# The Smart Set/Volume 6/Issue 1/One Eighteenth-Century Day

Jan 1902, pp. 27–44.
ONE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY DAY
By Alfred Henry Lewis
THERE had been tumult and riot in Garrick's theatre of Drury Lane. The queer, dwarf, four-page papers of the day gave almost four hundred words—an unprecedented outburst; the rebellion of '45 got no more—to a relation of this violence. Seats had been smashed; the chandelier, that pride of Garrick, had been broken; the house itself was all but burned. And there was to be further riot that very evening. The coffee houses and the clubs were agog with anticipation. Garrick was not loved, and, to twist a common phrase, the very worst was hoped.
In a house in Cleveland Court, just off St. James street, a gentleman without his coat, waving slim hands with wrists all ruffles, walked about, speaking rapidly, protestingly.
"It is for that I fear for you, my Rena. Last night the mob, led by Fitzpatrick, was near to burning the theatre over Garrick's head. I should know—I, who incited Fitzpatrick to the campaign. The riot will continue to-night, and if the small creature Garrick has courage we shall destroy him. No, I don't hate him; he is a player, a vagabond by word of law, and a gentleman cannot afford the compliment of his hatred to so low a thing as a vagabond. But this Garrick has gone horn-mad with vanity; he struts and puffs and has the swelling airs, as one who deems himself of the Plantagenets—of the Tudors at least. In that he is a matter of offense to me, just as, for instance, is musk; he is a civet cat to me; and beholding his pride, I am enough of a technical Christian to countenance any method of reducing it."
"But why may I not go?" demanded the lady. "I should like the riot better than the play."
"It's a thousand sorrows, dear," responded the gentleman, "that you don't read. Then you might amuse yourself at home this evening. However, I should not make a quarrel with you for any lack of literary taste—I, who read nothing save the entries and odds at Newmarket, the betting book at White's, and an occasional novel of Crebillon's."
The time was the late morning of a January day in 1763. The speaker was the Earl of March, a leading dandy of the town. It was to his heart's mistress he spoke; that beauty, small and warm and dark, the celebrated Rena.
"But I must go to the theatre; I would die of weariness here alone," and the Rena looked lazily out from the heavy fringes of her eyes as she recurled herself like a cat on the cushions.
"You shall take the risk; go then, little lady," replied March, after a pause. "I may not go with you, as I'm to be there with Fitzpatrick. Also, I'm to be engaged during the day with Selwyn, Beauclerk and Gillie Williams, to go I know not where, and do I care not what. I'll bestow you aright, however. You shall be there in your sedan chair; and I'll despatch a cordon of bruisers with you as a guard of honor. There, it's done; you are to go, and see, and come back safe."
It was cold in London on that January day. But it was warm and bright in the Earl's house in Cleveland Court; doubly warm and bright by virtue of the Rena, who, surrounded with the silks, and bronzes, and pictures, and rugs, and brocades, and tapestries, and golds—all products of a purse as utter as the taste that dispensed it—seemed withal a great gem in a proper setting.
St. James street, the heart of London's fashion, while as good a road as any of that time, would have made the hearts of modern paviers fail within them. It was as crude and rough as a Highland trail. Moreover, it was a wrack of snow and ice, on which the sun glanced with a cold cynicism, refusing any warmth of countenance.
March was in his thirty-eighth year—a full and heavy middle age in these declining days. Yet March was as lithe and well kept as a leading buck should be; and became his satins, his sword and his ruffles as much as ever they elegantly became him. He was a man of middle size, light rather than heavy, a bit high in the shoulder and waspish of flank. The last two characteristics came of fashion rather than of nature. His keen face, with a hard jaw and a nose a trifle on the falcon order, was made more than good by two steady gray eyes, wide between and brazenly honest, as if created to search for and condemn hypocrites. Folk had told Voltaire that he looked like this Earl of March, and the French vitriol thrower thanked them as for a compliment.
We have seen that March owned a sprightly, youthful figure, and that, too, despite his thirty-eight years. It was the more strange, perhaps, when one recalls him as the leading moral rebel of Hell Fire clubs, and of that Order of Franciscans of Medmenham Abbey, where, fifteen years before, with Wilkes and Dashwood and Sandwich, the poet Whitehead and a half-dozen others, he and they had shocked England in its most hardened era with their blasphemy and viciousness.
The health that gleamed in the eye, that glowed on the cheek and leaped in the step of March came not more from inborn stamina than the absolute care and rule wherewith he lived what to the casual eye might seem a life of mighty recklessness. Libertine, gambler, wine bibber, he was these; and yet he never over-drove himself; was rigid to sleep and to eat and to repose himself; and thereby he stood the pace. He was heedful of his health and careful of his guineas, as became an epicurean who knew how to husband enjoyment. And so he remained to the last. He lived well, he ended well, according to his creed.
Look ahead. March dies at the age of eighty-six, in 1810, at his house in Piccadilly. He conserves himself to the last. He walks as long as he is able. An eye dies; he puts in a glass one. An ear goes deaf; he employs the other with double ardor. When he no longer walks, he hobbles forth to his vis-à-vis, whereof the body is a dark green, and horses coal black with tails that brush the streets. When he must give up his carriage and the Ring, when he may no longer hobble down the stairs, he has his chair lifted and lowered by rope and pulley from his drawing-room window. Then he sits for hours on the sidewalk of a bright afternoon, a green parasol over his head, and Jack Radford, his groom, booted, spurred, with charger standing ready to pursue and bring back and acquaintance who drives by for whose talk March—in that day "Old Queensberry"—conceives a fancy. Meanwhile his French doctor, astrologer and composer of elixirs, peers at him from a window, thinking of new lies to tell "Old Q," and wondering how much longer he will last. In the end, 1810, he dies, leaving a harem and a million pounds in bank; and so passed the last and the best of the bucks of the eighteenth century.
At the time we encounter him March is known for his hatred of Wilkes, formerly a companion in sin and fellow Medmenham Franciscan; his contempt for the Whigs; his lack of religion; his passion for gambling at White's and at Newmarket; his patronage of the opera, and his love for the Rena. He has made his first mark in the sporting world by driving nineteen miles in one hour, for a mighty wager, four blood horses to a whalebone, spiderish contrivance of four wheels, built by that gifted wagonmaker, Wright, of Long Acre, killing seven horses training for the experiment. That was sixteen years before the January day in Cleveland Court, St. James.

### II

March was assisted into a claret-colored coat, and his valet bestowed his cravat and ruffles to advantage.
"Davenport grows worse and worse," observed the dandy, stretching himself in his garments. "I would wager a thousand guineas that he is the vilest tailor in town. I must remind myself to offer that wager to Bully Bolingbrook, who insists that there's something divine in Davenport's coats."
"But you look well," observed the Rena, eying March with indolent criticism; "yes, you look very well; and so now, because you do look well, you may kiss me."
The black boy, dressed in a fantastic parody of the Turkish, came in to announce a visitor.
"Bring him up," said March, glancing for a moment at the soiled bit of paper on which a name was written. Then, as he brushed the Rena's damp, red lips with a caress, he added: "You, who love only the well-looking, my Rena, will hardly open your arms to our visitor."
"Who is he?" asked the young woman. "I thought it had been George Selwyn; you said he was to come."
"Yes, Selwyn will be here presently," said March. "Meanwhile, this is a writer—a sort of scribbler. His name is Goldsmith—Oliver Goldsmith. He is hideously ugly, and was offered to me by Topham Beauclerk as a dab at pamphlets. You know Sandwich wanted something on that villain Wilkes."
"If you are to have your writer here," said the Rena, beginning a languid stir as prior to getting off the cushions, "I might better withdraw. I'm hardly arrayed to meet strangers," and she pulled about her curves and swells a black and yellow thing like a kimono, that gave her the effect of a little tigress.
"Nonsense!" responded March. "Remain where you are. There's enough clothes on you for a Siberian sleigh ride; much more than when you dance at the theatres."
"On the whole," said the Rena, sinking cushionward again, "I should like to see a writer. I should like to talk with him. I wonder how it would seem to have a genius—a poet—love one!" and her eyes began to dim with languor.
"Compose yourself, dearling," observed March, as he slowly paced the room; "this Goldsmith is not a genius, not a poet; and writes, I believe, nothing better than those dull Chinese letters in the journal of that pimply-faced person, Newbury; what is it called? yes, the Ledger."
Goldsmith came in. Shy, awkward; showily but ridiculously dressed, he appeared a parody on such beaux as March, whom he evidently yet so laughably imitated. The sight of the Rena seemed to daunt him. As March surveyed his ugliness—not unkindly—he could not help reflecting: "If there were to be a contest of hideousness I would back this Goldsmith against even Lord Chesterfield, and give that Caliban of Blackheath seven pounds in the handicapping."
"Here is your pamphlet, my lord," said Goldsmith, tugging forth a manuscript. "It is done on the lines suggested by Mr. Beauclerk."
"And I've no doubt well done," returned March, tossing it upon a cabinet. "Here are ten guineas, if that will please you."
"They will do very well, my lord," said Goldsmith, as he put them away, not without a flicker of satisfaction.
"As mere guineas," observed March, "they should do as well as any, truly. As to their present employment, I must believe their yellow destinies to be looking up. To-day they repay genius for defending Government; last night they had so vile a fate as to be won by me, with four hundred odd of their saffron fellows, from Lord Masham, over the quinze table at White's. You do not, sir," continued March, with a twinkle, "object to an honorarium in guineas that have been counters at the gaming-table?"
"It was Vespasian, I think," observed Goldsmith, with a meek sourness, "who said that 'the smell of all money is sweet.'"
"I am truly glad," remarked March, "that Vespasian, or whoever he was, said anything so much to his credit. Don't go," protested March, as the pamphleteer was about to depart. "This is the Rena, Mr. Goldsmith. Had Helen been half so fair Troy should have rejoiced in its destruction for her sake. It is my own and my only ambition to perish for the sake of beauty; and even a city could have no better fate. Sit you down, then, and talk with the Rena. She has some thought of liking genius—some hope, I take it, of having genius like her. And while you talk," concluded March, as he moved toward another room, "if I may be permitted to abandon such good and brilliant company, I will by your leave go about giving certain orders touching horses, and coats, and boots, and a trip to Paris by my valet to get new waistcoats. I have your pardon, I presume?" and March bowed cynically and with a polite laugh.
"To ask or to offer pardon," replied Goldsmith, and there was a creeping dash of bitterness, "is superfluous in a coil such as this, where no loss can occur to either. Certainly you may go, my lord, and I will remain quite at your beautiful friend's command."
"Nobly thrust!" said March, with a little laugh that was all honest and without cynicism. "Gads!" he continued, as he left the room, "my good friend the scribbler is a verbal boxer equal to anything that Steevens the Nailer ever was with his hands. I begin to like him, and shall do him, some good yet."
When they were alone the Rena nestled in her cushions and seemed depressed in ways serious, soft and winsome, as one who lived a life half perfumes and half regrets. She was now as careless of the kimono as before Goldsmith came, and her loveliness peeped at him until the poor pamphlet maker began to think the room too warm.
"You will have some wine?" said the Rena, and stretching forth an arm about whose charms Hogarth and Reynolds managed the one agreement of their lives, lifted a buck-skinned stick and struck a little gong. With the same motion she thrust forth a small foot clad in a gold slipper, whereof the buckle displayed a ruby of price, and with it came an ankle like a love verse from Herrick.
"I will indeed take some wine, mistress," said the dazed scribbler, now quite weak; "I walked from Islington this morning, and am weary."
"From Islington, and in all this snow!" The Rena was aghast with a dainty yet tender horror. "Was there no coach?"
"None, wanting money," said Goldsmith. "However, I will ride back," and he felt through the flaps of his garish coat where the ten guineas lately gambled with at quinze by Lord Masham lay snug in his pocket. Then, to change a discussion whereof he distrusted the taste, Goldsmith gulped the wine the Rena tendered, and remarked: "You should be vastly happy here, mistress."
"Why, yes, truly, if I lacked a soul," said the pretty hypocrite, trying to remember a sentence or two from the last sermon of John Wesley, she being an indomitable attendant on the oratory of that divine. "I try to be happy and—and I fail." Here the thrice winsome lady furtively gleamed on the visitor with her cast-down eyes, and in a manner half-sad gave him a flash of white between her red lips. "I try for happiness, but it does not come—not, at least, in full. We poor women are to be pitied. We make an item of a genteel establishment, like the horses. What an outlook! What can a helpless, disrated woman do?"
The guileless Goldsmith felt embarrassed by a frankness on the Rena's part which would have been brutal had it been sincere. However, he manned himself, in a spirit of clumsy innocence, to comfort the downcast from the classics.
"They may do much, mistress," he responded, with an inspiration to doughtily defend the Rena from herself; "much, indeed, they may do. Do we not read of Phryne, and what debt the ages owe her? Phryne is poor, a peasant, and as a child gathers capers to make a livelihood. But Phryne is beautiful; and you, mistress, who are also beautiful—" the Rena glowed and re-coiled herself among the cushions—"should remember that beauty is a form of genius. Phryne loves Apelles, and inspires him to his wondrous picture of the foam-born Aphrodite. She loves Praxiteles; she feeds his chisel with fire, and becomes the reason of his Cnidian Venus, which held Pliny spellbound; Praxiteles carves her once, twice, thrice in gold and in marble. She loves Hyperides, and the orator's tongue is tipped with a deathless eloquence. She can conquer reason; and when the grave judges are about to convict her of impiety she casts her robe aside, and the sight of loveliness so true and yet so helpless, convinces the magistrates of her innocence. Lastly, she is rich, and would rebuild the Theban wall, thrown down by the Macedonian, asking no reward save the inscription, 'Destroyed by Alexander the Great; restored by Phryne the courtesan.'"
"And did Phryne fail of nothing, then?" asked the Rena, her eyes now wide and dancing.
"Yes," responded Goldsmith, with a dogged slowness, looking at the floor; "yes, she failed once. She offered her love to Xenocrates, the philosopher, and he declined her.
"And you, I suppose, are also a philosopher," said the Rena, with a little click of teeth, and sitting up among her cushions like a ruffled rose.
"Here, here!" said March, coming into the room, "you are not to rend my friend Goldsmith, O my sweet tiger-cat, merely because he prefers philosophy to love. All men are not so weak as I; or perhaps they lack my profound appreciation of the beautiful."
Here he pinched the Rena's ear, and elicited the music of her laugh.
"How much do you make a year, Mr. Goldsmith?" asked March, bluntly. "I ask because, if you care to do it, I see pamphlet work ahead."
"I made sixty-eight pounds last year."
"So little!" exclaimed the Rena. "I give five times that sum to Mr. Wesley myself." Then she fell to eating fruit, having, after all, but a dull interest in poverty.
"The work I contemplate would double that," said March, "and I will communicate with you from time to time."
"I shall be proud to have your commands, my lord," observed Goldsmith, again making ready to go. "I live in Islington; but a word left at the Cheshire Cheese will reach me. No, mistress," turning to the Rena, "poverty is not pleasant, yet I believe it to be good for authorship. Genius should be fed, but not fattened—like hunting dogs and running horses."
"I am for Government," observed March, at the same time eying his visitor carefully; "you have gathered some notion of what I will want by the pamphlet you have done. Your name will not be used; yet I trust, sir, that what we shall ask of you will not infringe on your political convictions. I should be sorry to urge one to write against his own politics."
"Those who have lived in St. Giles have no politics, my lord." Then, tossing his hand with a gesture of helplessness: "I am not to blame, my lord, for English taste, or rather, the English want of it. A writer must starve or be ready to pull his quill, as a highwayman does a pistol, and take purses with it. I give you good-day, my lord."
"Do you know, I couldn't so much as kindle a spark in that clod!" said the Rena, when Goldsmith was gone. And then she pouted.
"We move among wonders, my child," said March, with mock sympathy.

### III

Then, with a great clatter, came again the attendant black boy, and this time a gentleman swathed in furs like a Russian was stamping at his heels.
"I will wait for no announcement," cried the stranger. Then he threw back the furs, kissed the Rena and shook March by the hand.
"How are you, George?" observed March; "though it is folly to ask of your health."
"Then do not ask it," said George Selwyn; "and do not interrupt me while I do all the talking, for I've a dozen things to say, and must then run away to Newgate to lunch with a murderer who is to be made a tassel of to-morrow at Tyburn. I am to ride in the coach with him, be on the cart with him, and become the repositor of his last gurgle. He has promised to confide to me the exact state of his feelings after the black cap is drawn over his eyes. But what is the matter with the Rena? You look quite blighted, child."
"That scribbler Goldsmith was just here, and the Rena would make love to him. He had the hardihood to repulse her, and now she raves with anger." Thus did March playfully explain.
"O my pearling!" cried Selwyn, "I would that I had been more diligent to come. Had I been in time I might have saved you this defeat. This Goldsmith is beyond conquest. Actually, he withstood the Bellamy; and that was six years ago, when the Bellamy was queen of Drury Lane, as radiant as a star. He sent her a tragedy; she sought him with her chariot at Old Griffiths's, where the unfortunate Goldsmith was a hack writer—as, forsooth, is he yet—for a pound a week and what scraps of crusts and mutton that lumbering, fat old she-dragon, Mrs. Griffiths, would give him. Yes, gad! the Bellamy, chariot and four, invaded Paternoster Row, where the Griffiths laired, tore Goldsmith from their talons—for the afternoon—and bore him away to her house in Southampton street. And yet this Irish boor would not love her! What do you think of it! Bellamy told me herself, while the noble blood of the Tyrawleys mounted to her indignant cheeks! Dr. Dodd, the lecturer of St. Olave's Church, was there at the time. You know Dodd, the Rev. Dodd, March? He was with us that night at the Beefsteak Club, sang the best song, told the best story—for gentlemen only—and drank us all under the table. Quite the tavern king is Dodd!"
"You mean the night when we all got drunk and burned our wigs in the fireplace and almost poisoned everybody in the room?"
"The very occasion," said Selwyn. "You should know this Dodd better, March; he might be of use to you. He's a preaching marvel of grace and wickedness. He takes lessons in elocution and acting from Shuter and Mossop. Even little pippin-faced Kitty Clive taught him how to go through the marriage service dramatically. The result is, he's the idol of all the ladies of St. Olave's; they've paid his debts three times, and even forgave him when he married."
"And whom did he marry, pray?" asked the Rena. "So many should have clung to this paragon, I marvel he could make a choice."
"The dilemma March and I are in, exactly," rattled Selwyn. "But Dodd had more power of concentration than we. He married a favorite of Lord Sandwich—plundered her from our noble friend's very arms, as it were."
"And what said Sandwich?" asked March; "it's strange I should not have heard of these dulcet doings."
"Not strange at all," retorted Selwyn; "had Gillie Williams and I been half so devoted to the ladies and Newmarket and hazard as you, we should have missed it; but thank heaven! we were more at our leisure. Sandwich, on the trying occasion alluded to, behaved with a Christian resignation almost suspicious; gave Dodd and the lady his blessing and a thousand pounds, and had Dodd named a chaplain to the King, or something, where he draws money and hectors heaven in behalf of the royal house with all the eloquence, my dear Rena, of your own great Wesley."
"Mr. Wesley is a good man," declared the Rena, spiritedly. "You both scoff and laugh at all good men; it is your defense. I shall always go to hear Mr. Wesley."
"The Rena has even dragged me away to hear Mr. Wesley once or twice," said March. "It was not bad fun. The children sang well; quite like a new kind of opera, in a way. And a great crowd was there, for Wesley is the St. Paul of the shopkeepers, who require a hell to keep their apprentices from robbing their tills and squeezing their wives. As for Wesley, he was brilliant, full of force; but, sir, an actor, as much as Garrick or Spranger Barry. Speaking of actors, Shuter, you know, is a follower of Wesley; that is, a follower like the Rena. They both contribute handsomely to the cause in guineas if not in example; and after all, religion, like war and everything else, demands a treasure chest."
"I will no longer listen while you traduce Mr. Wesley!" and the Rena stamped with her gold slipper, at which the ruby in the buckle glowed like blood.
"And so you shall not," said Selwyn. "It all had its start in your madness for that indurated Goldsmith, and with one more assurance that it is no disgrace to fail where the Bellamy met defeat, we'll close the incident, as we statesmen say."
"However, on the whole," mused the Rena, "even though he did not admire me, I believe I like this Mr. Goldsmith. He is ugly, but he is a genius. And I should love a toad if it were a genius."
"Your taste is becoming a scandal, ladybird," observed March. "George and I shall not object to your worship of Goldsmith, but why distress us with fears for your understanding by calling him a genius?"
"Tut, tut, Will!" interjected Selwyn; "this fellow is a genius. I smell poetry on him as one smells hidden fire in a room. He will do it yet, this Hecla of sentiment and verse; he will erupt. And bank not on his ugliness, O best of gamblers and worst of literary judges! The music of the moon sleeps in the plain eggs of the nightingale. But I must away," continued Selwyn, "and not keep Newgate and my murderer waiting."
"Will you be at Drury Lane tonight?" asked March. "We mean to force the upstart Garrick to his knees, or all shall be wreck in that theatre."
"Heavens, what I shall miss!" moaned Selwyn. "But I can't make it, Will. I must go to Mrs. Fitzroy's following the festival with the homicide, to see her baby daughter, who is ill, and take to her a doll I've somewhere in my furs—I had it from Paris. And at night I'm going—but this is not to be mentioned, as it's a secret—to Westminster. They are about to open a royal tomb, and gave me private information, knowing how I dote on the rummage of a sepulchre. They mean to turn their backs, too, I think, and let me steal a fragment—a vertebra or something. I wouldn't be absent for worlds."
"I'm sorry," said March. "I wish you could have been at Drury Lane. You might have looked after the Rena. She will go, however much the signs may threaten sticks and stones."
"Oh, Beauclerk and Gillie will be there," responded Selwyn. "You won't miss me. But you must keep your eye on the Rena when Beauclerk is by. He has all of that admiration for the ladies and the drama which so strongly marked his ancestors, King Charlie and the little Gwynn."
"That Beauclerk!" responded the Rena, with a sniff of contempt. "He is a mere boy—a child who is hardly twenty."
"Four-and-twenty," protested Selwyn; "'pon honor! Now if he were twenty years older—as old as I, in truth—no one should fear him. As it is, he is a menace."
"You do not know how staid the Rena is," laughed March. "Moreover, she loves the Hanovers too dearly to have aught to do with the Stuarts."
"I had thought her a Jacobin," teased Selwyn. "Do you not remember how she raged at me when I told her I had witnessed the execution of Lord Lovat, and that was sixteen years ago? Said it was an outrage on the Fraser to go and see his head chopped off."
"And so say I still," said the Rena.
"But I made Lovat amends, fair censor," mocked Selwyn; "for, realizing the outrage, as you well describe it, I went, as they prepared him for his funeral, and saw his head sewed on again."
"Don't speak to him, Rena," laughed March, and then to the airy Selwyn: "George, you are not to be cured. But odds, man! leaving traitors and murderers, axes, blocks and tombs; what's the news? Who stirs, and to what end?"
"No news except that I played whist with the Baptist (Henry St. John), Bully and Dicky Edgecumb at Almack's last night, and lost fifteen hundred pounds. It was two hundred a point and two thousand on the rub, so, for a loser, I did even well. But harrow and alas!" continued Selwyn, with assumed grief, "I fear me no such sum awaits at my bankers; so I hie to you, my partner, for relief."
"And it is ready and simple enough," responded March. "I've some eight thousand pounds at Coutts's, and will transfer two thousand of them to you. I would make it more, but shortly I go to Newmarket—the Rena goes too, by the way; she says the country air is suited to her—and I wouldn't like to cramp my betting if a good thing appeared."
"I shall myself have money in by that time," said Selwyn, "so do not hesitate at any wager your judgment decides for. You will be in town following the races?"
"We may stop a day or two at Strawberry Hill with Horry Walpole. You remember, dear—" turning to the Rena—"how, the last time we were there, our presence almost ruined him with his neighbors, and was like to bring that varlet Wilkes about his ears again in the North Briton."
"Well," bustled Selwyn, getting again into his furs, "I must away. There's nothing more to tell save that Tom Hervey's to print another letter about his wife and send it to all the clubs and coffee houses—odd way to entertain one's self, that! Also, there's been made a rule at White's that quinze players must keep fifty guineas in front of them or give up their chairs. Lastly, old Mackreth, who owns the club, you know, writes me that he is about to retire and make over White's to his relative, the Cherubim, and bespeaks my favor for the latter, and that I will hereafter borrow money from that person as freely as I have from him."
Selwyn, with this, started for the door, which the trousered, scarfed and turbaned young blackamoor stood ready at hand to open. At the threshold he paused.
"I almost forgot," he cried; "Gillie Williams and Topham Beauclerk await you at Betty the fruiterer's in St. James street."
"I'll be with them on the instant," replied March.
"How queer George is!" said the Rena, as Selwyn descended to the street. "All for murderers and babies, tombs and dolls."
"The best fellow in the world," replied March, "but the strangest. He has two great loves—a passion for children and a passion for executions. Six years ago he was missing for a month. No one knew whither he had fled, and several of our friends, with homes out of town, trembled till they heard from their faithful wives. But he had only skulked over to Paris to enjoy the execution of Damiens. You recollect, the wretch who stabbed and wounded the King while at Versailles? They burned off Damiens's right hand first with a slow fire. Then they tore his flesh with pincers and poured melted lead into the wounds, and cauterized them with oil and resin and wax. Lastly the rogue was literally wrenched limb from body by four powerful Percheron horses. As George crowded his way close to the low scaffold where Damiens was suffering—they were burning away his hand at the time—the chief executioner observed him.
"'Make way for the Englishman!' he cried, parting the crowd with a hand-wave; 'make way for the Englishman! He is a brother professional.'
"'Thanks for your courtesy,' said George, and then with reluctant shame he added, 'I am sorry to be obliged to correct you, however; I am not entitled to your compliment. I have not the honor to be a professional executioner, only an amateur.'"

### IV

At Betty the fruiterer's March found Beauclerk and Williams.
"Betty," said March, following the salutations of his friends, "send to the Rena, at my house in Cleveland Court, a pine, and say that I would write her my compliments with the fruit, but your ignoble stall possesses no paper better than that which wraps a parcel. Now, my comrades," turning to Williams and the descendant of the Stuarts, "come with me to the Thatched House. I must do an errand. Come; you shall drink from what flasks you will."
"I am abstinent," said Gillie Williams, "as one should be who is ending his fourth decade. I drink nothing but saloop for a month yet; sassafras, they say, clears the blood."
"Leaving my blood to clear itself as best it may," said Beauclerk, "I will think up some wine to have as we journey on our way."
In the parlor of the Thatched House, over what they would for drink, March despatched a messenger.
"And tell him to come without delay," he added. "I will not be made to wait."
"And who may this be that you summon so cavalierly?" asked Williams, busy with his sassafras.
"Jack Slack, bruiser and butcher," responded March. "His shambles and shop are at close hand, and we shall not be long detained. I want him to bring a band of his pugilists to guard the Rena's chair to-night, as I cannot be with her at the theatre. I am having this sallow-faced, effeminate popinjay Fitzpatrick, who some say is a woman in disguise, make mob war on the jackanapes Garrick. The pretext is the high charges to pit, stalls and boxes. Certainly I care little for his prices, but they are convenient as a casus belli, and I desire revenge on the mountebank for a slight put on me when last I visited his stage."
"And what was that, pray?" inquired Beauclerk.
"Why, sir, I was one night behind the scenes," replied March, and a scowl began to gather at the recollection. "Catching a glimpse of a pretty girl of his company, Miss Bride, I crossed the stage to salute her. This Garrick was tossing about in Lear at the time, and was pleased later to show a temper in the greenroom and say I had spoiled his scene. I should have pulled his nose, but there were no appliances at hand wherewith to wash my fingers afterward, so I let it go for the nonce. I hope to see his theatre pulled about his ears to-night."
"It would have been burned last night," said Williams, "had not Moody, the Irish actor, snatched the candle from the hand of one of your amiable myrmidons who was willing to oblige with his incendiarism."
"Yes," responded March, "and unless this pasteboard king yields and restores half-prices as they were last season, to-night will behold his ruin. I shall be there to urge on Fitzpatrick and have an eye to the saving of Miss Bride."
"Do not blunder with Miss Bride," said Beauclerk. "This shaggy Hercules, Churchill the poet, who wrote the 'Rosciade,' and goes about with a club, like his prototype, and breathes of battles and sudden death, is most besottedly in love with that actress. She has shown him favor, and he declares he will fight with any who attempts her."
"Does he, forsooth!" replied March, with a sneer; "then should this club-carrying monster of love and war and rhymes seek for me without delay. For I tell you, I have enjoyed the lady's friendship quite as much as he. Gads! the lumbering jongleur has been made to wait an hour by his Dulcinea because I was with her."
"I know this Churchill well," said Williams. "He was both a priest and a married man, and cast off his wife and his gown together. 'I get rid of two damned heavy loads,' said he. Then he starved about the gin-cellars and kennels of St. Giles, eating refuse off greasy tables, where they chained knife and fork to the board lest he steal them. It was the Lloyds who took the outcast up; and he wrote his 'Rosciade.' Later he alarmed little Garrick with his 'Apology,' and our small green-room coward, who has a dwarf's heart in his dwarf's body, sent for him and gave him money to be his friend."
"He is to have this Churchill," said March, "satirize he wax-faced Fitzpatrick in an eighth edition of his 'Rosciade,' I hear; but for that I care nothing. For myself, I shall have him to Hyde Park and run my sword through his big body should he take that foul-feeding pen to me for so much as one ill syllable."
"He is a drunkard," observed Williams, "who, to right a wrong, would sooner drink than duel, and there's no fear of him. Moreover, if one would have this Churchill out of the way one has but to send him a guinea, and he will drown himself in drink with all imaginable speed."
"I was taught so much," interrupted March, "by the Bride one day, as we cooed and he clamored at the street door to see her."
"But why is it you so hate the poor fellow?" asked Beauclerk. "Truly his 'Rosciade' is a work of worth, as much as anything that was ever done by Pope or old Dryden. Also, your Churchill has not a bad heart at all. I met him once with this flighty little Scot, Boswell, who so runs from Derrick to Sheridan, and from Sheridan to Tom Davies, and from Tom to Tom's pretty wife, crying to be presented to my great friend, the snuffy old dictionary maker, Johnson. I will take it back, however, concerning Davies's wife; as, from the leers he casts upon her over the cups as they drink tea in Tom's back parlor, I fear me this Boswell hath tenderer plans for her. 'Tis a parlous small Scot, this Boswell!"
"And of about your age and ardor, Beauclerk," laughed Williams, "so one may readily see in what dangers poor Davies keeps his shop and wife."
"I know Davies," remarked March. "This same hammersmith of rhymes—this Churchill—drove him from the Drury stage with four lines:
"'With him came mighty Davies—on my life, That Davies hath a very pretty wife! Statesman all over!—in plots famous grown!— He mouths a sentence as curs month a bone—'
said Churchill, and poor Tom could never be dragged before the foot candles again. But truly, Beauclerk, and if you hold his spouse to be in peril of this burning Boswell, is it not your duty to warn Davies?"
"I think not," responded Beauclerk, dipping once at Williams's saloop, and making a wry face. "Satan take sassafras, say I!" and he put down the cup. "No, it would be out of my character as an immoralist to say a guardian word to Tom. And if I were to do so, he has enough of wit to suspect my motive and accuse me of love for Mrs. Tom and a jealousy of Boswell, rather than a care for him."
"You asked a bit ago why I distaste the man Churchill," said March. "Briefly, then, is he not friend and aid and writer to Wilkes, who is so much the foe of Dashwood, Sandwich and myself? Is that not reason enough? I trust to see both disposed of; Churchill in the Fleet, and Wilkes before Lord Mansfield for treason, before ever we be done."
"And Wilkes, too, hath a wit," observed Beauclerk, meditatively, over his glass. "If I were no Stuart, and sure Bute would not suspect me of treasonable thoughts and a misliking for King George, I should love Wilkes as I love all men of wit. Do you remember how he said he could not play whist, being unable to tell a king from a knave? That was a rare shot!"
There was a stamping of heavy feet, freeing themselves from snow, in the common room without. Then the door of the parlor opened and a hulking fellow came in and bowed to March and his companions with an air of rough subserviency. He was broken of nose, narrow of forehead, thin of lip, bony of face, and with a jaw of iron. His rough, red skin glowed rougher, redder still with the icy winds of the January weather. He approached the fireplace with an easy, coarse freedom, as if noble society were nothing new to him, and kicking the logs together to make them blaze, said, "I'll 'ave a bit of gin, your lordship."
"Who's your rugged friend, March?" asked Beauclerk, with a yawn directed at the marred countenance of the invader, where he stood by the fire.
"Don't you know?" responded March. "I'm surprised that you have missed an honor so easy to attain. No less, forsooth, than Jack Slack the butcher, ex-champion of England's prize ring. Look at his shoulders, a cloth-yard wide, I warrant! He beat Broughton, who was backed by the Duke of Cumberland, and won the championship, and cost the Duke ten thousand pounds that he was so unwise as to wager on Broughton. Slack defeated his man, and the Butcher of Culloden was ten thousand pounds poorer by virtue of the Butcher of Chandos street. The Duke wagered against you through professional jealousy, as a rival butcher, didn't he, Slack?"
"I 'ates to 'ear you speak so of 'is R'yal 'Ighness," mumbled Slack, in an apologetic way, over his gin. "'E was a great patron of sport, 'is R'yal 'Ighness was. But your lordship always was a chaffer, an' I don't mind, an', belike now, neither does 'is R'yal 'Ighness."
"Slack wore his championship until three years ago," resumed March, "when I had the double pleasure of seeing him trounced by Bill Steevens, the Nailer, and of winning five hundred guineas from his 'R'yal 'Ighness,' as Slack describes him. The Butcher of Culloden on this last fistic occasion was betting on his fellow craftsman."
"But your lordship bears me out," interrupted Slack, eagerly, "w'en I says to you gen'lemen all as 'ow subsekevintly I trains up Geordie Meggs, an' Geordie, 'e beat the Nailer, 'e did, an' 'e's the champion now."
"It was a cross, Slack," said March, coolly; "the Nailer could have beaten a coach load of Geordies that day. You paid the Nailer to lie down."
"Don't disturb our friend. Will," said Williams. "If he did arrange a cross he did no worse than I've seen at White's and Almack's. Tell Mr. Slack why you sent for him, and save his blushes."
Williams, for all his raillery, really felt sorry for the humbled gladiator, who seemed in plain confusion over the charge of a "cross;" the more so, probably, because the charge was true.
"Yes, your lordship," said Slack, hunching his huge shoulders in a deprecatory way; "I knows you was always a chaffer; but just the same, I'd like to 'ear your lordship's orders. Is it a match for Geordie Meggs?"
"No," responded March, "it's against my present rule to wager on prize battles. Selwyn, my betting partner, and I talked it over, and we decided never hereafter to lay so much as a shilling on anything that can talk; that is, men, women and parrots. No, Slack, it's nothing so vulgar as a ring battle that brings you to the Thatched House. You are to become a knight and guard a damsel. You will collect at least six of your bully-boys, and as many more as would like, after midnight, to be drunk with you, and repair to my house just before the play, and guard the Rena's chair to the show. You are to stay and take her home; and at any time during the play, in case of serious trouble, you are to see her safe out of the theatre, and knock down whatsoever of the nobility or the rabble, lord or commoner, seems meet and proper in your sight. Do you understand?"
"Yes, your lordship," said Slack; "I'll bring along my lads, and the lady shall be puffickly safe; an' I doubts not as 'ow we'll show 'er a bit of rare sport besides. Is there anyone in p'ticler your lordship would be pleased to 'ave knocked down?"
"No one," said March, with mock seriousness. "I'm absolutely impartial in the matter, Slack!"
"And now, my children," said Beauclerk to March and Williams, when the huge bruiser had departed, "if you will be so kind with your company to one so much younger than yourselves, we will first have March pay the lawing at this crib, and then repair to the Cheshire Cheese. I have a word to say to my friend of Rambler fame, the good Johwnson, and I learn that he'll be there. You must come, March; you've never met the sage of Inner Temple Lane."
"I will go very readily," responded March, "but I can't see for my life, Beauclerk, what leads you to bother with these book people. Their work is well enough when you have call for it; I got a pamphlet to-day from an Islington fellow named Goldsmith; but why one should hunger for their society is a mystery too deep for me."
"But, my dear March, you do not understand," said Beauclerk. "I'm bound by an inexorable fate to like literary people. I've a library of thirty thousand volumes; and these book men are forever ransacking them and pulling them off their shelves. I'm obliged to like literary people, or their raids would drive me mad."

### V

In the raftered room at the Cheshire Cheese were to be found fire and cleanliness and comfort and dancing shadows. Three men sat about a table on this short, dark, wintry London afternoon, and a smoking bowl in the centre of the board, as well as the mugs at their elbows, showed them to be laudably engaged. The coarse man, with features fatty and vulgar, wig unkempt and awry, stained and spotted garments, buttons gone at knee and neck, and with a general atmosphere of slovenliness enveloping him, who sat round-shouldered and uncouthly in his chair, was the celebrated Samuel Johnson. The slight, dapper, nervous little man, dressed like a beau, who fidgeted and talked anxiously, and with sentences broken by exclamations and repetitions without sense, was David Garrick, of Drury Lane. The third was our friend of the morning, Goldsmith, who had come to have a bowl of bishop with his bullying friend Johnson before wending Islingtonward to bed.
"Now, sir," said Johnson, with an austere rumble, interrupting Garrick, "you must sit quiet awhile. Why should you dominate us? You have just come in, and have no more title to destroy the conversation that Goldsmith and I were about than you have to burn the inn. Suppose you are the best among players; sir, that is but another way of saying that you are the best of the least among men, and can give you no precedence. Moreover, Davy—" and here the lexicographer's voice sank from the rumble austere to the rumble reproachful, "it is but a fortnight since you refused me an order for the play because a seat was worth three shillings. Out on you, Davy! to be so close with me, preceptor and friend, who tramped to London town with you, both of us poor as mice. And now you come seeking advice in your troubles! But I'll have my talk first with Goldy." Then turning from the flustered Garrick to Goldsmith, he said: "And what more said this eminent Horace Walpole?"
"Why, sir," replied Goldsmith, "he said he liked not your Idlers, and that, while you might have wasted no more than the evenings of a week writing 'Rasselas,' the philosophy in the book needn't have consumed an hour."
"Walpole!" interrupted Garrick, peevishly; "why, sir, he is as shallow as a skimming dish, and of no more critical taste than a Towser dog."
"No, I remember now," observed Johnson, with a gleam. "The same depthless rogue said you were no player."
"But Garrick is right whatever!" said Goldsmith. "This coxcomb Walpole can never separate his envy from his taste. He abuses Sterne, and declares there was never the book so dull as 'Tristram Shandy.' 'To read it,' says this Walpole, 'is to smile a moment and yawn an hour. The humor is forever being aimed at and forever being missed.' The great Warburton now insists there has not been in two centuries anything like 'Shandy.' He sent Sterne a purse of gold, and told the other bishops that Sterne was the English Rabelais."
"And what said the bishops, sir?" demanded Johnson, refilling his mug.
"They asked who Rabelais was."
"Well," observed Johnson, after an interval filled with a tentative sipping of the hot drink, "I have no fault to find because this Walpole does not like my work. Yet, sir, the trouble lies here: I have too much morality for him. This noble rake feels himself criticized. It is the same with the beetle-browed Chesterfield. Such ribald folk, sir, hate a moral man, just as they dislike a chaste woman."
"Was it not Chesterfield, sir," asked Garrick, still smarting, and willing for some trifle of revenge, "was it not Lord Chesterfield who said you were 'a respectable Hottentot who threw his meat everywhere but down his throat?'"
"And if it were, sir," retorted Johnson, with a roar, "it meant no more than that he was sore because I did not dedicate my dictionary to him. The man never saw me eat in his life."
There was a pause, broken at last by Johnson.
"Now, sir," he continued, suddenly turning to Garrick, and in tones of kind interest, "what is it we would say? What of this tumult in your theatre last night? I hear they tried to burn the house."
"It is this rancorous Fitzpatrick," replied Garrick. "He hates me and is put forward by others of my foes. They make a pretext of my raising the charges for tickets."
"And pray, sir, why should you raise the charges? Do you not get rich fast enough?"
"But I have raised the expenses of the house. It costs me ninety pounds every time I ring up my curtain; last season it was but sixty."
"And, sir," said Johnson, "I will remember what you forget. You have also enlarged your house, and nightly take in three hundred and seventy-five pounds where before it was two hundred and fifty. Sir, the public cares nothing for your expenses. Moreover, this is not a question of justice, but one of expediency. You say that you fear for your building if you do not restore the old-time charges?"
"On my life, sir, I fear they'll tear it down to-night if I don't yield."
"Then yield, sir," said Johnson. "Since there's no principle at bay beyond the principle of avarice, doubtless the world will deem the better of you for your complacency."
"I fear I must," observed Garrick, gloomily.
"Davy, you're a great hare-heart," said Johnson, surveying him with an amused cynicism; "vanity and cowardice are your weaknesses, Davy."
"Why, sir, because I yield to your advice?" responded Garrick, with warmth. "Is a man a coward who takes the only method of saving himself from destruction? And as for vanity, sir, I see no reason for the charge."
"No reason!" quoth Johnson, "and you've just taken off Mallet's 'Elvira,' as bad a piece as ever came to London town, which you accepted because Mallet promised you a puff in his 'Life of Marlborough!' Call you that by any name but vanity?"
"The piece was a good piece," contended Garrick. "It did not suit the vulgar; but what then? As your friend Chesterfield says: 'The vulgar are seldom right, and then only for a wrong reason.'"
"It was a wretched piece," declared Johnson, dogmatically. "What was good in it was not new, and what was new was not good. But I'll retract, Davy, my charges of cowardice and vanity. And I'll allow none to abuse you but me. Still, it is my thought that, in case of a demonstration tonight, you might show wisdom in retreating to your tariff of last year. The public likes not change; surely not a change for the worse."
"I shall have my revenge on Fitzpatrick, however," said Garrick. "Hear what Churchill is to say of him in a next edition of his 'Rosciade,' which we have even now on the press. It is the severest thing in language. You will note that Churchill does not name him, but the description marks the creature for every eye. Churchill got his idea from my 'Fribbleriad.' Observe, now, how Fitzpatrick is flayed." And Garrick began to read from a proof sheet he took from his pocket:
"A motley figure of the Fribble tribe,
Which heart can scarce conceive or pen describe,
A six-foot suckling, mincing in Its gait,
Affected, peevish, prim and delicate;
Fearful It seemed, though of athletic make.
Lest brutal breezes should too roughly shake
Its tender form, and savage motion spread
O'er Its pale cheeks the horrid, manly red.
Much did It talk, in Its own pretty phrase,
Of genius and of taste, of players and plays;
Much, too, of writing which Itself had wrote.
Of special merit, though of little note;
For Fate, in a strange humor, had decreed
That what It wrote none but Itself should read.
Much, too, It chattered of dramatic laws,
Misjudging critics and misplaced applause;
Then, with a self-complacent, jutting air.
It smiled, It smirked, It wriggled to the chair."
"It will crush the man," said Johnson. He was deeply impressed; for Garrick read well, and no strength was lost through him. "What think you, sir?" asked Johnson, turning to Goldsmith.
"Crush him, yes," replied Goldsmith; "but it's too powerful for so slim a purpose. Do you know this silken fop Fitzpatrick? Why, sir, it's to burn a barn to boil an egg!—a bludgeon to a gnat!"
"I fear you do not like Churchill," said Garrick to Johnson, as he pocketed the proof sheet and prepared to go. "He tells me he asked you to dine, and you refused."
"I did not refuse," returned Johnson, making a grimace; "I merely failed to accept. I like the man well enough, but I do not like his company. I have liked a dog, sir; but I did not dine with the dog."
Then Johnson was left to empty his bowl of bishop alone. Garrick departed to prepare himself for the coming trouble of the night. Goldsmith, who liked Garrick as little as he liked trouble, declined an order for a seat at the theatre, giving as an excuse that the Ledger was shouting for another "Citizen of the World," and staged his way to "merry Islington."
As Johnson mused, there rose a vast noise. Into the room came Beauclerk, March, Williams and George Selwyn, the latter having encountered the others at the door.
"And we had given you up till to-morrow, George," March was saying. "I was just picturing you to Beauclerk and Gillie as running between the dying and the dead—the murderer who hangs to-morrow, and the monarch mouldering at Westminster; and presto! up you turn and show me a false picture-maker."
"I could not help it, March," said Selwyn. "Those knaves at Westminster, after having me in a sweat for a week, postpone digging out my king. As for the murderer, I left him in a most Christian frame, eating sirloin and potatoes, sure of heaven to-morrow. This last, on the bare word of a tavern chaplain with a marvelously red nose."
"A pure hoax," said Williams to Beauclerk, for the two were holding a side conversation touching the Cock Lane ghost, which spectre had been a popular wraith a short time before; "a pure hoax, I assure you. As Horry Walpole said, 'a mere cheap fraud of knocks and scratches.'"
Johnson and March were made known to each other by Beauclerk. The others and the philosopher had met before. The newcomers, gay of costume in contrast with the dull and slouchy garb of Johnson, noisy as against his rather sour taciturnity, drew chairs to the table. It was plain that March had not conquered Johnson's love at first sight. This may have been the reason why March, with a praiseworthy hope of uplifting Johnson's spirits, ordered another bowl of bishop. Johnson took this as a text.
"Why, sir," said he, staring arrogantly at March, "I perceive you to be one who loves drink."
"And if it be so?" remarked March, arching his brows.
"Nothing, save this," responded the dogmatist: "you may have sobriety and knowledge, or drink and ignorance."
"From which," observed Beauclerk, gaily, "one must infer you to be a six-bottle man at least, March. Not a drop less would explain the miracle of all you do not know."
"If I may amend your word 'drink' to 'wine,'" said March, replying to Johnson, "I am constrained to say that the wisdom of the wise whom I've encountered reconciles me fully to that ignorance and claret you have joined as twins. There is but one man of brains in England," continued March, cheerfully, eager to irritate Johnson, "and that is Hume."
"Hume, sir!" ejaculated Johnson, growling his scorn; "Hume is an imitation, and an imitation is ever a failure. Hume, sir, is the merest echo of Voltaire."
"I am obliged to you, sir," smiled March; "you have multiplied my respect for Voltaire beyond measure."
"Impertinence, sir!" roared Johnson, who supposed March, from his groomed, sleek appearance, to be much younger than he was; "impertinence comporteth ill with youth."
"That can have no concern with me," replied March, with an air of irony. "I have for long been no boy. I am crowding forty years, sir, while Beauclerk tells me you are no more than fifty-four. But what account years? The thickest dolt I ever knew was fifty-four," And March beamed on the wrathful editor of the Rambler.
"Go on, gentlemen," said Selwyn, tasting his drink; "you do famously. Quite like a bear-baiting, eh, Gillie? A case of snap and claw."
"On what, sir, do you found such an existence as yours?" asked Johnson of March, after a pause, and meanwhile eying that nobleman in deep disdain.
"You will believe me," replied March, "when I tell you I do not make the mistake of being better or worse or other than my times. I match the world I live in, sir. My cardinals of existence are wagers, women and wine."
"You have forgotten the fourth, sir—a foppishness of dress."
"You mean my decency of apparel, sir," returned March, sweetly. "I should have named it, but I feared you would feel criticized."
"I have one thing to thank you for," observed Johnson, with much acrimony, yet not a little worried to find a stout and ready combatant where one was so little looked for; "you permit me to felicitate myself with the thought that we agree on nothing."
"You mistake, sir," retorted March. "We agree on politics. We are both Whigs in spirit. We have both sold out and become Tories; you for a pension of three hundred pounds, and I for my place in the Royal bedchamber."
"Gentlemen," snorted Johnson, starting up, "you will pardon me if I leave bad company."
"Assuredly," said the incorrigible March, as the incensed doctor stumped out of the tavern; "the more readily as your doing so will tend vastly to improve it." Then continuing to Beauclerk, who remonstrated against the warmth with which March had met Johnson's thrust with thrust, "What else was I to do? Because the man loves soiled linen, must my ruffles be insulted? Johnson is a hypocrite; he pretends to independence, when there is no greater truckler than he in England. He assumes the moral; yet it was but the other day when—you should know who escorted the lady—he gushed over the Bouffler, who visited him in his den. He is in clumsy raptures over the mistress of the Prince di Conti, because, adding a bent for literature to a bent for immodesty, she pays our grumbling bear a visit. You told me yourself how he clattered down-stairs to her coach, wig on wrong and raiment all unbuttoned and unbuckled. The man is an impostor, and cheats even himself. To his own mind, he is a highly moral fellow. Consenting to what most folks admit, that I'm the wickedest man in Britain, still I would wager that I meet death more steadily than does he."
And March was right. Twenty-one years later, Johnson, pale, and with the sweat of terror damp on his forehead, yielded his life; the day before, in a frenzy of fear, attempting to stab himself with a pair of shears, being in that extremity of apprehension when the victim rushes on the destruction that affrights him. March, forty-eight years following his tilt with Johnson in the Cheshire Cheese, met his end; and the day of his death was as every day of his life—a day of calmness, cynicism and smiling gentility, with regrets for nothing and reproaches for none.

### VI

It was evening. Drury Lane Theatre was thronged, and the crowd in the pit buzzed angrily, like a colony of wasps. The Rena, safe in her box, the color high in her dark cheek, was exhilarated with the suppressed uproar. Across from her the waxen-faced, slim Fitzpatrick was posted, ready to head the campaign of the night. By his side was Burke, a haberdasher, whose grievance was that Garrick no longer bought of him. March, Beauclerk, Williams and Selwyn were well to the rear, where they might see and enjoy and have everything before them. Johnson was in the pit, well down toward the "spikes." Back of the animated Rena towered the prize-fighter, Jack Slack, covering the lady with a cool eye of guardianship, three or four of his big-fisted butcher lads of Chandos street about him.
"The orders of 'is lordship," observed Slack to one of his satellites, "is to carry out the lady the moment trouble sets in; an' from w'at I 'ears an' sees of them coves in the pit, I don't think as 'ow we 'as long to wait."
"But suppose 'er ladyship wants to see the ruction out?" considered the satellite.
"The lady 'as no say," asserted Slack. "'Is lordship says, 'e does, 'Use your judgment, Jack Slack, an' take 'er out direckly, knockin' down w'atever blokes is 'andy to your reach, to ockepy 'er mind like.' Them's 'is lordship's very orders."
There was a crash of music; the orchestra had begun the overture. At the sound the pit began to shout and make an uproar, one calling to another, clubs flourishing, the spirit of riot commencing to swell. There is nothing the mob likes better than violence with safety.
A burly fellow stood over the leader of the orchestra, menacing him with a cudgel, demanding that he play "Britons, Strike Home." The leader, not being a hero and loving his bones, complied. The pit sang, or rather howled, to the accompaniment of the orchestra.
The music ceased; in the midst of hoots and yells and deafening noise the curtain went up. "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" was the bill. Holland came on to speak a prologue. He was cursed and clamored at, and one or two clubs were thrown at him. A cudgel struck him across the breast; at that he left the stage.
The ruffian who had captured the leader of the fiddles smote with his bludgeon on that official's desk, and commanded "The Roast Beef of Old England." While the music proceeded, somewhat out of tune and time—for there was much nervousness among the musicians—several of the pit resumed the breaking and smashing of such furniture as had survived the riot of the night before. Those not actively engaged in the war looked on from stall or box approvingly.
March, elated at Garrick's punishment, left his three friends and hastened round to Fitzpatrick's box, the better to counsel that person in his duties as mob-leader.
In her place the Rena, in a tingle of delight and carried away by the tumult, was standing in the very front, augmenting the uproar with shrill cries and pretty profanities, and urging on destruction. To what heights the Rena's enthusiasm would have lifted her will never be known. In the midst of her joy she was caught up like a child in the giant arms of Slack, who, with no more of explanation than the remark, "'Is lordship's orders!" began bearing her away. The Rena spat like a cat, swore like a bargeman, and clawed the tough features of the fighter. Her objections were unheeded. She was whisked off and chaired to her door in Cleveland Court, hearing and seeing no further of that night's proceedings in Drury Lane. March beheld her as she was borne away, and the spectacle pleased him, as it left him more free to the double enterprise of injuring Garrick and seeking the pretty Bride.
The orchestra straggled and staggered noisily to the final notes of "England's Roast Beef." The din and turbulence of the pit were in no wise abated. Fitzpatrick, cold, with his thin, bloodless face, stood up and raised his hand for silence. There was a half-lull in the storm.
"We were last night insulted by Moody, the Irish comedian," shouted Fitzpatrick. "This Moody assaulted a gentleman who had paid at the door as a spectator of the performance. We demand that the creature Moody appear and apologize to an insulted public for his ruffianly conduct of last evening."
Garrick, in a tremble of terror just off the stage in the wings, urged Moody to obey the howl of the public. Moody demurred. His last night's guilt consisted in nothing beyond knocking down an incendiary and stepping on the candle wherewith he was about to burn the theatre. At last, pushed by the white-faced Garrick, Moody went on. He was met by a shout of derision.
"Apologize to the public you've insulted, you rogue!" commanded Fitzpatrick.
"Why, then," said Moody, with his most comic Irish leer, "I'm sorry I saved the lives of you last night."
"Get down on your knees! Down on your knees, scoundrel!" howled a dozen in the pit.
"I'll see you damned first!" retorted Moody, and walked off the stage.
"Garrick! Garrick!" shouted the burly party with the bludgeon—the person who had control of the music. "Garrick! Garrick!" yelled two hundred voices, taking up the name.
There was nothing else for it. Shaking in every joint, his face pallid, horror in his eye, Garrick appeared. There were a few cheers from such as Johnson, whose age made him safe and whose anger gave him courage. The cheers were buried beneath an avalanche of hissing disapprobation. Garrick nerved himself and attempted to speak. Fitzpatrick, his hated foe and critic, interrupted him, March at his elbow giving him suggestions.
"Will you or will you not," demanded Fitzpatrick, "restore the old charges of last year?"
Again Garrick essayed to speak, and again the mob drowned his voice.
"Answer—yes or no?" commanded Fitzpatrick.
"Yes!" screamed Garrick, in a final agony, his face working.
The next morning the paper in which Garrick had an interest announced:
Messrs. Garrick & Lacy, of the management of Drury Lane Theatre, at the earnest request of countless patrons of the house, and believing it to be but justice to that public which they hereby thank for numerous favors, have decided to restore the charges of last year.
"Davy has a timid heart," said Johnson to Goldsmith, as they read and discussed the announcement over a bottle at the Cheshire Cheese; "Davy is a coward. And yet," concluded the philosopher, after a pause, "what we call courage, in at least one-half of its expression, is only a phase of imbecility."
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse