As in Greece a man suffered no disparagement by being an actor there was no disposition to do in private what was not forbidden in public. The whole profession was ennobled when an actor so accomplished as Aristodemus was honoured with the office of ambassador.
In Rome a man was dishonoured by being a player. Accordingly noble Roman youths loved to act in private, excusing themselves on the ground that no professional actor polluted their private stage. Roman youths, however, had imperial example and noble justification when a Roman emperor made his first appearance on the public stage, and succeeded, as a matter of course.
Nero and Louis XIV. were the two sublime monarchs who were most addicted to private theatricals; but the Roman outdid the Frenchman. We know that persons of the Senatorial and Equestrian orders, and of both sexes, played the parts, but we do not know how they liked or disliked what they dared not decline. One can fancy, however, the figure and feelings of the Roman knight when he began to practise riding on an elephant that trotted swiftly along a rope. What strong expletives he must have muttered to himself!—any one of which, uttered audibly, would have cost him his head as a fine levied by his imperial manager. As to Nero’s riding, and racing, and wrestling, and charioteering, as an amateur, among professionals who always took care to be beaten by him, these things were nothing compared with his ardour as a private player, and especially as what would now be called an opera singer. After all, Nero was more like an amateur actor who plays in public occasionally than an actor in strictly private theatricals. There is no doubt of his having been fond of music; he was well instructed in the art and a skilful proficient. His first great enjoyment after becoming emperor was in sitting up night after night playing with or listening to Terpnus the harper. Nero practised the harp as if his livelihood depended on it; and he went through a discipline of diet, medicine, exercise, and rest, for the benefit of his voice and its preservation, such as, it is to be hoped, no vocalist of the present day would submit himself to. Nero’s first appearance on any stage was made at Naples. The débutant was not at all nervous, for, though an earthquake made the house shake while he was singing, he never ceased till he had finished his song. Had any of the audience fled at the earthquake, they probably would have been massacred for attending more to the natural than the imperial phenomenon. But we can fancy that, when some terrified Drusus got home and his Drusilla asked him about the voice of the illustrissimo Signor Nerone, Drusus looked at her and answered, ‘Never heard such a shake in all my life!’
What an affable fellow that otherwise terrible personage was! How gracious he must have seemed as he dined in the theatre and told those who reverently looked on that by-and-by he would sing clearer and deeper! Our respect for this august actor is a little diminished by the fact that he not only invented the claque, but taught his hired applauders how they were to manifest approbation. He divided them into three classes, constituting several hundreds of individuals. The bombi had to hum approval, the more noisy imbrices were to shower applause like heavy rain upon the tiles, and the testas were to culminate the effect by clapping as if their hands were a couple of bricks. And, with reputation thus curiously made at Naples, he reached Rome to find the city mad to hear him. As the army added their sweet voices of urgency, Nero modestly yielded. He enrolled his name on the list of public singers, but so far kept his imperial identity as to have his harp carried for him by the captain of his Prætorian Guard, and to be half surrounded by friends and followers—the not too exemplary Colonel Jacks and Lord Toms of that early time.
Just as Bottom the weaver would have played, not only Pyramus, but Thisbe and the Lion to boot, so Nero had appetite for every part, and made the most of whatever he had. Suetonius says that, when Nero sang the story of Niobe, ‘he held it out till the tenth hour of the day;’ but Suetonius omits to tell us at what hour the imperial actor first opened his mouth. ‘The Emperor did not scruple,’ says a quaint translation of Suetonius’s ‘Lives of the Twelve Cæsars,’ ‘done into English by several hands, A.D. 1692,’ ‘in private Spectacles to Act his Part among the Common Players, and to accept of a present of a Million of Sesterces from one of the Prætors. He also sang several tragedies in disguise, the Visors and Masks of the Heroes and the Gods, as also of the Heroesses and the Goddesses, being so shap’d as to represent his own Countenance or the Ladies for whom he had the most Affection. Among other things he sang “Canace in Travail,” “Orestes killing his Mother,” “Œdipus struck blind,” and “Hercules raging mad.” At what time it is reported that a young Soldier, being placed sentinel at the Door, seeing him drest up and bound, as the Subject of the Play required, ran in to his Assistance as if the thing had been done in good earnest.’ (Here we have the origin of all those soldiers who have stood at the wings of French and English stages, and who have interfered with the action of the play, or even have fainted away in order to flatter some particular player). Nero certainly had his amateur-actor weaknesses. He provided beforehand all the bouquets that were to be spontaneously flung to him, or awarded as prizes in the shape of garlands. French actresses are said to do the same thing, and this pretty weakness is satirised in the duet between Hortense, the actress, and Brillant, the fine gentleman, in the pretty vaudeville of ‘Le Juif’ (by A. Rousseau, Désaugiers, and Mesnard), brought out at the Porte St.-Martin fifty odd years ago. Hortense is about to appear at Orleans, and she says, or sings:
Je suis l’idole dont on raffole.
Après demain mon triomphe est certain!
‘Oui,’ rejoins Brillant,
Oui! de tous les points de la salle,
Je prédis que sur votre front,
Trente couronnes tomberont.
And Hortense replies confidentially:
Elles sont dans ma malle!
This is a custom, therefore, which French actresses derive from no less a person than Nero. This gentleman, moreover, invariably spoke well of every other actor to that actor’s face, but never at any other time. If this custom has survived—which is, of course, hardly possible—he who practises it can justify himself, if he pleases, by this Neronic example.
Although it was death to leave the theatre before the imperial amateur had finished his part, there were some people who could not ‘stand it,’ but who must have handsomely tipped the incorruptible Roman guard to be allowed to vanish from the scene. There were others who insisted on being on the point of death, but it is not to be supposed that they were carried home without being munificently profuse in their recompense. There was no shamming on the part of the indefatigable Roman ladies, who, it is said, sometimes added a unit to the audience and a new member to the roll of Roman citizens, before they could be got away. And, when a man ran from the theatre, dropped from the walls of the town, and took to his heels across country, he must have been even more disgusted with the great amateur than you are, my dear reader, with, let us say, your favourite worst actor on any stage. Exit Nero, histrio et imperator.
Some one has said that the Italians had not the necessary genius for acting. Ristori has wiped out that reproach. Private theatricals may be said to have been much followed by them. Plays were acted before popes just as they used to be (and on Sundays too) before our bishops. It is on record that the holiest of Holy Fathers have held their sides as they laughed at the ‘imitations’ of English archbishops given to the life by English bishops on mission to Rome; and, on the other hand, there is no comedy so rich as that to be seen and heard in private, acted by a clever, joyous Irish priest, imitating the voice, matter, and manner of the street preachers in Italy. Poliziano’s ‘Orfeo,’ which inaugurated Italian tragedy, was first played in private before Lorenzo the Magnificent. Italian monks used to act Plautus and Terence, and the nuns of Venice were once famous for the perfection with which they acted tragedy in private to select audiences.
Altogether, it seems absurd for anyone to have said that the Italians had not the genius for acting. Groto, the poet—‘the blind man of Adria’—played Œdipus, in Palladio’s theatre at Vicenza, in the most impressive style. Salvator Rosa, the grandest of painters, was the most laughable of low comedians; and probably no Italian has played Saul better than Alfieri, who wrote the tragedy which bears that name.
In France, private theatricals may be said to date from the seventeenth century; but there, as in England, were to be found, long before, especial ‘troops’ in the service of princes and nobles. We are pleased to make record of the fact that Richard III., so early as the time when he was the young Duke of Gloucester, was the first English prince who maintained his own private company of actors, of whom he was the appreciating and generous master. No doubt, after listening to them in the hall of his London mansion, he occasionally gave them an ‘outing’ on his manor at Notting Hill. We have more respect for Duke, or King, Richard, as patron of actors, than we have for Louis XIV. turning amateur player himself, and not only ‘spouting’ verses, but acting parts, singing in operas, and even dancing in the ballets of Benserade and the divertissements of Molière. Quite another type of the amateur actor is to be found in Voltaire. On the famous private stage of the Duchess of Maine, Voltaire acted (in ‘Rome sauvée’) Cicero to the Lentulus of the professional actor, Lekain. If we may believe the illustrious actor himself, nothing could be more truthful, more pathetic, more Roman, than the poet, in the character of the great author.
Voltaire prepared at least one comedy for private representation on the Duchess’s stage, or on that of some other of his noble friends. A very curious story is connected with this piece. It bore the title of ‘Le Comte de Boursoufle.’ After being acted by amateurs, in various noble houses, it gave way to other pieces, the manuscript was put by, and the play was forgotten. Eleven years ago, however, the manuscript of the comedy, in Voltaire’s handwriting, was discovered, and ‘Le Comte de Boursoufle’ was produced at the Odéon. M. Jules Janin and all the French theatrical critics were in a flutter of convulsive delight at the recovery of this comedy. Some persons there were who asked if there was any doubt on the matter, or was the piece by any other clever Frenchman. They were laughed to scorn. The comedy was so full of wit and satire that it could only be the work of the wittiest and most satirical of Frenchmen. ‘If it is not Voltaire’s,’ it was asked, ‘whose could it possibly be?’ This question was answered immediately by the critics in this country, who pointed out that ‘Le Comte de Boursoufle,’ which Voltaire had prepared for a company of private actors, was neither more nor less than an exact translation of Sir John Vanbrugh’s ‘Relapse.’
Private theatricals in France became a sort of institution. They not only formed a part, often a very magnificent part, of the noble mansions of princes, dukes, marquesses, et tout ça, but the theatre was the most exquisite and luxurious portion of the residences of the most celebrated and prodigal actresses. Mademoiselle Guimard, to surpass her contemporaries, possessed two; one in her magnificent house in the Chaussée d’Antin, the other in her villa at Pantin. The one in Paris was such a scene of taste, splendour, extravagance, and scandal, that private boxes, so private that nobody could be seen behind the gilded gratings, were invented for the use and enjoyment of very great ladies. These, wishing to be witnesses of what was being acted on and before the stage, without being supposed to be present themselves, were admitted by a private door, and after seeing all they came to see, and much more, perhaps, than they expected, these high and virtuous dames, wrapped their goodly lace mantles about them, glided down the private staircase to their carriages, and thought La Guimard was the most amiable hussey on or off the stage.
Voltaire’s private theatre, at Monrepos, near Lausanne, has been for ever attached to history by the dignified pen of Gibbon. The great historian’s chief gratification, when he lived at Lausanne, was in hearing Voltaire in the Frenchman’s own tragedies on his own stage. The ‘ladies and gentlemen’ of the company were not geniuses, for Gibbon says of them in his ‘Life,’ that ‘some of them were not destitute of talents.’ The theatre is described as ‘decent.’ The costumes were ‘provided at the expense of the actors,’ and we may guess how the stage was stringently managed, when we learn that ‘the author directed the rehearsals with the zeal and attention of paternal love.’ In his own tragedies, Voltaire represented Lusignan, Alvarez, Benassur, Euphemon, &c. ‘His declamation,’ says Gibbon, ‘was fashioned to the pomp and cadence of the old stage; and he expressed the enthusiasm of poetry rather than the feelings of nature.’ This sing-song style, by which diversified dramas, stilted rather than heroic, horribly dull rather than elevated and stirring, had an effect on Gibbon such as we should never have expected in him, or in any Englishman, we may say on any created being with common sense, in any part of the civilised world. His taste for the French theatre became fortified, and he tells us, ‘that taste has perhaps abated my idolatry for the gigantic genius of Shakespeare, which is inculcated in our infancy as the first duty of Englishmen.’ This is wonderful to read, and almost impossible to believe. We may give more credit to the assertion that ‘the wit and philosophy of Voltaire, his table and theatre, refined in a visible degree the manners of Lausanne.’ It is worthy of note that a tragedy of Voltaire’s is now rarely, if ever, acted. We question if one of his most popular pieces, ‘Adélaïde Du Guesclin,’ has ever been played since it was given at the Théâtre Français (spectacle gratis), 1822, on occasion of the baptism of the Duc de Bordeaux, whom we now better know as the Comte de Chambord, and who knows himself only as ‘Henry V., Roi de France et de Navarre.’
One of Voltaire’s favourite stage pupils was an actor named Paulin, who played a tyrant in the Lausanne company. Voltaire had great hopes of him, and he especially hoped to make much of him as Polifonte, in Voltaire’s tragedy ‘Mérope.’ At the rehearsals, Voltaire, as was customary with him, overwhelmed the performers with his corrections. He sat up one night, to re-write portions of the character of the tyrant Polifonte, and at three in the morning he aroused his servant and bade him carry the new manuscript to Paulin. ‘Sir,’ said the man, ‘at such an unseasonable hour as this M. Paulin will be fast asleep, and there will be no getting into his house.’ ‘Go! run!’ exclaimed Voltaire, in tragic tones. ‘Know that tyrants never sleep!’
Some of the French private theatres of the last century were singular in their construction. We know that the theatre of Pompey was so constructed that, by ingenious mechanism, it could form two amphitheatres side by side or could meet in one extensive circus. On a smaller scale, the salon of the celebrated dancer D’Auberval could be instantaneously turned into a private theatre, complete in all its parts. Perhaps the most perfect, as regards the ability of the actors, as well as the splendour of the house, audience and stage, were the two private theatres at Saint-Assise and Bagnolet, of the Duke of Orleans and Madame de Montesson. None but highly-gifted amateurs trod those boards. The Duke himself was admirable in peasants and in characters abounding in sympathies with nature. Madame de Montesson was fond of playing shepherdesses and young ladies under the pleasures, pains, or perplexities of love; but, with much talent, the lady was far too stout for such parts. It might be said of her, as Rachel said of her very fat sister, whom she saw dressed in the costume of a shepherdess; ‘Bergère! tu as l’air d’une bergère qui a mangé ses brebis!’
Out of the multitude of French private theatres there issued but one great actress, by profession, the celebrated Adrienne Lecouvreur; and she belonged, not to the gorgeous temple of Thespis in the palaces of nobles, but to a modest stage behind the shop of her father, the hatter; and latterly, to one of more artistic pretensions in the courtyard attached to the mansion of a great lawyer whose lady had heard of Adrienne’s marvellous talent, and, to encourage it, got up a theatre for her and her equally young comrades, in the cour of her own mansion. The acting of the hatter’s daughter, especially as Pauline, in Corneille’s ‘Polyeucte,’ made such a sensation that the jealous Comédie Française cried ‘Privilège!’ and this private theatre was closed, according to law.
We have less interest in recalling the figure of Madame de Pompadour, playing and warbling the chief parts in the sparkling little operettas on the stage of her private theatre at Bellevue, than we have in recalling the figure of the young Dauphine, Marie-Antoinette, with the counts of Provence and Artois (afterwards Louis XVIII. and Charles X.), with their wives, and clever friends, playing comedy especially, with a grace and perfection which were not always to be found in the professional actor. But what the old king Louis XV. had encouraged in the Pompadour he and his rather gloomy daughters discouraged in Marie-Antoinette. It was not till she was queen, and had profited by the lessons of the singer Dugazon, that the last royal private theatre in France commenced its career of short-lived glory, at Choisy and the Trianon. Louis XVI. never took kindly to these representations. He went to them occasionally, but he disliked seeing the queen on the stage. It is even said that he once directed a solitary hiss at her, as she entered dressed as a peasant. It is further stated that the royal actress stepped forward, and with a demure smile informed the house that the dissatisfied individual might have his money returned by applying at the door. It is a pretty story, but it is quite out of character with the place and the personages, and it may be safely assigned to that greatest of story-tellers, Il Signor Ben Trovato.
Adverse critics have said of Marie-Antoinette’s Rosine, that it was ‘royalement mal jouée.’ Perhaps they opposed the whole system of private acting. This amusement had the advocacy of Montaigne, who was himself a good amateur actor. Of course, the thing may be abused. It was not exemplary for French bishops to go to hear Collé’s gross pieces in private. There was more dignity in Louis XIV. and Madame de Maintenon listening to ‘Esther’ and ‘Athalie,’ acted by the young ladies of Saint-Cyr; and there was less folly in the princes and nobles who began the French Revolution by acting the ‘Mariage de Figaro’ in private, than there was in the Comte d’Artois (afterwards Charles X.) learning to dance on the tight rope, with a view of giving amateur performances to his admiring friends.
Mercier, in his ‘Tableau de Paris,’ under the head ‘Théâtre bourgeois,’ states that in the last quarter of the last century there was a perfect rage for private theatricals in France, and that it extended from the crown to the humblest citizen. He thought that the practice had its uses, but its abuses also; and he counselled simple country-townsmen to leave acting to the amateurs in large cities, where people were not too nice upon morals; where lovers gave additional fire to Orosmane, and the timidest young ladies found audacity enough to play Nanine. Mercier had seen the private theatricals at Chantilly, and he praises the care, taste, and simple grace which distinguished the acting of the Prince of Condé and the Duchess of Bourbon. It is very clear that if they had not been cast for the genteelest comedy in the drama of life, they would have got on very well in the world as players. So the Duke of Orleans, at his private theatre at Saint-Assise, pleased Mercier by the care and completeness of his acting. ‘The Queen of France,’ he adds, ‘has private theatricals, in her own apartments, at Versailles. Not having had the honour to see her I can say nothing on the subject.’
With these players of lofty social quality, Mercier contrasts the amateurs in humble society. These were given to act tragedy—or nothing. He cites, from ‘Le Babillard,’ the case of a shoemaker, renowned for his skill in gracefully fitting the most gracefully small feet of the beauties of the day. On Sundays, Crispin drew on his own legs the buskins which he himself or his journeymen had made; and he acted, in his own house, the lofty tragedy then in vogue. It happened once that his manager, with whom he had quarrelled, had to provide a dagger to be deposited on an altar, for the amateur player’s suicidal use. Out of spite, the fellow placed there the shoemaker’s professional cutting-knife. The amateur, in the fury of his acting, and not perceiving the trick, snatched up the weapon, and gave himself the happy despatch with the instrument which helped him to live. This stage business excited roars of laughter, which brought the tragedy to an end as merrily as if it had been a burlesque. The shoemaker could find nothing to say, by which he might turn the laughter from himself. He was not as witty as the English shoemaker’s apprentice whom his master seized, about this time, on the private stage in Berwick Street, acting no less a character than Richard III., in a very dilapidated pair of buskins. As the angry master pointed to them in scorn, the witty lad sustained his royal quality in his reply: ‘Oh! shoes are things we kings don’t stand upon!’
In England, private theatricals are to be traced back to an early date. We go far enough in that direction, however, by referring to Mary Tudor, the solemn little daughter of Henry VIII., who, with other children, acted before her royal sire, in Greenwich Palace, to the intense delight of her father and an admiring court. Henrietta Maria, Queen of Charles I., is remembered in court and theatrical annals for the grace with which she played in pretty pastoral French pieces, assisted by her ladies, on the private stages at Whitehall and Hampton Court. The private theatricals of the Puritan days were only those which took place surreptitiously, and at the risk of the performers being arrested and punished. Holland House, Kensington, was occasionally the place where the players found refuge and gave a taste of their quality. The ‘good time’ came again; and that greatest of actors, Betterton, with his good and clever wife, taught the daughters of James II. all that was necessary to make those ladies what they both were, excellent actors on their private stage. So Quin taught the boy to speak, who afterwards became George III., and who was a very fair private player, but perhaps not equal with his brothers and sisters, and some of the young nobility who trod the stage for pastime, and gave occupation to painters and engravers to reproduce the mimic scene and the counterfeit presentments of those who figured therein.
It was in the reign of George III., and in the year 1777, that the year itself was inaugurated on the part of the fashionable amateurs by a performance of ‘The Provoked Husband.’ Lord Villiers was at the cost of getting it up, but that was nothing to a man who was the prince of macaronies, and who, as Walpole remarks, had ‘fashioned away’ all he possessed. The play, followed by a sort of pose plastique, called ‘Pygmalion and the Statue,’ was acted in a barn, expensively fitted up for the occasion, near Henley. Lord Villiers and Miss Hodges were Lord and Lady Townley. Walpole says, on hearsay, that ‘it went off to admiration.’ Mrs. Montagu, also on report, says: ‘I suppose the merit of this entertainment was, that people were to go many miles in frost and snow, to see in a barn what would have been every way better at the theatre in Drury Lane or Covent Garden.’ Walpole speaks of M. Texier’s Pygmalion as ‘inimitable.’ The Frenchman was at that time much patronised in town for his ‘readings.’ Miss Hodges acted the Statue. Mrs. Montagu’s sharp criticism takes this shape: ‘Modern nymphs are so warm and yielding that less art than that of M. Texier might have animated the nymph. My niece will never stand to be made love to before a numerous audience.’ The Lady Townley and Galatea of these gay doings sacrificed herself, we suppose, to these important duties. ‘Miss Hodges’ father,’ writes Mrs. Montagu, ‘is lately dead: her mother is dying. How many indecorums the girl has brought together in one petite pièce!’ The play was not all the entertainment of the night, which was one of the most inclement of that pitiless winter. ‘There was a ball,’ says the lady letter-writer, ‘prepared after the play, but the barn had so benumbed the vivacity of the company, and the beaux’ feet were so cold and the noses of the belles were so blue, many retired to a warm bed at the inn at Henley, instead of partaking of the dance.’ Walpole gives play to his fancy over these facts. ‘Considering,’ he says, ‘what an Iceland night it was, I concluded the company and audience would all be brought to town in waggons, petrified, and stowed in a statuary’s yard in Piccadilly.’
We have heard over and over again of such private theatres as Winterslow, near Salisbury, which was burnt down on the night after a performance in which Fox and similar spirits had acted with equal vivacity in tragedy and farce. Other incidents are to be found in Walpole and similar gossiping chroniclers of the time. None of those private theatres, however, can match with Wargrave, in Berkshire, where, in the last century, Lord Barrymore held sway during his brief and boisterous life. When Lord Barrymore succeeded to the lordship of himself, that ‘heritage of woe,’ he came before the world with a splendour so extravagant in its character that the world was aghast at his recklessness. Wild and audacious as was the character of this wayward boy’s life, he was in some sort a gentleman in his vices. He was brave and generous and kindly hearted. Since his time we have had a line (now extinct, or effete in the infirmity and imbecility of a surviving member or two) of gentlemen who plunged into blackguardism as a relief from the burden of life. They would play loosely at cards, swindle a dear friend at horse-dealing, and half a dozen of them together would not be afraid to fall upon some helpless creature and beat him into pulp by way of a ‘lark.’ Lord Barrymore was simply a ‘rake,’ and he injured no man but himself. He came into the hunting field more like a king of France and Navarre than an English gentleman, and his negro trumpeters played fantasias in the woods, to the infinite surprise, no doubt, of the foxes. He kept perpetual open house, and Mrs. Delpini superintended it for him. What he most prided himself upon was his taste for the drama, and the way he carried it into effect made Wargrave brilliant and famous in its little day.
This noble youth began modestly enough. His first private theatre was in one of his own barns. The first piece played in it was ‘Miss in her Teens,’ in which he acted Flash; and no one of the illustrious performers, youth or maiden, was over seventeen years of age. Noble by birth, as all the amateur Thespians were, this performance was not given to an exclusively aristocratic audience, but to all the villagers and the peasantry in the vicinity of the village who cared to come. All came, and there was a pit of red cloaks and smock frocks, and ample provision of creature comforts for the whole barn. From this modest origin sprang the noble theatre which Cox of Covent Garden Theatre built for the earl at a cost of 60,000l. It was a marvellous edifice. For pantomimic performances it had traps and springs and other machinery that might satisfy the requirements of Mr. George Conquest himself, who practised gymnastics, for exercise, when he was a student at a German university, and who is now the first of gymnastic performers instead of being the profoundest of philosophers—though there is no reason why he may not be both.
The Wargrave theatre lacked nothing that could be wanted for its completeness. The auditorium was splendid. There was a saloon quite as superb, wherein the audience could sup like kings and the invited could afterwards dance. Between the acts of performance pages and lackeys, in scarlet and gold, proffered choice refreshments to the spectators, who were not likely to be hard upon players under a management of such unparalleled liberality. The acting company was made up of professional players—Munden, Delpini, and Moses Kean, among the men, with the best and prettiest actresses of the Richmond Theatre. Lord Barrymore and Captain Walthen were the chief amateurs. Low comedy and pantomime formed the ‘walk’ of my lord, who on one occasion danced a celebrated pas Russe with Delpini as it was then danced at the opera. Now and then the noble proprietor would stand disguised as a check-taker, and promote ‘rows’ with the farmers and their wives, disputing the validity of their letters of invitation. It was also his fond delight to mingle with them, in disguise again, as they wended homeward, listening to or provoking their criticism. He probably heard some unwelcome truths, for he could not have long escaped detection. Within doors the night’s pleasures were not at an end with the play. Dancing, gambling, music, and folly to its utmost limits succeeded; and he, or she, was held in scorn who attempted to go to bed before 5 A.M. Indeed, such persons were not allowed to sleep if they did withdraw before the appointed hour. From five o’clock to noon was the Wargrave season for sleep. The company were consigned to the ‘upper and lower barracks,’ as the two divisions were called where the single and the married, or those who might as well have been, were billeted for the night.
Lord Barrymore did not confine himself to acting on a private stage. In August, 1790, he ‘was so humble as to perform a buffoon dance and act scaramouch in a pantomime at Richmond for the benefit of Edwin junior, the comedian; and I,’ writes Walpole, ‘like an old fool, but calling myself a philosopher that loves to study human nature in all its disguises, went to see the performance!’ Walpole used to call the earl ‘the strolling player.’ On the above occasion, however, there is one thing to be remembered: Lord Barrymore, invited to play the fool, condescended to that degradation in order to serve young Edwin, whose affection and filial duty towards a sick and helpless mother had won the noble amateur’s regard.
Lord Barrymore married in 1792, in which year the splendid theatre at Wargrave was pulled down. In March, 1793, he was, as captain of militia, escorting some French prisoners through Kent. On his way he halted at an inn to give them and his own men refreshment; which being done, he kissed the handsome landlady and departed in his phaeton, his groom mounting the horse Lord Barrymore had previously ridden. The man put a loaded gun into the carriage, and Lord Barrymore had not ridden far when it exploded and killed him on the spot. Thus ended, at the age of twenty-four years, the career of the young earl, who was the most indefatigable, if not the most able, amateur actor of his day.
Such examples fired less noble youths, who left their lawful callings, broke articles and indentures, and set up for themselves by representing somebody else. Three of our best bygone comedians belong to this class, and may claim some brief record at our hands.
Oxberry, who was distinguished for the way in which he acted personages who were less remarkable for their simplicity than for their silliness, was a pupil of Stubbs, the animal painter, and subsequently was in the house of Ribeau, the bookseller. The attractions of the private theatres in Queen Anne Street and Berwick Street were too much for him. Oxberry’s first appearance was made at the former place, as Hassan, in the ‘Castle Spectre.’ The well-known players, Mrs. W. West and John Cooper, acted together as Alonzo and Leonora in ‘The Revenge,’ at a private theatre in Bath, to the horror of their friends and the general scandalising of the city of which they were natives. The Bath manager looked on the young pair with a business eye, and the youthful amateurs were soon enrolled among the professionals. In their first stages, professionals scarcely reckon above amateurs. They play what they can, and such comic actors as Wilkinson and Harley are not the only pair of funny fellows upon record who played the most lofty tragedy in opposition to each other. Little Knight, as he used to be called, was, like Long Oxberry, intended for art, but he too took to private acting, and passed thence to the stage, where he was supreme in peasants, and particularly rustics, of sheer simplicity of character. His Sim in ‘Wild Oats’ was an exquisite bit of acting, and this is said without any disparagement of Mr. D. James, who recently acted the part at Mr. Belmore’s benefit with a natural truthfulness which reminded old play-goers of the ‘real old thing.’ If Mr. Knight did not succeed in pictorial art, he left a son who did—the gentleman who so recently retired from the secretaryship of the Royal Academy. The two names of Knight and Harley were, for a long time, pleasant in the ears of the patrons of the drama. John Pritt Harley was intended for many things, but amateur acting made a capital comedian of him. His father was a reputable draper and mercer—and jealous actors used to say that he sold stays and that his son helped to make them. The truth is that he was first devoted to surgery, but Harley ‘couldn’t abide it.’ Next he tried the law, and sat on a stool with the edge of a desk pressing into him till he could bear it no longer. There was, at the time, a company of amateurs who performed in the old Lyceum, and there, and at other private theatres, Harley worked away as joyously as he ever played; and worked harder still through country theatres, learning how to starve as well as act, and to fancy that a cup of tea and a penny loaf made a good dinner—which no man could make upon them. His opportunity came when, in 1815, Mr. Arnold, who had watched some part of his progress, brought him out at the Lyceum—his old amateur playing ground—as Marcelli, in ‘The Devil’s Bridge.’ Harley lived a highly-esteemed actor and a most respectable bachelor. Some little joking used to be pointed at him in print, on account of an alleged attachment between him and Miss Tree, the most graceful of dancers and of columbines. But Miss Tree was a Mrs. Quin—though she had scarcely seen her husband, since she was compelled to marry him in her childhood. The nicest pointed bit of wit was manufactured in a hoaxing announcement of a benefit to be taken by both parties. The pieces advertised were ‘A Tale of Mystery,’ and a ‘Harley-Quinade.’ The names of the parties could not have been more ingeniously put together in sport. Harley, though a mannerist, was an excellent actor to the last. When he was stricken with apoplexy, while playing Bottom, in the ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ at the Princess’s Theatre, in Charles Kean’s time, he was carried home, and the last words he uttered were words in his part: ‘I feel an exposition to sleep coming over me.’ And straightway the unconscious speaker slept—for aye!
We must not add to the grievances of Ireland by altogether overlooking Erin’s private theatricals. From the day in 1544, when Bale’s ‘Pammachius’ was acted by amateurs at the market cross of Kilkenny, to the last recent record of Irish amateur acting, in the ‘Dublin Evening Mail,’ this amusement has been a favourite one among the ‘West Britons.’ The practice did not die out at the Union. Kilkenny, Lurgan, Carton, and Dublin had their private stages. When the amateur actors played for charity’s sake everybody took private boxes and nobody paid for them. In 1761, the ‘Beggars’ Opera’ was played at the Duke of Leinster’s (Carton). Dean Marly played Lockit, and wrote and spoke the prologue, in which the reverend gentleman thus alluded to himself:
But when this busy mimic scene is o’er
All shall resume the worth they had before;
Lockit himself his knavery shall resign,
And lose the Gaoler in the dull Divine.
The above was not quite as dignified as Milton’s ‘Arcades,’ played by the children of the Dowager Countess of Derby, at her house, Harefield Place; or as ‘Comus,’ acted by the young Egertons before the Earl of Bridgewater, at Ludlow Castle. Perhaps it was more amusing.
One of our own best amateur actresses was the Princess Mary of Cambridge (now Duchess of Teck). This excellent lady had once to commence the piece (a musical piece, written for the occasion by an amateur) on a private stage in one of the noblest of our country mansions. An illustrious audience was waiting for the curtain to go up; but the kindly-hearted princess was thinking of some less illustrious folks, who were not among that audience and whom she desired to see there, namely, the servants of the household—as many as could be spared. They had had much trouble, and she hoped they would be allowed to share in the amusement. There was some difficulty; but it was only when she was informed that the servants were really ‘in front,’ that the ‘Queen of Hearts’ (her part in the piece) answered that she was ready to begin the play. She never acted better than on this occasion.