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CHAPTER XV
RYAN, RICH, O'BRIEN

Perhaps the last of the players who had been contemporary with Betterton, died when Richard Ryan⁸⁷ departed this life, at his house in Crown Court, Westminster, in August 1760. Westminster claims him as born within the Abbey precincts, Paul's School for a pupil, and a worthy old Irish tailor for a son, of whom he was proud. Garrick confessed that Ryan's Richard was the one which, in its general features, he took as the model of his own, and Addison especially selected him to play Marcus in his "Cato." He was but a mere boy when he first appeared with Betterton (who was playing Macbeth) as Seyton, wearing a full-bottomed wig, which would have covered two such heads as his. Between this inconvenience, and awe at seeing himself in presence of the greatest of English actors, the embarrassed boy hesitated, but the generous old actor encouraged him by a look, and young Ryan became a regularly engaged actor.

From first to last he continued to play young parts, and his Colonel Standard, in 1757, was as full of the spirit which defies age, as his Marcus, in 1713, was replete with the spirit which knows nothing of age. Easy in action, strong, but harsh of voice, careless in costume and carriage, but always earnest in his acting, he obtained and kept a place at the head of actors of the second rank, which exposed him to no ill feeling on the part of the few players who were his superiors.

Quin loved him like a brother; and it is singular that there was blood on the hands of both actors. Quin's sword despatched aggressive Bowen and angry Williams to Hades; and Ryan, put on his defence, slew one of the vapouring ruffians of the day, to the quiet satisfaction of all decent persons.

On June 20, 1718, the summer season at the Lincoln's Inn Fields house had commenced with "Tartuffe." After the play, Ryan was supping at the Sun, in Long Acre; he had taken off his sword, placed it in the window, and was thinking of no harm to any one, when he saw standing before him, flushed with drink, weapon in hand, and all savagely athirst for a quarrel and a victim, one Kelly, whose pastime it was to draw upon strangers in coffee-houses, force them to combat, and send them home more or less marred in face or mutilated in body. Kelly stood there, not only daring Ryan, but making passes at him, which meant deadly mischief. The young actor took his sword from the window, drew it from the scabbard, and passing it through the bully's body, stretched him on the floor, with the life-blood welling from the wound. The act was so clearly one induced by self-protection, that Ryan was called to no serious account for it.

He had like to have fared worse on that later occasion, when, after playing Scipio, in "Sophonisba," he was passing home down Great Queen Street, and a pistol-shot was fired at him by one of three or four footpads, another of whom seized his sword. In this fray his jaw was shattered. "Friend, you have killed me; but I forgive you," said Ryan, who was picked up by the watch, and committed to surgical hands, from which he issued, after long suffering, something the worse for this serious incident in his life.

Ryan was the "esteemed Ryan" of numerous patrons, and when a benefit was awarded him, while he yet lay groaning on his couch, Royalty was there to honour it, and an audience in large numbers, the receipts from whom were increased by the golden guerdons forwarded to the sufferer from absent sympathisers. Perfect recovery he never reached, but he could still portray the fury of Orestes, the feeling of Edgar, the sensibility of Lord Townley, the grief and anger of Macduff, the villainy of Iago, the subtilty of Mosca, the tipsyness of Cassio,⁸⁸ the spirit of young Harry, the airiness of Captain Plume, and the characteristics of many other parts, with great effect, in spite of increasing age, some infirmities, and a few defects and oddities.

I have already noticed how Quin, in his old days, declined any longer to play annually for Ryan's benefit, but offered him the £1000 sterling Quin had bequeathed to him in his will. Brave old actor! Dr. Herring, who was then Archbishop of Canterbury, had not in him a truer spirit of practical benevolence than James Quin manifested in this act to Dick Ryan,⁸⁹– who died in 1760.

In the following year, died Rich, the father of Harlequins, in England. He has never been excelled by any of his sons, however agile the latter may have been. Rich (or Lun, as he called himself) was agile, too, but he possessed every other qualification; and his mute Harlequin was eloquent in every gesture. He made no motion, by head, hand, or foot, but something thereby was expressed intelligibly. Feeling, too, was pre-eminent with this expression; and he rendered the scene of a separation from Columbine as graceful, to use the words of Davies, as it was affecting. Not only was he thus skilled himself, but he taught others to make of silent but expressive action the interpreter of the mind; Hippisley, Nivelon, La Guerre, Arthur, and Lalauze, are enumerated by Davies, as owing their mimic power to the instructions given to them by Rich, whose action was in as strict accordance with the sentiment he had to demonstrate, as that of Garrick himself. The latter, in his prologue to "Harlequin's Invasion," in which Garrick introduced a speaking Harlequin, thus alluded to the then defunct hero: —

 
"But why a speaking Harlequin? 'tis wrong,
The wits will say, to give the fool a tongue.
When Lun appeared, with matchless art and whim,
He gave the pow'r of speech to ev'ry limb.
Tho' mask'd and mute, convey'd his quick intent,
And told, in frolic gestures, all he meant.
But now the motley coat, and sword of wood,
Require a tongue, to make them understood."
 

To introduce the speaking Harlequin was, however, only to restore to speech one of the most loquacious fellows who ever wore motley. For, as Colman had it, poor Harlequin —

 
"Once spoke,
And France and Italy admired each joke.
But Roundhead England, all things who curtails,
Who cuts off monarchs' heads and horses' tails,
By malice led, by rage and envy stung,
Put in his mouth a gag, and tied his tongue."
 

Rich thought himself so much a better actor than mimic, that he was ten times happier when giving foolish instruction to a novice training for Hamlet, than when he was marshalling his corps of pantomimists, and admirably teaching them to say everything, and yet be silent.

A man like John Rich, of course, had his little jealousies. He was angry when the combination of Garrick and Quin filled his house and treasury, and when the season of 1746-47 yielded him a profit of nearly £9000, to which his wand of Harlequin had contributed little or nothing. He was wont to look at the packed audience, through a hole in the green curtain, and then murmur, "Ah! you are there, are you? much good may it do you!"

The avidity of the old public, however, to witness harlequinades, was even more remarkable than that of the present day. Then, pantomimes went through, not merely a part of one, but several seasons. Theobald's "Harlequin Sorcerer," which had often filled Lincoln's Inn Fields, was even more attractive at Covent Garden, above a quarter of a century later. The company assembled at mid-day, and sometimes broke the doors open, unless they were opened to them, by three o'clock, and so took the house by storm. Those who could not gain admittance went over to Drury Lane, but Garrick found them without heart for tragedy; the grown-up masters and misses had been deprived of their puppet show and rattle, and were sulky accordingly.

Booth, Wilks, and Cibber came under the somewhat dirty censure of Hogarth, who ridiculed them in a well-known unsavoury engraving for producing Harlequin Jack Sheppard. Booth tolerated these harlequinades, and Garrick acted in like fashion; remarking – "If you won't come to Lear and Hamlet, I must give you Harlequin;" and he perhaps gave them the best the stage ever had, save Rich, in Woodward, who had worn the party-coloured jacket before, but who, in "Queen Mab," and in speaking Harlequins, exhibited an ability, the effect of which is illustrated in a contemporary print, wherein you see all the great actors of the day in one scale, and Harlequin Woodward in the other, who makes them kick the beam.

From the very first, however, the poets made protest against the invasion of the stage by foreign dancers and home-born Harlequins; and Cibber quotes Rowe as complaining, or asking, in a prologue to one of his first plays —

 
"Must Shakspeare, Fletcher, and laborious Ben,
Be left for Scaramouch and Harlequin?"
 

One of the most curious features connected with pantomime, and which certainly dignified Harlequin, was the assumption of that character by such sterling actors as Woodward and O'Brien. The London Magazine, a century ago, wished "that so eminent an actor as Woodward might never be permitted to put on the fool's coat again." Rich thought himself, indeed, as good an actor as they; but, though the son of a gentleman, he was illiterate: sometimes said turbot for turban; talked of larning Wilkinson to be a player; told Signora Spiletta always to lay her emphasis "on the adjutant;" and said to Tate, "You should see me play Richard!"

Nevertheless John Rich was supreme in his own particular line. His "catching the butterfly," and his "statue scene" were salient portions of his Harlequin, which people went to see because of their excellence. Still finer was that in which Harlequin is hatched from the egg by the heat of the sun. Jackson calls it a masterpiece in dumb show; "from the first chipping of the egg, his receiving of motion, his feeling of the ground, his standing upright, to his quick harlequin trip round the empty shell, through the whole progression every limb had its tongue, and every motion a voice which spoke with most miraculous organ to the understandings and sensations of the observers."

There was this difference between Rich and Garrick in their conduct towards authors. Garrick would decline with courteous commendation a manuscript he had never looked at; but Rich kept a drawer full of such copy, and when an author demanded his piece, Rich would tell him to take which he liked best, he would probably find it better than his own.

Rich's good-humour seldom failed him, though he was warm of temper; he was less witty than Foote, but he was of a better nature. One night, during his proprietorship of Covent Garden, a man, rushing down the gallery, fell over into the pit. He was nearly killed; but Rich paid all the medical and other expenses, and the poor fellow, when his broken bones were whole again, called on the manager and expressed his gratitude for the kindness shown to him. "Well, sir," said Rich, "you must never think of coming into the pit, in that manner, again!" and, to prevent it, Rich gave him a free admission.

We should altogether misjudge Rich if we looked on him as the founder of the modern, miserable, purposeless, storyless harlequinade. This sort of entertainment deteriorated soon after his death. In 1782, Walpole saw the pantomime of "Robinson Crusoe," and his comment is, "how unlike the pantomimes of Rich, which are full of wit, and coherent, and carried on a story." Rich left Covent Garden to his son-in-law, Beard, the vocalist. Beard's first wife was Lady Henrietta Herbert, daughter of the Earl of Waldegrave, and this match was a happy one, though Lord Wharncliffe incorrectly recorded of Beard that he was "a man of indifferent character." Beard held Covent Garden, for himself and second wife, under a not unpleasant restriction. Rich directed that the property should be sold, whenever £60,000 could be got for it; and for that handsome sum the house was ultimately made over to Colman, Harris, and their partners.

Beard and Lady Herbert remind me of another mésalliance. In the studio of Catherine Read, the portrait painter, a good deal of love-making was carried on. Here is a February morning of 1764, and a young couple, all the handsomer for a bracing walk through the eager and nipping air, are conversing confidentially in one corner of the room while discreet Miss Read plies her work in another. The lady is Lady Susan Fox Strangways; the gentleman owns a villa at Dunstable, and is one of the airiest actors of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, Mr. O'Brien.

Subsequently, the lady's father, Stephen Fox, the first Earl of Ilchester, opening his post-bag, hands a letter to Lady Susan from Lady Sarah Bunbury, his daughter's dearest friend. The letter was really from O'Brien, who imitated Lady Sarah's writing. The intrigue was discovered, and the father's wrath was so overwhelming, that Lady Susan promised that the affair should proceed no further, if she were only permitted to take a last farewell. She waited a few days for this final meeting, till she became of age, when, released from lock and key, she went on foot, escorted by a lacquey, to breakfast with Lady Sarah, and to call on Miss Read by the way. In the street, she sent the footman back, for a particular cap in which she was to be painted; a few moments after he was out of sight, a couple of chairmen were carrying her to Covent Garden Church, where Mr. O'Brien was waiting for her, and, the wedding ceremony being performed, the happy and audacious pair posted down to the bridegroom's villa at Dunstable. Only the night before he had played 'Squire Richard, in the "Provoked Husband."

This ended O'Brien's brief theatrical career of about eight years;⁹⁰ and therewith departed from the stage the most powerful rival Woodward ever encountered upon it; the original actor of Young Clackit, in the "Guardian;" Lovel, in "High Life Below Stairs;" Lord Trinket, in the "Jealous Wife;" Beverley, in "All in the Wrong;" Colonel Tamper, in the "Deuce is in Him," &c. In one character O'Brien must have exhibited extraordinary humour – Sir Andrew Aguecheek. He was playing it on the 19th of October 1763, a period when it was the custom to have two sentinels posted on either side of the stage, and one of these fellows was so overcome by Sir Andrew's comicality, that he laughed till he fell, to the infinite amusement of all who witnessed the circumstance.

O'Brien's marriage caused a sensation in the fashionable world, and brought sorrow to some parties. On April the 9th, 1764, Walpole writes to Mann: – "A melancholy affair has happened to Lord Ilchester; his eldest daughter, Lady Susan (Strangways), a very pleasing girl, though not handsome, married herself, two days ago, at Covent Garden Church, to O'Brien, a handsome young actor. Lord Ilchester doated on her, and was the most indulgent of fathers. 'Tis a cruel blow." Three days later, Walpole writes to Lord Hereford, "Poor Lady Susan O'Brien is in the most deplorable situation, for her Adonis is a Roman Catholic, and cannot be provided for out of his calling." Sir Francis Delaval, one of the rich amateur actors of his time, touched by her calamity, "made her a present of – what do you think?" asks Horace, "of a rich gold stuff! The delightful charity! O'Brien comforts himself, and says it will make a shining passage in his little history!"

As O'Brien had not the means whereby to live without acting, his wife's noble family thought it would be no disgrace, to hide the disgrace which had fallen upon it, by providing for the young couple – at the public expense. Accordingly, a grant of lands in America was procured for them, and thither they went. On Christmas Day 1764, Charles Fox writes of his cousin, to Sir George Macartney: – "We have heard from Lady Susan since her arrival at New York. I do not think they will make much of their lands, and I fear it will be impossible to get O'Brien a place." When Charles Fox wrote this he was about fifteen, and looked as handsome as he does in the famous picture at Holland House, which contains also the portraits of Lady Susan, who married the actor, and Lady Sarah Lennox (Bunbury), who did not marry the king.

The Board of Ordnance ultimately provided for O'Brien, and the player and his aristocratic wife were away between seven and eight heavy years beyond the Atlantic. Weary of their banishment they returned to England, without leave asked of the Board. O'Brien was not the only officer in England without leave. In the Last Journals of Horace Walpole, which I edited in 1858, the Journalist says: – "General Conway was labouring to reform that department (the Board of Ordnance), and had ordered all the officers under it to repair to their posts, those in America particularly, who had abandoned their duty. O'Brien received orders, among the rest, to return, but he refused. Conway declared they would dismiss him. Lord and Lady Holland interposed; but Conway was firm, and he turned out O'Brien."

Lord Ilchester, albeit ashamed of his son-in-law, was not ashamed to write to Lord North, soliciting a place for O'Brien; but Lord North did not even reply to the letter. It is just possible that the player was a proximate cause of Fox's withdrawal from the administration, and his becoming in permanent opposition to the Court. Fox had spoken against Lord North, and the latter endeavoured to conciliate him. "He weakly and timidly called him aside, and asked him if he had seen Maclean, who had got the post which had been asked for O'Brien, and who would make O'Brien his deputy; but this Fox received with contempt."

Let me remark here, that in "blood," young O'Brien was the equal of Lady Susan. In the days of Charles I., Stephen Fox, her ancestor, was bailiff to Sir Edward Nicolas, the king's secretary, at Winterbourne, Wilts; where Stephen (not yet Sir Stephen) occasionally officiated as clerk of the parish. At that time the direct ancestor of our lucky actor was a member of that ancient family of those O'Briens, who generally contrived to take opposite sides in every quarrel. William O'Brien's grandfather was faithful to the cause of James II., and on the capitulation of Limerick, made his way to France, where he served in the Irish brigade, under O'Brien, Viscount Clare. That brigade, many of whose members "took to the road" in France, in order to support themselves, turned out first-rate fencing-masters, who lived by teaching. Such was the father of our O'Brien, and such was the family history of the actor; and surely the descendant of King Brien of the Tributes was of as good blood as the daughter of a house, the first worthy, that is to say unfortunate, member, of which was parish clerk in a Wiltshire village.

O'Brien failing to obtain a post, or to enjoy the laborious luxury of a sinecure, turned his attention to writing for the stage, and on the night of December 8, 1772, he produced two pieces – at Drury Lane, his comedy of "The Duel;" at Covent Garden, his comedietta "Cross Purposes." The first is an adaptation of the "Philosophe sans le savoir," in which Barry did not more affect his audience than I have seen Baptiste ainé do, on the French stage. "The Duel," however, failed, through the mawkish, sentimental, scenes which the adapter worked in, at the suggestion of some of his noble relatives, who spoiled his play, but made him pecuniary compensation for its ill-fortune.

"Cross Purposes," also an adaptation – from "Les trois frères rivaux," was more lucky. It was levelled at the follies of the day, and every one was amused by the light satire. In the first piece, Barry was sublime in his affectation of cheerfulness, on his daughter's wedding-day, while his son is engaged in a duel fought under paternal sanction. In the second, Shuter as Grub, and Quick as Consol, made the house as hilarious, as Barry, in the scenes in which he was engaged, made his audience sympathetic.

Mrs. Cibber, addressing Mrs. Woffington, in the "Dialogue in the Shades," speaks of O'Brien and Powell as the only actors of eminence who had appeared since Margaret's time. O'Brien was entirely in Woodward's line, from Mercutio to Harlequin. I collect from Genest, that after his aristocratic connections made a placeman of him, O'Brien grew ashamed of his vocation. "If we may judge from … what I was told in 1803, when I resided in his neighbourhood, O'Brien had, since he left the stage, wished to sink the player, and to bury in oblivion those years of his life which are the most worth being remembered – ashamed, perhaps, of a profession which is no disgrace to any one who conducts himself respectably in it, and in which to succeed, is, generally speaking, a proof of good natural abilities, and a diligent application of them —Ex quovis ligno non fit Mercurius. It is not everybody that can make even a moderate actor."

O'Brien left the stage after playing Squire Richard, and subsequently he became "William O'Brien, of Stinsford, County of Dorset, Esq." His wife died on the 9th of August 1827, on which night the Haymarket Company acted the "Poor Gentleman!"

Before Barry reappeared in London, the stage suffered more serious losses than these. At one, Garrick uttered a cry – as of anguish, at the falling away of the brightest jewel of the stage.