Читать книгу Their Majesties' Servants. Annals of the English Stage (Volume 2 of 3) - Doran John - Страница 3

In Mr. Secretary Southwell's office, in Dublin, there sits the young son of one of the Pursuivants of the Lord Lieutenant; he is not writing a précis, he is copying out the parts of a play to be acted in private. His name is Robert Wilks, and the wise folk of Rathfarnham, near Dublin, where he was born in 1665, shake their heads and declare that he will come to no good.

The prophecy seemed fulfilled when the Irish wars between James and William forced him, an unwilling volunteer, into the army of the latter. As clerk to the camp he is exempt from military duty; but he tells a good story, sings a good song, and the officers take him for a very pretty fellow.

Anon, he is back in the old Dublin office. At all stray leisure hours he may, however, be seen fraternising with the actors. He most affects one Richards; he hears Richards repeat his parts, and he speaks the intervening sentences of the other characters. This he does with such effect that Richards swears he is made for an actor, and the young Government clerk, fired by the fame of Betterton, is eager to leap from the stool, which his father considered the basis of his fortune, and to don sock and buskin.

His old comrades of the camp were then about to vary the monotony of life at the Castle, by getting up a play to inaugurate the new theatre, re-opened, like the Temple of Janus, at the restoration of peace. Judicious and worthy Ashbury was the only professional player. Young Wilks had privately acted with him as the Colonel in the "Spanish Friar." Ashbury now offered to play Iago to his Othello, and the officers were well pleased to meet again with their old clerk of the camp. The tragedy was acted accordingly. "How were you pleased?" asked Richards, who thought Wilks took it as a pastime. "I was pleased with all but myself," answered the Government clerk, who was thoroughly in earnest.

Wilks had gone through many months of probation, watched by good Joseph Ashbury, and honest Richards, when one morning the latter called on the young actor, with an introductory letter to Betterton in his hand. Wilks accepted the missive with alacrity, bade farewell to secretaries and managers, and in a brief space of time was sailing over the waters, from the Pigeon House to Parkgate.

The meeting of Wilks and Betterton, in the graceful costume of those days, the young actor travel-worn, a little shabby, anxious, and full of awe; the elder richly attired, kind in manner, his face bright with intellect, and his figure heightened by the dignity of a lofty nature and professional triumph, borne with a lofty modesty, is another subject for a painter.

Betterton instructed the stranger as to the course he should take, and, accordingly, one bright May morning of 1690,7 a handsome young fellow, with a slight Irish accent, presented himself to Christopher Rich as a light comedian. He was a native of Dublin county, he said, had left a promising Government clerkship, to try his fortune on the Irish stage; and, tempted by the renown of Betterton, had come to London to see the great actor, and to be engaged, if that were possible, in the same company.

Christopher Rich was no great judge of acting, but he thought there was something like promise of excellence in the easy and gentleman-like young fellow; and he consented to engage him for Drury Lane, at the encouraging salary of fifteen shillings a week, from which half a crown was to be deducted for instruction in dancing! This left Wilks twelve and sixpence clear weekly income; and he had not long been enjoying it, when he married Miss Knapton, daughter of the Town Clerk of Southampton. Young couple never began life upon more modest means; but happiness, hard work, and good fortune came of it.

For a few years, commencing with 1690,8 Wilks laboured unnoticed, at Drury Lane, by all save generous Betterton, who seeing the young actor struggling for fame, with a small salary, and an increasing family, recommended him to return to Ashbury, the Dublin manager, who, at Betterton's word, engaged him at £50 a year,9 and a clear benefit. "You will be glad to have got him," said Betterton to Ashbury. "You will be sorry you have lost him," said he, to Christopher Rich. Sorry! In three or four years more, Rich was imploring him to return, and offering him Golconda, as salaries were then understood. But Wilks was now the darling of the Dublin people, and, at a later period, so universal was the desire to keep him amongst them, that the Duke of Ormond, Lord Lieutenant, issued a warrant to prohibit his leaving the kingdom. But, on the other hand, £4 per week awaited him in London. It was nearly as high a salary as Betterton's!10 Wilks, however, caring less for the terms than for the opportunity of satisfying his inordinate thirst for fame, contrived to escape, with his wife. With them came a disappointed actor, soon to be a popular dramatist, Farquhar; who, in the year 1699, after opening the season with his "Love and a Bottle," produced his "Constant Couple," with Wilks as Sir Harry Wildair. On the night of Wilks's first appearance, in some lines written for him by Farquhar, and spoken by the debutant, the latter said: —

and confessing a sort of supremacy in the London over the Dublin stage, he added: —

This the young actor did apace. Applauded as the latter had been the year before, in old parts, the approbation was as nothing compared with that lavished on him in this his first original character. From the first recognition of Vizard down to the "tag" with which the curtain descends, and including even the absurd and unnatural scene with Angelica, he kept the audience in a condition of intermittent ecstasy. The piece established his fame, gave a name to Norris, the frequently mentioned "Jubilee Dicky," and made the fortune of Rich. It seems to have been played nearly fifty times in the first season. In its construction and style it is far in advance of the comedies of Aphra Behn and Ravenscroft; and yet it is irregular; not moral; as often flippant as witty; improbable, and not really original. Madam Fickle is to be traced in it, and the denouement, as far as Lurewell and Standard are concerned, is borrowed from those of Plautus and Terence.

Wilks, now the great favourite of the town, justified all Betterton's prognostications. Like Betterton, he was to the end convinced that he might become more perfect by study and perseverance. Taking the extant score of judgments recorded of him, I find that Wilks was careful, judicious, painstaking in the smallest trifles; in comedy always brilliant, in tragedy always graceful and natural. For zeal, Cibber had not known his equal for half a century; careful himself, he allowed no one else to be negligent; so careful, that he would recite a thousand lines without missing a single word. The result of all his labour was seen in an ease, and grace, and gaiety which seemed perfectly spontaneous. His taste in dress was irreproachable; grave in his attire on the streets, on the stage he was the glass of fashion. On the stage, even in his last season, after a career of forty years, he never lost his buoyancy, or his young graces. From first to last he was perfection in his peculiar line. "Whatever he did upon the stage," says an eminent critic, quoted by Genest, "let it be ever so trifling, whether it consisted in putting on his gloves, or taking out his watch, lolling on his cane, or taking snuff, every movement was marked by such an ease of breeding and manner, everything told so strongly the involuntary motion of a gentleman, that it was impossible to consider the character he represented in any other light than that of reality; but what was still more surprising, that person who could thus delight an audience, from the gaiety and sprightliness of his character, I met the next day in a street hobbling to a hackney-coach, seemingly so enfeebled by age and infirmities that I could scarcely believe him to be the same man."

The grace and bearing of Wilks were accounted of as natural in a man whose blood was not of the common tap. "His father, Edward Wilks, Esq., was descended from Judge Wilks, a very eminent lawyer, and a gentleman of great honour and probity. During the unhappy scene of our civil wars he raised a troop of horse, at his own expense, for the service of his royal master." A brother of the judge was in Monk's army,11 with the rank of Colonel, and with more of honest intention than of commonplace discretion. The civil wars took many a good actor from the stage, but they also contributed the sons and daughters of many ancient but impoverished families to the foremost rank among distinguished players. Some of the daughters of these old and decayed houses thought it no disparagement to wed with these players, or to take humble office in the theatre. Wilks's first wife, Miss Knapton, was the daughter of the Town Clerk of Southampton, and Steward of the New Forest, posts of trust, and, at one time, of emolument. The Knaptons had been Yorkshire landholders, the estate being valued at £2000 a year; and now we find one daughter marrying Wilks, a second espousing Norris, "Jubilee Dicky," and a third, Anne Knapton, filling the humble office of dresser at Drury Lane, and probably not much flattered by the legend on the family arms, "Meta coronat opus."

The greatest trouble to Wilks during the period he was in management, arose from the "ladies" of the company. There was especially Mrs. Rogers, who, on the retirement of Mrs. Barry and Mrs. Bracegirdle, played the principal serious parts. It was the whim of this lady to act none but virtuous characters; her prudery would not admit of her studying others. In the epilogue to the "Triumphs of Virtue," in which she played the innocent Bellamira, she pronounced with great effect the lines, addressed to the ladies, for whose smiles, she said,

In this, however, she did not succeed; but Mrs. Rogers congratulated herself by considering that her failure saved Wilks's life, who, when a widower, protested that he should die of despair if she refused to smile upon him; but, as Cibber remarks, Mrs. Rogers "could never be reduced to marry."

Her ambition was great, for she not only looked on herself as the successor of Mrs. Barry and Mrs. Bracegirdle; but when the lively and graceful Mountfort (Mrs. Verbruggen) died, in giving birth to an infant, Mrs. Rogers aspired to the succession of her parts also. Wilks, then in power, preferred Mrs. Oldfield. A public clamour ensued; but, says Victor, somewhat confusedly, "Mr. Wilks soon reduced this clamour to demonstration, by an experiment of Mrs. Oldfield and Mrs. Rogers playing the same part, that of Lady Lurewell in the "Trip to the Jubilee;" but though obstinacy seldom meets conviction, yet from this equitable trial the tumults in the house were soon quelled (by public authority), greatly to the honour of Mr. Wilks. I am," adds the writer, "from my own knowledge, thoroughly convinced that Mr. Wilks had no other regard for Mrs. Oldfield but what arose from the excellency of her performances. Mrs. Rogers' conduct might be censured by some for the earnestness of her passion towards Mr. Wilks, but in the polite world the fair sex has always been privileged from scandal."

As great a tumult ensued when Mrs. Oldfield was cast for Andromache, a character claimed by her rival, who, being refused by Wilks, "she raised a posse of profligates, fond of tumult and riot, who made such a commotion in the house, that the Court hearing of it, sent four of the royal messengers and a strong guard to suppress all disorder." Cibber laments having "to dismiss an audience of £150 from a disturbance spirited up by obscure people, who never gave any better reason for it than it was their fancy to support the idle complaint of one rival actress against another in their several pretensions to the chief part in a new tragedy."

A green-room scene, painted by Colley Cibber, reveals to us something of the shadowy side of Wilks's character, while that of Booth and Mrs. Oldfield stand out, as it were, "in the sun." Court and city in 1725 had demanded the revival of Vanbrugh's "Provoked Wife," with alterations, to suit the growing taste for refinement. These alterations had taken something from the sprightliness of the part of Constant, which Wilks had been accustomed to play, and Cibber proposed to give it to Booth, for whom its gravity rendered it suitable. Wilks, who was eager to play every night, at first looked grave, then frowned; as Cibber hinted, that if he were to play in every piece, a sudden indisposition on his part might create embarrassment, he sullenly stirred the fire; but when the chief manager suggested that as he had accomplished all he could possibly aim at in his profession, occasional repose would become him more than unremitting labour, he took Cibber's counsel and Booth's acquiescence for satire, and retorted with a warmth of indignation which included some strong expletives not to be found in the best poets.

Cibber then accused him of inconsistency, and expressed indifference whether he accepted or rejected the part which he then held in his hand, and which Wilks at once threw down on the table whereupon the angry player sate, with crossed arms, and "knocking his heel upon the floor, as seeming to threaten most when he said least." Booth, good-naturedly, struck in with a cheerful comment, to the effect that, "for his part, he saw no such great matter in acting every day, for he believed it the wholesomest exercise in the world; it kept the spirits in motion, and always gave him a good stomach."

At this friendly advance Mrs. Oldfield was seen laughing behind her fan, while Wilks, after a few hesitating remarks, which showed some little jealousy of Booth, proposed that Mrs. Oldfield should herself select which of the two she would have play with her. He would be glad to be excused if she selected another.

"This throwing the negative upon Mrs. Oldfield," says Cibber, "was indeed a sure way to save himself; which I could not help taking notice of, by saying, it was making but an ill compliment to the company, to suppose there was but one man in it fit to play an ordinary part with her. Here Mrs. Oldfield got up, and turning me half round, to come forward, said with her usual frankness, 'Pooh! you are all a parcel of fools to make such a rout about nothing!' Rightly judging that the person most out of humour would not be more displeased at her calling us all by the same name."

Finally, Wilks accepted the part, at Mrs. Oldfield's suggestion, and all went well. Irascible as he was, yet he was more remarkable for his zeal and industry, for the carefulness with which he superintended rehearsals, and for the elaborate pains-concealing labour, which distinguished him on the public stage. Cibber renders him full measure of justice in this respect, and generously confesses: "Had I had half his application I still think I might have shown myself twice the actor that, in my highest state of favour, I appear to be."

Cibber, indeed, has painted his colleague Wilks with great elaboration. From Colley we learn that Wilks excelled Powell, and that hot-headed Powell challenged him to the duello in consequence. So painstaking was the young Irishman, that in forty years he was never once forgetful of a single word in any of his parts. "In some new comedy he happened to complain of a crabbed speech in his part which, he said, gave him more trouble to study than all the rest of it had done." The good-natured author cut the whole of the speech out; but "Wilks thought it such an indignity to his memory that anything should be thought too hard for it, that he actually made himself perfect in that speech, though he knew it was never to be made use of." Cibber praises his sober character, but hints at his professional conceit, and somewhat overbearing temper; and he calls him "bustle master-general of the company." If he was jealous and impatient, "to be employed on the stage was the delight of his life;" and of his unwearied zeal, unselfishly exercised for the general good, Cibber cannot speak too highly. Nothing came amiss to Wilks that was connected with the stage. He even undertook the office of writing the bills of performance; but he charged £50 a year for the trouble.

In the plaintive and tender, this light comedian excelled even Booth, who used to say that Wilks lacked ear and not voice to make a great tragedian.12 Wilks's greatest successes were in his friend Farquhar's heroes, – Sir Harry Wildair, Mirabel, Captain Plume, and Archer. He played equally well, but with less opportunity for distinction, the light gentlemen of Cibber's comedies. In Don Felix, in Mrs. Centlivre's "Wonder," he almost excelled the reputation he had gained in Sir Harry. "When Wilks dies," Farquhar once remarked, "Sir Harry may go to the Jubilee." Of the above characters he was the original representative, as he was of some fourscore others of less note, – among them Dumont, in "Jane Shore," for which he may be said to have been cast by Mrs. Oldfield. "Nay!" she cried to him, in her pretty way; "if you will not be my husband, I will act Alicia, I protest." And accordingly, the two most brilliant and gleesome actors of their day, enacted married tribulation, and kept their wreathed smiles for the crowd which clustered round them at the wings.

Few men ever loved acting for acting's sake more than Wilks. At the same time, no one ever warned others against it with more serious urgency. He had a nephew, who was in fair prospect of such good fortune as could be built up in an attorney's office. How little the young fellow merited the fortune, and how ill he understood the duties and advantages of attorneyship he manifested fully, by a madness for appearing on the stage. No counsel availed against his resolution; and, in 1714, Wilks despatched him to Dublin, with a letter to Ashbury, the manager. "He was bred an attorney," wrote the uncle, despondingly, "but is unhappily fallen in love with that fickle mistress, the stage; and no arguments can dissuade him from it. I have refused to give him any countenance, in hopes that time and experience might cure him; but since I find him determined to make an attempt somewhere, no one, I am sure, is able to give him so just a notion of the business as yourself. If you find my nephew wants either genius or any other necessary qualification, I beg you will freely tell him his disabilities; and then it is possible he may be more easily persuaded to return to his friends and business, which I am informed he understands perfectly well."

Young Wilks proved as poor an actor as he probably was an attorney; but his uncle received him at Drury Lane, after a year's novitiate in Dublin, where he played, at first, better "business" than Quin himself. But he never advanced a step, and died at the age of thirty, having never obtained above that number of shillings a week. And for that, he deserted his vocation as an attorney, in the practice of which he might have gained, if not earned, at a low estimate, twice that amount in a single morning.

There was a pious young Duke of Orleans, who, to keep a fair character, was obliged to assume the fashionable vices of his day. Wilks, with all his love of home, was a fine gentleman among the fine gentlemen. His appreciation of matrimony was shown by the haste with which he espoused the widow Fell, daughter of Charles II.'s great gun-founder, Browne, in April 1715, after losing his first wife in the previous year. During the first union, he must have trod the stage with many a heart-ache, while he was exciting hilarity, for eleven of his children died early, and the airy player was for ever in mourning. His stepson, Fell, married the granddaughter of William Penn, and brought his bride to the altar of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, not to be married, but christened. Wilks and his wife were the gossips to the pretty quakeress; and the former, probably, never looked more imposing than when he pronounced the names of the fair episcopalian, —Gulielma Maria.

Betterton used to rusticate in Berkshire; Booth, at Cowley; Cibber, at Twickenham; his son, at Brook Green. Wilks, too, had his villa at Isleworth. He is said to have kept a well-regulated and extremely cheerful home. He had there seen so much of death that we are told he was always prepared to meet it with decency. His generosity amounted almost to prodigality. "Few Irish gentlemen," says his biographer, "are without indigent relatives." Wilks had many, and they never appealed to him in vain. He died, after a short illness and four doctors, in September 1732,13 leaving his share in the Drury Lane Patent, and what other property he possessed, to his wife. Throughout his life, I can only find one symptom of regret at having abandoned the Irish Secretary's office for the stage. "My successor in Ireland," he once said to Cibber, "made by his post £50,000."

Exceeding benevolence is finely exhibited in an incident connected with Farquhar. When the latter was near the end of his gay yet chequered career in 1707, – death, the glory of his last success, and the thought of his children pressing hard upon him, he wrote this laconic, but perfectly intelligible, note to Wilks: – "Dear Bob, – I have not anything to leave thee, to perpetuate my memory, but two helpless girls; look upon them, sometimes; and think of him that was, to the last moment of his life, thine, – George Farquhar." Farquhar's confidence in his friend was like that of La Fontaine, who, having lost a home, was met in the street by a friend who invited him to his. "I was going there!" said the simple-minded poet. Wilks did not disappoint Farquhar's expectations.

Wilks could be as modest as he was generous. After playing, for the first time, the Ghost to Booth's Hamlet,14 the latter remarked, "Why, Bob, I thought you were going to knock me down. When I played the Ghost to Mr. Betterton's Hamlet, awe-stricken as he seemed, I was still more so of him."

"Mr. Betterton and Mr. Booth," said Wilks, "noble actors, could always play as they pleased. I can only play to the best of my ability."15 Once only do I find Wilks in close connection with royalty, – namely, when he took, by command, the manuscript of "George Barnwell" to St. James's, and read that lively tragedy to Queen Anne.16 On some like occasion, King William once presented Booth with five pounds for his reward, but history does not note the guerdon with which Wilks retired from the presence of "Great Anna!"17