Part 51

During the Christmas of 1810 or 1811, Mr. T. P. Cooke was a member of the Theatre Royal, Dublin, which could boast of a company including the names of Miss O'Neil, afterwards Lady Beecher, then in her teens; Miss Walstein, Messrs. Conway, Farren, and others of histrionic fame. Sir Walter Scott's Lady of the Lake had been published on the 10th of May, 1810, and the critics of the day had pronounced it to be "the most interesting, romantic, picturesque, and graceful" of the author's poems. Managers were anxious to produce a version of the Lady of the Lake upon the stage, and no one was more prompt in bringing one forward than the lessee of the Theatre Royal, Dublin. The cast was powerful. Misses O'Neil and Walstein were the representatives of the chieftain's daughter, Ellen Douglas, and the crazed and captive lowland maid, Blanche of Devon; Malcolm Græme was well acted; Conway looked the Knight of Snowdon, James Fitzjames, to the life; and T. P. Cooke appeared to the greatest advantage as Roderick Vick Alpine Roderick Dhu. Nothing could exceed the beauty of the scenery; and the drama created a furore among the warm-hearted Emeralders. As the manager acted upon the principle of not "keeping more cats than could kill mice," the services of some of his dramatic performers were pressed into afterpieces; and, as the pantomime of Harlequin and Mother Goose had made a great sensation in London, it was brought out in the capital of the sister isle--T. P. Cooke doffing his picturesque Highland costume for that of Squire Bugle, afterwards Clown. No one that had seen the noble bearing of Vick Alpine in the mountain pass, exclaiming:--

"These are Clan-Alpine's warriors true; And, Saxon, I am Roderick Dhu,"

would have recognized the same being when equipped in the loose hunting-dress of the Squire or the grotesque garb of the Clown. The pantomime went off well, and, although T. P. Cooke wanted the fun of Grimaldi, he, by the aid of youth and great agility, bustled through the part most satisfactorily.

At the termination of the performance, which had been honoured by the presence of the Lord-Lieutenant, Charles, fourth Duke of Richmond, the Duchess, and her then young and numerous family, the Duke was persuaded by two of his sons, Lords William and Frederick--then Westminster boys--to go behind the scenes to look at the wonderful goose. The manager, wax-candles in hand, after the most approved manner of receiving illustrious guests, conducted the Duke, his two sons, and a young daughter to the stage and green-room, and the pantomimic tricks were duly displayed by the attentive property-man, who explained to the young noblemen the mysteries of the world behind the curtain: how the transformation-scene was managed; how the sprites descended and ascended through the "traps;" how the nimble Harlequin, the active Clown, and the "slippered Pantaloon" were caught in blankets after their wonderful leaps through clock-dials, shop-windows, picture-frames, and looking-glasses; how the smallest of boys was introduced into a sham goose's skin; how a few daubs of paint, some gold and silver leaf, and green tinsel, produced the splendid fairy scene; how some spangles sewn on a coarse parti-coloured suit made Harlequin appear glittering like gold; how a white calico garb, with a few quaint red and blue devices, some chalk and red paint, could change the "human face divine" to that of a mask. After inspecting everything worthy of note behind the scenes, the Duke and his family proceeded to their carriage, when, at the entrance to the green-room, they met the Clown, who had remained behind to arrange some stage-business with the Harlequin. "I forget his name," said the Duke, who, although he patronized the drama, did not take especial interest in the performance. "Cooke," responded the manager. "I congratulate you, Mr. Cooke," said his Grace. "I've seen Grimaldi in the part, and am delighted with your performance." Cooke bowed his acknowledgments. "Pray," continued the Lord-Lieutenant, "is Mr. T. P. Cooke, who looked so well and acted Roderick Vick Alpine with such spirit, any relation of yours?"--"A very near one," responded the actor. "He stands before you; for, Saxon, I am Roderick Dhu!" The Duke smiled, shook hands with him, declaring he had never witnessed such a wonderful metamorphose.

"Romeo and Juliet" in America.

Miss Fanny Kemble, in her clever record of her experiences in the United States, relates the following, which occurred in one of her provincial engagements. The play was Romeo and Juliet. "My Romeo," says Miss Kemble, "had gotten on a pair of trunk-breeches, which looked as if he had borrowed them of some worthy Dutchman a hundred years ago. Had he worn them in New York, I could have understood it as a compliment to the ancestry of that good city; but here to adopt such a costume in Romeo was perfectly unaccountable. They were of a most unhappy choice of colour, too--dull, heavy-looking blue cloth, and offensive crimson satin, all bepuckered, and beplaited, and bepuffed, till the young man looked like a magical figure growing out of a monstrous, strange-coloured melon, beneath which descended his unfortunate legs, thrust into a pair of red slippers, for all the world like Grimaldi's legs en costume for Clown. The play went off pretty smoothly, except that they broke one man's collar-bone and nearly dislocated a woman's shoulder, by flinging the scenery about. My bed was not made in time, and when the scene drew, half-a-dozen carpenters, in patched trousers and tattered shirt-sleeves, were discovered smoothing down my pillows and adjusting my draperies. The last scene is too good not to be given verbatim:--

"Romeo. Rise, rise, my Juliet, And from this cave of death, this house of horror, Quick let me snatch thee to thy Romeo's arms."

Here he pounced upon me, plucked me up in his arms like an uncomfortable bundle, and staggered down the stage with me.

"Juliet (aside). Oh! you've got me up horribly! That'll never do. Do let me down, pray let me down.

Romeo. There, breathe a vital spirit on thy lips, And call thee back, my soul, to life and love.

Juliet (aside). Pray put me down; you'll certainly throw me down, if you don't set me on the ground directly."

In the midst of "Cruel, cursed fate," his dagger fell out of his dress; I, embracing him tenderly, crammed it back again, because I knew I should want it again in the end.

"Romeo. Tear not our heart-strings thus! They crack! they break! Juliet! Juliet!

Juliet (to Corpse). Am I smothering you?

Corpse (to Juliet). Not at all. Could you be so kind, do you think, as to put my wig on again for me? It has fallen off.

Juliet (to Corpse). I'm afraid I can't; but I'll throw my muslin veil over it. You've broken the phial, haven't you?

Juliet (to Corpse). Where's your dagger?

Corpse (to Juliet). 'Pon my soul, I don't know."

The Mulberries, a Shakspearian Club.

At the thirty-fourth Anniversary of the Shakspeare Club, at Stratford-on-Avon, on April 23rd, 1858, the President, Mr. Buckstone, of the Haymarket Theatre, related, with much humour, the following interesting account of the above Shakspearian Club:--

"On emerging from boyhood, and while yet a young actor, I was one of the first members of a Shakspearian club, called The Mulberries. It was not then a very prominent one, as its meetings were held at a certain house of entertainment in Vinegar Yard, Drury Lane. The club assembled there once a week; they dined together on Shakespeare's birthday; and in the mulberry season there was another dinner and a mulberry feast, at which the chairman sat enthroned under a canopy of mulberry branches, with the fruit on them; Shakspearian songs were sung; members read original papers or poems relating only to Shakspeare; and as many artists belonged to this club, they exhibited sketches of some event connected with our poet's life; and some had the honour of submitting a paper to be read, called 'Shakespeare's Drinking-bout,' an imaginary story, illustrating the traditionary event, when the chivalry of Stratford went forth to carouse with

"Piping Pebworth, dancing Marston, Haunted Hilborough, hungry Grafton, Dudging Exhall, papist Wicksford, Beggarly Broom, and drunken Bidford."

All these papers and pictures were collected together in a book, called Mulberry Leaves; and you will believe me, that in spite of our lowly place of meeting, the club was not intellectually insignificant, when amongst its members, then in their youth, were Douglas Jerrold, Laman Blanchard, the Landseers (Charles and Thomas), Frank Stone, Cattermole, Robert Keeley, Kenny Meadows, and subsequently, though at another and more important place of meeting, Macready, Talfourd (the judge), Charles Dickens, John Forster, and many other celebrities. You will very naturally wish to know what became of this club. Death thinned the number of its members; important pursuits in life took some one way and some another; and, after twenty years of much enjoyment, the club ceased to exist, and the Mulberry Leaves disappeared, no one ever knew whither.

From Mr. Blanchard Jerrold's Life of his Father we learn that William Elton, the Shakspearian actor, was a member of the Mulberries, as were also William Godwin, and Edward Chatfield the artist. The contributions fell into Mr. Elton's hands, and are now in the possession of his family. The leaves were to have been published; but the club dead, it was nobody's business to see them through the press, and to this hour they remain in manuscript. Of the club itself it is said: "Respectability killed it. Sumptuous quarters were sought; Shakspeare was to be admired in a most elegant manner--to be edited specially for the club by the author of The Book of Etiquette. But the new atmosphere had not the vigour of the old, and so, after a long struggle, all the Mulberries fell from the old tree, and now it is a green memory only to a few old members. Douglas Jerrold always turned fondly to these Shakspearian days, and he loved to sing the old song he wrote for the Mulberries, in that soft, sweet voice which all his friends remember:

"And thus our moral food Doth Shakspeare leaven still, Enriching all the good. And less'ning all the ill;-- Thus, by his bounty, shed Like balm from angel's wing, Though winter scathe our head, Our spirits dance with spring."

Colley Cibber's Daughter.

This unfortunate person was the youngest child of Colley Cibber, and married a singer named Charke: there seems to have been a touch of insanity, certainly there was no power of self-control, in this poor woman. From her childhood she had been wild, wayward, and rebellious; self-taught, as a boy might be, and with nothing feminine in her character or pursuits. With self-assertion, too, she was weak enough to be won by a knave with a sweet voice, whose cruel treatment drove his intractable wife to the stage, where she failed to profit by her fine opportunities. Mrs. Charke loved to play male characters; and of the many, that of Plume was her favourite. At the Haymarket Theatre, in 1745, she played Captain Macheath, and other masculine parts, before she attempted to pass herself off upon the world, or hide herself from it, as a man.

Dr. Doran, in his amusing book, Their Majesties' Servants, writing of the year 1757, that of Colley Cibber's death says: "While the body of the poet Laureate was being carried to Westminster Abbey, there was up away in a hut in then desolate Clerkenwell, and starving, Colley's only daughter, Charlotte Charke. Seven-and-twenty years before, she had just come upon the stage, after a stormy girlhood; and she had a mania for appearing in male characters on, and in male attire off, the stage. By some terrible offence she forfeited the recognition of her father, who was otherwise of a benevolent disposition; and friendless, she fought a series of battles with the world, and came off in all more and more damaged. She starved with strollers, failed as a grocer in Long Acre, became bankrupt as a puppet-show proprietor in James Street, Haymarket; re-married, became a widow a second time, was plunged into deeper ruin, thrown into prison for debt, and released only by the subscriptions of the lowest, but not least charitable, sisterhood of Drury Lane. Assuming male attire, she hung about the theatres for casual hire, went on tramp with itinerants, hungered daily, and was weekly cheated, but yet kept up such an appearance that an heiress fell in love with her, who was reduced to despair when Charlotte Charke revealed her story and abandoned the place. Her next post was that of a valet to an Irish Lord; forfeiting which she and her child became sausage-makers, but could not obtain a living; and then Charlotte Charke cried, 'Coming, coming, sir,' as a waiter at the King's Head Tavern, Marylebone. Thence she was drawn by an offer to make her manager of a company of strolling players, with whom she enjoyed more appetite than means to appease it. She endured sharp distress again and again; but was relieved by an uncle, who furnished her with funds, with which she opened a tavern in Drury Lane, where, after a brief career of success, she again became bankrupt. To the regular stage she once more returned, under her brother, Theophilus, at the Haymarket: but the Lord Chamberlain closed the house, and Charlotte Charke took to working the wires of Russell's famous puppets in the Great Room, still existing in Brewer Street. There was a gleam of good fortune for her, but it soon faded away; and then for nine wretched years this clever but most wretched of women struggled frantically for bare existence, amongst the most wretched of strollers, with whom she endured unmitigated misery. And yet, Cibber's erring and hapless daughter contrived to reach London, where, in 1755, she published her remarkable autobiography, the details of which make the heart ache, in spite of the small sympathy of the reader for this half-mad creature. On the profits of this book, she was enabled to open, as landlord, a tavern at Islington; but of course, ruin ensued; and in a hut, amid the cinder-heaps and worse refuse, in the desolate fields, she found a refuge, and even wrote a novel on a pair of bellows in her lap, by way of desk. Here she lived with a squalid hand-maiden, a cat, dog, magpie, and monkey. Humbled, disconsolate, abandoned, she readily accepted from a publisher who visited her 10l. for her manuscript. This was at the close of the year 1755, and I do not meet with her again till 1759, two years after her father's death, when she played Marplot in The Busy Body, for her own benefit at the Haymarket, with this advertisement: 'As I am entirely dependent on chance for a subsistence, and desirous of getting into business, I humbly hope the town will favour me on the occasion, which, added to the rest of their indulgences, will be ever gratefully acknowledged by their truly obliged and obedient servant, Charlotte Charke.' She died on the 6th of April, 1760."