Haunted London — Drury Lane Part 3

The new theatre was to have cost £75,000, and the £150,000 subscribed for was to have paid the architect and defrayed the mortgage debts.

The theatre, however, cost more than £150,000; only part of the debt was paid off, and a claim of £70,000 remained upon the property.

[595] On the 24th of February 1809, while the House of Commons was occupied with Mr. Ponsonby’s motion on the conduct of the war in Spain, the debate was interrupted by a great glare of light through the windows.

When the cause was ascertained, so much sympathy was felt for Sheridan that it was proposed to adjourn; but Sheridan calmly rose and said, “that whatever might be the extent of his private calamity, he hoped it would not interfere with the public business of the country.

” He then left the house, and is said to have reached Drury Lane just in time to find all hope of saving his property abandoned.

According to one story he coolly proceeded to the Piazza Coffee-house and discussed a bottle of wine, replying to a friend who praised his philosophic calmness, “Why, a man may surely be allowed to take a glass of wine _at his own fireside_.

”[596] He is said to have been most grieved at the loss of a harpsichord that had belonged to his wife.

Encouraged by the opening presented, and at the tardiness of shareholders to rebuild, speculators now proposed to erect a third theatre; but this design Sheridan and his friends defeated, and Mr. Whitbread, the great brewer of Chiswell Street, Finsbury, who afterwards destroyed himself, exerted his energies in the rebuilding of it.

By the new agreement of 1811, Sheridan was to receive for his moiety £24,000, and an additional sum of £4000 for the property of the fruit-offices and the reversion of boxes and shares; his son also receiving his quarter of the patent property.

Out of this sum the claims of the Linley family and other creditors were to be satisfied.

Overwhelmed with debt, dogged by bailiffs, hurried to and from sponging-houses, Sheridan, now a broken-down man, died in 1816, reproaching the committee with his last breath for refusing to lend him more money.

The new theatre, built by Mr. B.

Wyatt, had been opened in October 1812, the performances consisting of “Hamlet” and “The Devil to Pay.

” The house held 800 persons less than its predecessor.

The proprietors being anxious to have an opening address equal to that of Dr. Johnson, advertised for a suitable poem, and professed a desire for an open and free competition.

The verses were, like Oxford competition poems, to be marked with a word, number, or motto, and the appended sealed paper containing the name of the writer was not to be opened unless the poem was successful.

They offered twenty guineas as the prize, and extended the time for sending in the poems.

The result was an avalanche of mediocrity, till the secretary’s desk and the treasury-office ran over with poems.

The proprietors were in despair, when Lord Holland prevailed on Lord Byron to write an address, at the risk, as the poet feared, “of offending a hundred rival scribblers and a discerning public.

” The poem was written and accepted, and delivered on the special night by Mr. Elliston, who performed the part of Hamlet.

The address was voted tame by the newspapers, with the exception of the following passage-- “As soars this fane to emulate the last, Oh, might we draw our omens from the past?

Some hour propitious to our prayers, may boast Names such as hallow still the dome we lost.

On Drury first your Siddons’ thrilling art O’erwhelmed the gentlest, stormed the sternest heart;

On Drury Garrick’s latest laurels grew;

Here your last tears retiring Roscius drew, Sigh’d his last thanks, and wept his last adieu.

” The brothers Smith eagerly seized this fine opportunity for parody, and the “Rejected Addresses” made all London shake with laughter.

The leaden statue of Shakspere over the entrance of old Drury Lane was executed by Cheere of Hyde Park Corner--“the leaden figure man” formerly so celebrated--from a design by Scheemakers, a native of Antwerp and the master of Nollekens.

When this sculptor first went to Rome to study, he travelled on foot, and had to sell his shirts by the way in order to procure funds.

Mr. Whitbread, one of Sheridan’s creditors, gave the figure to the theatre.

[597] Mr. Whitbread and a committee had erected the house and purchased the old patent rights by means of a subscription of £400,000. Of this £20,000 was paid to Sheridan, and a like sum to the other holders of the patent.

The creditors of the old house took a quarter of what they claimed in full payment, and the Duke of Bedford abandoned a claim of £12,000. The company consisted of Elliston, Dowton, Bannister, Rae, Wallack, Wewitzer, Miss Smith, Mrs. Davison, Mrs. Glover, Miss Kelly, and Miss Mellon.

Mr. C.

Kemble and Grimaldi were at the other house, that the next season boasted a strong company--John and Charles Kemble, Conway, Terry, and Matthews.

At Drury Lane no new piece was brought out except Coleridge’s “Remorse.

” At Covent Garden there was played “Aladdin, or the Wonderful Lamp.

” At Drury Lane, says Dr. Doran, neither new pieces nor new players succeeded, till on the 20th of January 1814, the play-bills announced the first appearance of an actor from Exeter, whose coming changed the evil fortunes of the house, scared the old correct, dignified, and classical school of actors, and brought again to the memories of those who could look back as far as Garrick the fire, nature, impulse, and terrible earnestness--all, in short, but the versatility, of that great master in his art.

This player was Edmund Kean.

Kean was born in 1787. He was the son of a low and worthless actress, whose father, George Saville Carey, a poor singer, reciter, and mimic, hanged himself.

The father of Carey was a dramatist and song-writer, the natural son of the great Lord Halifax, who died in 1695. Kean’s father is unknown: he may have been Aaron Kean the tailor, or Moses Kean the builder.

In early life the genius was cabin-boy, strolling player, dancer on the tight-rope, and elocutionist at country fairs.

His first appearance, as Shylock, in 1814, was a triumph.

That night he came home and promised his wife a carriage, and his son Charles (then in his cradle) an education at Eton.

In Richard III.

he soon attained great triumphs.

He was audacious, sneering, devilish, almost supernatural in his cruelty and hypocrisy.

His Hamlet, though graceful and earnest, was inferior to his Othello; but Kemble thought that the latter was a mistake, Othello being palpably “a slow man.

” When Southey saw Kean and Young, he said, “It is the arch-fiend himself.

” When Kean played Sir Giles Overreach, and removed it from Kemble’s repertory, his wife received him on his return from the theatre with the anxious question, “What did Lord Essex think of it?

” The triumphant reply is well known: “D---- Lord Essex, Mary!

the pit rose at me.

” In 1822, after a visit to America, Kean appeared with his rival Young in a series of characters, though he never liked “the Jesuit,” as he used to call Young.

In 1827, Kean’s son Charles appeared as Norval at Drury Lane, while his father, now sinking fast, was acting at Covent Garden.

In 1833 Kean, shattered and exhausted, played Othello to his son’s Iago, and died two months after.

Hazlitt has a fine comparison between Kean and Mrs. Siddons.

Mrs. Siddons never seemed to task her powers to the utmost.

Her least word seemed to float to the end of the stage; the least motion of her hand commanded obedience.

“Mr. Kean,” he says, “is all effort, all violence, all extreme passion; he is possessed with a fury and demon that leaves him no repose, no time for thought, nor room for imagination.

[598] Mr. Kean’s imagination appears not to have the principles of joy or hope or love in it.

He seems chiefly sensible to pain and to the passion that springs from it, and to the terrible energies of mind or body which are necessary to grapple with or to avert it.

”[599] The new theatre had small success under its committee of proprietors, and soon became involved in debt and unable to pay the performers.

In 1814 it was let to the highest bidder, Elliston, who took it at the yearly rental of £10,300, and expended £15,000 on repairs.

Captain Polhill afterwards became the lessee, and sunk in it large sums of money.

The two next lessees, Messrs. Bunn and Hammond, became bankrupts.

Towards the middle of 1840 the house was reopened, after a closing of some months, for the then new entertainments of promenade concerts.

Grimaldi, the son of Queen Charlotte’s dentist, was born in 1779. He made his début at Drury lane in a “Robinson Crusoe” pantomime in 1781, and retired from the stage in 1828. His first part of any importance was Orson.

He remained at Drury Lane for nearly five-and-twenty years, and then played alternately at Covent Garden and Sadler’s Wells every night.

“He was the very beau-ideal of thieves,” says a critic of the time: “robbery became a science in his hand; you forgave the larceny from the humour with which Joe indulged his irresistible weakness.

”[600] He was famous for his rich ringing laugh, his complacent chuckle, the roll of his eyes, the drop of his chin, and his elongated respiration.

But we must go back to the singers.

Mrs. Crouch, the great singer, and the daughter of a Gray’s Inn Lane attorney, was articled to Mr. Linley, patentee of Drury Lane, in 1779, and in 1780 made her début as Mandane.

In 1785 she married a lieutenant in the navy, but returned to the stage in 1786, to be eclipsed by Mrs. Billington.

In 1787 she acted with Kelly at Drury Lane in the opera of “Richard Cœur de Lion,” and in the same year, in the character of Selima, sang the once popular song of “No Flower that blows is like the Rose.

” In 1788 she played Lady Elinor in “The Haunted Tower” at Drury Lane.

She died in 1804. Mrs. Billington, the daughter of a German musician, was born in London in 1765. In 1801-2 she sang alternately at Drury Lane and Covent Garden.

She died in 1818. Bianchi wrote for this lady the opera of “Inez de Castro.

” She is said to have played and sung at sight Mozart’s “Clemenza di Tito;”

her voice ranged from D to G in altissimo.

She indulged too much in ornament, but was especially celebrated for her “Soldier tired of War’s Alarms.

” John Braham, a Jew pencil-boy--so the musical _on dit_ goes--was brought up by a singer at the Duke’s Place Synagogue.

He made his début in 1787. He appeared first, in 1796, in Storace’s opera of “Mahmoud,” at Drury Lane.

The compass of his song, “Let Glory’s Clarion,” extended over seventeen notes.

He died in 1856. Storace, born in 1763, died in 1796. He was the son of an Italian double-bass player, was engaged by Linley to compose for Drury Lane, and for that theatre wrote the following operas:--“The Siege of Belgrade,” 1792: “Lodoiska,” 1794; and “The Iron Chest,” 1796. This brilliant young man wrote chiefly for Braham and Kelly.

Madame Storace made her début at Drury Lane, in 1789, in her brother’s comic opera of “The Haunted Tower.

” Bishop, who was born about 1780, produced his opera of “The Mysterious Bride” at Drury Lane in 1808. In 1809, the night preceding the fire, Bishop produced his first great success, “The Circassian Bride,” the score of which was burnt.

After being long at Covent Garden, Bishop, in 1826, produced his “Aladdin” at Drury Lane to compete with Weber’s “Oberon” at Covent Garden.

In 1827 he adapted Rossini’s “Turco in Italia;” and in 1830, for Drury Lane, he adapted Rossini’s “William Tell.

” Michael Kelly, born in 1762, made his first appearance at Drury Lane in 1787. In his jovial career Kelly composed “The Castle Spectre,” “Blue Beard” (the march in which is very pompously oriental and fine), “Of Age To-morrow,” “Deaf and Dumb,” etc. He also wrote many Italian, English, and French songs, and had a good tenor voice.

He became superintendent of music at the Drury Lane Theatre, and died in 1826. He was an agreeable man, and much esteemed by George IV.

Parkes accuses him of a want of knowledge of harmony, and of stealing from the Italians.

In May 1836 Madame Malibran (de Beriot) appeared at Drury Lane as Isolina in Balfe’s “Maid of Artois,” which was a great success.

At the close of the season she went abroad.

Returned in September, she sang at the Manchester Festival, and after a duet with Madame Caradori Allen, was taken ill, and died a few days after.

This gifted woman, the daughter of a Spanish Jew (an opera-singer), was born in 1808. To return to our last batch of actors.

James Wallack, born in 1792, began to be known about 1816, and in 1820 was principal tragedian at Drury Lane.

His Hamlet, Rolla, and Romeo were very manly and bearable.

He afterwards became stage-manager at Drury Lane, and was praised for his light comedy.

Charles Young, who played with Kean at Drury Lane, was a dignified but rather cold actor.

Booth appeared also with Kean in 1817, and again in 1820 with Wallack and Cooper.

Mrs. Mardyn (the supposed mistress of Lord Byron) appeared on the Drury Lane stage in 1815. She was boisterous, but so full of girlish gaiety and reckless wildness that she became for a short time the favourite of the town.

She failed, however, when she reappeared in 1833 in a tragic part.

Charming Mrs. Nisbett, “that peach of a woman,” as Douglas Jerrold used to call her, died in 1858, aged forty-five.

The daughter of a drunken Irish officer who took to the stage, she married an officer in the Life Guards in 1831; but on the death of her husband by an accident, she returned to her first love in 1832, and reappeared at Drury Lane.

Her great triumph was “The Love Chase,” which was produced at the Haymarket in 1837, and ran for nearly one hundred nights.

It was worth going a hundred miles to hear Mrs. Nisbett’s merry, ringing, silvery laugh.

Irish Johnstone, who died in 1828, is described by Hazlitt as acting at Drury Lane, “with his supple knees, his hat twisted round in his hand, his good-humoured laugh, his arched eyebrows, his insinuating leer, and his lubricated brogue curling round the ear like a well-oiled moustachio.

”[601] Oxberry quitted Drury Lane with Elliston in 1820. In 1821 he took the Craven’s Head Chop-house in Drury Lane, where he used to say to his guests, “We vocalise on a Friday, conversationalise on a Sunday, and chopise every day.

” His best characters were Leo Luminati, Slender, and Abel Day.

Emery surpassed him in Tyke, Little Knight, and Robin Roughhead.

Farren, who was born about 1787, made his début at Covent Garden in 1818. He was for some time at Drury Lane, and latterly manager of the Olympic.

In old men he took the place of Dowton.

His finest performance was Lord Ogleby, but in his prime he excelled also in Sir Peter Teazle, Sir Anthony Absolute, Sir Fretful Plagiary, and the Bailie Nicol Jarvie.

John Pritt Harley was the son of a silk-mercer, and originally a clerk in Chancery Lane.

He was born in 1786 or 1790. He made his début at the Lyceum in 1815, in “The Devil’s Bridge.

” His first appearance at Drury Lane was in 1815, as Lissardo in “The Wonder.

” In farce he was good-humoured, bustling, and droll; and he excelled in Caleb Quotem, Peter Fidget, Bottom, and many Shaksperean characters.

He died only a year or two ago, repeating, it is said, this line of one of his old parts: “I have an exposition of sleep come upon me.

” Miss Kelly, born in 1790, was at the Lyceum in 1808, and went from thence to Drury Lane.

She sang in operas, and was admirable in genteel comedy and domestic tragedy.

Her romps were scarcely inferior to Mrs. Jordan’s; her waiting-maids were equal to Mrs. Orger’s. Charles Lamb, writing in 1818, says of her-- “Your tears have passion in them, and a grace, A genuine freshness which our hearts avow;

Your smiles are winds whose ways we cannot trace, That vanish and return we know not how.

” Miss Kelly was twice shot at while acting.

In both cases the cruel assailants were rejected admirers.

In 1850 Mrs. Glover took her farewell benefit at Drury Lane; Farren and Madame Vestris taking parts in the performance--Mrs. Glover playing Mrs. Malaprop.

She was born in 1779, and had made her first appearance as Elvina in good Hannah More’s dull tragedy, at Covent Garden, in 1797. Beautiful in youth, Mrs. Glover had gracefully passed from sighing Juliets and maundering Elvinas into Mrs. Heidelbergs, Mrs. Candours, and the Nurse in “Romeo and Juliet.

” Robert Keeley, who was brought up a compositor, was born in Grange Court, Carey Street, in 1794. He acted at Drury Lane as early as 1819, and at the Adelphi as early as 1826 as Jemmy Green in “Tom and Jerry.

” In 1834 we find the critics ranking him below Liston and Reeve, but he was very popular in his representations of cowardly fear and stupid chuckling astonishment.

He left the stage for several years before his death.

Miss Helen Faucit, born in 1816, was the original heroine of Sir Bulwer Lytton’s and Mr. Browning’s plays.

Her Beatrice, Imogen, and Rosalind were admirable, and her Antigone was a great success.

She retired from the stage in 1851, when she married Mr. Theodore Martin, the accomplished translator of Horace and Catullus, and the joint author with Professor Aytoun of those admirable burlesque ballads of “Bon Gaultier.

” William Charles Macready, the son of a Dublin upholsterer, appeared in London first in 1816. Kean approved his Orestes, and he soon advanced to Rob Roy, Virginius, and Coriolanus.

He then removed to Drury Lane, and distinguished himself as Caius Gracchus and William Tell, in two of Mr. Sheridan Knowles’s plays.

He reappeared at Drury Lane in 1826. The critics said that he failed in Rolla and Hamlet, but excelled in Rob Roy, Coriolanus, and Richard.

He himself preferred his own Hamlet.

They complained that he had a burr in his enunciation, and a catching of the breath--that he was too fond of declamation and violent transitions;

others thought him too heavy and colloquial.

In 1826 he went to America, where the fatal riot of Forrest’s partisans occurred, and twenty-two men were killed.

His season closed at Drury Lane in 1843. His benefit took place in 1851, and he then retired from the stage to live the life of a quiet, useful country gentleman in the west of England.

He died in 1873, and lies buried at Kensal Green.

Mr. Charles Kean, struggling with a bad voice and a mean figure, had a hard fight for success, and won it only by the most dauntless perseverance.

Born in 1811, he appeared for the first time upon the boards as Norval, in 1827. After repeated failures in London and much success in the provinces and America, Mr. Kean accepted an engagement at Drury Lane in 1838--Mr. Bunn offering him £50 a night.

He succeeded in Hamlet, and was presented with a silver vase of the value of £200. In Richard and Sir Giles Overreach he also triumphed.

In 1843 Mr. Kean renewed his engagement with Mr. Bunn.

Before retiring from the stage and starting for Australia, Mr. and Mrs. Kean performed for many nights at Drury Lane.

Charles Kean died in 1868. Miss Ellen Tree first performed at Drury Lane as Violante in “The Wonder.

” She married Mr. C.

Kean in 1842, and aided him in those antiquarianly-correct spectacles that for a time rendered a scholarly, careful, but scarcely first-rate actor popular in the metropolis.

We have room in this brief and imperfect _résumé_ of theatrical history for only two pictures of Drury Lane.

One is in 1800, when George III.

was fired at by Hatfield as he entered the house to witness Cribber’s comedy of “She Would and She Would Not.

” When the Marquis of Salisbury would have drawn him away, the brave, obstinate king said--“Sir, you discompose me as well as yourself: I shall not stir one step.

” The queen and princesses were in tears all the evening, but George III.

sat calm and collected, staring through his single-barrel opera-glass.

In 1783 the king, queen, and Prince of Wales went to Drury Lane to see Mrs. Siddons play Isabella.

They sat under a dome of crimson velvet and gold.

The king wore a Quaker-coloured dress with gold buttons, while the handsome scapegrace prince was adorned in blue Genoa velvet.

Mr. Planché, the accomplished writer of extravaganzas and the _Somerset Herald_, brought out his burlesque of “Amoroso, King of Little Britain,” at Drury Lane in 1818. He afterwards wrote the libretto of “Maid Marian” for Mr. Bishop, and that of “Oberon” for Weber.

In 1828 his “Charles XII.

” was produced at Drury Lane.

On Mr. Falconer’s clever imitative experiments we have no room to dilate.

The “Peep o’ Day,” a piece which reproduced all the “Colleen Bawn” effects, was the best.

And now leaving the theatres for meaner places, we pass on to the district of the butchers.

Clare Market stands on a spot formerly called Clement’s Inn Fields, and was built by the Earl of Clare, who lived close by, in 1657. The family names, Denzil, Holles, etc. , are retained in the neighbouring streets.

This market became notorious in Pope’s time for the buffoonery, noisy impudence, and extravagances of Orator Henley, a sort of ecclesiastical outlaw of a not very religious age, who tried to make his impudence and conceit pass for genius.

This street-orator, the son of a Leicestershire vicar, was born in 1692. After going to St. John’s College, Cambridge, he returned home, kept a school, wrote a poem called “Esther,” and began a Universal Grammar in ten languages.

Heated by an itch for reforming, and tired of the country, or driven away, as some say, by a scandalous embarrassment, he hurried to London, and for a short time did duty at a chapel in Bedford Row.

During this time, under the Earl of Macclesfield’s patronage, he translated Pliny’s epistles, Vertot’s works, and Montfaucon’s Italian travels.

He then competed for a lecturership in Bloomsbury, but failed, the parishioners not disliking his language or his doctrine, but complaining that he threw himself about too much in the pulpit.

Now, “regular action” was one of Henley’s peculiar prides.

The rejection hurt his vanity and nearly drove him crazy.

Losing his temper, he rushed into the vestry-room.

“Blockheads!

” he roared, “are _you_ qualified to judge of the degree of action necessary for a preacher of God’s Word?

Were you able to read, or had got sufficient sense, you sorry knaves, to understand the renowned orator of antiquity, he would tell you almost the only requisite of a public speaker was ACTION, ACTION, ACTION.

But I despise and defy you: _provoco ad populum_; the public shall decide between us.

” He then hurried from the room, soon afterwards published his probationary discourse, and taking a room in Newport Market, started as quack divine and public lecturer.

But he first consulted the eccentric and heretical Whiston, whom Swift bantered so ruthlessly--Whiston being, like Henley, a Leicestershire man--as to whether he should incur any legal penalties by officiating as a separatist from the Church of England.

Whiston, himself an expelled professor, tried to dissuade the Orator from his wild project.

Disagreement and abuse followed, and the correspondence ended with the following final bomb-shell from the violent demagogue:-- “To Mr. WILLIAM WHISTON,

“Take notice that I give you warning not to enter my room in Newport Market, at your peril.

“JOHN HENLEY.

”[602] The Orator patronised divinity on Sundays, and secular subjects on Wednesdays and Fridays.

The admittance was one shilling.

He also published outrageous pamphlets and a weekly farrago called The _Hyp-Doctor_, intended to antidote _The Craftsman_, and for which pompous nonsense Sir Robert Walpole is said to have given him £100 a year.

He also attacked eminent persons, even Pope, from his pulpit.

Every Saturday an advertisement of the subject of his next week’s oration appeared in the _Daily Advertiser_, preceded by a sarcastic or libellous motto, and sometimes an offer that if any one at home or abroad could be found to surpass him, he would surrender his Oratory at once to his conqueror.

In 1729 Henley, growing perhaps more popular, removed to Clare Market, where the butchers became his warm partisans and served as his body-guard.

The following are two of his shameless advertisements:-- “At the Oratory in Newport Market, to-morrow, at half an hour after ten, the sermon will be on the Witch of Endor.

At half an hour after five, the theological lecture will be on the conversion and original of the Scottish nation and of the Picts and Caledonians, St. Andrew’s relics and panegyric, and the character and mission of the Apostles.

“On Wednesday, at six or near the matter, take your chance, will be a medley oration on the history, merits, and praise of confusion and of confounders, in the road and out of the way.

“On Friday will be that on Dr. Faustus and Fortunatus and conjuration.

After each the Chimes of the Times, Nos.

23 and 24. ” Very shortly afterwards he advertised from Clare Market:-- 1. “The postil will be on the turning of Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt.

2. The sermon will be on the necessary power and attractive force which religion gives the spirit of a man with God and good spirits.

2. “At five--1. The postil will be on this point:--In what language our Saviour will speak the last sentence to mankind.

3. “The lecture will be on Jesus Christ’s sitting at the right hand of God; where that is; the honours and lustre of his inauguration; the learning, criticism, and piety of that glorious article.

“The Monday’s orations will shortly be resumed.

On Wednesday the oration will be on the skits of the fashions, or a live gallery of family pictures in all ages; ruffs, muffs, puffs manifold; shoes, wedding-shoes, two-shoes, slip-shoes, heels, clocks, pantofles, buskins, pantaloons, garters, shoulder-knots, periwigs, head-dresses, modesties, tuckers, farthingales, corkins, minnikins, slammakins, ruffles, round-robins, fans, patches; dame, forsooth, madam, my lady, the wit and beauty of my granmum;

Winnifred, Joan, Bridget, compared with our Winny, Jenny, and Biddy: fine ladies and pretty gentlewomen; being a general view of the _beau monde_ from before Noah’s flood to the year ’29. On Friday will be something better than last Tuesday.

After each a bob at the times.

” This very year, 1729, the _Dunciad_ was published, and in it this Rabelais of the pulpit had, of course, his niche.

Pope had been accused of taking the bread out of people’s mouths.

He denies this, and asks if “Colley (Cibber) has not still his lord, and Henley his butchers;” and ends with these lines, which, however, had no effect, for Henley went on ranting for eighteen years longer-- “But where each science lifts its modern type, History her pot, Divinity his pipe;

While proud Philosophy repines to show, Dishonest sight!

his breeches rent below,-- Imbrown’d with native bronze, lo!

Henley stands, Tuning his voice and balancing his hands.

How fluent nonsense trickles from his tongue!

How sweet the periods, neither said nor sung!

Still break the benches, Henley, with thy strain, While Sherlock, Hare, and Gibson preach in vain.

O great restorer of the good old stage, Preacher at once and zany of the age!

O worthy thou of Egypt’s wise abodes!

A decent priest when monkeys were the gods.

But Fate with butchers placed thy priestly stall, Meek modern faith to murder, hack, and maul, And bade thee live to crown Britannia’s praise In Toland’s, Tindal’s, and in Woolston’s days.

”[603] In another place he says-- “Henley lay inspired beside a sink, And to mere mortals seemed a priest in drink.

” Pope often attacked Henley in the _Grub Street Journal_, and the Orator retaliated.

A year or two after the _Essay on Man_ was published, Henley (Dec.

1737) announced a lecture, “Whether Mr. Pope be a man of sense, in one argument--‘Whatever is is right.

’” If whatever is is right, Henley thought that nothing could be wrong; ergo, he himself was not a proper object of satire.

Henley’s pulpit was covered with velvet and gold lace, and over his altar was written, “The PRIMITIVE Eucharist.

” A contemporary journalist describes him entering his pulpit suddenly, like a harlequin, through a sort of trap-door at the back, and “at one large leap jumping into it and falling to work,” beating his notions into the butcher-audience simultaneously with his hands, arms, legs, and head.

In one of his arrogant puffs, he boasts that he has singly executed what “would sprain a dozen of modern doctors of the tribe of Issachar;” that no one dares to answer his challenges; that he can write, read, and study twelve hours a day and not feel the yoke; and write three dissertations a week without help, and put the Church in danger.

He struck medals for his tickets, with a star rising to the meridian upon them, and the vain superscription “Ad summa” (“To the heights”), and below, “Inveniam viam aut faciam” (“I will find a way or make one”).

When the Orator’s funds grew low, his audacity and impudence rose to their climax.

He once filled his chapel with shoemakers, whom he had attracted by advertising that he could teach a method of making shoes with wonderful celerity.

His secret consisted in cutting the tops off old boots.

His motto to this advertisement was “Omne majus continet in se minus” (“The greater includes the less”).

In 1745 Henley was cited before the Privy Council for having used seditious expressions in one of his lectures.

Herring, then Archbishop of York, had been arming his clergy, and urging every one to volunteer against the Pretender.

The Earl of Chesterfield, then Secretary of State, urged on Henley the impropriety of ridiculing such honest exertions at a time when rebellion actually raged in the very heart of the kingdom.

“I thought, my lord,” said Henley, “that there was no harm in cracking a joke on a _red herring_.

” During his examination, the restorer of ancient eloquence requested permission to sit, on account of a rheumatism that was generally supposed to be imaginary.

The earl tried to turn the outlaw divine into ridicule;

but Henley’s eccentric answers, odd gestures, hearty laughs, strong voice, magisterial air, and self-possessed face were a match for his somewhat heartless lordship.

Being cautioned about his disrespectful remarks on certain ministers, Henley answered gravely, “My lords, I must live.

” Lord Chesterfield replied, “I don’t see the necessity,” and the council laughed.

Upon this Henley, remembering that the joke was Voltaire’s, was somewhat irritated.

“That is a good thing, my lord,” he exclaimed, “but it has been said before.

” A few days after the Orator, being reprimanded and cautioned, was dismissed as an impudent but entertaining fellow.

[604] Dr. Herring whom the rogue ridiculed was a worthy man, who in 1747, on the death of Potter, became Archbishop of Canterbury, and died in 1757. Swift hated Herring for condemning the “Beggars’ Opera” in a sermon at Lincoln’s Inn, and wrote accordingly: “The ‘Beggars’ Opera’ will probably do more good than a thousand sermons of so stupid, so injudicious, and so prostitute a divine.

”[605] In 1748 Dr. Cobden, the Court chaplain, an odd but worthy man, incurred the resentment of King George II.

by preaching before him a sermon entitled “A Persuasive to Chastity”--a virtue not popular then at St. James’s. He resigned his post in 1752. The text of this obnoxious sermon was, “Take away the wicked from before the king.

” Henley’s next Saturday’s motto was-- “Away with the wicked before the king, Away with the wicked behind him;

His throne it will bless With righteousness, And we shall know where to find him.

” If any of the Orator’s old Bloomsbury friends ever caught his eye among the audience, he would gratify his vanity and rankling resentment by a pause.

He would then say, “You see, sir, all mankind are not exactly of your opinion; there are, you perceive, a few sensible persons in the world who consider me as not totally unqualified for the office I have undertaken.

” His abashed adversaries, hot and confused, and with all eyes turned on them, would retreat precipitately, and sometimes were pushed out of the room by Henley’s violent butchers.

The Orator figures in two caricatures, attributed, as Mr. Steevens thinks, wrongly to Hogarth.

In one he is christening a child; in another he is on a scaffold with a monkey by his side.

A parson takes the money at the door, while a butcher is porter.

Modesty is in a cloud, Folly in a coach, and there is a gibbet prepared for poor Merit.

Henley, who latterly grew coarse, brutal, and drunken, died October 14, 1756. The _Gentleman’s Magazine_ merely announces his death thus:--“Rev. Orator Henley, aged 64. ” “Nollekens” Smith says that he died mad.

It is somewhat uncertain where his Oratory stood: some say in Duke Street;

others, in the market.

It was probably in Davenant’s old theatre, at the Tennis Court in Vere Street.

[606] The beginning of one of this buffoon’s ribald sermons has been preserved, and is worth quoting to prove the miserable claptrap with which he amused his rude audience.

The text is taken from Jeremiah xvi.

16, “I will send for many fishers, saith the Lord, and they shall fish them; and after that I will send many hunters, and they shall hunt.

” “The former part of the text seems, as Scripture is written for our admonition, on whom the ends of the world are come (an end of all we have in the world), to relate to the _Dutch_, who are to be fished by us according to Act of Parliament; for the word ‘herrings’ in the Act has a figurative as well as a literal sense, and by a metaphor means Dutchmen, who are the greatest stealers of herrings in the world; so that the drift of the statute is, that we are to fish for Dutchmen, and catch them, either by nets or fishing-rods in return for their repeated catching of Englishmen, then transport them in some of Jonathan Forward’s close lighters and sell them in the West Indies, to repair the loss which our South Sea Company endure by the Spaniards denying them the assiento, or sale of negroes.

”[607] Among other wild sermons of Henley, we find discourses on “The Tears of Magdalen,” “St. Paul’s Cloak,” and “The Last Wills of the Patriarchs.

” He left behind him 600 MSS.

, which he valued at one guinea a-piece, and 150 volumes of commonplaces and other scholarly memoranda.

They were sold for less than £100. They had been written with great care.

When Henley was once accused that he _did all_ for lucre, he retorted “that some do nothing for it.

” He once filled his room by advertising an oration on marriage.

When he got into his pulpit he shook his head at the ladies, and said “he was afraid they oftener came to church to get husbands than to hear the preacher.

” On one occasion two Oxonians whom he challenged came followed by such a strong party that the butchers were overawed, and Henley silently slunk away by a door behind the rostrum.

[608] There are still popular preachers in London as greedy of praise and as basely eager for applause as Orator Henley.

Equally great buffoons, and men equally low in moral tone, still fill some pulpits, and point the way to a path they may never themselves take.

To such unhappy self-deceivers we can advise no better cure than a moonlight walk in Clare Market in search of the ghost of Orator Henley.

There was in Hogarth’s time an artists’ club at the Bull’s Head, Clare Market.

Boitard etched some of the characters.

Hogarth, Jack Laguerre, Colley Cibber, Denis the critic (?

), Boitard, Spiller the comedian, and George Lambert, were members.

Laguerre gave Spiller’s portrait to the landlord, and drew a caricature procession of his “chums.

” The inn was afterwards called the “Spiller’s Head.

” One of the wags of the club wrote an epitaph on Spiller, beginning-- “The butchers’ wives fall in hysteric fits, For sure as they’re alive, poor Spiller’s dead;

But, thanks to Jack Laguerre, we’ve got his head.

* * * * * He was an inoffensive, merry fellow, When sober hipped, blithe as a bird when mellow.

”[609] The Bull’s Head Tavern in Clare Market, the same place in which Hogarth’s club was held, had previously been the favourite resort of that illustrious Jacobite, Dr. Radcliffe, who is said to have killed two queens.

Swift did not like this overbearing, ignorant, and surly humorist, who, however, rejoiced in doing good, and left a vast sum of money to the University of Oxford.

When Bathurst, the head of Trinity College, asked Radcliffe where his library was, he pointed to a few vials, a skeleton, and a herbal, and replied, “There is Radcliffe’s library.

”[610] [Illustration: DRURY LANE THEATRE, 1806. ] Mrs. Bracegirdle, that excellent and virtuous actress, used to be in the habit (says Tony Ashton) of frequently going into Clare market and giving money to the poor unemployed basketwomen, insomuch that she could not pass that neighbourhood without thankful acclamations from people of all degrees.

In 1846 there were in and about Clare Market, about 26 butchers who slaughtered from 350 to 400 sheep weekly in the stalls and cellars.

The number killed was from 50 to 60 weekly--but in winter sometimes as many as 200. But the butchers’ market has now become almost a thing of the past.

Joe Miller formerly lay buried in a graveyard on the south side of Portugal Street, but the graveyard is now turned to other purposes.

At the corner of Portugal Street and Lincoln’s Inn Fields is the “Black Jack” Inn, a hostelry whose name is connected with some of Jack Sheppard’s feats.

[Illustration: OLD ST. GILES’S--CHURCH LANE AND DYOT STREET, 1869.

] CHAPTER XIII.