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MY FIRST PLAY
AT the north end of Cross-court there
yet stands a portal, of some architectural pretensions, though
reduced to humble use, serving at present for an entrance to a
printing-office. This old doorway, if you are young, reader, you
may not know was the identical pit entrance to Old Drury -- Garrick's
Drury -- all of it that is left. I never pass it without shaking
some forty years from off my shoulders, recurring to the evening
when I passed through it to see my first play. The afternoon had
been wet, and the condition of our going (the elder folks and
myself) was, that the rain should cease. With what a beating heart
did I watch from the window the puddles, from the stillness of
which I was taught to prognosticate the desired cessation! I seem
to remember the last spurt, and the glee with which I ran to announce
it.
We went with orders,
which my godfather F. had sent us. He kept the oil shop (now Davies's)
at the corner of Featherstone- building, in Holborn. F. was a
tall grave person, lofty in speech, and had pretensions above
his rank. He associated in those days with John Palmer, the comedian,
whose gait and bearing he seemed to copy; if John (which is quite
as likely) did not rather borrow somewhat of his manner from my
godfather. He was also known to, and visited by, Sheridan. It
was to his house in Holborn that young Brinsley brought his first
wife on her elopement with him from a boarding-school at Bath
-- the beautiful Maria Linley. My parents were present (over a
quadrille table) when he arrived in the evening with his harmonious
charge. -- From either of these connexions it may be inferred
that my godfather could command an order for the then Drury-lane
theatre at pleasure -- and, indeed, a pretty liberal issue of
those cheap billets, in Brinsley's easy autograph, I have heard
him say was the sole remuneration which he had received for many
years' nightly illumination of the orchestra and various avenues
of that theatre -- and he was content it should be so. The honour
of Sheridan's familiarity -- or supposed familiarity -- was better
to my godfather than money.
F. was the most gentlemanly
of oilmen; grandiloquent, yet courteous. His delivery of the commonest
matters of fact was Ciceronian. He had two Latin words almost
constantly in his mouth (how odd sounds Latin from an oilman's
lips!), which my better knowledge since has enabled me to correct.
In strict pronunciation they should have been sounded vice versa
-- but in those young years they impressed me with more awe than
they would now do, read aright from Seneca or Varro -- in his
own peculiar pronunciation, monosyllabically elaborated, or Anglicized,
into something like verse verse. By an imposing manner, and the
help of these distorted syllables, he climbed (but that was little)
to the highest parochial honours which St. Andrew's has to bestow.
He is dead -- and thus
much I thought due to his memory, both for my first orders (little
wondrous talismans ! -- slight keys, and insignificant to outward
sight, but opening to me more than Arabian paradises!) and moreover,
that by his testamentary beneficence I came into possession of
the only landed property which I could ever call my own -- situate
near the road-way village of pleasant Puckeridge, in Hertfordshire.
When I journeyed down to take possession, and planted foot on
my own ground, the stately habits of the donor descended upon
me, and I strode (shall I confess the vanity?) with larger paces
over my allotment of three quarters of an acre, with its commodious
mansion in the midst, with the feeling of an English freeholder
that all betwixt sky and centre was my own. The estate has passed
into more prudent hands, and nothing but an agrarian can restore
it.
In those days were pit
orders. Beshrew the uncomfortable manager who abolished them !
-- with one of these we went. I remember the waiting at the door
-- not that which is left -- but between that and an inner door
in shelter -- O when shall I be such an expectant again ! -- with
the cry of nonpareils, an indispensable play-house accompaniment
in those days. As near as I can recollect, the fashionable pronunciation
of the theatrical fruiteresses then was, "Chase some oranges,
chase some numparels, chase a bill of the play;" -- chase
pro chuse. But when we got in, and I beheld the green curtain
that veiled a heaven to my imagination, which was soon to be disclosed
-- the breathless anticipations I endured! I had seen something
like it in the plate prefixed to Troilus and Cressida, in Rowe's
Shakspeare -- the tent scene with Diomede -- and a sight of that
plate can always bring back in a measure the feeling of that evening.
-- The boxes at that time, full of well-dressed women of quality,
protected over the pit; and the pilasters reaching down were adorned
with a glistering substance (I know not what) under glass (as
it seemed), resembling -- a homely fancy -- but I judged it to
be sugar-candy -- yet, to my raised imagination, divested of its
homelier qualities, it appeared a glorified candy -- The orchestra
lights at length arose, those "fair Auroras!" Once the
bell sounded. It was to ring out yet once again -- and, incapable
of the anticipation, I reposed my shut eyes in a sort of resignation
upon the maternal lap. It rang the second time. The curtain drew
up -- I was not past six years old -- and the play was Artaxerxes!
I had dabbled a little
in the Universal History -- the ancient part of it -- and here
was the court of Persia. It was being admitted to a sight of the
past I took no proper interest in the action going on, for I understood
not its import -- but I heard the word Darius, and I was in the
midst of Daniel. All feeling was absorbed in vision. Gorgeous
vests, gardens, palaces, princesses, passed before me. I knew
not players. I was in Persepolis for the time; and the burning
idol of their devotion almost converted me into a worshipper.
I was awe-struck, and believed those significations to be something
more than elemental fires. It was all enchantment and a dream.
No such pleasure has since visited me but in dreams. -- Harlequin's
Invasion followed; where, I remember, the transformation of the
magistrates into reverend beldams seemed to me a piece of grave
historic justice, and the tailor carrying his own head to be as
sober a verity as the legend of St. Denys.
The next play to which
I was taken was the Lady of the Manor, of which, with the exception
of some scenery, very faint traces are left in my memory. It was
followed by a pantomime, cal]ed Lun's Ghost -- a satiric touch,
I apprehend, upon Rich, not long since dead -- but to my apprehension
(too sincere for satire), Lun was as remote a piece of antiquity
as Lud -- the father of a line of Harlequins -- transmitting his
dagger of lath (the wooden sceptre) through countless ages. I
saw the primeval Motley come from his silent tomb in a ghastly
vest of white patch-work, like the apparition of a dead rainbow.
So Harlequins (thought I) look when they are dead.
My third play followed
in quick succession. It was the Way of the World. I think I must
have sat at it as grave as a judge; for, I remember, the hysteric
affectations of good Lady Wishfort affected me like some solemn
tragic passion. Robinson Crusoe followed; in which Crusoe, man
Friday, and the parrot, were as good and authentic as in the story.
-- The clownery and pantaloonery of these pantomimes have clean
passed out of my head. I believe, I no more laughed at them, than
at the same age I should have been disposed to laugh at the grotesque
Gothic heads (seeming to me then replete with devout meaning)
that gape, and grin, in stone around the inside of the old Round
Church (my church) of the Templars.
I saw these plays in
the season 1781-2, when I was from six to seven years old. After
the intervention of six or seven other years (for at school all
play-going was inhibited) I again entered the doors of a theatre.
That old Artaxerxes evening had never done ringing in my fancy.
I expected the same feelings to come again with the same occasion.
But we differ from ourselves less at sixty and sixteen, than the
latter does from six. In that interval what had I not lost! At
the first period I knew nothing, understood nothing, discriminated
nothing. I felt all, loved all, wondered all -
Was nourished, I could not tell how
-
/BLOCKQUOTE>
I had left the temple a devotee, and
was returned a rationalist. The same things were there materially;
but the emblem, the reference, was gone -- The green curtain was
no longer a veil, drawn between two worlds, the unfolding of which
was to bring back past ages, to present "a royal ghost,"
-- but a certain quantity of green baize, which was to separate
the audience for a given time from certain of their fellow-men
who were to come forward and pretend those parts. The lights --
the orchestra lights -- came up a clumsy machinery. The first
ring, and the second ring, was now but a trick of the prompter's
bell -- which had been, like the note of the cuckoo, a phantom
of a voice, no hand seen or guessed at which ministered to its
warning. The actors were men and women painted. I thought the
fault was in them; but it was in myself, and the alteration which
those many centuries -- of six short twelve- months -- had wrought
in me. -- Perhaps it was fortunate for me that the play of the
evening was but an indifferent comedy, as it gave me time to crop
some unreasonable expectations, which might have interfered with
the genuine emotions with which I was soon after enabled to enter
upon the first appearance to me of Mrs. Siddons in IsabelIa. Comparison
and retrospection soon yielded to the present attraction of the
scene; and the theatre became to me, upon a new stock, the most
delightful of recreations.
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