TALES FROM THE OLD DRAMATISTS. No. J.-The Blackfriars Firm. SHOWING HOW A CAPITAL COMEDY CAN BE MADE WITHOUT ANY LOVE IN IT. HIS is another London story, and the about the same time as that of our last. scene is laid at But whereas in that case you were asked not to consider your ancestors as people who lived many ages ago, but as those for whom you could have a sympathy and a kindred feeling, you must now, please, consider these ancestors as at an enormous distance. For you are to be told how very unenlightened they were. They did not, certainly, believe in spirit-rapping, in homoeopathy, or ritualism, or that the skin of a boa-constrictor would cure consumption, or that twenty thousand blockheads were sure to choose a clever man to represent them; but they, a great number of them, did believe in fairy influence, in fortune telling, and in the magical production of gold. So those who only pretended to believe in these things made a capital harvest out of those who had faith, and I am going to tell you the adventures of three clever persons who were partners in as gallant a fraud as ever City folks concocted for the pillage of the foolish. If I were writing on the top of the house where the Gentleman's Magazine is published, I could see the place where stood, in King James's time, the house in which these incidents took place. It was in Blackfriars, to which place, as you know, the Dominicans moved from Holborn in 1276. A parliament was once held in that quarter, and it was called the Black Parliament, and the divorce of Henry VIII. from Catherine was discussed there. It is full of antiquarian interest, but we will not talk of that now. our scene is laid has, of course, long been removed. It belonged, at the time I am speaking of, to a gentleman named Lovewit. He was a man of substance, and grew hops in Kent, though there was no The old house in which Blackfriars Bridge for him to bring them over, far less a mail coach in which he could take the four inside places for four great hopsacks, to hurry them off into a distant district at a time when hops were almost worth their weight in gold, a feat performed by an acquaintance of everybody's friend, Mr. Mark Lemon. There was plague in the City, at this time-there always was, more or less, until the beneficial disaster commemorated by the Tall Bully-and Mr. Lovewit, a bachelor, had betaken himself to his hop ground, resolving not to return to town while any danger existed. He had locked up his Blackfriars house, but given the keys to his trusty butler, whose name was Jeremy. Jeremy had been a trusty servant, certainly, but had altered his ways. He had been an honest, plain fellow, content with his sixty shillings a year wages, and his master's regard. But walking one day at Pie Corner, a place you may still see, he lighted upon a somewhat elderly and very hungry and ragged man, who, not having the means of buying any pies, was forced to content himself with smelling the steam of the cooking. The good-natured butler took compassion on him, gave him relief, and discovered that he was an alchemist. I think the hungry man believed a little in his art, and was thoroughly up in all its technicalities and jargon; "could burst a man to harm," but the wretched condition at which he had arrived must have convinced him that he had not got near the marvellous secret, and it occurred to him that he had better leave off cheating himself, and begin to cheat other people. So he considered Jeremy's nature, and worked upon it. In a short time Jeremy established the philosopher in Mr. Lovewit's house, with an array of stills and glasses, and crucibles and furnaces, and all the rest of the contents of an alchemist's laboratory. Then Jeremy, who had a large circle of acquaintances in the City, caused it to be given out that there was the most wonderful miracleworker open to consultation at Mr. Lovewit's, and then Jeremy himself disappeared. Not actually, however, but only as the honest livery servant. There appeared on the premises a most gallant Captain Face, sumptuously arrayed in a second-hand military suit, and full of swagger and strange oaths. He haunted ordinaries, showed golden rings and chains which his friend the alchemist he said had made for him by transmutation of base metal, and enjoyed many treats at the expense of curious or deluded persons. This was Captain Face, who, though he lent himself to this roguery, I believe was not a bad fellow, and being young and tempestuous, enjoyed the fun. "He did not care," he said, "whether people believed him or not (only if they signified disbelief too rudely, there was the sword that had slaughtered, in foreign wars, more folks than he could number), and if they wished to consult the alchemist, they could be introduced by him, though, as proof of their respectability and fitness to know a wise and holy man, they must make the Captain handsome presents. You see that the knaves who pick up countrymen in our days, and desire to see the money of those whom they cheat, are but sorry imitators of the old rascals. The partners soon began to flourish, and jovial feasts, of which Mr. Lovewit among his hops knew nothing, smoked on the Blackfriars board. But, saith the bard, what's a table nicely spread, without a woman at its head? Not only as matter of good taste, but for the sake of better conducting their impositions, the respectable firm of Face & Subtle took a lady into partnership. I do not know that we need inquire particularly into her earlier history, but she was a very clever girl, with a capital memory and a genius for acting and disguises, and her high spirit speedily gave her domination over her friends. In fact, she was the life and soul of the business, and though her baptismal name was one known to Sir John Falstaff, we will give her the handsomer one which in a moment of admiration of her wit was conferred upon her by the alchemist, and she shall be Claridiana. The eminent Blackfriars firm, as I have said, prospered, for there were numbers of people eager to be taken in-so eager that they would take themselves in, and when ridiculed by wiser persons, would actually invent stories in proof of the truth of what had been told them by Captain Face. I should mention that his friend's real name was Subtle, but that when disguised as a venerable philosopher he was addressed as Father, or by some other title of respect. It was given out that by long study in the wilderness, prayers, fasting, and a most holy life, he had been admitted to the grand secrets of nature, and that no one must approach him for mere purposes of greed, or in an avaricious spirit, but only that by obtaining gold he might be able to do good among men. To this hour people with marvellous prescriptions tell you the same story-only you must not forget the stamps. To the House of Mystery thronged all kinds of people, until the wits of the partners were puzzled how to dispose of some while others were being cheated according to their respective natures, and sometimes the house was so full of dupes that Captain Face was obliged to stow away the least valuable ones in back cellars and the like. But he was always equal to the occasion. Among the principal victims-and, by the way, the partners must have had great knowledge of humankind, for they had to suit their cozenage to the different characters, and mistakes would have been fatal-was a City Knight, named Sir Epicure Mammon. His name to a certain extent indicates his nature. He was, of course, an utter hypocrite, desperately greedy of money, but he desired it that he might indulge in the most extravagant luxury that ever a poet put into the head of one of his creations. His dreams of revel exceeded anything that we have read of the madness of Roman Emperors, but his fancy descended to the remotest details,-amber spoons, agate dishes, taffeta sarsnet shirts soft as cobweb, and all other minutiae of epicureanism (as it was thought)—and, in fact, but for the greatness of the poet who filled up this picture with such infinitesimal details, one might almost venture to think it over-charged. But the idea you require is that of a voluptuous, greedy, unprincipled knave, a believer in no good, and yet through the baseness of his own nature, deluded into the belief that a good man might attain the goldmaking secret, and would part with it to a scoundrel who pretended that he desired wealth only for the best of purposes. Another dupe was a religionist of the Puritan type. The Faithful Brethren had heard of the fame of the alchemist, and having pretended to satisfy themselves that he was a holy man, and having really, as they thought, discovered that he had the secret, they sent him by Tribulation Wholesome, a Dutch pastor, and Ananias, one of his deacons, not only much money, but a very large and valuable stock of metal goods, which the alchemist was to change into gold, whereby the good cause should be much profited, and friends should be made for it among the evil rulers of the earth. Again, there came to be deluded, but rather in the hope of making a rich marriage (for the reputation of the partners, as it extended, included rumour that other advantages than those of alchemy might be obtained at their hands), a foolish young country gentleman, Master Kastril, known as the Angry Boy. He is an extinct type, but, as with many types which still linger on the stage, though the originals have ceased to be, a laugh may be got out of his swagger and cowardice. He wished to be thought a fine gentleman, and knew no better way of attaining his purpose than by quarreling with everybody. His companion was his sister, a pretty young widow, a perfect nonentity, plastic in the hands of her fiery brother, but quite ready, in an easy, indolent way, to be courted by anybody who would take the trouble to talk to her. Her brother had an idea that he might manage a good marriage for her by an introduction to the House of Mystery, and poor Mrs. Pliant had no will of her own. Then there were two capital dupes of the lower order. One was a foolish lawyer's clerk, Mr. Dapper, who had no taste for his business, and a great deal of affectation. I do not suppose that in these days any lawyer's clerk in Chancery Lane would easily be persuaded that the fairies liked him, though many an otherwise smart young fellow in Chancery Lane has been victimized by the spirits, and wears a galvanic ring. Mr. Dapper we may assume to have been a type of extra-silliness, but the way in which the poor little creature is gradually led on to believe that the Queen of Fairies is his aunt, and loves him, and means to give him a charm that shall make him a match for Lord Nigel Glenvarloch, whom he had heard of, and hoped no doubt to meet at the ordinary, is excellent fooling, if you will reject the common sense, as you are taught to call it, which puts you into a critical attitude, and will accept a bit of broad fooling in the spirit in which it was written. Lastly comes the noble dupe, whose name you all know from the portraits of Garrick, the last actor, they say, who could do anything with the part. Kean confessedly failed, and Mrs. Garrick told him so. I have sometimes thought that the late Robson might have been taught to play it. He was not a man of education, and would not at first have leaped into the conception, which demands knowledge of old times. But he had something worth more than all teaching, that power of alternating the wildest self-excitement with the most abject stolidity; and I think this little "tobacco man" would have been made marvellous in his hands. He is a small, pettifogging tradesman, of the neediest and most sordid kind, intensely mean, but as intensely credulous, and he is led on from the tiny ambition of the sordidest shopkeeper up to City visions which are too much for his little brain. O, to have seen Garrick when told that he must bury a loadstone under his threshold to attract the spurs of the gallants, and when he humbly presented his almanac, begging that the wise man would cross out all evil days so that he might neither buy nor sell thereon; and when he vainly sought to remember the mercurial spirits whose names he was to inscribe on his boxes, that flies might be kept off. A more exquisite study of fatuity was never executed by a dramatist. Now, the play, and it is a most busy and merry one, is composed of the various scenes in which the Blackfriars firm humbug these people. There is a steady business going through. Chapter follows chapter of roguery, some of the most high-flying kind, acceptable to the more educated, some of the sort which I have just described; but there is a persistence of intent in the resolute efforts of the trio of impostors to enrich themselves as soon as may be, and I need not |