Page images
PDF
EPUB

tion as a manager. I do not see how a man can fill two public situations which may be placed in conflict. In the one he must take a course with a decided bias; in the other he should have no bias at all. But this is not the only case in which the two offices have been united. If a question came before a managermagistrate, in which a breach of the peace in his own theatre was concerned, it is impossible he could legislate on it impartially. Solon, or Lycurgus, or even Aristides the Just, could scarcely have administered justice in such a predica ment. I know not that Mr. Jones was ever placed in it, but it was within the category of possibilities, and a very awkward one he would have found it to deal with.

The "Bottle Row," as it is generally called, took place on December 14th, 1822, on the occasion of the Marquis Wellesley, then Lord Lieutenant, making his first state visit to the theatre. Thus, of the three leading "rows," two occurred, as if by special arrangement, on Command Nights. This last was exclusively a party political demonstration, and it appears very extraordinary that nobody seems to have had any idea of what was to happen, or that mischief was concocting. Were the authorities of the theatre asleep or blind? The Dublin public are not eminently distinguished for keeping close counsel when they have "business on their hands." They are neither given to be silent nor unanimous. How the managers could remain in total ignorance of the intended outrage I cannot understand. They must have been careless or badly served. They should have known in time, and calculated whether they were able to keep the peace. A manager, like a general, should never be taken by surprise. If they found the conspiracy too strong, at least they should have apprised the Lord Lieutenant, and left him to decide as he pleased: but assuredly he should never have been brought to the theatre, to be driven from it by a party uproar, principally confined to the galleries, it being clear that the other portions of the house were not on their side of the question. The tumult began at the end of the play, and during the interval (which happened, unluckily, to be

rather a long one), before the commencement of the afterpiece. This time it consisted chiefly of discordant yells, unintelligible placards and handbills scattered about, cat-calls, rattles, crowings, and shoutings, and occasionally a missile directed with uncertain aim. Something struck the front of the Viceregal box, and a bottle was hurled against the act-drop, which rebounded on the stage, and, mirabile dictu, rolled down to the foot-lights without being broken! The Lord Lieutenant faced the storm, which he was quite unable to comprehend, with perfect composure for a considerable time, and retired when he saw the intended programme so totally changed. No damage was done of any consequence. The "row" evaporated in "sound and fury signifying nothing:"— but dull parliamentary harangues, and futile prosecutions, occasioned it to be long remembered. Sixty thousand pounds at least were frittered away in seeking for convictions it was impossible to obtain. The pockets of the lawyers were bursting with fees, and the public, as usual, had to pay the piper. And all this, too, might have been saved, had the manager been wide awake and vigilant on his post.

There have been sundry minor "ructions," such as the "Byrne row," and the "Talbot row," of which latter I could relate some amusing particulars, having been in office when it occurred; but they were merely the efforts of a private clique to exact conditions for a particular favourite, and are too obscure to be elevated to the importance of historical

events.

In conclusion, the best mode of dealing with "a row" of any kind, is to anticipate it. Preventive measures are easier, better, and safer than open conflict. A small force, skilfully posted, can dislocate and divide any number of confederates who may arrange to assemble in a theatre for a preconcerted purpose. When once divided, they are paralyzed. But the best of all preventive measures is to prohibit sticks. If they do no more, they make a diabolical clatter, break the panels of the boxes and galleries in the absence of heads to practise on, deafen the ears of the peaceful lieges, and incite to pugnacity.

"Credat Judæus ?"

On the first Command of Lord Normanby, immediately after his arri val in Dublin, I felt convinced there would be a crowded and noisy assemblage, not from love of mischief or wish to riot, but from some late rather sudden changes which had stirred men's blood, and the exuberance of political feeling which had inoculated the whole city to madness. I gave the most positive orders that no sticks or bludgeons should be admitted into any part of the house, and the police manfully assisted my own people in carrying the orders out. They were not to take a stick forcibly from any one, which manifestly they had no right to do, but were merely to say, "You cannot go in with a stick; leave it here, and you shall receive it again when you go out," adopting the system so prudently pursued in all exhibitions, museums, collections of curiosities, and zoological and botanical gardens. The sticks were sacrificed with scarce any remonstrance or exception. Nearly 350 (some of most formidable proportions) were piled up in my room in the theatre and in the College-street Policeoffice; and on the following day the proprietors were politely invited by placard and advertisement to reclaim their property. Very few came forward, and these identical bludgeons have been converted into serviceable stage properties ever since; and will continue to supply theatrical mobs, rebellious citizens, and tumultuous conspirators, for the next twenty years.

On the night alluded to, my preventive measures were crowned with the most signal success. We had a crowded, noisy, shouting, and enthusiastic public to deal with, who enjoyed their own humours more than the humours of the actors, and the noble Viceroy entered fully into their character, which he saw for the first time

in all its glory. With the exception of an occasional bonnetting, and that more in fun than in earnest, they were abstinent from physical outrage. When Paddy feels his little sprig of shillelagh, or blackthorn, affectionately enclosed within his fingers; at the first shout he moves it mechanically a little, at the second he twirls it gracefully round his own head, and at the third it descends vigorously on the cranium of his neighbour. Take it from him, and he sinks into as peaceable and subdued an individual as John Bull when his departed pence no longer jingle in his pocket.

And now, a few more last words by way of postscript, commencing with an anecdote. A friend of mine, who had long been manager of a leading provin cial theatre in England, was once called upon to engage a transatlantic Star, on terms he deemed it impolitic to comply with. "If you don't engage him," said the ambassador, "depend upon it you'll have a row.” "Ensure

me that," replied the manager, “and I'll write you a check for £200.” Now, I echo the same sentiment in the present theatrical apathy or influenza which pervades all classes of the public, and hereby make proclamation, "Any money for a row!" But mind, it must be a good substantial one, and no empty imitation. A "row royal," which shall live in future chronicles, guaranteed to last for twelve successive nights, and to produce an equal number of overflowing houses. The public to select their own grievance and the manager to be bound to enter an appearance on each clause of the indictment. The arguments to be heard viva voce; no speaker on either side to occupy more than ten minutes at a time, to avoid prolixity; with equal division of sun and wind, as the formula runs in the old tournaments—a clear stage, a fair stand-up fight, and no favour!

SAINT VALENTINE'S DAY.

Carrigbawn, Feast of Saint Valentine. We men in the country, my dear Anthony, watch the vicissitudes of the seasons with an anxiety of which you, town gentlemen, have no notion. With you it is merely a question of umbrellas and dry flags; with us it is one of life and death. The heavy rains, during the earlier portion of this month, arrested all out-door labour, and left us sadly in arrear in our ploughing and sowing. This morning we are all as busy as bees, for fine weather has set in most opportunely. I was out early in the fields, to set the day's operations fairly agoing. The mists of the morning were lazily rolling away in heavy vapour from the marshy ground along the riverside, and the white hoarfrost of the night was lying on the green sward and the brown furrows. As I passed an old ivy-clad gable, the rustling and twittering of innumerable little birds, flying and chasing each other fro:n branch to branch, reminded me that the Spring was coming, and that Nature was beginning to stir in her heart's core. And then, too, I spied the crocus and the snowdrop, and I caught faintly the odour of the violet; and I knew that the Divine agency, which renews all things, was again putting forth its potency. And now I watched the sturdy team drawing the plough through the heavy glebe, and the busy crows following in the furrow; and further on, the sower, with his bag slung before him, scattering the seed over the wellprepared ground, in the hope that it would bring forth abundantly, some tenfold, some fifty-fold, some an hundred-fold. I was returning homeward with the buoyant air of the fresh morning breathing around, and the bright lustre of the now up-risen sun upon me, when just as I reached the door of my porch, I beheld the conjoint animal of a man on horseback bearing down upon me. the mass came near to me its identity was unmistakeable. An aged bay horse, with a white star on his forehead, a poke of the nose and a contemplative gait, bestridden by a lanky figure in black habilaments, announced the good parson, mounted on the companion of his parochial rambles during the last ten years. Assisting my worthy friend to dismount, and committing his beast to the lad whom I had summoned for the purpose, I led the chaplain into the house.

As

"My dear Jonathan," said he, "I wish you all the happiness that attends this auspicious morning, and am come to breakfast with you.'

"For the latter favour, my dear friend, I am truly grateful," said I, "but I am at a loss to understand the peculiarity of your greeting."

"What!" said he, "do you not remember this is Valentine's Day?"

"Not I, indeed," I answered.

"Ah, Jonathan when I was a young man it should not have come upon me unawares."

"Perhaps not," said I, "but I have little sympathy with the mode in which the festival is honoured now-a-days."

The parson looked at me for an explanation.

"I do not despise, my dear Sir," I continued, "the customs of simple times ; nor the manner in which this day was anciently celebrated, when young men and maidens drew their Valentines by billets, and the life-long happiness of many a couple commenced with the true-hearted gallantries of the day. But I do abhor, with a hatred as intense as the postman, the present practice, contemptible, heartless, and affected, to say the least of it, which sends a thousand silly and impertinent rhymes flying through the length and breadth of the land; corrupting the taste and depraving the judgment. You have no idea how the sentiment of love is vulgarised and bebased by the daubed prints of hearts, and darts, and Cupids, and the frippery missives which, by the abused license of this day, find way to eyes and ears which would blush with shame, and tingle with indignation, were the stuff these billets doux contain spoken to them by living lips. Look at the windows of the stationers' shops in town, and tell me if I am not justified in what I say. And then, are you aware of the enormous sums which silly coxcombs, who cannot indite for themselves, pay for those borrowed sen timents. I assure you, the price of some of them would supply the food of many

their

a family for a month, or purchase a volume of sterling literature. Shame befal the man, say I, that has recourse to such a sneaking mode of courtship, and cannot express, as a man should do, his own feelings of love in his own words." "My dear Jonathan," said the Parson, "you are unjustly severe. I fear you have never received a Valentine."

Nor sent one," said I, "thank heaven."

"We are told," observed my friend, "that they had their origin in a pious device of the early Christians who substituted these for the pagan practices of the Februato Juno."

"I do not believe it," I replied. "I think the usage springs from a higher and truer source. Nature is herself our divine instructress. Listen," said I, throwing open the window of the room in which we sat, and letting in the fresh air of the pleasant morning and the chirping of the birds that thronged the woodbine and rose tree trelliced around it. "The earth's bosom is already putting on her robes of green; the vernal flowers are bursting into life; the birds carol and mate, and God, who is love, speaks of love to and through all animal existence. How beautifully has Donne expressed this thought :—

"Hail Bishop Valentine! whose day this is,

All the air is thy diocese

And all the chirping choristers

And other birds are thy parishioners.
Thou marryest every year

The lyric lark and the grave whispering dove;
The sparrow that neglects his life for love,
The household bird with his red stomacher;
Thou makest the blackbird speed as soon
As doth the goldfinch or the halcyon.'

"And again, with what truth of nature and grace of poetry does Tasso celebrate these mysterious influences of the nascent spring:—

[blocks in formation]

"I believe you are in the right, Jonathan," said the Parson. "And I will give you an illustration more beautiful still, and sublimer than any profane poetry can afford." And so saying, he drew forth from his ample pocket, the com panion of all his hours his well worn Bible. "Listen to the prophetic language in which He of whom love is the essence, and not the attribute, speaks of the holy influence. What is spoken to the Church we may in all reverence apply in a less exalted sense :

66

"The winter is past, the rain is over and gone;

The time of the singing birds is come,

And the voice of the turtle-dove is heard in our land,

The fig tree putteth forth her green figs;

And the vines with the tender grapes give a good smell.
Arise my love, my fair one, and come away.'"

Beautiful, indeed, my dear pastor; there is no poetry like that we find in Holy Writ. How sublime its sentiments; how grand and yet how simple often is its imagery; how lofty its teaching, how tender its pathos. Every day I feel this truth more deeply. It is the great well whence modern Poesy draws all that is pure, healthful, and life-giving in its waters."

"And what marvel," said my friend. "Remember its inspiration and its theme. Remember whence Isaiah and Ezekiel,-whence Solomon, and David, and the solitary of Patmos, had their mighty missions. God their inspirationthe Divine mind their "mens divinior"-His Spirit their Helicon,-heaven, and hell, and earth,—the unseen mysteries of Nature, the undisclosed councils of God and the future destinies of men,-these their wondrous themes. Think on all this, Johnathan, and you will know how the fabled frenzy of the Pythoness under the influence of her god can but faintly shadow forth the divine rapture of those whose spirits held direct and intimate communion with the Great Spirit. As the face of the Jewish lawgiver shone with the light of Deity, that still lingered on it after he left the presence, so the tongues of prophets, touched with the fires of heaven, poured forth their burning words when the vision had passed away from their spiritualised sight."

"Confess then," said I,

66

that good Saint Valentine has little reason to be proud of the honour we now give to his name. And were he to rise from his grave, would as indignantly repudiate his followers, as would Epicurus reject his luxurious disciples of ancient Greece and modern Belgravia."

With such pleasant converse did we pass away the half hour of breakfast. When the meal was over, the Parson said, "Well Jonathan, notwithstanding all you have said, here am I the bearer of a Valentine to you."

I do not know why it was, my dear Anthony, but I confess to you I felt myself blushing like a girl in her "teens."

[ocr errors]

"Don't be alarmed Jonathan," said the Pastor, with a smile of the slyest humour on his solemn visage. Do I look like Cupid's messenger?" "Why, not exactly, I replied, recovering a little from my embarrassment. So let us have it."

The Parson, without more ado, drew from his pocket a large packet.

"It is no light matter," I observed, "and will require consideration, or I am mistaken."

"You are not mistaken, but I must say a few words before I open it. You remember poor Somers. He was left an orphan to my care, when heaven had taken from me my dear ones. I did my best for him in the way of education, and seeing that he had good abilities, I sent him to our University. He obtained a sizarship, and was a studious, steady lad, of an imaginative and melancholy temperament. I heard with joy of his having got a scholarship, but the next post dashed my pleasure by the intelligence of his dangerous illness. I hurried to town, too late to find him alive. Över-application was too much for a constitution naturally feeble, and he sank as soon as he had grasped the prize for which he had toiled. I committed him to the grave, discharged the few shillings he owed to his laundress and baker, surrendered the key of his chambers, and possessed myself of his scanty library of books and papers. Among the latter, I found one which I chanced to take up last night, and thinking it not without interest, I have brought it over to submit to you."

"Let us have it then, dear Parson," said I.

Thereupon my friend opened his budget and read the following:

A LEGEND OF ST. VALENTINE.

CHAPTER I.

"Martyrium est delictorum finis, periculi terminus, dux salutis, iter patientiæ, magister vita; quo perfecto, es etiam accedunt quæ in futuro discrimine potuissent tormenta reputari.. Magna sublimitas ante ora Domini, aspectumque Christi, potestatis humanæ tormenta contemnere."—Cyprian, de laude Martyr.

MOONLIGHT in the city! What a striking and solemnising sight; how suggestive of thoughts that daylight never stirs within us; Life locked for a season in the arms of Death. The

stony giant lies outstretched before us, snatching from the turmoil and excitement of day a short repose to invigorate him for the same ever-recurring

.

and ever-wasting turmoil and excitement to which the first ray of morning again awakes him. The wanderer in the silent street hears the echoes of his own footfalls, where a few hours before the tread of a thousand steps, the rush, the roar, the struggle of life, stunned and distracted him. Houses gleam, silent and bleak, in the pale cold light

« PreviousContinue »