimbly out of the house after 
 his brother. Mr. Smith followed him to the door, and as 
 the two brothers turned by the wall of St. Augustine's 
 Church he saw some sailors come out of the White Hart 
 alehouse, one with a bottle in his hand. The captain 
 exchanged a hurried word with them, and they all dis- 
 appeared out of sight. Mr. Smith would have followed 
 them, but he had promised to fetch his wife from a 
 neighbour's house. " Some people think," he said on 
 a subsequent occasion, "it was well I did not" a very 
 justifiable surmise. 
 
 This Sunday, January 18th, between four and five o'clock, 
 loiterers about Mr. Thompson's dock by the lime-kilns, 
 where Captain Goodere's barge was moored, were treated 
 to an unusual spectacle. They saw a man with his clothes 
 ruffled and shoved up to his armpits being pushed along 
 by some five or six sailors, who threatened in loud tones 
 death and damnation to any who interfered with their 
 
 173
 
 THE FALL OF THE 
 
 proceedings. The huddled figure in their midst, they said, 
 was a midshipman who had committed a murder, and was 
 being taken to be tried on board his ship. But the 
 " midshipman's " clothes got settled down after a while, 
 and a carpenter's wife thought she recognised the face of 
 Sir John Goodere, for whom her husband had once mended 
 a chair. She was right ; it was indeed Sir John, and as 
 they drove him on, he struggled and called out his name, 
 and said they were going to murder him. But no one 
 heeded his cries. The proceeding acquired respectability 
 from a gentleman in a shag coat and gold-trimmed waist- 
 coat, who, with cane poised in one hand and sword in the 
 other, marched by the side of the ruffians and ordered their 
 speed. Arrived at the water's edge, a plank was put out 
 to the barge, and the murderous " midshipman " pushed 
 into the stern-sheet. But before the boat was well off 
 from the water-side the " midshipman " cried with a loud 
 voice to those standing near, " For God's sake, gentlemen, 
 if any of you know Mr. Jarrit Smith in the College Green 
 
 tell him my name is Sir John Dinely " "Goodere," he 
 
 would have added, no doubt, had not the authoritative 
 gentleman in the shag coat stuffed the flap of his coat into 
 his mouth, exclaiming loud enough for those on land to 
 hear, " Haven't you given the rogues of lawyers money 
 enough already ? Do you want to give them more ? I'll 
 take care they shall never have any more of you ; now 
 I'll take care of you." 
 
 The captain's method of taking care of his brother was 
 certainly an original one. The fashion in which Sir John 
 had been conveyed to the barge was, perhaps unavoidably, 
 coercive. And the baronet was hardly reassured when the 
 captain, it being a bitterly cold night, pulled off his 
 brother's red cloak and put it over his own shoulders. Sir 
 John asked what " the captain was going to do with him." 
 " I am going to carry you on board, to save you from ruin 
 and from lying rotting in a jail," was the reply. " I know 
 
 174
 
 HOUSE OF GOODERE 
 
 better things," answered the elder ; " I believe you are 
 going to murder me. You may as well throw me over- 
 board and murder me here as carry me on board ship 
 and murder me." " No," replied the younger, " I am not 
 going to do any such thing, but I would have you make 
 your peace with God." They said no more, for Sir John, 
 deprived of his cloak, was soon numbed by the cold, and sat 
 still, groaning in bodily distress. 
 
 It was between seven and eight at night when Captain 
 Goodere, " in a pleasant humour," came on board the 
 Ruby. He greeted his officers in happy fashion. " How 
 do you all do, gentlemen ? Excuse me, gentlemen, from 
 going the right way to-night, for I have brought an old 
 mad fellow on board, and I must take care of him " ; and 
 the officers saw the object of his care come groaning up the 
 side of the ship, a chilled old gentleman in a black cap, 
 who " looked much surprised, as a person used ill." As 
 soon as he had been got roughly on board the " old mad 
 fellow " was hauled down to the purser's cabin, which had 
 been already cleaned out by the captain's orders for the 
 reception of a visitor. The visitor complained of a pain in 
 his thigh, occasioned by his rude treatment, and the captain 
 offered him a dram, which he refused, nor would he allow 
 his wet clothes to be shifted. Mahony, the Irishman, 
 made to take them off, but he stopped him : "Don't strip 
 me, fellow, until I am dead." He was searched, and a 
 knife taken from him. He asked them to take care of it, 
 for it had been his son's knife, and several times during 
 that night he was heard to ask for this knife. Before 
 leaving his charge the captain sent for the ship's carpenter 
 to put two bolts on the cabin door, and a sentinel, one 
 Buchanan, was placed outside with a naked cutless in his 
 hand. 
 
 The " madman " gave Sentry Buchanan little trouble in 
 his watch. He groaned a good deal, and about eleven 
 required some assistance. Mahony, the Irishman, went in 
 
 175
 
 THE FALL OF THE 
 
 to see after him. The old gentleman was still uneasy as 
 to his fate. He asked Mahony if his brother had said he 
 was mad. " Formerly," he said, " I used to be so, but now 
 I have not tasted wine these two years." He could not 
 believe, he added, that the men who had attacked him that 
 day were sailors, " for, if so, they are sadly degenerated 
 from what sailors were formerly ; for I myself have been 
 at sea, and might have been a commander." Then for 
 a space they talked together of the East Indies, until 
 Mahony left him. And after that one that lay in an 
 adjoining cabin, Jones, the ship's cooper, heard the gentle- 
 man pray to God to be his Comforter in his affliction ; he 
 said to himself that he knew he was to be murdered, and 
 prayed that it might come to light by one means or 
 another. But the cooper did not heed his words, thinking 
 him to be a madman. 
 
 The poor " madman " was right none the less. Though 
 he knew it not, he had just talked amicably with his 
 executioner. Mahony was now in the captain's cabin, 
 and the captain busy preparing for his brother a truly 
 grievous instance of the degeneracy of modern seamen. 
 Shakespeare has immortalised in more than one of his 
 plays the kind of interview that passed between Captain 
 Goodere and the Irishman. The former did not waste 
 words; Mahony, he said, must murder his brother, and 
 that before four the next morning. Mahony objected; the 
 captain insisted. Mahony said he could not do it alone. 
 Then he must do it with some one else. With whom ? 
 The captain suggested one Elisha Cole, but Elisha had 
 been drank all day, and was therefore not to be relied on. 
 Then the captain sent for Charles White, a very stout, 
 lusty fellow, and produced a bottle of rum. He told 
 White a madman had to be murdered. With the help 
 of sundry drams and promises of reward Mahony and 
 White were brought at last to the sticking point. But 
 how was it to be done ? The captain produced a piece of 
 
 176
 
 HOUSE OF GOODERE 
 
 half-inch rope about nine feet long, in which White made 
 a noose. This round the neck and a handkerchief over 
 the mouth ought, in the trusty hands of Mahony and 
 White, to settle the madman for good and all ; the 
 captain promised to keep guard outside, to prevent 
 interruption. 
 
 About midnight Buchanan, the sentry, was sent for to 
 the captain's cabin. There he found the captain and 
 Mahony drinking rum. The captain asked him how his 
 brother was. Buchanan replied that he groaned a little. 
 " Ah ! " said the captain, " I am coming down by and by 
 to shift him with dry stockings " ; and some time after, in 
 pursuance of his kind intention, the captain did accord- 
 ingly come down to the cabin and, taking his cutlass from 
 him, relieved Buchanan of any further sentry duty. All 
 was now in order for the shifting of Sir John's stockings. 
 
 Jones, the ship's cooper, had fallen asleep after hearing 
 the madman's prayers. It was the slop room in which he 
 and his wife were sleeping ; only a thin deal partition with 
 a crack in it separated this apartment from the purser's 
 cabin, so that what occurred in one room would be quite 
 audible and partially visible to any person lying in the 
 other. About two o'clock Mrs. Jones was awakened by 
 hearing voices in the purser's cabin. Mahony was talking 
 to the madman. The latter could not sleep. Mahony 
 offered to take a letter for him to Bristol. Then she heard 
 some one say to him, " You must lie still and not speak a 
 word for your life," and then a sound as of a struggle. She 
 waked her husband. " Don't you hear the noise," she 
 whispered, " that is made by the gentleman ? I believe 
 they are killing him." Jones listened. What happened 
 afterwards is best told in his own words. " I then heard 
 him [the gentleman] kick and cry out, ' Here are twenty 
 guineas : take it ; don't murder me. Must I die ? Must 
 I die ? Oh, my life ! ' and give several kecks with his 
 throat, and then he was still. I got up in my bed ; I saw 
 
 177 N
 
 THE FALL OF THE 
 
 a light glimmering in at the crack, and saw Mahony with 
 a candle in his hand. The gentleman was lying on one 
 side. Charles White was there, and he put out his hand 
 to pull the gentleman upright. I heard Mahony cry out, 
 ' Damn ye, let us get his watch out. 1 White laid hold of 
 him, ana went to tumbling him up to get out his money, 
 and unbuttoned his breeches to get out his watch." At 
 last White got it out and gave it to his companion. The 
 gold and silver he took out in like fashion from the dead 
 man's pockets, Jones still peering through the partition. 
 " He [the gentleman again] lay in a very uneasy manner 
 with one leg up ; and when they moved him he still 
 remained so, which gave me the suspicion that he was 
 dead. White put his hand in another pocket, took out 
 nothing but a piece of paper, and was going to read it. 
 ' Damn ye ! ' said Mahony, ' don't stand to read it ! ' : 
 And then Jones, the cooper, still watching, saw a person's 
 hand on the throat of this gentleman, and heard the 
 person say, " 'Tis done, and well done."" " It was a hand 
 whiter than that of a common sailor. I have often seen 
 Mahony's and White's hands, and I thought the hand was 
 whiter than either of theirs." That white hand is beyond 
 a doubt the hand of Captain Samuel Goodere. He has 
 been at the door all the time, naked cutlass in hand, waving 
 back any whom chance brought at that hour near the 
 purser's cabin. He has taken a candle from Buchanan 
 and handed it into the cabin to illuminate the better what 
 was passing within. And now, somewhere about three 
 o'clock, the stockings have been shifted, and Mahony and 
 White will soon be on their way to Bristol in the captain's 
 own boat with a store of guineas and a gold watch. The 
 captain has locked the door of the purser's cabin and put 
 Buchanan on duty there again, with orders to fetch him if 
 the madman make any noise a rather unlikely eventuality. 
 Jones, the cooper, and Mrs. Jones were not the only 
 persons on board who had heard something of this pro- 
 
 178
 
 HOUSE OF GOODERE 
 
 ceeding in the purser's cabin. Mr. Dudgeon, the surgeon's 
 mate, sleeping three yards off from the same cabin, had 
 been similarly awakened, and had heard quite enough to 
 satisfy him that some foul work was being done on the old 
 madman. As soon as he heard the captain lock the door 
 of the purser's cabin and return to his own he got up 
 stealthily and, groping in the dark, came across Mr. 
 Heathorne, the watch. He could not see his features, 
 but, recognising his voice, whispered, "Mr. Heathorne, 
 here hath been a hellish cabal to-night. I believe they 
 have murdered the gentleman." His suspicions were con- 
 firmed when Heathorne told him that the captain had 
 ordered the boat out to take some one on shore. 
 Determined to know the worst, the two men crept 
 down to the purser's cabin and questioned Buchanan, 
 who was still on guard. In a short time they were joined 
 by Mr. and Mrs. Jones, "shaking and trembling," the 
 horror of the night still on them. They told their story, 
 and it was agreed that it should be communicated without 
 delay to the lieutenant. But first they would satisfy 
 themselves that the gentleman was really dead. In the 
 wall of the steward's cabin, which divided it from the 
 purser's, there was a scuttle. As they drew it a cat flew 
 out in their faces an unpleasant shock to these awe- 
 stricken men, harrowed by the experiences of the night. 
 Recovered from this surprise, they looked again and saw 
 the gentleman lying on the bed in the posture Jones had 
 described to them. About his neck a cloth was tied, and 
 on the neck itself were marks of finger-nails ; blood was 
 oozing from his nose and mouth, all things pointing to a 
 recent strangulation. The cooper prodded the body with 
 a long stick, but there was no sign of life. 
 
 Mr. Dudgeon at once acquainted the lieutenant with 
 these facts, but it was agreed that no action should be 
 taken till the morning. There was an evident reluctance 
 on the part of the officers to accept the responsibility of 
 
 179
 
 THE FALL OF THE 
 
 laying hands on their captain. Apart from his rank, he 
 had always behaved to them in a " very genteel manner, 11 
 and it seemed to them very painful to be obliged now to 
 seize him as a fratricide. The lieutenant declined to 
 prevent Mahony and White from leaving the ship, as they 
 had the captain's permission. He would wait till morning, 
 to see if the gentleman was really dead, a fact which was 
 hardly beyond doubt. At eight in the morning he still 
 refused to proceed any further until he had seen whether 
 or no the captain sent down to the purser's cabin. When 
 the captain invited Mr. Dudgeon and the lieutenant to 
 breakfast with him they accepted his invitation. Indeed, 
 it is difficult to say what course they would have pursued 
 had not the cooper, Jones, indignant at the crime of which 
 he had been an accidental witness, declared his intention 
 of writing to the Admiralty and the Mayor of Bristol if 
 the lieutenant still refused to arrest the murderer. Jones's 
 determination proved effectual, and the lieutenant took 
 the necessary steps to secure his commander. 
 
 Accompanied by Jones and Buchanan, he knocked at 
 the door of the captain's cabin and asked him to come 
 out and drink a glass of wine with him. The captain, his 
 suspicions aroused, declined the invitation. The lieutenant 
 opened the door and went in, followed by the two others. 
 As they laid hold of Goodere he exclaimed, " Hey ! hey ! 
 what have I done ? " and when they told him the reason 
 of his arrest he added, " What if the villains have 
 murdered my brother ? can I help it ? I know nothing 
 of it." The same night Mahony and White were taken 
 in Bristol. 
 
 Such is the story of the murder of Sir John Goodere, 
 Bart., by his brother, Captain Samuel Goodere, of the 
 Ruby man-of-war. Apart from the consanguinity of the 
 two principal actors, the crime is one fraught with circum- 
 stances of peculiar horror ; the age of the victim, the 
 cruelty of his treatment, his seizure by ruffians in the open 
 
 180
 
 HOUSE OF GOODERE 
 
 streets of Bristol, his imprisonment in the dark cabin of 
 the man-of-war, his six hours 1 agony, and finally his brutal 
 assassination, are in themselves sufficiently shocking occur- 
 rences. But in this instance the ordinary circumstances 
 of violent crime are heightened by touches which would 
 have been highly creditable to a writer of romance. 
 Leslie Stephen has written of the white hand seen by the 
 ship's cooper through the crack in the partition ; l and 
 there are many other incidents hardly less ghastly which 
 embellish that night of murder in the bowels of His 
 Majesty's ship the Ruby. 
 
 The trial of Captain Goodere and Matthew Mahony 
 took place at Bristol, on March 26th, before Serjeant 
 Michael Foster, Recorder of that city, afterwards a dis- 
 tinguished judge of the Court of King's Bench. The story 
 of the murder was recapitulated at length by the various 
 witnesses, and its completeness left no hope of acquittal for 
 the prisoners. Certain points of law raised by Captain 
 Goodere's counsel were speedily overruled. The captain 
 himself attempted to meet the charge by calling evidence 
 of his brother's insanity and his own respectability. In 
 regard to the first point, though undoubtedly eccentric, the 
 baronet seems to have been considered quite sane by those 
 who knew him best. From what he himself said to 
 Mahony on the night of the murder, he would appear to 
 have at one time rather aggravated his peculiar temper by 
 drinking too much wine, but for two years before his death 
 he had been a water-drinker. As to the captain's other 
 defence, it is immediately obvious that neighbourly kind- 
 ness and punctual attendance at divine service pleasant 
 features in the captain's disposition sworn to by his 
 witnesses cannot be considered as valid excuses for 
 fratricide. 
 
 The captain's conduct after sentence of death had been 
 passed upon him was a strange mixture of penitence for his 
 1 Essay on " State Trials " in vol. iii. of Hours in a Library, 
 
 181
 
 crime and a desire to avoid his punishment. He not only 
 addressed repeated petitions to his friends to intercede for his 
 life, but conspired with certain colliers to rescue him on the 
 day of execution. At the same time he admitted that justice 
 had most deservedly overtaken him, regretted that he had 
 involved Mahony and White in a similar fate, and, when 
 all hope of pardon was at an end, met his death with 
 fortitude. He was executed with his two accomplices at 
 eleven o'clock on the morning of April 20th, and next day 
 his body was carried in a hearse with six horses to Hereford, 
 where it was buried along with that of his murdered 
 brother and those of his honourable ancestors. 
 
 In 1809 a poor knight of Windsor died at the advanced 
 age of eighty. This poor knight was the last survivor of 
 the House of Goodere, Sir John Dinely Goodere, Bart., 
 second son of Captain Samuel Goodere, who had been 
 executed for fratricide in 1741. The death of his elder 
 brother, Edward, had brought him the baronetcy. That 
 eccentricity which had marked the proceedings of his 
 immediate ancestors was developed to the point of mania 
 in the poor knight of Windsor. He had sold the family 
 estates of Burhope, and the charity of Lord North procured 
 him his pension and residence at Windsor. There he was 
 noted for his exaggerated frugality, his costume of the time 
 of George II., in which he always appeared on important 
 occasions, and the fantastic proposals of marriage which he 
 delivered in printed form and with courtly gravity to any 
 lady who attracted his attention. When, twice or thrice 
 a year, he visited Vauxhall or the theatres, he publicly 
 announced the fact in the fashionable newspapers, and 
 repeated his offers of marriage to any ladies who would 
 take advantage of the advertisement to make the acquaint- 
 ance of the odd, old gentleman. At Windsor he lived by 
 himself, and locked up his house when he went out. 
 
 182
 
 HOUSE OF GOODERE 
 
 Unless the presence of royalty demanded the faded 
 magnificence of the suit of the time of George II., he made 
 his purchases in the town clad in a large cloak or roquelaure 
 which concealed all but a pair of dirty silk stockings ; 
 a formidable umbrella and pattens completed his equipment. 
 This strange, fantastic figure of a man represented the last 
 chapter in the strange and bloody story of his house. At 
 his death the title became extinct ; but in The State Trials, 
 The Newgate Calendar and The Penny Magazine the 
 House of Goodere enjoys a celebrity beyond that to be 
 acquired in the staid columns of The Extinct Baronetage. 
 
 183
 
 The Fualdes Case 
 
 185
 
 \
 
 THE FUALDfiS CASE 
 
 FROM a lofty eminence, some 1,800 feet above the level 
 of the sea, the ancient city of Rodez frowns, with grim and 
 sinister aspect, on the rugged and hilly country of the 
 Aveyron department, which surrounds and shuts it in 
 from the rest of France. At the beginning of the last 
 century the inhabitants of Rodez, remote from the higher 
 civilisation of Paris and the great cities, communicating 
 with difficulty with their neighbours, yet retained some- 
 thing of the roughness and violence, the lawlessness and 
 cunning that had made them in the Middle Ages such 
 useful subjects to the ruthless Counts of Armagnac. Since 
 Henry IV. incorporated Rodez into the kingdom of France, 
 the city had lost all political importance ; she led her 
 own solitary existence, comparatively undisturbed by 
 external commotions. Revolution, Empire, the White 
 Terror of the Restoration, had left little trace on her 
 history ; the bitter animosities that troubled France after 
 the return of Louis XVIII. to his throne were ineffectual 
 to seriously compromise her peace. If within her gates 
 there were angry feuds dividing and agitating the families 
 of some of her most important and respectable citizens, 
 these sprang from motives personal rather than political, 
 private rather than public. 
 
 Suddenly, on the morning of March 20th, 1817, Rodez 
 woke from her "ancient, solitary" repose to find herself 
 on the threshold of a lurid notoriety that was to attract 
 to her steep and narrow streets, and her rough citizens, 
 
 187
 
 THE FUALDF.S CASE 
 
 the regard not only of all France, but, in time, that of 
 Europe as well. 
 
 What a French writer has styled the cause celtbre 
 par excellence 1 was upon her. The dead body of one 
 of her most noteworthy inhabitants, a man who had 
 played his small part in the drama of the Parisian Terror, 
 and held judicial office under Napoleon, had been taken 
 out of the river Aveyron, some half a league away from 
 Rodez, at daybreak on March 20th, bearing every trace 
 of foul and deliberate murder. The story of that murder, 
 the strange circumstances that accompanied it, the perjury 
 and intimidation that beset at every turn the course of 
 justice, go far to warrant the supremacy accorded by 
 M. Fouquier to the case, best known to posterity by the 
 name of its victim, Antoine Bernardin Fualdes. 
 
 In the March of 1817 M. Fualdes was nearly fifty-six 
 years of age. Originally an advocate, the Revolution 
 drew him for a short time into politics, and he became 
 one of the foremost republicans in Rodez. Thence, in 
 1793, he was summoned to Paris to serve as one of 
 the permanent jurymen attached to the newly created 
 Revolutionary Tribunal. But the functions of a revo- 
 lutionary juryman were little to his taste. After taking 
 part in the conviction of Charlotte Corday, and barely 
 escaping popular ill-treatment for having voted for the 
 acquittal of the unfortunate General Custine, he left Paris 
 and disappeared from public life until after the fall of 
 Robespierre. He was then appointed a judge of the 
 Criminal Court of Rodez ; he held with success various 
 judicial offices until the reorganisation of the law courts 
 under Napoleon, when he was nominated to the post of 
 Procureur Imperial attached to the Tribunal of First 
 Instance in that city. On the return of the Bourbons 
 he prudently resigned his office, and by so doing received 
 a pension instead of summary dismissal. At the time of 
 1 A. Fouquier, Causes Celebres de tons les Peuples, vol. v, 
 188
 
 THE FUALDES CASE 
 
 his death Fualdes was engaged in selling landed property 
 and winding up his affairs, with a view to settling down in 
 an easy and honourable retirement. 
 
 About eight o'clock on the evening of March 19th 
 M. Fualdes had left home with a packet of papers under 
 his arm, to keep a business appointment. About half-past 
 eight the same evening his walking-stick was picked up at 
 the corner of a street known as the Rue des Hebdomadiers, 
 a narrow, sordid alley containing at least one house of 
 notoriously ill repute. Between eight and nine passers-by 
 had observed a rather unusual commotion going forward 
 in this usually silent and deserted street men going to 
 and fro, a sentinel posted as if watching for some one, the 
 arrival of the one so eagerly expected, who seemed to answer 
 in some particulars to the description of M. Fualdes, then 
 a noise as of a struggle and cries and moans proceeding 
 from the house of ill repute, and all this to the accom- 
 paniment of a couple of barrel-organs that paraded the 
 street for a whole hour, from eight to nine, making night 
 hideous, seeking as it were to drown, by their incessant 
 grinding, all other disquieting noises. A little after nine, 
 a few steps from the house of ill repute, some one picked 
 up a dirty pocket-handkerchief, twisted and bitten, as 
 though it had served as a gag. 
 
 The river Aveyron, which runs by the city of Rodez, 
 is about seven furlongs distant from the Rue des 
 Hebdomadiers. The way from this street to the river-side 
 lies by the Rue du Terral, through the Place de T^veche, 
 on which stands the cathedral, and then out at one of the 
 city gates on to the Boulevard d'Estourmel, which runs 
 along the bank of the river. About ten o'clock on the 
 night of the 19th, along this very line of route, at three 
 different places, by the cathedral, on the Boulevard 
 d'Estourmel, in some gardens at the river's edge, four 
 persons spoke to meeting a procession of men carrying 
 some heavy burden, preceded by a man of exceptionally 
 
 189
 
 THE FUALDES CASE 
 
 tall stature, carrying what appeared to be a gun or thick 
 stick, whose threatening aspect effectually discouraged 
 curiosity or comment. The following morning the corpse 
 of M. Fualdes, fully dressed, was dragged out of the river 
 by a woman who had noticed a dark bundle floating on 
 the water. A huge wound in the throat, apparently 
 inflicted with a rather blunt knife, that had severed the 
 larynx, the jugular vein, and the left carotid artery, was 
 the one and sufficient cause of death. M. Fualdes had 
 been clearly the victim of assassination ; it only remained 
 to discover the assassins. 
 
 It was not long before the circumstances already 
 narrated directed the attention of the judicial authorities 
 to that forbidding Rue des Hebdomadiers, and from the 
 street to the house of ill repute therein situate, as the 
 probable scene of Fualdes' murder. This house was 
 tenanted by a couple of the name of Bancal, sordid and 
 impecunious, who eked out the precarious earnings of the 
 man as a mason by taking in lodgers and letting out their 
 own squalid apartments as a meeting-place for clandestine 
 lovers of all classes, who would feel well ensured against 
 discovery in so obscure and undesirable a neighbourhood. 
 Various unusual occurrences in the Bancal household had 
 provoked the neighbours 1 criticism on the day following 
 the disappearance of Fualdes. The floor of their kitchen 
 had been scrubbed very recently ; the woman Bancal had 
 been to the river with some washing, but had come back 
 without it ; the man had paid a debt of thirty sous, an 
 altogether unwonted proceeding on his part ; their eldest 
 daughter appeared to be in a state of ill-disguised terror ; 
 and lastly, on search being made, a quantity of blood- 
 stained linen was discovered by the police hidden away 
 under the staircase. 
 
 On the Bancals' second floor there resided, as their 
 lodger, a sinister individual of the name of Colard. This 
 man's supreme ambition in life was to fill the post of 
 
 190
 
 public executioner, but unfortunately the office was not at 
 the moment vacant. In the meantime he lived on his 
 mistress, the woman Anne Benoit, who took in washing. 
 Colard was himself dissatisfied with the existing social 
 system, and looked back with regret to the period when 
 the guillotine played a more conspicuous part in the 
 solution of social and political differences. He held openly 
 the opinion that a man who had twenty-five lotiis deserved 
 to be shot, and expressed himself as fully prepared to 
 pull the trigger in such a case if he thought no one was 
 looking. He spent a good deal of his time at the house 
 of the public executioner, to whom he must have been 
 a thoroughly inspiring companion. 
 
 Immediately after the murder of Fualdes, the mistress 
 of this Colard, whilst denying to the police any knowledge 
 of what had passed at the Bancals" 1 on the night of the 19th, 
 let fall certain observations which revealed some acquaint- 
 ance with the circumstances of the crime. " Fancy," she 
 said to a neighbour, "they bled him on the table like a 
 pig." She admitted that the handkerchief picked up in 
 the street was hers. When Colard was questioned about 
 the crime, he merely answered, with an air of mystery, 
 " There'll be a good many more." To obviate any such 
 repetitions, the examining magistrate issued warrants on 
 March 22nd for the arrest of Colard, the two Bancals, and 
 their daughter Marianne. 
 
 Two more arrests were made on the 24th. Jean 
 Bousquier, a stableman of hitherto respectable character, 
 sitting in a tavern, talking, on the night of the 20th, 
 had remarked, in the course of conversation, that he 
 had been very well paid for a load he had carried the 
 night before. " Ah ! " said one of the other topers, 
 " perhaps M. Fualdes was inside it." " Perhaps," replied 
 Bousquier ; " it was heavy enough." It was recollected 
 that this same Bousquier had been in the tavern about 
 eight o'clock on the night of the murder, waiting, as he 
 
 191
 
 THE FUALDES CASE 
 
 said, for a man who had engaged him to carry a bale of 
 contraband tobacco, and that about ten o'clock this man 
 had come in and fetched him away. Bousquier was 
 arrested. He said that the man who had employed him 
 was an individual named Bach. He too was arrested. 
 
 So far the murder of Fualdes would appear to have 
 been little better than the commonplace handiwork of 
 daring ruffians, who had waylaid, robbed, and murdered a 
 respectable middle-aged gentlemen. But great was the 
 astonishment of the city of Rodez when, three days after 
 the arrest of Bach, that is, on March 27th, two of her 
 most influential and important citizens were clapped into 
 prison, charged, on very grave suspicion, with being the 
 prime movers and instigators in the assassination of the 
 worthy ex-magistrate, and the charge appeared the more 
 heinous from the fact that both the inculpated persons 
 had been close friends of the murdered man, and one 
 of them his relation by marriage. This was a certain 
 Jausion, a banker and broker, a precise and avaricious 
 man of business, said to be hard and usurious, but enjoy- 
 ing a reputation for commercial integrity. He was known 
 to have had business dealings with his kinsman Fualdes. 
 His companion in arrest was his brother-in-law, Bastide- 
 Gramont, a man of exceptionally large stature, who lived 
 a little way outside Rodez. His character and reputation 
 were the very reverse of his brother-in-law's. Coarse and 
 brutal, he spent more than his modest means would allow 
 on wine and women. He was bold, daring, and unscru- 
 pulous. If rumour was to be believed, he had on one 
 occasion demanded money from his father, and, on being 
 refused, had held a pistol to his parent's head. His 
 short way with importunate creditors was to threaten 
 them with death. But it was not alone his exceptional 
 stature that seemed to identify Bastide with the tall, 
 burly man who had been described as leading the mysterious 
 procession that wended its way towards the banks of the 
 
 192
 
 THE FUALDES CASE 
 
 river on the night of March 19th. There was more than 
 that to connect him with the tragedy of M. Fualdes' 
 death. On the afternoon of the 19th Bastide had been 
 seen talking to Fualdes in the street ; he was overheard 
 making an appointment with him for eight o'clock that 
 evening ; the discussion had been heated. " So that is 
 the way you propose to keep your word to me ! " exclaimed 
 Fualdes. " Don't worry," Bastide was heard to reply, 
 " I'll clear up my account with you this evening." Certain 
 incidents that had taken place in the course of the day 
 following the crime, coupled with the discoveries made by 
 the son of Fualdes when, on his arrival in Rodez, he tried 
 to set in order his father's papers, cast still graver suspicion 
 on both Bastide and Jausion. Of his father's papers, of 
 those more particularly that related to his financial affairs, 
 the son could make little or nothing. He found them in 
 hopeless confusion, all the most important missing. This 
 was the more astonishing as he knew his father to be very 
 regular and punctilious in such matters, and to have been 
 at the time of his death on the point of setting his affairs 
 in order, previous to his approaching retirement to the 
 property which he had purchased in the country. It was 
 from his father's servants that the son first obtained a clue 
 to the strange disorder in which he found the drawers and 
 cupboards in his father's room. That room had been 
 visited on March 20th, first by Bastide, and later by 
 Jausion. During the morning of that day a maid of 
 Madame Fualdes' had met Bastide on the staircase, had 
 followed him up, seen him enter M. Fualdes' room, and 
 there rummage and search in a chest of drawers, which he 
 afterwards locked, giving the key to another of the 
 servants with a direction to return it to Madame Fualdes. 
 Later in the morning, according to the evidence of another 
 servant, Jausion arrived at the house, accompanied by his 
 wife and sister-in-law. They also made for the room 
 of the murdered man. There Jausion borrowed a hatchet, 
 
 193 o
 
 THE FUALDES CASE 
 
 broke into certain chests and cupboards, and carried off 
 
 a bag, warning the servant, a man of rather limited 
 
 intelligence, not to mention this circumstance to any one. 
 
 In the light of these extraordinary proceedings, it 
 
 seemed only reasonable to place Bastide and Jausion under 
 
 arrest. They both protested their innocence. Jausion 
 
 at first denied that he had visited the house of Fualdes on 
 
 the 20th. Later he admitted the visit and the breaking 
 
 open of a cupboard, but said that in so doing he had acted 
 
 in his kinsman's interests. In the meantime the magistrate 
 
 in charge of the case had procured front? one of the 
 
 humbler participators in the crime a confession that 
 
 directly implicated Bastide. This came from Bousquier, 
 
 the man who had been hired by Bach on the night of the 
 
 murder to carry what he was pleased to term a load of 
 
 contraband tobacco. He said that he had been taken by 
 
 Bach to the house of the Bancals, that there he found, 
 
 besides the Bancals themselves, Colard, a cutler named 
 
 Missonier, a woman whom he did not know, and two 
 
 gentlemen, one of whom he identified unhesitatingly as 
 
 Bastide ; but he could not say for certain that the other, 
 
 the shorter of the two, was Jausion. He was shown a 
 
 bundle wrapped up in some woollen material, and told it 
 
 was a corpse, Bastide threatening to kill him if he 
 
 divulged the fact. He then described the journey to the 
 
 river, corroborating the evidence of those passers-by who 
 
 had deposed to meeting such a procession on the night of 
 
 the 19th. Besides this confession of Bousquier, the two 
 
 little children of the Bancals, a boy of eight and a little 
 
 girl, Magdeleine, let fall to those who had charge of them 
 
 at the hospital whither they had been removed after their 
 
 parents 1 arrest, observations that shed some further light 
 
 on the manner of Fualdes' death. " I saw them bring 
 
 a gentleman in from the Place de la Cite," said the little 
 
 girl. " He was very naughty, and wouldn't keep still on the 
 
 table, so that it upset." The boy said : " Two gentlemen 
 
 194
 
 THE FUALDES CASE 
 
 came to our house : one of them had big boots on ; they 
 brought in a gentleman who was ill and put him on 
 the table ; that's why they've sent papa to prison." 
 
 But these partial avowals, these stray hints that some 
 of the prisoners had allowed to escape them as to the 
 events of March 19th were soon to be superseded by 
 a detailed confession of a dying man, obtained under 
 circumstances of a solemn and dramatic character. The 
 man Bancal, in whose house it was evident the murder had 
 been committed, overcome by remorse, had attempted his 
 life in the prison at Rodez. In the bottom of a shoe he 
 had soaked some copper coins in vinegar, and so concocted 
 a solution of verdigris. This he drank, and, though an 
 emetic was administered to him, the poison worked with 
 rapidly fatal result on a man who was already suffering 
 from gaol fever. Death was approaching ; the wretched 
 man begged that he might see a priest. On May 1st the 
 priest arrived at the prison. He brought with him a friend, 
 and it is from a letter written by the priest's secular com- 
 panion to one of the deputies for the Aveyron department 
 that we derive a full report of BancaFs confession. For- 
 tunately the confession had not partaken of a strictly 
 religious character ; though, from considerations of justice, 
 it was not used at the trial, it remains the most complete 
 account of the actual circumstances of the murder of 
 Fualdes and was borne out in all its principal details by 
 the evidence subsequently given in the courts of law. The 
 priest had found Bancal in a very communicative frame 
 of mind. The wretched man had only a day or two to 
 live ; he declared himself to be haunted by the spectre of 
 M. Fualdes. It was the first of May ; the birds were 
 singing in the garden of a convent adjoining the prison. 
 " Ah ! they sing because they're not shut up in a cell," 
 exclaimed the dying man. " No," replied the priest, 
 " because they're innocent. God sends joy to the innocent. 
 There was a time when you sang in the vineyards." " I 
 
 195
 
 THE FUALDF.S CASE 
 
 djdn't sing on the 19th of March," groaned the prisoner, 
 
 " when my little Magdeleine ." And so, by easy 
 
 stages, the priest led the culprit on to the revelation 
 of the truth. 
 
 According to Bancal, miserable poverty and a bad wife 
 had been the causes of his downfall. His poverty was no 
 doubt acute, and, if his confession is to be believed, his 
 wife had been of two minds as to allowing her own child to 
 be murdered for 500 frs. The Bancals, for some time 
 previous to the crime, had been acquainted with the 
 principal actors in the tragedy of Fualdes'' death. Bastide 
 made use of their house as a convenient place for carrying 
 on his illicit love affairs, while from both the families of 
 Jausion and Fualdes they had received charitable assist- 
 ance of a modest kind in the way of loaves of bread 
 and the leavings of the table. Indeed, Bancal, on his 
 death-bed, complained of the very trifling character of the 
 help thus extended to him, and pronounced Jausion to be 
 a cunning skinflint. 
 
 The first hints that Bancal received that any ex- 
 ceptional proceeding, affecting him, was in contemplation 
 on the part of two of his benefactors, were mysterious 
 allusions dropped by Bastide and Jausion to means they 
 were about to afford him of relieving the grinding penury 
 in which he had lived so long. But his wife would seem 
 to have been more in the confidence of the conspirators 
 than he was. The murder of Fualdes was originally to 
 have taken place in a stable belonging to the cutler, 
 Missonier ; but he had a lodger, a professional beggar, 
 who came home at nine and went to bed at uncertain 
 hours. Consequently, at the last moment, the scene was 
 shifted to the Bancals 1 tenement, a sudden change of venue 
 that will account for some of the serious misadventures 
 that attended the assassins in the execution of their 
 design. 
 
 On the evening of the 19th Bancal returned home 
 
 196
 
 from the vineyard in which he laboured, about half-past 
 six. The first thing that struck him as unusual were 
 the violent performances of the grinders of the hurdy- 
 gurdy, disturbing the ignoble repose of the Rue des 
 Hebdomadiers. Bancal expressed his opinion of their 
 efforts by throwing the remains of a salad at the heads of 
 the musicians. But they merely shifted their ground and 
 recommenced a little farther off with all the added vigour 
 of remonstrance. If, as has been supposed, these 
 musicians had been hired deliberately by the assassins of 
 Fualdes to drown all inconvenient noise, it is plain that 
 the Bancals were only partially in the secrets of the 
 conspirators. It was a quarter past eight when Colard, 
 whose appetite for the blood of the rich had for some 
 days past betrayed signs of approaching satisfaction, burst 
 into the Bancals' kitchen, and abruptly ordered them to 
 send the children to bed, as there was a gentleman coming 
 up the street to keep an appointment with a lady. He 
 then went out. He had hardly done so, when there was a 
 knock at the door. The woman Bancal opened it and 
 admitted a lady wrapped in a shawl and wearing a black 
 veil. She was trembling. " No one for me ? "" she asked. 
 " No one," replied la Bancal. In the meantime the noise 
 in the street was getting louder and louder, coming nearer 
 to the house ; the hurdy-gurdies shrieked with redoubled 
 vigour ; there was an advancing sound as of men whistling 
 and shouting. The lady was terrified at the thought of 
 discovery ; there was a loud knocking at the outer door ; 
 she begged the woman Bancal to conceal her ; the latter, 
 equally dismayed, pushed her hurriedly into a cupboard 
 and shut the door, as Colard appeared on the threshold of 
 the kitchen, a lighted candle in his hand. 
 
 He entered the room quickly, followed by a number of 
 men, among them M. Bastide and M. Jausion, breathless 
 and excited, who were dragging along an elderly gentle- 
 man, hatless, his clothes torn arid dishevelled, whom 
 
 197
 
 THE FUALDES CASE 
 
 Bancal recognised immediately as M. Fualdes. " In God's 
 name, what do you want with me ? " asked the bewildered 
 gentleman. " Your signature to these papers, 11 replied 
 Jausion. " It is a disgraceful outrage ! " cried Fualdes. 
 But the protest passed unheeded. Bastide fetched a pen 
 and ink and Fualdes wrote his name on some long papers 
 that Jausion produced from a letter-case. As he was 
 doing this, Bancal saw Colard whisper in Bastide's ear and 
 show him a knife, upon which Bastide, half laughing, 
 exclaimed " Good ! " Fualdes, as soon as he had finished 
 writing, asked if that was all. " I know you," answered 
 Jausion. " After what I've just done you'll never forgive 
 me." " No one knows better than you what I have for- 
 given you," retorted Fualdes, with a sigh. " Oh ! you 
 regret it, do you ? " " Yes, you see he does ! " chimed in 
 Bastide. And Colard, the enemy of wealth, exclaimed, 
 " Oh, they're all like that, these rich men. They think 
 they can do anything." And then, in the words of 
 Bancal, " there was a great silence, during which we all 
 looked at one another, and then at M. Fualdes." Bastide 
 was the first to break the silence. " Come along," he said, 
 " it's time to finish this ! " Fualdes asked for his hat. 
 Jausion replied to his request by striking him twice. He 
 was pushed and hustled ; there was a struggle, during 
 which the table was upset, and a loaf of bread rolled on to 
 the floor. It was a loaf that Madame Fualdes had that 
 day given to the Bancals. Fualdes recognised the bread ; 
 he threw up his hands to heaven and began to cry. 
 Bastide remarked, for the second time, that it was time to 
 have done with the business. Fualdes was laid on the table, 
 Bancal holding his feet. Colard produced his knife. 
 Bancal turned away his head. He heard two low cries, 
 then the blood began to flow, and, as it gurgled on to the 
 floor, he heard a faint voice saying, " Let me say my 
 prayers." " You can say them to the devil in hell," replied 
 Bastide. 
 
 198
 
 THE FUALDES CASE 
 
 M. Fualdes dead, the murderers emptied his pockets of 
 everything they contained. Whilst they were engaged in 
 this occupation Bancal noticed that the curtains of a bed 
 that stood in the room moved slightly. They were drawn 
 aside, and, to the terror of Bancal, disclosed his little 
 daughter Magdeleine, to all appearances asleep. After 
 being sent out of the room by her mother, the child must 
 have crept back unobserved and slipped behind the 
 curtains of the bed. What had she seen or heard ? To 
 Bastide the only safe precaution was to add another 
 murder to the night's work, and he offered the parents 
 500 francs as compensation for their daughter's sacrifice. 
 The mother, who, according to her husband, " always had 
 an eye to the main chance," looked at the father as much 
 as to say, " Well, shall we take it ? " " No, never ! " cried 
 Bancal, as he caught the little girl to his arms. Then he 
 knew, as she lay in his embrace, that she was feigning sleep, 
 that she must have seen something of the horrid work ; 
 but he held his tongue, and set about giving the blood of 
 M. Fualdes, that had been caught up in a bucket, to the 
 pigs to drink. The pigs having done justice to the 
 repast, what was left was thrown into the gutter. 
 
 It was now a question of disposing of the body. This 
 was wrapped up in strong cloth and the bundle tightly 
 corded. It only remained to send for Bousquier, who was 
 to carry it to the river. Bastide did not want him to see 
 the bundle before he shouldered it. He accordingly sug- 
 gested that in the meantime it should be hidden some- 
 where, and, before the Bancals could stop him, opened the 
 door of the cupboard in which was concealed the lady 
 who had been so suddenly surprised by the approach of 
 the murderers. " We are lost ! " cried Bastide as he 
 dragged out the trembling woman. " I have seen nothing, 
 know nothing," stammered out the fearful lady. There 
 was a hurried consultation of the leaders of the enterprise 
 in a corner of the room, as to what means they should 
 
 199
 
 THE FUALDES CASE 
 
 take to ensure their safety. Bastide and Colard were for 
 the lady's death, but Jausion would not hear of it ; if they 
 touched a hair of her head, he said, they would have 
 to reckon with him ; he had had enough of assassination 
 for one night. Bach suggested that she should be com- 
 pelled to take an oath. Bastide, though he had little 
 faith in mere words, agreed to administer it, which he 
 did in such awful tones that even the assassins were 
 struck with terror. " Listen, madame," he said, his voice 
 rising and growing deeper and more impressive as he 
 reached the end, " if you speak of what you have seen, be 
 it by steel or by poison, by water or by fire, you shall 
 surely die ! " Overcome by the hideousness of the 
 situation and it must be allowed that, apart from 
 Bastide's melodrama, the scene was a sufficiently ghastly 
 one, the dim and sordid kitchen, the bloody thing that lay 
 stretched upon the table the horror-stricken lady fainted 
 away. As soon as she had partially recovered, Jausion 
 led her into the street and sent her about her business. 
 
 Shortly after this untoward incident Bousquier arrived, 
 and the remains of M. Fualdes were consigned to the 
 river in the manner already described. 
 
 Such was the substance of Bancal's death-bed confession. 
 On the day following it he expired. There is no reason 
 to seriously impugn its accuracy ; he could at the time 
 have had no motive for misleading his auditors, and having 
 some heart, the unfortunate man was, at the time of his 
 death, sincerely contrite for his share in the foul proceed- 
 ing. The only matter in regard to the actual commission 
 of the crime that remained to be cleared up was the 
 question of motive. What motive or motives could have 
 been powerful enough to impel men of the standing and 
 position of Bastide and Jausion to be the perpetrators of 
 so atrocious a murder ? What had Fualdes done to 
 deserve such treatment at their hands ? The second 
 question can be answered shortly. No serious, no justifiable 
 
 200
 
 THE FUALDES CASE 
 
 cause for resentment or revenge on the part of Bastide and 
 Jausion was ever made out against the murdered man ; 
 had there been any such cause the murderers would have 
 assuredly revealed it in their own interests. 
 
 There was certainly a story to the effect that Fualdes, 
 some eight years before the crime, had in his judicial 
 capacity used his influence to save Jausion from the con- 
 sequences of an intrigue which he had carried on with the 
 young wife of an old and infirm cloth merchant of Rodez. 
 The circumstances attending the birth of a child, of which 
 Jausion was presumably the father, had brought the 
 unfortunate lady to the bar of the Assize Court, charged 
 with the murder of her infant. But a sympathetic jury 
 acquitted her, and the name of Jausion had never been 
 mentioned in the course of the proceedings, a favour 
 shown to him, it was said, in consequence of his friendship 
 with the magistrate, Fualdes. After the murder, rumour 
 noised it abroad that in a moment of anger Fualdes had 
 threatened to revive the scandal and so compromise 
 publicly the reputation of the now precise and respectable 
 banker, who, in fear of such an exposure, had been driven 
 to put his relative beyond the chance of doing him such 
 an injury. But there is little reason to attach any serious 
 importance to the story as a real factor in the crime. 
 Jausion was anxious, it is true, to conceal or avoid the 
 consequences of misconduct on his part in relation to 
 M. Fualdes ; but that misconduct had in it no element of 
 romance. It was not passion that was likely any longer 
 to tempt Jausion to crime ; greed and avarice were now 
 the masters of his soul. 
 
 Both Bastide and Jausion were under financial obligations 
 to Fualdes. Bastide owed him money, some 10,000 francs. 
 He had no means of paying his debt. Fualdes, on the 
 eve of a final settlement of his affairs, had no doubt 
 become somewhat importunate. Bastide, violent and law- 
 less in character, was in the habit of solving difficulties of 
 
 201
 
 THE FUALDES CASE 
 
 this kind by a resort to force. To liquidate his debt to 
 M. Fualdes by extinguishing the creditor was not such 
 a preposterous solution to Bastide-Gramont as it might 
 appear to more temperate men. With Jausion the case 
 was more serious. If with him the inclination to murder 
 were less, the motive was far stronger. In the course of 
 his business transactions with Fualdes the latter had 
 placed in Jausion's hands a number of blank signatures to 
 oe used by Jausion for certain definite purposes. These, 
 however, Jausion had converted to his own use, to raising 
 money for his own benefit. At the time of the murder 
 those bills were becoming due ; Fualdes was desirous of 
 regulating all outstanding liabilities ; the fraud of Jausion 
 was on the brink of discovery. To extort from the 
 ex-magistrate his signature to papers that would set 
 Jausion right with the holders of the fraudulent bills was 
 the only means by which the latter could hope to save 
 himself from disaster. But those signatures would be 
 valueless if Fualdes survived the violence that in all 
 probability would have to be used to extort them from 
 him. With Bastide at his elbow to urge him on along 
 
 o o 
 
 the path of crime, Jausion screwed his courage to the 
 sticking-point, and embarked on an enterprise in which 
 murder, if not clearly contemplated, was at least a highly 
 probable contingency. To their influential position in 
 Rodez Bastide and Jausion looked for impunity from the 
 consequences of crime. They no doubt hoped, if they did 
 not actually believe, that intimidation would be a powerful 
 weapon in their hands to silence any testimony to their 
 guilt. How vigorously and effectually they exercised it in 
 more than one instance, the sequel will show. Undoubtedly 
 some such confidence on their part goes a long way to 
 explain the rashly daring character of their crime. One 
 must endeavour to realise in some degree the peculiar 
 social conditions of this old-fashioned city, which preserved 
 in its comparative seclusion many of the less desirable 
 
 202
 
 THE FUALDF.S CASE 
 
 characteristics of bygone periods in the history of France, 
 in order to comprehend the apparently reckless and im- 
 pudent boldness that accompanied the murder of Fualdes. 
 
 At the same time, the cruelty of the murder, the intense 
 animosity towards their victim displayed by both Bastide 
 and Jausion, make it pardonable to ask whether there was 
 not some other cause than pecuniary embarrassment that 
 provoked these two men to kill M. Fualdes. According 
 to the confession of Bancal, both Bastide and Jausion had 
 repeatedly declared to those present at the assassination 
 that it was not for his money that they had murdered the 
 gentleman, and that he, Fualdes, knew perfectly well how 
 thoroughly he deserved his fate. It is given to some men 
 to inspire dislike, just as it is given to others, for reasons 
 difficult to define, to inspire regard. Was there something 
 in Fauldes' way of doing things, his manner of dealing 
 with men, that aggravated to a murderous pitch the evil 
 passions of two men such as Bastide and Jausion, who 
 were not of a class that usually gratify their settled hates 
 by assassination ? If there was any cause of irritation 
 other than the financial one, it cannot have been very 
 tangible ; had it been, it would in all probability have 
 been pleaded at the trial ; but, to explain the extreme 
 atrocity of the crime, it is permissible to indulge in some 
 speculation as to vaguer motives that may have swayed 
 the two principal actors. 
 
 With the help of the confession of Bancal, the judicial 
 authorities were ready, at the beginning of May, to send 
 twelve prisoners for trial before the Cour Prevotale of 
 Rodez. Among them were included the wives of Bastide 
 and Jausion, a sister of Bastide, and the eldest daughter 
 of the Bancals. But the Royal Court at Montpellier 
 issued a decree removing the case from the jurisdiction 
 of the Cour Prevotale a peculiar court of unenviable 
 reputation, established during the White Terror to deal 
 with political offences and ordering a fresh investigation 
 
 203
 
 THE FUALDES CASE 
 
 preparatory to the hearing of the trial by the ordinary 
 Assize Court sitting at Rodez. It was in the midst of 
 this second investigation that an event occurred which gave 
 new life to the excitement caused by the crime, and shifted 
 the interest of the drama from the persons of the principal 
 criminals to that of a woman whose strange vagaries not 
 only attracted universal attention, but prolonged for 
 nearly a year the final settlement of the case. 
 
 Ever since the details of Bancal's confession had become 
 known to the public, speculation had been rife as to the 
 identity of the veiled lady who had been hidden in the 
 cupboard of the Bancals' kitchen during the progress of 
 Fualdes murder. Gossip, as not infrequently happens in 
 such cases, made free with the names of various ladies of 
 Rodez as being the actual victims of the misadventure, and 
 even went so far as to name the man for whose sake the 
 lady had found herself so dangerously compromised. It was 
 out of gossip of this kind that the truth at last emerged. 
 A certain respectable young girl, Mile. Avit, a daughter 
 of the registrar of the Tribunal, had been designated as 
 the veiled lady, and the name of a young gentleman 
 equally blameless coupled with hers. The young man 
 was complaining to some friends in the public room of a 
 hotel of the gross injustice of such scandal, when one of 
 his friends, an officer in the army named Clemandot, 
 endeavoured to reassure him by saying, " Never mind, 
 my good fellow. I know perfectly well that it was not 
 Mile. Avit." Later in the day Clemandot repeated this 
 statement. The young man, and those with him, insisted 
 that if Clemandot knew the real truth as to the identity 
 of the mysterious lady, it was his duty to disclose it, and 
 so relieve the respectable women of Rodez from the burden 
 of a scandalous suspicion. But the officer was reluctant 
 to speak ; to name a lady as having been at the Bancals' 
 house, under any circumstances, was to blast her reputation. 
 However, he gave a half-promise that he would do 
 
 204
 
 something towards elucidating the mystery. A few hours 
 later Clemandot found himself summoned into the presence 
 of the Comte d'Estourmel, the Prefect of the Department. 
 " You must tell me everything," said the Prefect ; " you 
 cannot in honour keep silence any longer." Clemandot 
 replied by a statement to the effect that Madame Manzon, 
 a lady of good family but easy reputation, well known in 
 Rodez, had herself confessed to him that it was she who 
 had been surprised in a rendezvous at the Bancals 1 house 
 by the assassins of Fualdes. 
 
 Hitherto the elements of romance, of sensibility to use 
 a word much in vogue at the period of emotion, have 
 been strangely lacking from this great cause celebre. But 
 with the appearance of Madame Manzon all these more 
 feminine qualities are brought into play, tending to relieve 
 the mere horror of the crime, and giving to French 
 justice an opportunity of displaying all those arts of 
 pressure, persuasion, and intimidation that it knows so 
 well how to employ in their most striking and sensational 
 form towards an unwilling witness or a prisoner who 
 obstinately denies his guilt. 
 
 Madame Manzon was admirably fitted, both by nature 
 and circumstance, to be the heroine of a cause celebre. 
 The daughter of M. Enjalran, one of the judges of the 
 Tribunal of Rodez, she had fallen away from the respect- 
 able surroundings in which she had been brought up, 
 and occupied at the time of the murder the rather 
 equivocal position of a woman separated from her husband 
 and reputed to be lively, sentimental, and indulgent. 
 Fortune had not been very kind to her. At an early age 
 she had been married to a man she did not love ; she took 
 him as her husband, to use her own words, " as one takes 
 a pill." And all the time her thoughts were elsewhere ; 
 for there was a bright and lively young fellow, a " little 
 sportsman " of quick wit and nice appreciation, who had 
 won her heart, and was daily contrasted with the kindly 
 
 205
 
 THE FUALDES CASE 
 
 and well-meaning but insufferably dull and unattractive 
 husband. After three months of married life M. and 
 Madame Manzon separated, she going to live at a little 
 farmhouse in the country. There the still devoted 
 husband made an attempt to gain the affection of his wife 
 in a manner that for a time, at any rate, appealed to the 
 " sensibility " of the lady. Like some Troubadour of old, 
 the excellent gentleman appeared at night under her 
 window, twanged a mandoline, and sent her mysterious 
 baskets of flowers which concealed gifts of various kinds. 
 The masquerade was successful. Charmed by the 
 eccentricity of the situation, Madame Manzon once more 
 admitted her husband to her chamber, and as a burlesque 
 Romeo he obtained what was denied to homely affection. 
 However, the birth of a child soon scattered the factitious 
 setting of pseudo-romance, and the ill-assorted couple 
 parted for good. 
 
 Madame Manzon returned to Rodez, a city she despised. 
 Its inhabitants, to her thinking, had no heart ; they were 
 little better than stupid machines. Being in no temper to 
 conform to their ways of living, she followed those of her 
 own, and soon acquired, among those she despised, a 
 dubious reputation. If the story told by Clemandot were 
 true, and she had really gone to the Bancals 1 on the night 
 of March 19th to keep an assignation, there were some 
 grounds for the rather questionable character given her 
 by the dullards of Rodez. It was on July 29th that 
 Clemandot made his startling revelation. On the 31st, at 
 the request of her father, the Prefect sent for Madame 
 Manzon and questioned her as to Clcmandofs avowal. 
 She promptly gave him the lie, but seemed embarrassed 
 and ill at ease. 
 
 On the following day she wrote a letter to the Prefect 
 that betrayed a painful agitation. She was anxious, she 
 wrote, to tell the truth, but wanted the courage to do so : 
 her situation was so difficult, she so lonely in her distress.
 
 THE FUALDES CASE 
 
 " Have I not been born to misfortune ? Has not the cup 
 of my unhappiness been filled to the brim ?" She came to 
 the Prefect's house and there declared that it was true that 
 she had told Clemandot that she had been at the Bancals" 1 
 on the night of the murder, but that it was a joke on her 
 part ; she had never been there in her life. The Prefect 
 confronted her with Clemandot ; her father, who was 
 present, commanded her to speak the truth : " Enough of 
 lies, madame ; if you wish to avoid the full current of my 
 wrath, speak the truth. If you have forgotten all other 
 obligations, at least respect that one."" The Prefect sent 
 everybody from the room, and once again pressed her, in a 
 kindly manner, to be frank with him. At length Madame 
 Manzon showed signs of wavering ; if she spoke, would 
 her father promise not to separate her from her child, 
 and guarantee her an income sufficient to live upon ? 
 M. Enjalran, called into the room, promised to accede to 
 her wishes. She then confessed, for the first time, that she 
 had been in the Bancals'' kitchen on the night of March 19th, 
 but said she could not identify any of the persons she had 
 seen there. To improve the occasion, and profit by her 
 coming-on disposition, the Prefect straightway took 
 Madame Manzon to the scene of the murder. She had no 
 sooner entered the passage leading to the kitchen than she 
 turned pale, beat her hands together, and fainted away. 
 In the kitchen itself and the courtyard her agitation was 
 no less marked ; she begged to be allowed to go. She 
 identified the cupboard in which she had hidden, and, as 
 the recollection of that awful night came more forcibly 
 upon her, her terror showed only too clearly the nature of 
 the scene she had witnessed. Feeling that he had suffi- 
 ciently harrowed her feelings for one day, the Prefect sent 
 Madame Manzon to her home. 
 
 The following day, August 2nd, as a result of the 
 Prefect's judicious measures, Madame Manzon made a 
 formal declaration. In it she stated that she had gone 
 
 207
 
 THE FUALDES CASE 
 
 into the Bancals' house on the night of the murder in 
 order to avoid a crowd in the street. She described how 
 she had hidden in the cupboard, how a man had dragged 
 her out and threatened her with death if she spoke of what 
 she had seen ; and she gave the substance of half an hour's 
 conversation she had had in the street with the man who 
 led her from the house. But she could identify no one ; she 
 admitted that she had been dressed as a man on the occasion 
 in question, and that she had burnt the clothes because 
 they were blood-stained. The Prefect suggested to her 
 that the blood was the blood of the murdered man, that 
 she had accidentally come into contact with the corpse on 
 the table ; but she attributed it to quite another cause : 
 she had knocked her head while she was in the cupboard, 
 and the blow had made her nose bleed. This statement of 
 Madame Manzon was clearly of a very partial character ; 
 she had not told all ; but the Prefect had every hope that, 
 since she had gone so far in the path of revelation, he 
 would ultimately succeed in getting from her a full and 
 particular account of her nocturnal adventure. But he 
 was doomed to disappointment. Not only was there no 
 more information to Ibe obtained from the lady, but on the 
 very day following her confession she retracted it, denied 
 that she had ever been at the Bancals" 1 , and went back to 
 her previous story that it was merely as a joke she had 
 told Clemandot that she had been there. 
 
 On August 4th this astounding retraction was solemnly 
 repeated in the presence of the Prefect, her father, and the 
 Procureur du Roi. " In the very sanctuary of justice, in 
 the presence of its honourable ministers, in the presence of 
 God who hears me and shall judge," Madame Manzon 
 declared that never, at any time, had she been in the 
 Bancals 1 house ; that she had not even known that such a 
 house existed, and that she was fully prepared to maintain 
 the truth of this statement to the end of her days. " You 
 have sorely tried our patience and our trust in you," was 
 
 208
 
 THE FUALD^S CASE 
 
 the cold comment of the Prefect. But he was only at the 
 beginning of his trials ; he had yet to learn what it was to 
 get the truth out of a woman of sensibility. In the mean- 
 time it was clear that some powerful cause must have 
 operated to induce Madame Manzon to go back with such 
 resolute determination on what was evidently the true 
 account of her visit to the Bancals 1 . That cause was 
 intimidation. Since her first interview with the Prefect 
 she had been visited by Madame Pons, a sister of Bastide, 
 and there can be no doubt that the object of that visit had 
 been to put such pressure on Madame Manzon, such fear 
 into her heart, as should compel her, for her own safety's 
 sake, to do her utmost to save the heads of Bastide and 
 Jausion. Already intimidation had been practised in 
 Rodez by members of these two influential families, and it 
 was not likely that a weak and vain woman, capable of 
 giving fatal testimony, would escape their efforts. The 
 authorities, too, had played into their hands. At the first 
 sign of wavering they should have placed Madame Manzon 
 under arrest, charged her with having been an accomplice 
 in the crime, and so secured her against the threats and 
 inducements of the relatives of the prisoners. But the 
 favour she enjoyed as the daughter of a respected 
 magistrate, the consideration shown to her by the Prefect, 
 the freedom allowed her up to the time of the trial, 
 exposed her to the influence of Madame Pons, left her free 
 to the indulgence of the emotional element in her com- 
 position, and gave her an opportunity of tasting the 
 sweets of notoriety. Terror of the vengeance threatened 
 by the relatives of Bastide, a feeling of gratitude towards 
 Jausion, who had undoubtedly saved her life on the fatal 
 night, shame at having to admit her presence in a house of 
 ill repute, the attraction of finding herself the centre of a 
 highly dramatic and poignant situation all these motives 
 united in the troubled breast of Madame Manzon to make 
 perjury almost a necessity. 
 
 209 P
 
 THE FUALDES CASE 
 
 But, having made up her mind to lie, Madame Manzon 
 was neither robust nor wicked enough to emulate worthily 
 the achievements of an Gates or a Bedloe. Her tortured 
 conscience betrayed itself in a series of letters with which, 
 during the fortnight previous to the trial of the case, she 
 bombarded the too amiable Prefect. In these letters, and 
 in the interviews to which they led, she acknowledged 
 that she had a secret, and promised to one day divulge it ; 
 at times she seemed to hover on the brink of yet another 
 confession, but only to draw back and take refuge in 
 vague hints, entreaties, fantastic tales. She was a poor 
 weak woman, she wrote, no Machiavelli ; she was on the 
 edge of a precipice ; the whole world was against her, 
 a world that knew nothing of her true character ; her 
 nights were horrible ; her child, that slept peacefully by 
 her side, would soon be taken from her ; and so on, in a 
 confused medley of conflicting emotions. All this time, 
 and to the knowledge of the Prefect, she was receiving 
 visits from Madame Pons and others interested in the 
 fate of Bastide and Jausion. It was not likely, therefore, 
 that, exposed to these sinister influences, Madame Manzon 
 would escape from the web of falsehood in which she had 
 involved herself. The magistrates, victims of their own 
 mistaken indulgence, had now to trust to the gravity and 
 authority of the Assize Court to fix Madame "Mensonge, 1 " 
 as she was playfully termed, to the truth. 
 
 On August 18th, 1817, eleven prisoners stood in the 
 dock before the Assize Court of Rodez, charged with 
 being concerned in various degrees in the murder of 
 M. Fualdes. These were Bastide and Jausion, Bastide's 
 two sisters, Madame Jausion and Madame Galtier, the 
 woman Bancal and her eldest daughter, Marianne, Colard 
 and his mistress, Anne Benoit, Bach, Bousquier and 
 Missonier. Of the two principal actors in the crime, 
 Jausion, as he entered the court, seemed restless and 
 depressed, but Bastide bore himself with hardy insolence. 
 
 210
 
 THE FUALDES CASE 
 
 The leading advocate for the defence was M. Romiguieres, 
 a distinguished representative of the bar of Toulouse. 
 The son of Fualdes was present in his capacity of " partie 
 civile," not in this instance to claim any pecuniary com- 
 pensation for the loss of his father, but to import into 
 the proceedings an inconvenient, if comprehensible, 
 element of personal vindictiveness that could be of little 
 assistance to justice. The jury had been carefully chosen 
 from among men holding prominent positions in and 
 about Rodez. 
 
 In describing a case the hearing of which lasted nearly 
 a month and in which three hundred and twenty witnesses 
 were examined, it is necessary to select those points that 
 are new and of salient interest, and avoid such evidence as 
 merely repeats the story that has been already told. 
 
 The great body of the evidence, as it affected Bastide 
 and Jausion, added little to the ample details given in 
 Bancal's informal confession. The prisoner Bousquier 
 fully admitted his share in the business, told of his horror 
 when he discovered the real character of the bale of 
 tobacco that he had been hired to carry, and identified 
 Bastide as one of those present, but was less positive as 
 to Jausion. Many witnesses deposed to the involuntary 
 admissions made by the two little children of the Bancals 1 ; 
 many also deposed to the intimidation exercised in Rodez 
 by the friends of the prisoners towards those capable of 
 giving evidence against them ; two daring attempts made 
 previous to the trial to effect the escape of Bastide and 
 Jausion by corrupting their gaolers, bore plain testimony 
 to the determined and daring efforts of their families to 
 cheat justice of her prey. The comings and goings of the 
 two men before and after the murder, their financial 
 relations with the murdered man, the admissions made by 
 the woman Bancal to some fellow prisoners ; all these 
 circumstances told heavily against the innocence of the 
 majority of the prisoners. One of those trivial pieces of 
 
 211
 
 THE FUALD&S CASE 
 
 evidence that astonish the English reader at their finding 
 a place in a grave judicial investigation, provoked a sneer 
 from the redoubtable Bastide. A Professor was called 
 who had met Bastide about two o'clock on the afternoon 
 preceding the crime. His appearance was so distraught 
 that the Professor could not help exclaiming to a friend 
 who was with him, " That man looks a villain ! " " But 
 he^s a man of very good family,'" expostulated the friend. 
 " Never mind that," replied the Professor, " he's got an 
 evil face." " Permit me to congratulate the department," 
 sneered Bastide at the conclusion of this remarkable 
 evidence, " on being able to reckon among its professors 
 so striking a physiognomist." 
 
 It was not until the fifth day of the trial that public 
 expectation was gratified by the appearance of Madame 
 Manzon in the 'witness-box. This event was the signal 
 for a display of emotion and excitement on the part of 
 all concerned, rarely, if ever, equalled in the records of the 
 French Assize Courts. The President greeted the witness 
 as " an angel sent by Providence to clear up a dreadful 
 mystery." But when he invited Madame Manzon to fulfil 
 this august mission, she fainted away and had to be carried 
 from the court. On her return, to the disappointment of 
 of the judge, she denied that she had ever been in the 
 house of the Bancals, but said that she had heard that 
 there had been a woman there on the night of the murder 
 whom Bastide had wished to kill but Jausion had preserved 
 from death. The utmost efforts of the President, and of the 
 young Fualdes, could wring nothing more from her. In 
 vain the former exhorted her, as the daughter of a 
 magistrate, to speak the truth ; her only answer was to 
 faint away a second time. In vain was a row of soldiers 
 placed between her and the prisoners, to protect her from 
 intimidation ; in vain was she confronted with her lover, 
 Clemandot, and other witnesses to whom she had spoken 
 at different times of her unlucky adventure in the Bancals 1 
 
 212
 
 THE FUALDES CASE 
 
 house. Madame Manzon, though she did not hesitate to 
 address the prisoners as assassins, persisted in denying 
 that she had any knowledge of the murder except such as 
 she had learnt from hearsay, or the many anonymous 
 letters with which she had been deluged ; whatever she 
 may have said before was false ; she was now speaking the 
 truth. No one believed her ; but all arts were powerless 
 to shake her resolution to lie. The gallant Clemandot 
 felt that her denials reflected so seriously on his character, 
 that he twice offered to explain to the court the exact 
 nature of his relations with Madame Manzon ; this, he 
 declared, would place the truth of his statements beyond 
 question ; but the President, to the intense disappointment 
 of the audience, declined to receive the information. 
 M. Romiguieres, in defending Bastide, made a daring 
 appeal to her to speak the whole truth. "The contra- 
 dictions, inconsistencies, half admissions in your evidence, 
 your obvious terror, tell far more heavily against the 
 prisoners than any definite accusation. It would be far 
 better for all that you should speak the whole truth. 
 What is there to prevent you ? I ask you, in the name 
 of the prisoners, what have you to fear from them ? They 
 
 are in the dock " " No ! no ! " cried Madame Manzon, 
 
 " they are not all in the dock ; there are others ! " 
 
 At this startling announcement the general excitement 
 reached fever heat ; the formidable Bastide, the only one 
 of the prisoners who in any degree dominated the pro- 
 ceedings, became so terrible and threatening that the 
 officer commanding the soldiers guarding the precincts of 
 the court ordered his men to present arms. 
 
 The following day the President made a last attempt to 
 persuade Madame Manzon to recant. He felt, no doubt, 
 that he had been premature, if not presumptuous, in 
 greeting her in the first instance as a heaven-sent angel 
 of truth. He apologised for his ill-judged enthusiasm by 
 explaining that though God had given to men all they 
 
 213
 
 THE FUALDES CASE 
 
 required to make them happy, He had denied them the 
 power to penetrate the secrets of eternity : " I don't think 
 anybody can imagine for one moment that I sought to 
 lift the impenetrable veil that wisely shrouds from us the 
 mysterious designs of Providence." He then exhorted 
 Madame Manzon, in the name of her parents, to tell the 
 truth. Her only answer was to try to shift the responsi- 
 bility for her original statements on to a young lady 
 named Pierret, from whom she said she had learnt the 
 details of the murder. The young lady was called and 
 denied emphatically that she had ever had any conversation 
 of any kind with Madame Manzon on the subject of the 
 crime. The President, his patience exhausted, began to 
 threaten. " Remember," he said, addressing Madame 
 Manzon, " you are a witness now ; you may be a prisoner 
 later."" " I know that," she replied ; " you can arrest me 
 if you like. But I was never at the Bancals', and I am 
 ready to suffer for the woman who was." At this point 
 the young Fualdes rose, and told the President that he 
 had that moment been informed that the woman Bancal 
 was ready to aver that it was indeed Madame Man/on who 
 had been discovered in her closet by the murderers. The 
 gendarme, sitting by her side in the dock, told the court 
 that, while Madame Manzon was giving her evidence, he 
 had heard the prisoner Bancal mutter, " She may say 
 what she likes, she was there." But Bancal declined to 
 be drawn into any definite admissions. 
 
 The attempt to make Madame Manzon tell her real 
 story had failed egregiously. The intimidation practised 
 by the relatives of Bastide, her gratitude to Jausion, the 
 reluctance to avow her own indiscretion, and the indulgence 
 hitherto extended to her by the authorities, had all con- 
 tributed to the suppression of the truth. A rigorous 
 cross-examination after the English fashion, a sterner and 
 less sentimental attitude on the part of the presiding 
 judge, might have swayed her resolution ; but her treat- 
 
 214
 
 ment at the trial was not of a character to do that. If 
 she had been arrested before instead of after the trial the 
 result might have been different. 
 
 In any case her reticence did not avail those chiefly 
 concerned. On September 12th the jury returned a verdict 
 of " Guilty " in varying degree against all the prisoners 
 with the exception of Bastide's two sisters, Madame Galtier 
 and Madame Jausion, and Marianne Bancal. Bastide, 
 Jausion, Bach, Colard, and the woman Bancal were sen- 
 tenced to death, Missonier and Annie Benoit to imprison- 
 ment for life, and Bousquier to one year's imprisonment 
 and a trifling fine. Jausion was crushed by the weight of 
 his condemnation ; but the redoubtable Bastide rose to the 
 occasion. " There are hearts in this court," he said, " that 
 are beating quicker than mine." The woman Benoit, 
 Colard's mistress, paid no attention to her own sentence, 
 but reproached herself with having brought about her 
 lover's fate by persuading him to stay in Rodez. 
 
 But they were not to die yet. Whether from careless- 
 ness or over-excitement, the President at Rodez had 
 committed so many irregularities in the conduct of the 
 trial, chiefly in the swearing of the witnesses, which in 
 France, as in Scotland, is entrusted to the presiding judge, 
 that in October the Court of Cassation quashed the whole 
 proceedings and directed a new trial before the Assize 
 Court for the Tarn department, sitting at Albi. In the 
 meantime Madame Manzon had been arrested on a charge 
 of perjury and imprisoned in a convent. 
 
 Her confinement was, however, of the most indulgent 
 character. She was allowed to receive as many visitors as 
 she pleased ; nor was she separated from her little boy, 
 whom she described as " her little palladium, her Allah, 
 her idol." She was now to taste to the full the sweets of 
 notoriety. An enterprising and unscrupulous Parisian 
 journalist, by name de la Tout-he, scented lucrative 
 " copy " in the imprisoned heroine of a cause celebre ; he 
 
 215
 
 THE FUALDF.S CASE 
 
 visited her in her convent prison and for 2,400 francs pur- 
 chased the right to publish a volume of Memoirs setting 
 forth the story of her married life and her connection with 
 Fualdes. It was a good bargain, for out of the sale of the 
 book de la Touche was enabled to buy himself a charming 
 villa in the country. Paris had become interested in the 
 strange stories that reached the capital from Rodez, in the 
 sentimental lady so mysteriously involved in a brutal and 
 sordid crime, in her extraordinary attitude, her constant 
 admissions and retractions. 
 
 In her Memoirs Madame Manzon continued to deny her 
 presence in the Bancals' kitchen on the night of the 
 murder, and to insist that it was from Rose Pierret that 
 she had learned all she knew of the circumstances of 
 the crime. But in her narrative of her married life, and 
 her relations with Clemandot, she broke new ground, and 
 amused the curious public. We have already alluded 
 to her account of her unhappy marriage with the un- 
 sympathetic Manzon, the worthy citizen of Boeotian Rodez, 
 a city filled not with men, but with automata and 
 machines. She dealt in these Memoirs no less severely 
 with Clemandot, whose indiscretion had first revealed her 
 awkward secret. He was a young fool who had bored her 
 by his persistent attentions ; he had been in the habit 
 of calling at her house slightly intoxicated, and sitting 
 there till she was at her wit's end how to get rid of him ; 
 and it was on one of these occasions that, to pass the time 
 and evade his silly questions, she had pretended, as a joke, 
 to have been the woman, the unwilling witness of Fualdes 1 
 murder. 
 
 The gallantry of Clemandot was not proof against this 
 most uncomplimentary account of his relations with 
 Madame Manzon ; he could not refrain from a reply. He 
 had already been threatened with the loss of his commission 
 and a duel with one of Madame Manzon's brothers, and 
 had not been allowed to tell all his story in the Assize 
 
 216
 
 THE FUALDES CASE 
 
 Court. Since memoirs were in the air, there was nothing 
 left him but to publish his own. According to his story, 
 he had known Madame Manzon for three days when, on 
 July 28th, she, after some beating about the bush, told 
 him that on the night of the murder she had gone to the 
 Bancals 1 house to meet " a young man from the country, 11 
 and had been surprised there by the assassins of Fualdes. 
 As to his brief relations with Madame Manzon, Clemandot 
 declared them to have been perfectly innocent ; he would 
 have said so at the trial, and so put an end to all un- 
 charitable surmise, had he been permitted. The reason 
 why Madame Manzon had endeavoured to involve Rose 
 Pierret in her adventure was, Clemandot suggested, the 
 girl's prettiness, an unforgivable crime in another woman 
 in the eyes of Madame Manzon. But the cruellest cut of 
 all was contained in the following passage from these 
 Memoirs : " I was first attracted to Madame Manzon by 
 her plainness. I was told she was bright and amusing, 
 and, though it required an effort to get over her yellow 
 skin, her small eyes, large mouth and masculine voice, I 
 gradually came to find her tolerable. I enjoyed her con- 
 versation ; we talked together, and there, thank God, it 
 ended." 
 
 Clemandofs retort is unchivalrous, but to have been 
 described publicly as a tedious bore who lolls about in 
 a lady's drawing-room in a state of somnolent inebriety 
 was, even if it were true, provoking. 
 
 As the time of the second trial drew nearer, memoirs 
 fell thick and fast ; witnesses wrote memoirs ; Madame 
 Manzon wrote additional Memoirs, reflecting on her first, 
 which she said had been wheedled out of her by un- 
 scrupulous arts. De la Touche replied by revealing a 
 number of scandalous details which he had suppressed in 
 the original Memoirs out of consideration for their author. 
 In the meantime Madame Man/on continued to be treated 
 with every possible consideration ; she wrote letters to the 
 
 217
 
 THE FUALDES CASE 
 
 newspapers and received her visitors ; her arrival at Albi 
 partook more of the nature of a triumphal entry than that 
 of a prisoner awaiting trial. At Albi the prosecution had 
 decided to place her in the dock by the side of the other 
 prisoners, charged with having " aided and abetted the 
 authors of the crime either before or after the fact."" It 
 was hoped that, by placing her in this unpleasant situation, 
 she might be induced to speak the truth. The proceed- 
 ings before the Albi Assize Court, which opened on March 
 25th, 1818, were far more decisive in their character than 
 those at Rodez. Tongues that had been previously tied, 
 from a variety of causes, were now loosed. Many who had 
 been afraid to speak at the first trial for fear lest certain 
 of the accused, if acquitted, might wreak vengeance on 
 them, now that the dreaded ones had been once convicted, 
 plucked up courage to come forward. One of the prisoners, 
 condemned to death at Rodez, in the hope of meeting with 
 an easier fate at Albi, had made a partial confession. The 
 trial itself was conducted with greater firmness and decision 
 than that of the year before, with on the whole satisfactory 
 results. 
 
 No evidence that could tell against the prisoners was 
 deemed too indirect, or, strictly speaking, irrelevant, to be 
 urged against them. A witness stated that a woman with 
 whom Bastide lodged had replied to him very evasively 
 when he asked her whether Bastide was at her house on 
 the night of March 19th, 1817. Bastide, in reply, said 
 that this woman had died, but, in dying, had made a 
 declaration which he wished to have read. " Yes," said 
 the President, " I know very well she is dead, and that 
 her death followed on an attack of violent sickness." A 
 young advocate, not engaged in the case, rose and pro- 
 tested against the absurd rumours circulated about this 
 woman's death. " I have official information on the 
 subject," answered the judge. 
 
 As the court did not think it right that the little girl, 
 
 218
 
 THE FUALDF.S CASE 
 
 Magdeleine Bancal, should be called to give evidence 
 against her mother, a gentleman named de Lorme, occupy- 
 ing no official position, was allowed to give the substance 
 of a statement made by the child to himself and five other 
 persons in the hospital to which she had been removed. 
 According to this, Jausion dealt Fualdes the first blow, 
 but recoiled in horror, whereupon Bastide and Missonier 
 finished him off. Madame Manzon, after her discovery in 
 the closet, had been compelled to place her hand on the 
 belly of the corpse. The following morning her mother 
 sent the little girl to her father, who was working in the 
 fields. She was to take him his dinner and tell her father, 
 so her mother enjoined her, " to do he knew what." The 
 child found Bancal digging a hole ; she was frightened, 
 believing, after the events of the previous night, that it 
 was intended for her ; but her father soon reassured her. 
 Sobbing, he took her in his arms and said, " No. Promise 
 me always to be a good girl, and run away ! " The hole 
 he had dug was afterwards used for the interment of the 
 two pigs which, having been given the blood of Fualdes to 
 drink, had perished from the horrid draught. 
 
 A witness named Garribal repeated what he had heard 
 from a female servant of Jausion the day after the murder. 
 The woman said that, on the morning of the 20th, Jausion 
 had come into his wife's room and said, " Victoire, we are 
 lost ; he floats ! " Another witness deposed to a remark 
 made by Bastide on the same day. A few years before the 
 murder of Fualdes, Bastide's eldest son had been killed in 
 the course of a brawl ; Fualdes, then Procureur Imperial, 
 had prosecuted his assailants, but, in the opinion of his 
 father, without sufficient zeal. Bastide, who had not 
 forgotten nor forgiven this, said to the witness on one 
 occasion, " I have plenty of children, but none of them 
 can work. If my eldest son were alive, he would have 
 helped me. The judges were very unwilling to punish 
 his murderer; 111 pay them out." 
 
 219
 
 THE FUALDES CASE 
 
 The evidence of a man named Theron was more con- 
 clusive in its character. He swore positively to having 
 seen, from behind a bush, Bastide, Jausion, Bach, Colard, 
 and Barical, carrying the corpse of a man in the direction 
 of the Aveyron river on the night of March 19th ; he was 
 positive in his identification of the prisoners. Asked by 
 the President why he had not given his evidence at Rodez, 
 he answered : " Bastide, when first arrested, had been re- 
 leased for a while ; I was afraid he might get out of prison 
 again and serve me as he had served M. Fualdes. But I 
 told M. Anglade, the doctor, at the time that ' my best 
 friend ' knew all about the murder, and as I meant myself 
 by my ' best friend, 1 I thought he might guess that it 
 was I who knew all about it." 
 
 By placing Madame Manzon in the dock the prosecution 
 attained their end, in a measure. She now admitted her 
 presence in the Bancals' kitchen. From her concealment 
 she had heard cries and moans and the noise of the blood 
 running into the bucket ; she had tried in vain to get out 
 by the little window of the closet, but had only succeeded 
 in making her nose bleed. When she was brought out, 
 her terror was so great that she had no recollection of 
 what or whom she had seen ; she only remembered being 
 taken into the street by a man whom she was unable to 
 identify, and there sent about her business. More than 
 this she could not, or would not say ; she was utterly 
 unable, she said, to identify any of her companions in the 
 dock as having been present in the kitchen on that awful 
 night. And it would have been well for at least one of 
 them had she been left alone at that point in her story. 
 A gentleman had been called who swore that Madame 
 Manzon had told him, before the first trial, that she had 
 given evidence to the authorities that would send those 
 accused of the murder to the scaffold. Judge, advocates, 
 the witness himself, pressed her to admit the truth of this 
 statement, but in vain ; at length Bastide himself inter- 
 
 220
 
 THE FUALDF.S CASE 
 
 vened. " If she would only tell the truth ! " he exclaimed. 
 Madame Manzon turned on him, and, with a strangely 
 significant look, apostrophised him as " Wretch ! " " Come, 
 no more monosyllables, madame ! " replied Bastide ; but 
 the words were hardly out of his mouth when Madame, 
 pushing aside the two gendarmes who interposed between 
 them, confronted her fellow-prisoner. " Look well at me, 
 Bastide," she cried ; " don't you know me again ? " " No," 
 was the answer, " I don't know you." " Wretch, you say 
 you don't know me, you who would have cut my throat ! " 
 and Madame Manzon fell fainting in the dock. For the 
 redoubtable Bastide this was a fatal blow. From the first 
 Madame Manzon had betrayed a marked antipathy to the 
 man who had, according to her original story, proposed 
 to add her murder to that of Fualdes. This significant 
 incident left little doubt of the truth of that story. 
 
 No sooner had she recovered from the agitation into 
 which she had been thrown by her passage with Bastide, 
 than the young Fualdes strove with all his might to 
 persuade her to identify Jausion as the man who had 
 combated Bastide's bloodthirsty suggestion, but without 
 result. The following day the President renewed the 
 attack, but with little better success ; the utmost that 
 could be wrung from Madame Manzon was the statement, 
 " I can neither save nor convict Jausion." Bastide made 
 a final effort to discount the weight of her damning 
 testimony against himself. " These exclamations are worth 
 nothing," he protested, "we are not in a theatre. 
 Madame Manzon has been entertaining the public too 
 long. What is the meaning of these dramatic outbursts ? " 
 " Stop, prisoner," said the President, " why do you call 
 the dock in which you are seated a theatre r If it be true 
 that you wanted to murder Madame Manzon, can you 
 expect she should speak of it with perfect self-command ? 
 Don't deceive yourself, Bastide ; this is no comedy." 
 " My God, no ! " he answered. " I should think not ! 
 
 221
 
 THE FUALDES CASE 
 
 It's a cruel tragedy for a man whose conscience is as clear 
 as mine ! " " Your conscience clear ! " exclaimed Madame 
 Manzon, with energy. " If M. Bastide can prove his 
 innocence, I will mount the scaffold in his stead ! " It 
 was useless for Bastide to urge that the woman had said 
 one thing at Rodez, another at Albi. " I lied at Rodez," 
 was the calm retort, " I am telling the truth at Albi." 
 
 But nothing could induce Madame Manzon to swear 
 away the life of Jausion, the man who had saved her own. 
 One of the judges pointed out to her how much better it 
 would be for Jausion if she would only speak out, but she 
 was resolute. " I cannot speak conclusively," she answered, 
 " in respect to him." 
 
 But her reticence was powerless to save Jausion from 
 his fate. Not only had the evidence of Theron added 
 very materially to the weight of the testimony against 
 him, but the confessions made by Bach and the woman 
 Bancal in the course of the trial, which fully corroborated 
 the informal but seemingly trustworthy statement made 
 by the latter's husband on his death-bed, furnished con- 
 clusive evidence of his presence and active participation 
 in his kinsman's murder. According to these confessions, 
 there had been at least two other persons present at the 
 murder in addition to those who were standing in the 
 dock one a brother of Bastide, another a man by the name 
 of Yence. 
 
 It was not until the end of April that the speeches of 
 counsel were commenced. Whether as a protest against 
 the attitude of the judges, or for some other reason, 
 Bastide's advocate declined to address the jury himself, 
 but furnished his client with a carefully prepared speech, 
 which, after the manner of Thurtell, with whom Bastide 
 has some points of likeness, the prisoner declaimed to his 
 judges. This elegant oration was greatly admired at the 
 time; the King, Louis XVIII., read it over twice, and 
 the Academy deliberated as to whether it was not worthy 
 
 222
 
 THE FUALDES CASE 
 
 to be crowned as a model of forensic eloquence. But its 
 effect in court would seem to have been less remarkable, 
 as may be expected from the artificial character of its 
 delivery. Bastide was thundering away from his manuscript 
 about the " snares employed to persuade such vile creatures 
 as Bach and the woman Bancal to save their miserable 
 lives by perjuring themselves," when the President asked, 
 " What snares have been employed ? Tell us all about 
 them." But, as they were not in the manuscript, Bastide 
 was obliged to go lamely on to the next passage. Again, 
 he was attacking Madame Manzon : " My defence against 
 her," he said, " this woman who is at the same time 
 witness, accused, and accuser, whom the prosecution 
 alternately censure and caress, pitilessly disgrace or 
 egregiously exalt, this woman who, to avoid being dis- 
 graced by the law, forces the law to disgrace itself 
 
 Here the President interrupted him. " Bastide," he asked, 
 is this written defence you are reading your own com 
 position ? " " The ideas are my own," answered the 
 prisoner. "Well," replied the judge, "I should advise 
 you to think before you add to your guilt or aggravate 
 the public resentment." The address ended by an appeal 
 to the future, which, said Bastide, however the present 
 trial might end, would one day engrave on his tomb the 
 words, " He died innocent." 
 
 On May 4th, after a trial lasting thirty-four days, and 
 more than thirteen months after the murder of Fualdes, 
 the jury convicted all the prisoners, with the exception 
 of Madame Manzon, of having participated in varying 
 degree in the crime of March 19th, 1817. Bastide, 
 Jausion, Colard, Bach, and the woman Bancal were, as at 
 the previous trial, condemned to death, Anne Benoit to 
 imprisonment for life, and Missonier to two years 1 im- 
 prisonment and a small fine. This Missonier, who seems 
 to have been little better than an idiot, was the only 
 one of the prisoners to profit by a second trial, for at 
 
 223
 
 THE FUALDS CASE 
 
 Rodez he had been sentenced to imprisonment for life. 
 Jausion, a coward by nature, was as overcome by this 
 second condemnation as Bastide was to all appearances 
 still defiant. The former cried out against his fate ; he 
 was innocent, they wanted to take his money from him ; 
 it would kill his children ; he adjured Bach to say that he 
 was not in the Bancals' kitchen that night. " You were 
 there," was the only answer. The sentences on Bach and 
 la Bancal were not carried out, but Jausion, Bastide, and 
 Colard, after vainly appealing once again to the Court of 
 Cassation, were guillotined at Rodez on June 3rd. Even 
 the stout heart of Bastide failed him at the supreme 
 moment ; but not one of the three confessed their guilt. 
 Three other persons implicated in the confessions of Bach 
 and la Bancal, as having been present at the murder, were 
 subsequently put on their trial, but were acquitted ; 
 justice, satisfied with the punishment of the principals in 
 the tragedy, did not inquire too curiously into the relative 
 guilt of the subordinate actors. 
 
 Some thirteen years after the execution of the murderers, 
 a sinister discovery furnished grim proof of the good 
 fortune of Madame Manzon and the little Magdeleine 
 Bancal in not paying with their lives for their accidental 
 presence at Fualdes' assassination. In 1841, in a garden 
 that at the time of the murder had belonged to Jausion, 
 there were found two skeletons, and by their side the 
 rotting keyboards of two hurdy-gurdies. These were, in 
 all probability, the remains of those two itinerant musicians 
 who had played their instruments with such notable vigour 
 on the fatal night, but of whom the magistrates had 
 never been able to find any trace. In their cases Bastide 
 had evidently pursued to its logical conclusion that system 
 of making assurance doubly sure, which only the in- 
 adequate villainy of Jausion had prevented him from 
 carrying out in the instances of Madame Manzon and the 
 little girl. Of these two, the child, deprived of all pro- 
 
 224
 
 THE FUALD&S CASE 
 
 tection, drifted ultimately into that class to which the 
 melancholy surroundings of her childhood may be said to 
 have predestined her ; while Madame Manzon, after having 
 for a brief space been " run " by an enterprising showman, 
 retired shortly after on a Government pension, conferred 
 on her by the Due Decazes, presumably as a solace for her 
 trials, or a reward for her heroic efforts to suppress the 
 truth. 
 
 The murder of the luckless Fualdes is worthy to rank 
 as a famous cause celebre, firstly for the audacity of the 
 crime itself, and secondly for the strange mischance which 
 involved a vain and hysterical woman in the circumstances 
 of its investigation. Both the intimidation of witnesses, 
 which was practised to such an outrageous extent by the 
 relatives and friends of the principal criminals, and the 
 protracted lying of Madame Manzon, might have been 
 rendered far less serious in their results had the authorities, 
 immediately after the crime, acted with greater firmness. 
 As it was, the social position of Jausion and Bastide, 
 which made their crime difficult of belief, and the relation- 
 ship of Madame Manzon to a highly respected magistrate, 
 which procured her at the first peculiar indulgence, must 
 be held in great part accountable for the length of 
 time that elapsed between the arrest and execution of the 
 murderers, and the sensational, if unsatisfactory, character 
 of the first trial. 
 
 225
 
 The Early Life of Chief Justice 
 Scroggs 
 
 
 227
 
 THE EARLY LIFE OF CHIEF JUSTICE 
 SCROGGS 
 
 THE career of Sir William Scroggs after his appointment 
 as Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench is a part of the 
 history of his time, the history of the Popish Plot, and the 
 trials arising out of it. In his conduct of those trials he 
 has contrived to acquire a reputation for judicial villainy 
 second only to that of Chief Justice Jeffreys. Historians 
 have crushed him with a load of obloquy and denunciation, 
 light only in comparison with that accorded to the peerless 
 Jeffreys. Recent writers, chief among them Sir James 
 Stephen, have relieved his judicial conduct of some measure 
 of its apparently wanton guilt ; but his behaviour on the 
 bench must always remain a flagrant example of judicial 
 intemperance, a failing by no means extinct, but in these 
 less passionate days exercised in comparatively harmless 
 circumstances, not, as in Scroggs's case, tempted to display 
 itself in an hour of public panic, agitation, and suspicion, 
 unexampled in our history. How Chief Justice Scroggs 
 came to lose so dismally his self-control, when confronted 
 with the wild excitement of the Plot agitation, a brief study 
 of his early life, for which in recent times some interesting 
 materials have come to light, may serve at least partially 
 to explain. 
 
 The author of a Latin panegyric on Chief Justice Scroggs 
 tells us how that, at the birth of the future judge, there was 
 strife in heaven, Venus, Mars, and Mercury each contending 
 for the privilege of acting as tutelary genius to the helpless 
 
 229
 
 THE EARLY LIFE OF 
 
 infant, and how that Jove, intervening, accommodated the 
 dispute by deciding that each of the three should be 
 allowed to bestow a characteristic gift on the little Scroggs, 
 which should stand him in good stead through life, and 
 give the bestower an interest in his fortunes. In conse- 
 quence of this decision, Venus blessed him with a comely 
 presence, Mars with a soldier's courage, and Mercury 
 bestowed on him the gift of graceful and pungent" eloquence. 
 Whatever the degree of credit attaching to this poet's 
 vision of celestial interference in the destinies of Scroggs, 
 it is certain that a fine appearance, martial ardour, and 
 remarkable eloquence were conspicuous among the innate 
 advantages which nature had conferred on him, as means 
 whereby to push his fortunes in troublous times. 
 
 Two advantages, however, the gods had withheld from 
 Scroggs at his birth illustrious parentage and a sweet- 
 sounding name. It may be at once conceded that there 
 is no name imaginable more unlovely in its sound than 
 that of Scroggs. If the name was originally derived 
 from the provincial word " scrog," signifying something 
 shrivelled or stunted, and had been in the first instance 
 applied to the Scroggs family owing to their poverty of 
 stature, the name had lost its significance by the time it 
 came down to the Chief Justice. His fine physique was a 
 notable feature of his personal appearance. In considering 
 the parentage of Scroggs his biographer is confronted at 
 the outset with Sir William Dugdale's assertion that he 
 was a Smithfield butcher's son ; that his father had only 
 one eye ; that his mother was large, fat, and red-nosed ; 
 and that Scroggs himself, seemingly as a consequence of 
 this unpropitious origin, was a very ill-humoured man, who 
 never paid his tithes. Anthony Wood declares that, on his 
 knighthood, Scroggs had refused to pay the customary fees 
 to the College of Arms, of which Dugdale was a prominent 
 member; and therefore Dugdale's statement is to be received 
 with caution. But Wood, who seems to have been well 
 
 230
 
 CHIEF JUSTICE SCROGGS 
 
 acquainted with Scroggs, offers no other account. If Dug- 
 dale's version is a little highly coloured for the reason Wood 
 suggests and a herald would be naturally sensitive to 
 such an omission as Scroggs is said to have been guilty of 
 it is at any rate more than probable that Scroggs 1 immediate 
 origin was very humble. When, in 1637, he entered Oriel 
 College, Oxford, he was described as " of Deddington, 
 plebs ; " this Deddington was a market town of Oxford- 
 shire, pleasantly nicknamed " drunken Deddington," for 
 the excellence of the malt liquor brewed there. In after 
 life, when he had risen to eminence, Scroggs would seem to 
 have been at some pains to establish his relationship to a 
 family of Scroggs that in the sixteenth century had, by 
 a marriage with an heiress, come into possession of a con- 
 siderable estate at Albury in Hertfordshire ; and the 
 family would seem to have been ready to acknowledge 
 the connection, though there was some doubt as to the 
 precise link uniting them. 
 
 Whatever the trade or business of Scroggs's father, it had 
 been at any rate a successful one, for it enabled him to send 
 his son to Oxford, with a view to his entering the Church. 
 In the May of 1637, Scroggs, then sixteen years of age, 
 matriculated at Oriel College, which he afterwards quitted 
 for Pembroke. In January, 1640, he took his Bachelor's 
 degree, and, abandoning a clerical for a legal career, was 
 admitted a student of Gray's Inn in the following year. 
 His father had in the meantime left Deddington and gone 
 to live in Essex, for, in the register of Gray's Inn, Scroggs 
 is described as a gentleman of Stifford in that county. 
 Essex was henceforth to be the home of Scroggs. A few 
 miles north of Stifford lies South Weald, where he sub- 
 sequently purchased Weald Hall, and it is in South Weald 
 church that he lies buried. In June, 1643, he took his 
 degree as Master of Arts. The Civil War had broken out, 
 and Oxford was now the headquarters of the Royal cause. 
 For ten years, until his call to the Bar in 1653, Scroggs's 
 
 231
 
 THE EARLY LIFE OF 
 
 studies must have been considerably interrupted by that 
 element of Mars that was in him, and prompted him to 
 take up arms on behalf of his sovereign. Whether he 
 formed part of the contingents that the University supplied 
 to the royal army during the first Civil War it is impos- 
 sible to determine. But when the second Civil War broke 
 out in 1648, it is certain that Scroggs fought and suffered 
 along with some of the most gallant of the Cavalier soldiers. 
 Wood says that he was captain of a company of foot in 
 that honourable, though unfortunate, expedition of Kent, 
 Essex, and Colchester ; and the Latin panegyrist, already 
 quoted, describes him as fighting " Colcestrensi agro." 
 He most probably joined the expedition when Lord Norwich 
 and his defeated army abandoned Kent and joined the force 
 which that brave and skilful general, Sir Charles Lucas, had 
 raised in his own county of Essex. Scroggs was severely 
 wounded, presumably at the ensuing siege of Colchester, 
 when the Royalist force, shut up in the town, held out for 
 two months against the Parliamentary army under Fairfax. 
 So serious were his wounds that, after the Restoration, he 
 was obliged to plead them as an excuse for not taking part 
 in certain civic ceremonies, in which, as one of the counsel 
 for the City of London, he should have participated. 
 Scroggs's name is not included in the list of those colonels 
 and captains of the Royalist force who were made prisoners 
 when Colchester surrendered to Fairfax at the end of 
 August; but he may have been one of the seventy-two 
 lieutenants, or sixty-nine ensigns, whose names are not set 
 out. In that case he probably suffered a short imprison- 
 ment, or was given, with other gentlemen serving in the 
 army, to Fairfax's officers, who kept them in their custody 
 till their friends were willing to pay a substantial ransom 
 to obtain their liberty. 
 
 Scroggs possessed many qualifications calculated to make 
 him shine as a warrior in the King's army. A handsome 
 presence, boldness and address, undaunted courage, very 
 
 232
 
 CHIEF JUSTICE SCROGGS 
 
 excellent and nimble parts ; these were advantages that, 
 coupled with a good education, and, in all probability, a 
 full purse, must have gone far to make men forget the 
 obscurity of his birth. Nor would the fact that Scroggs 
 was no debtor to the bottle, but rather a passionate devotee, 
 be likely to detract from his charms in the eyes of some of 
 the King's bravest followers. It is to this period of his 
 career that we may fairly ascribe the intimate friendship, 
 ultimately confirmed by inter-marriage, that existed between 
 Scroggs and the Hatton family, a friendship to which we 
 owe a very vivid glimpse of, at any rate, one aspect of the 
 future judge's character. It would be interesting to know 
 for certain whether Scroggs's connection with the family 
 originated in an acquaintance with the first or the second 
 Lord Hatton. When the King made Oxford his capital, 
 the first Lord Hatton was with him as Comptroller of his 
 Household. He would have been then about thirty-eight, 
 Scroggs twenty. Hatton, who had just been made a peer, 
 was at that time a person of great reputation among the 
 King's advisers. This reputation he contrived, before his 
 death in 1670, to dissipate utterly. Exile, which followed 
 on the overthrow of Charles I., demoralised him. He 
 returned to England, at the Restoration, a selfish old 
 voluptuary. While his family starved and pinched at 
 Kirby on such meagre allowances as he was pleased to send 
 them, the old lord lived in Scotland Yard, and amused 
 himself with low company. But he did not entirely neglect 
 to exercise his brilliant and once promising intellect. 
 Whilst his wife was living on plum-cake and pie, supplied 
 by the pity of her neighbours, and his debts were unpaid, 
 the religious world was edified by an edition of the Psalms, 
 each prefaced with a suitable and original prayer composed 
 by the Lord Hatton. At his death his son Christopher 
 succeeded him in the title. He was a good son. He did 
 his best to repair the family estate from his father's 
 ravages and provide comfortable incomes for his mother
 
 THE EARLY LIFE OF 
 
 his brother Charles, and his sisters. He spent a great 
 part of his time in Guernsey ; his father, at the Restora- 
 tion, had been made governor of the island, and the 
 office was continued to the son. The letters of Scroggs 
 contained in the Hatton correspondence are all addressed 
 to this, the second Lord Hatton, whom we find Serjeant 
 Scroggs assisting to evade, in rather a shady way, legal 
 complications that had no doubt come to him from his 
 father, and with whom the Serjeant had a common bond 
 in a mutual love of good wine. But whether Scroggs and 
 the Hatton family first became intimate through the 
 selfish old lord, who liked low company, or the pious and 
 truly noble son, as Roger North describes the second Lord 
 Hatton, there is no evidence to determine. The first 
 Lord Hatton, though a man well on in years at the 
 Restoration, may have enjoyed the society of such high 
 court rakes as Ker and Guy, Lord Vaughan and Sir 
 Charles Sedley, of whom, North tells us, Scroggs was a 
 boon companion. But, even supposing such to have been 
 the beginning of Scroggs's acquaintance with the Hattons, 
 the worthy son certainly did not drop his father's friend 
 when he succeeded to the title. He and Scroggs cor- 
 responded on most friendly terms ; he took a lively interest 
 in the Serjeant's prospects of promotion to the Bench, and 
 his brother Charles, the " incomparable " of Roger North's 
 Lives, married a widowed daughter of Scroggs. If Scroggs 
 was a voluptuary and a hard drinker, a man of a head- 
 strong and unstable temperament, he could evidently make 
 himself acceptable to men of decent life. If to posterity 
 the name of Scroggs calls up nothing but the image of a 
 " base and bloody-minded villain," he was not so considered 
 by certain respectable contemporaries. Gravely as Scroggs 
 must in the sequel be condemned, that condemnation, to 
 be truthful and effective, must be shorn of the tawdry 
 melodrama with which Whig bias has loaded this period 
 of our history. 
 
 234
 
 CHIEF JUSTICE SCROGGS 
 
 To his exploits as a Cavalier officer must in all pro- 
 bability be ascribed Scroggs's marriage, which took place 
 about 1650 or 1651, with a lady of the old Berkshire 
 family of Fettyplace. Her name was Anne, and she was 
 a daughter of Edmund Fettyplace, of Denchworth, in 
 Berkshire. She was in all likelihood a near relation to 
 Charles Fettyplace, of Childrey, in the same county, who 
 was made a baronet at the Restoration as a reward for 
 services rendered and wounds suffered on the King's side 
 in the Civil War. As far as we know, the marriage was 
 a happy one. 1 From the occasional glimpses of the family 
 we get in Charles Hatton's letters, Scroggs seems to have 
 been on good terms with his female relations, though he 
 had no very high opinion of woman's intelligence. Even 
 his love of wine was shared, though in a more moderate 
 degree, by the ladies of his household. Mrs. Scroggs bore 
 her husband a son and three daughters. Lord Campbell 
 describes Scroggs in his Lives of the Chief Justices as 
 " a solitary, selh'sh bachelor." 
 
 Scroggs was called to the Bar in the June of 1653. 
 Twenty-three years later he was raised to the Bench. His 
 career as an advocate is as flat and uninteresting as his 
 career as a judge is fraught with incident and excitement. 
 During the Commonwealth his name appears once in the 
 Reports, which shows that he did not, like some of the 
 more ardent Royalist lawyers, such as Bridgeman, Morton, 
 or Keeling, refuse to plead before Crom well's judges. 
 According to Wood, the young barrister applied himself 
 with zeal to the study of municipal law, and no doubt, in 
 the comparative quiet of Cromwell's regime, he had few 
 temptations to wean him from the paths of study. It was 
 probably during these years of early application that 
 Scroggs compiled those materials for a work on the 
 practice of Courts-Leet and Courts-Baron, which were 
 
 1 According to Roger North the future Lady Scroggs was " a very 
 matronly, good woman." 
 
 235
 
 THE EARLY LIFE OF 
 
 published after his death. But he had little in his 
 temperament of those qualities which go to the making 
 of a great case lawyer. He would never have been a 
 serious rival to such learned lovers of the law as old 
 Serjeant Maynard, who found his lightest relaxation in 
 reading the Reports ; or of Vaughan who, when he was 
 Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, exclaimed openly on 
 the Bench at the ignorance of the puisnes sitting by his 
 side ; or of Francis North and William Jones, who were 
 laying the foundations of a success that after the Restora- 
 tion made the one Solicitor-General at thirty-four and a 
 Chief Justice at thirty-eight, the other the great legal 
 bulwark of the country party. Nor did Scroggs follow 
 the example of his contemporary, Francis Pemberton, 
 who, after spending his early years at the Bar in a riotous 
 debauchery that landed him in gaol, at the Restoration 
 put behind him resolutely his ignoble past, and developed 
 into a profound and much-respected lawyer. If Scroggs 
 studied zealously before the Restoration, the coming of 
 the King and his disorderly followers must have consider- 
 ably curtailed those hours that Scroggs had hitherto 
 devoted to the Reports and records of the Courts-Leet 
 and Baron. Had it not been for his energy, his eloquence, 
 his undoubted quickness and readiness of mind, and his 
 bold and pushing address, hard living must have rapidly 
 defeated such efforts as Mr. Scroggs had hitherto made to 
 become a competent lawyer. 
 
 It would, however, be unjust to imagine that the care- 
 lessness of Scroggs's private life after the Restoration 
 prevented him from achieving legitimate distinction in 
 his profession. When he was made a Serjeant in 1669 
 and a Judge in 1676, he was receiving honours to which 
 his position as an advocate fully entitled him. Not only 
 was his eloquence such as to make him a worthy rival of 
 the silver-tongued Finch, but he is found associated with 
 many of the leading lawyers of his day in such famous 
 
 236
 
 CHIEF JUSTICE SCROGGS 
 
 causes as that of Skinner v. The East India Company 
 (1666), and the equally important case of Barnardiston 
 v. Soame (1674), in which he appeared for the defendant 
 with Sir Francis North, then Attorney-General. He was 
 leading counsel for Sir William Penn, the Vice-Admiral, 
 and father of the famous Quaker, who was impeached by 
 the House of Commons in 1668. With William Jones 
 and Francis Winnington, both eminent lawyers, he drew 
 up Sir William's answer to the Commons' Articles, an 
 answer that was satisfactory enough to lead to the 
 abandonment of the prosecution. In 1667 we find 
 Samuel Pepys listening in the House of Lords to the 
 trial of the Duke of Buckingham's claim to the barony 
 of De Ros. The counsel for the Earl of Rutland who 
 opposed the duke's claim, William Montagu, the Queen's 
 Attorney-General, and Sir Peter Ball, are, says Pepys, 
 "good men," but Heneage Finch, the Solicitor-General, 
 and Sir William Scroggs, who appeared for the duke, the 
 diarist declares to be "excellent men." Unfortunately, 
 we have no surviving specimen of Scroggs's forensic oratory, 
 and it is only by the bare mention of his name as appearing 
 in these notable cases that we can arrive at the conclusion 
 that Scroggs's practice at the Bar was not confined, as a 
 biographer avers, to " causes likely to be won by a loud 
 voice and an unscrupulous appeal to the prejudices of the 
 jury." Whatever the irregularities of his private life, 
 Scroggs must have been well able to devote, when 
 necessary, no small amount of attention to his business 
 as a lawyer, and to concentrate his mind on legal questions 
 of the highest order. 
 
 But Scroggs's undoubted attainments as an advocate and 
 his strong Cavalier principles, would have done little for his 
 legal advancement so long as Lord Clarendon continued 
 Chancellor. Whatever his faults and weaknesses, Clarendon, 
 in point of scruple and integrity, stands in a very different 
 category from the reckless and unscrupulous political 
 
 237
 
 THE EARLY LIFE OF 
 
 leaders of the later part of the reign, to whom the 
 personal character of their instruments or associates was 
 utterly indifferent, provided they were serviceable. In his 
 judicial appointments Clarendon certainly filled the Bench 
 with men who were strict partisans, sharing to the full his 
 own loyal principles, men like Bridgeman, who had refused 
 to plead in the Protector's courts ; or Malet and Kelyng, who 
 had suffered imprisonment during the Commonwealth ; or 
 the hanging judge of his day, Sir William Morton, who at 
 the outbreak of the Civil War had cast off his robe and 
 fought valiantly in the field for the royal cause. But he 
 never selected as judges men, even of his own party, who 
 were likely in their private lives to reflect discredit on the 
 administration of the law ; and in the cases of Sir Matthew 
 Hale, Edward Atkyns, and Thomas Tyrrell, he retained as 
 judges sound lawyers who had sat in the Protector's courts. 
 Clarendon's judges were most of them sturdy and severe 
 loyalists ; but one and all men whose respectability was, as 
 far as we can tell, unquestioned. They had all belonged to 
 that party among the late King's followers of which Claren- 
 don was himself the most striking example, the party of 
 sober, decent Royalists, who resented the excesses of the 
 Rupert and Goring Cavalier. Scroggs no doubt belonged 
 to the latter, as did a number of brilliant men. Restrained 
 during the ministry of Clarendon, at his fall these free 
 livers found place and power open to them. A series 
 of unscrupulous statesmen, unexampled in our history 
 Buckingham, Danby, Shaftesbury, and Sunderland 
 succeeded each other almost without intermission in the 
 conduct of public affairs. To these men the private 
 character of a judge was of small account, provided his 
 principles, if he had any, were theirs. Herein lies the 
 difference between the judicial appointments of the earlier 
 and later halves of the reign. Foster, Hyde, and Kelyng, 
 whom Clarendon successively appointed Chief Justices of 
 the King's Bench, were all staunch upholders of the royal 
 
 238
 
 CHIEF JUSTICE SCROGGS 
 
 supremacy, and haters of sectaries and republicans. When 
 such men appeared before them they treated them with a 
 harshness and at times a brutality that was only a degree 
 less shocking to modern ideas than that displayed by 
 Scroggs to Papists, or Jeffreys to Whigs and Dissenters. 
 Clarendon's Chief Justices were dull and prejudiced lawyers. 
 But they were eminently decorous men, who, like the 
 Chancellor, led decent lives and hated rebellion. Their 
 successors, equally prejudiced against Popery and faction, 
 were, on the other hand, nimble and quick-witted, enjoying 
 life in the excessive fashion of the time, only too well fitted 
 by temperament to fall in with the loose and demoralising 
 habits that were fostered and encouraged at the court of 
 Charles II. as soon as it was freed from the unsympathetic 
 presence of the faithful Clarendon. 
 
 Scroggs had been knighted soon after the Restoration, 
 presumably as a reward for his services in the Civil War. 
 In 1669, after the fall of Clarendon, he was made a Serjeant, 
 and further promoted to be one of the King's Serjeants in 
 the same year. A lucrative practice as a stuff gownsman, 
 and, perhaps, an inheritance from his father, must have 
 been the means that enabled him to purchase, in 1667, 
 Weald Hall and the accompanying manor of South Weald 
 in Essex. The estate belonged to Sir Anthony Browne, a 
 descendant of a learned Roman Catholic Chief Justice in 
 the reign of Queen Mary, whose integrity was so much 
 respected that, in spite of his adherence to his religion, 
 he continued to sit as a judge under Elizabeth. This 
 learned judge had purchased Weald Hall and bequeathed 
 it to his descendants. But the financial embarrassments 
 of the present owner obliged him to sell his property, and 
 he found a ready purchaser in Sir William Scroggs, who 
 was desirous of making his home in Essex. In buying the 
 property Sir William was obliged to take over certain 
 liabilities of Sir Anthony, which were to cause him some 
 trouble in the future. Browne, who was perhaps one of 
 
 239
 
 THE EARLY LIFE OF 
 
 those high court rakes whom Roger North declares to have 
 been the constant associates of Scroggs, had made himself 
 liable for a debt as a security for the Earl of Carbery. This 
 Lord Carbery, himself a man of excellent parts, but doubt- 
 ful integrity, was the father of Lord Vaughan, one of the 
 most notorious and flagrant rakes of the day, an ill- 
 favoured man, "lewd even beyond the lewdness of Sir 
 Charles Sedley." The exact nature of or parties to these 
 transactions cannot be determined at this distance of time. 
 It is sufficient to say that Scroggs, as a result of the 
 negotiation, found himself saddled with an importunate 
 lady litigant of the name of Smithsby, who, thirteen years 
 later, when Sir William Scroggs was one of the most un- 
 popular men in England, took advantage of the occasion to 
 hale the depressed Chief Justice before the House of Lords. 
 
 But it is from the correspondence of the second Lord 
 Hatton that we obtain our most intimate acquaintance 
 with the private concerns of Serjeant Scroggs. After the 
 death of the old Lord Hatton, Scroggs seems to have 
 maintained very friendly relations with his sons. He 
 writes to the second Lord Hatton in a strain of easy 
 familiarity, whilst his brother, the incomparable Charles, 
 was a constant visitor at Weald Hall, from which he 
 eventually led to the altar a widowed daughter of his host. 
 Serjeant Scroggs seems to have rendered to Lord Hatton 
 those services that might be expected from a friend in the 
 legal profession. He drew up his will for him, advised 
 him in the management of his property, and in certain 
 awkward law suits went so far as to recommend to him 
 illegal courses when all legal manoeuvres had failed. It 
 is curious to find one of the King's Serjeants advising his 
 friend to escape a legal process by the barefaced corruption 
 of an Under-Sheriff. 
 
 The first letter of Scroggs to Hatton, preserved in the 
 latter's correspondence, is dated February, 1671, and is 
 written from the Serjeant's chambers in Gray's Inn. Both 
 
 240
 
 CHIEF JUSTICE SCROGGS 
 
 Hatton and Scroggs were apparently involved in some 
 troublesome suit which the Serjeant had undertaken to 
 square. After warning Hatton against an outlawry 
 impending at the suit of one " Halfside or Halfefair or 
 some such man," Scroggs goes on : "I moved against my 
 judgment in hope to prevail, but, however, moved without 
 effect. The consequence is not much to your inconvenience, 
 for what could not be done by justice, I advised your 
 attorney to prevent honestly by corrupting the Under- 
 Sheriff not to return the writ." There is a pleasant 
 humour in Scroggs's idea of honestly defeating the due 
 course of law by a bribe to its officer. 
 
 The dubious service that the Serjeant describes himself 
 in this letter as having rendered to Hatton, he gives as an 
 excuse for again reminding his friend of a promise as yet 
 unfulfilled. This promise relates to the one thing in all 
 the world that would seem to have been of paramount 
 importance to Sir William wine ! and that wine, claret ! 
 Good sound claret, hogsheads of it ! if only Scroggs is 
 well supplied with these, he can stand anything ; all the 
 ills of life, even tiresome female relatives who intrude on 
 his privacy ; all these are mitigated and assuaged if only 
 his cellar is well stocked with hogsheads of such claret as 
 Lord Hatton can send him, if he will, from Guernsey. In 
 a hand that seems at times to bear traces of the rapid 
 exhaustion of his cellars, Scroggs writes to Hatton, and 
 with incoherent jocularity conjures him to be faithful to 
 his charge of replenishing his exhausted bins. In the 
 October of 1671 the Serjeant writes that, bad correspondent 
 as he is, the dwindled hogshead forces him to write and 
 ask for more. He adds that he and a friend and his ladies 
 are at the very moment drinking his lordship's health ; and 
 in conclusion takes the opportunity to congratulate Hatton 
 on the fact that the ladies are not sending him any letters 
 with his, for they would only try to write well, " and then 
 they write sillily, knowing not what they write." 
 
 241 R
 
 THE EARLY LIFE OF 
 
 The next year we have another earnest appeal for wine 
 from the Serjeant. After politely hinting that he finds 
 Hatton's sisters, who are staying at Weald Hall, rather 
 dull " their smoothness of kindness is like a dead calm, 
 not a wrinkle to be seen, but carrying one no whither" 
 and expressing a wish that they would take more after 
 their brother, he urges a fresh supply of claret : " And 
 now you talk of wine, well remembered ! the last hogshead's 
 abroach, and without a sudden supply there is no living for 
 me at Weald Hall. The women drink in fear already, and 
 you know all their passions are violent. "Tis not a small 
 matter will satisfy any one's desire, and here are a great 
 many to be satisfied ... let as much of it be claret, and 
 as strong as you please, and more than ever you imagined."" 
 In September, 1673, he upbraids Hatton for having failed 
 to send a promised supply : " I know now," he writes, 
 " the pirates and the dangers of seas must be your 
 excuse ; but why wine could not as safely come as cider I 
 understand not, unless there be articles for apples but not 
 for grapes, or that the vigour of one would make it safe, but 
 that cowardice of wine would turn it into vinegar. My 
 lord, pray know that I am (though not the best performer) 
 yet the greatest exacter of promises, that will never be 
 answered by reason, but the thing itself; and think that 
 reasonable to be made into a law that whatsoever is promised 
 ought to be performed, whether it can or no." He adds a 
 postscript in which he makes feeling allusion to his pecuniary 
 difficulties that were in all probability increasing to an 
 alarming extent. " If hogsheads were as cheap as warrants," 
 he writes, " I had received them." In the last letter of 
 Scroggs contained in the collection, written presumably in 
 the same year, he gives Hatton a moving account of a 
 present of wine sent to Charles Hatton, which had turned 
 sour in the course of the journey : " We broke open the 
 coffin at his house, wherein we found only the furniture of 
 a coffin, corruption." Scroggs goes so far in this letter as 
 
 242
 
 CHIEF JUSTICE SCROGGS 
 
 to apologise for the considerable space devoted in his letters 
 to claret. " You must not take it ill," he writes, " if I 
 write of nothing but wine, for there is nothing I want 
 more, nor of which I can better write, or more willingly 
 with the difference only that wine wrote for has not half 
 that elegancy as wine thanked for."" After inviting Hatton 
 to spend Christmas at Weald Hall, he concludes with a 
 rebuke of women in general, and Hatton^s sisters in par 
 ticular, which seems to have been partially provoked by 
 their wish to join him in his potations : " Having vented 
 my passion of love to wine, my next good subject is railing 
 against women. They haunt my chamber oftener than a 
 pauper, and with much greater trouble, for they (the 
 paupers) only do not give, but these plunder what others 
 give. I want your company to redress that. Prithee, 
 my dear Lord, make haste. ... I am all love and 
 all yours." 
 
 In an age of hard drinking, when few members of the 
 House of Commons returned to their seats after the dinner 
 hour in a state of perfect sobriety, it would be unwise to 
 attach too much significance to the half-jocular outpourings 
 of one friend to another on the subject of claret ; nor does 
 Serjeant Scroggs's inordinate love of the bottle seem to have 
 made any difference to his intimacy with Lord Hatton, a 
 very respectable person, as far as we know, nor with the 
 incomparable Charles. At the same time, wine and 
 warrants must be held answerable for the strictures passed 
 on the private life and character of Scroggs by writers so 
 divergent in their prejudices as North and Burnet. " His 
 debaucheries were egregious, and his life loose," writes 
 North. " A man more valued," writes Bishop Burnet, 
 " for a good readiness in speaking well than either for 
 learning in his .profession, or for any moral virtue. His 
 life had been indecently scandalous, and his fortunes 
 were very low." Though Burnefs description is plainly 
 over-coloured Scroggs's learning was by no means 
 
 243
 
 THE EARLY LIFE OF 
 
 inconsiderable, nor were his fortunes very low his reputa- 
 tion was undoubtedly a poor one among men who, like 
 North and Burnet, did not regard with indulgence the lax 
 morality of their day. And in 1675 a public scandal was 
 to proclaim Serjeant Scroggs to the world as one whose 
 private life was careless and disorderly in a fashion 
 singularly ill-befitting a man of middle age, raised to 
 the honourable dignity of the coif. 
 
 It was in the spring of 1675 that the Courts at West- 
 minster were edified by the spectacle of a Serjeant-at-Law 
 being arrested for debt in the very Hall itself. Serjeant 
 Scroggs had been at length overtaken by one of those 
 warrants, the multitude of which he had so feelingly 
 deplored to Lord Hatton. The arrest had been made at 
 the suit of one Deakins, and joined with Scroggs as 
 defendant was a Mr. Gilby, probably his son-in-law, 
 Charles Gilby, a barrister, who had married the Serjeant's 
 daughter Elizabeth. Scroggs was much outraged by 
 Deakins' fearless proceeding, for he brought an action 
 against him in the King's Bench for illegal arrest, on the 
 ground that, as a Serjeant-at-Law, Deakins should have 
 sued him in the Court of Common Pleas, to which court the 
 Serjeants were supposed to be attached. The point raised 
 by Scroggs aroused considerable interest. When the case 
 first came before the judges of the King's Bench, it was 
 adjourned in order that Sir Matthew Hale, then Lord 
 Chief Justice, might be present at the argument of so 
 important a question of privilege. His presence was not 
 likely to advance the interests of Serjeant Scroggs. The 
 worthy and venerable judge must have viewed with con- 
 siderable disgust Brother Scroggs's escapade, and been little 
 inclined to stretch a point in favour of his contention. 
 When the hearing came on, the Chief Justice disposed very 
 summarily of the Serjeant's plea, in spite of the learned 
 arguments of Mr. Holt, the future Chief Justice under 
 William III., who on this occasion appeared as counsel for 
 
 244
 
 CHIEF JUSTICE SCROGGS 
 
 Scroggs. Though, he said, Serjeants had a monopoly 
 of practice in the Common Pleas, yet they often practised 
 in his own Court of King's Bench ; and consequently 
 if he assigned one of them as counsel to plead before 
 him, and the serjeant refused, he should not hesitate, 
 he declared, to commit him to prison. Arguing from 
 this standpoint, Hale made short work of the Serjeant's 
 case. 
 
 Legal advancement was uncertain and full of surprises 
 in the reign of Charles II. Hale retired from the Bench 
 in the year following this decision ; he survived just long 
 enough to see the disorderly Serjeant sitting as a Judge in 
 the Court of Common Pleas, and, less than two years from 
 his death, Sir William Scroggs was one of his successors as 
 Lord Chief Justice of England. 
 
 Scroggs's embarrassed finances made it high time that 
 his influential friends should do something to retrieve his 
 fortunes. The opportunity came with the advent to power 
 of the Lord Treasurer, the Earl of Danby. The King, 
 furnished with supplies from France, was able to prorogue 
 Parliament from the November of 1675 to the February 
 of 1677. During these fifteen months Danby had to 
 dispose of four judicial vacancies. As a politician Danby 
 was a firm believer in a friendly Bench. To a partisan of 
 personal as opposed to popular government, the existing 
 judges left a good deal to be desired. Some of them, 
 Hale, Atkyns, Ellis, and Wyndham, might be reckoned 
 frankly unsympathetic to the desire of Charles and Danby 
 to dispense as far as possible with parliamentary control. 
 Others, like Twisden, Wilde, and Thurland, were too 
 infirm in body or weak in character to be of much 
 service to the minister. He wanted fast friends to 
 King and Church, extreme loyalists, firm Protestants, 
 ardent Cavaliers, to administer the King's justice. Faction 
 was an ever-present danger, and the judges had in a recent 
 instance shown themselves slack to deal with it. In the 
 
 245
 
 THE EARLY LIFE OF 
 
 August of 1675 there had been a riot among the London 
 weavers. It had arisen from the introduction into England 
 of " looms with engines." The weaver who possessed these 
 looms could do in one day the work of ten men working 
 looms " without engines." This so enraged those weavers 
 who were unable to acquire the new looms, that they 
 attacked the houses of their more fortunate brethren and 
 broke up their machinery. Some hundred families in and 
 about London were ruined, and a few lives lost, partly 
 owing to the slackness of the Lord Mayor in suppressing 
 the riots. The Government having reproved the Lord 
 Mayor before the Privy Council, issued a commission of 
 Oyer and Terminer for the trial of the rioters ; but when 
 the case came on in September, to the disgust of the 
 Crown most of the judges failed to appear, and the court 
 was adjourned for a fortnight. Judges such as these were 
 not for Danby. In the April of 1676 he had an oppor- 
 tunity of doing something to strengthen his hold on the 
 Bench. Age and infirmity compelled the worthy Hale to 
 retire from the Chief Justiceship of the King's Bench, and 
 about the same time death removed the Chief Baron of 
 the Exchequer, Sir Edward Tumour, a man of considerably 
 less worth than his learned brother. To Hale's place 
 succeeded Sir Richard Rainsford, a puisne judge of the 
 King's Bench ; a respectable man in every way, and of 
 loyal principles ; and the vacancy occasioned by his pro- 
 motion fell to Sir Thomas Jones, a strong judge, who was 
 sturdily faithful to the Crown until James II. over-strained 
 his loyalty by asking him to subscribe to his views on the 
 dispensing power. William Montagu, the Queen's Attorney- 
 General, succeeded Tumour as Lord Chief Baron, and his 
 loyalty, as that of Jones, only quailed before the extrava- 
 gant demands of King James II. Scroggs had so far failed 
 to profit by these judicial changes, but as early as May 
 Charles Hatton writes to his brother to tell him that 
 Danby has shown himself extraordinarily kind to the 
 
 246
 
 CHIEF JUSTICE SCROGGS 
 
 Serjeant, and had promised in a very few days to provide 
 for him. This was to be done by getting rid of Sir 
 William Ellis, a Judge of the Common Pleas : he and 
 his brother Atkyns in the same court were fearless 
 opponents of prerogative and upholders of popular 
 rights. Danby pressed the King to dispense with their 
 services. Charles was reluctant, and it was only after 
 considerable pressure that he consented to the removal 
 of Ellis. This was effected in June, but it was not till 
 October that Serjeant Scroggs received the vacant place. 
 The Ring may well have felt some doubt about his fitness 
 to sit as judge in a court on which he had brought dis- 
 credit by his escapades with bailiffs. But Danby was not 
 so particular. Scroggs and Jeffreys were both indebted to 
 the Treasurer for advancement, which otherwise their some- 
 what erratic courses might have impeded. The persuasion 
 of the Lord Treasurer and other friends of Scroggs at 
 court, prevailed over the King's hesitation. But the 
 minister did not escape popular censure for his judicial 
 appointments. Shortly after Scroggs had taken his seat 
 on the Bench, a libel was posted on the gates of the 
 palaces of Westminster and Whitehall, stating that 
 two or three judgeships would shortly be put up for sale, 
 and that any young lawyer desirous of filling one should 
 apply to the Lord Treasurer, who would fix a day for 
 receiving offers. 
 
 Whatever may have been the misgivings in the mind of 
 the King over Scroggs's appointment, they were dissipated, 
 and the character of the judge retrieved in the royal eye 
 by the speech he delivered on the day he was sworn in by 
 the Lord Chancellor in the Court of Common Pleas. This 
 oration made little short of a sensation in court circles. 
 Never had a judge proclaimed with such eloquence and 
 vigour his conception of the duties of the King's justices. 
 Lord Northampton, who heard it, hurried off' to the King 
 and told him that it taught the people more loyalty than 
 
 247
 
 any sermon that had been printed. At his request the 
 King ordered it to be published in every market town in 
 England, and when in November Mr. Edmund Verney 
 wanted to buy a copy at the bookseller's, he found they 
 were all sold out. 
 
 It was without doubt a flaring speech. The judge 
 declared that he thought it right and "like English 
 honesty and plainness " to " something unveil himself " 
 as to what would be his attitude as a judge towards any 
 matters of government that might come before him. He 
 would no more wrong the people's liberties, he said, than 
 he would sacrifice up his own son ; but then, he added, he 
 would no more derogate from the King's prerogative than 
 he would betray his father. And then he launched out 
 into a graphic description of the boldness of faction and 
 the fearful timidity of those who should support King and 
 Government, "when men are forward and venturous enough 
 in what thwarts the Government, but in supporting it were 
 cautious, nice, and humorous, and so filled with prudentials 
 till they are as wise as fear can make them." 
 
 In the light of Scroggs's subsequent career, of the intem- 
 perate zeal, the improper fervour with which he threw 
 himself into the prosecution of Oates's victims, his con- 
 ception of the proper attitude of a judge is curious. " Be 
 quick to hear and slow to speak . . . the most towering 
 understanding that is attended with an impetuous haste 
 either out of glory of speaking or a too great fulness of 
 oneself," is nothing to the patient attention of a man 
 of modest parts ; he would be no seeker of " the applause 
 of the multitude, that contingent judge of good and bad 
 that rather attends the vain than the virtuous." These 
 were precepts that a man of Scroggs's excitable tempera- 
 ment found it quite impossible to recollect when he found 
 himself plunged into the vortex of a great national 
 convulsion. 
 
 For two years Scroggs led a quiet and uneventful 
 
 248
 
 CHIEF JUSTICE SCROGGS 
 
 existence on the easy cushion of the Common Pleas, " a 
 place very agreeable,"" so he declared, " to his unactive 
 spirit." In the meantime Danby had been advancing in 
 power and influence until, at the beginning of 1678, he 
 may be said to have reached the zenith of his ministerial 
 career. Scroggs, as Jeffreys also, had no doubt been serving 
 Danby in a private capacity, for we find him, probably 
 in 1678, writing to the Treasurer on the subject of a 
 pamphlet written by some gentleman against " the little 
 lord," presumably Lord Shaftesbury, which previous to its 
 publication Danby had submitted to the judge for his 
 criticism. At the Whitsuntide of 1678 Scroggs was 
 asked to submit to the King a proposed draft of his 
 speech at the ensuing opening of Parliament. Danby and 
 Sir William Temple had been asked to submit similiar 
 drafts, Scroggs's speech, though much admired, was 
 rejected finally in favour of Temple's, as containing 
 some expressions against popery distasteful to "one 
 person," doubtless the Duke of York. This ill-timed 
 reflection on the Romish religion goes some way to prove 
 the sincerity of the mistaken violence with which Scroggs 
 assailed the Papists and their religion in the earlier of the 
 Plot trials. 
 
 If Scroggs was mortified by the rejection of his speech, 
 he was consoled most effectually by receiving from Danby 
 a warning that he was in danger of judicial promotion. 
 The Court of King's Bench, according to the Treasurer, 
 stood in sore need of regeneration. And he was right. 
 With the exception of Jones, the recently appointed 
 judge, the judges of the King's Bench were feeble in the 
 extreme. Chief Justice Rainsford was now seventy-three 
 years of age, and " commonly slept on the bench." Mr. 
 Justice Twisden, aged seventy-six, had ceased to attend 
 the court, and was only awaiting a proper adjustment of 
 his pension to retire ; while his brother Wilde, who was 
 well nigh seventy, had been in failing health for a year. 
 
 249
 
 THE EARLY LIFE OF 
 
 The Treasurer had undoubtedly good and just cause for 
 removing Rainsford from the Chief Justiceship in the 
 Trinity term of 1678 ; but, with the exception of the 
 Hatton family, and perhaps a few other faithful friends, 
 the public must have received with some little astonish- 
 ment the news of the appointment on May 31st, of 
 Mr. Justice Scroggs of the Common Pleas as his successor. 
 This was " rousing " the energy of the King's Bench with 
 a vengeance. Danby was now master of the court ; what- 
 ever the attempts of faction, in the King's Bench, Charles 
 and Danby could count on an ardent and energetic Chief 
 Justice, determined fanatically to uphold the daring claims 
 of prerogative. 
 
 From Scroggs's speech to the Lord Chancellor on taking 
 his seat as head of the court, it would seem that the Bar 
 had, under the somnolent regime of Rainsford, got some- 
 what out of hand. Though, said the new Chief Justice, 
 his lion's courage in supporting the throne would not be 
 exerted to worry the lambs meaning thereby the young 
 trembling gentlemen of the Bar, who in their anxiety " to 
 eye the judge's face, forget their business," yet he would 
 suffer none of those indecent or clamorous practices on the 
 part of hardier practitioners, which might please a client, 
 but did him no good. The very heart and life of the 
 legal profession, he continued, was loyalty; the favour 
 extended to the Robe shall be measured by their loyalty ; 
 " he shall be first heard who moves best for the King " ; 
 the court shall prove prerogative the best friend of liberty. 
 And he concludes : "He that with honesty and industry 
 does his best has discharged his conscience, if not 
 his duty; and although he may not merit a mighty 
 fame, yet will have satisfaction enough within, when he 
 considers that it is not necessary to be a great man, but 
 a good one." 
 
 How far this emotional rhetorician sustained as Chief 
 Justice this modest ideal of the necessities of his new 
 
 250
 
 CHIEF JUSTICE SCROGGS 
 
 situation, is written in the history of the Popish Plot. 
 How far temperament, character, the strange and unex- 
 ampled circumstances of the time, the faulty state of legal 
 procedure, were responsible for the unfortunate figure he 
 cu in his extravagant conduct of many of the Plot trials, 
 cannot be discussed in this brief sketch. 1 But Roger 
 North, in all probability, has hit off Scroggs most happily 
 in calling him a " ranter," a man to whom popular excite- 
 ment at once communicates itself, so that he forgets the 
 restraints of the judicial seat, and converts his court into 
 a public meeting ; a man wanting in the balance and com- 
 mon sense of the true judicial mind. It is not so much 
 what Scroggs did in the Plot trials that has exposed him 
 to just censure few judges of his day would have acted 
 differently it is the ranting, transpontine way in which he 
 conducted himself that has rendered him odious. By 
 looking into his early life we get some clue to that general 
 intemperance, which in more senses than one was his most 
 obvious failing. 
 
 In any case history can hardly subscribe to the terms of 
 an elegy Avritten in 1683, on the death of the fallen Chief 
 Justice, in which Scroggs is described as the " pattern of 
 humility," the "gown's chief boast to after times," 
 " impervious to the golden shower," the whole concluding 
 with the following doggerel epitaph : 
 
 Beneath this marble, how can it be said, 
 Immortal Scroggs, a man so just, is laid ? 
 "Fis but his dust, reader, suppose no more ; 
 The rest's in heaven, 'tis there laid up in store, 
 Till with loud sounds the trumpet wakes the dead, 
 And rising dust is with fresh beauty clad ; 
 Then shall he live above the world's renown, 
 And wear for ever virtue's shining crown. 
 
 1 For the later history of Scroggs, I would refer the reader to 
 Mr. John Pollock's History of the Popish Plot ; and, if 1 may be 
 permitted the reference, to my own Life of Judge Jeffreys. 
 
 251
 
 The principal authorities made use of in this sketch are : 
 
 Cussan's History of Hertfordshire. 
 
 Morant's History of Essex. 
 
 Speech of Sir William Scroggs ... on his admission to the place 
 
 of one of His Majesty's Justices of the Court of Common 
 
 Pleas, 1676. 
 
 Lord Chief Justice Scroggs's Speech to the Lord Chancellor, 1678. 
 Wood's Athenae Oxonienses. 
 
 Hatton Correspondence. Add. MSS. British Museum. 
 Elegy in memory of the Right Worshipful Sir William Scroggs, late 
 
 Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench, departed this life 
 
 October 25th, 1683. 
 Colendissimo Viro, Gulielmo Scroggs, Militi, et De Banco Regis, 
 
 Capital! Justiciario, Prolusio Laudativa, May, 1680. 
 Levins Reports. 
 
 Historical Manuscripts Commission Verney Papers. 
 Matthew Carter, True and Exact Narrative of the Siege of Colchester. 
 
 Printed by UazM, Watson <k Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.
 
 m f\*\ '* '"'* 'I'll I'll' II