280 COLLEY CIBBER.
strange in one who had risen by his own unaided effort,
affords room only for contempt or pity. Writing of
the Earl of Chesterfield, he says : " Having often had the
honour to be the butt of his "raillery, I must own I have
received more pleasure from his lively manner of raising
the laugh against me, than I could have felt from the
smoothest flattery of a serious civility." English literature
presents few instances of such abject toadyism. Still he
had talents, and let them receive their tribute of admi-
ration ; he did a service to his generation, and let him
have his meed of praise. He was a patient reformer of
inveterate abuses. By his writings he elevated the morality
of the stage, and by his policy he improved its manage-
ment.
His private life stands in unfavourable contrast with
his public career. Witty and unprincipled, clever and vain,
he lived only to amuse and be amused ; a genuine comic
actor, with no depth of feeling or strength of character ;
undepressed by misfortune, but elated with success ; fond
of his bottle, fond of his jest, fond likewise of the rattle
of the dice.
Though undeserving the excessive depreciation he has
suffered, a candid impartiality will refuse to connect any
flattering encomium with his name. Whatever the debt
contemporaries may owe, they who make it their chief
business to cater to the public amusement merely, have
little daim upon a succeeding generation ; and his works
having answered their purpose, will be solely valuable
to the literary or historical student, as indicative of the
taste of a period he neither disgraced nor adorned.
In height he was of the middle size, with a fair
complexion, and a carriage easy, though not graceful.
His voice was shrill, painfiilly so when he raised it to
an unusual pitch ; but his attitudes were strikingly expres-
Digitized by VjOOQIC
COLLEY GIBBER. 281
sive. On the stage he seemed to put on the character
he was acting, and every limb and gesture spoke the part
as truthfully as the words he uttered. Instances of care-
lessness, however, were not finfrequent. Once, when acting
as Sir Courtly Rice, a part he had played a hundred times,
he quite lost himself; so, making a ceremonious bow to
the lady with whom he was acting, he drawled out, " your
humble servant, Madam," then with quiet assurance walked
across the stage, and said to the prompter, " Well, what
next?"
From the time of his retirement from the management
of Drury Lane till his death, he took no prominent part
in theatrical matters; but occasionally appeared on the
stage, and would receive as much as £50 a night for his
services. There was a rising actress, in whose career he
took a warm and lively interest, and that was Mrs.
Woffington : the witty, the volatile, the beautiful Peg Wof-
fington, President of the Beefsteak Club; who, at the
jocund noon of night, after having melted an audience into
tears by her touching impersonation of innocence and
sorrow, might be seen at the head of the board, brandish-
ing the foaming pewter, giving as the toast, " Here's to
liberty, confusion to all order." He delighted to play
Fondlewife to her Laetitia in Congreve's " Old Bachelor ;"
and Swiney, likewise, in his old age, after his twenty
years residence abroad, became one of her danglers, and
left her a handsome legacy at his death.
In 1745, Cibber appeared as Pandulph, in his tragedy
" Papal Tyranny in the Reign of King John," and his
last publication was an essay on the character of Cicero,
then a popular topic, owing to Dr. Middleton's celebrated
life of that orator. He died December 12th, 1757, in the
eighty-seventh year of his age. He had conversed with his
servant at six o'clock in the morning, and appeared in
Digitized by VjOOQIC
282 COLLEY GIBBER.
his usual health, at nine he was found quite dead. Of
his many children, two only acquired any notoriety, his
son Theophilus, who was a great profligate, but a tolerable
actor, and, like his father, e1l:celled in the characters of
fops and old men, and his youngest child Charlotte.
A witticism of the son has been preserved, lie fether
once meetmg him dressed in the ^ctreme of foppery,
surveyed him curiously for some minutes, and then said,
with great disdain : " Indeed, The, I pity you." " Don't
pity me. Sir," replied the son, " pity my tailor."
The career of his daughter Charlotte was so eccentric,
replete with such singular vicissitudes, that we cannot
resist devoting a paragraph to her memory. She seemed
to labour under a deficiency in some one faculty, which
more than neutralized the unusual activity of all the rest.
Ardent, intelligent, and persevering, her conduct ever
bordered on the extravagant ; a Lola Montes in her day,
though with greater virtue, and, therefore, not so fortunate
as to win the favour of kings and guardsmen. The
principal materials of this sketch are to be found in a
narrative written by herself, and dedicated to herself, to
which she affixed the following appropriate motto :
" This tragic story, or this comic jest.
May make you laugh or cry, as you like best."
In very early life she gave indications of an excitable
temperament, and an unruly will. Among her juvenile
pranks, she relates how one morning, when but four years
old, she got up early, put on her father's wig, dressed
herself as well as she could in male attire, and mimicing
the paternal strut, went out to receive the obeisances of
the passers-by : how, on another occasion, her father was
awoke by deafening acclamations, and on looking out of
the window, beheld his hopeful daughter making a tri-
Digifized by VjOOQIC
COLLEY CIBBER. 283
umphal entry into the village, sitting astride upon an ass, and
attended by a retinue of screaming urchins, whom she had
bribed to take part in the procession. At eight years
of age she was sent to schoftl, and devoted herself to her
studies with passionate vdxemence. The needle, woman's
(H^inary weapon against inactivity, she could never learn
to manage ; but every masculine pursuit or amusement
had for her an irresistible attraction. She would hunt,
shoot, ride races, dig, drink beer, do anything, in €^ort,
that a young lady ought not to do. At fourteen, she
WOTt to live with her mother at a house near Uxbridge.
There she became a capital shot, would rise early, spend
the whole day at her sport, and return home, laden with
spoil. Her gun, at the suggestion of a good-natured
friend, was soon taken away from her, and she revenged
herself by attempting to demolish the chimneys of the
house, by firing at them with a huge fowling-piece that
had hung over the kitchen mantel-piece.
To the gun succeeded the curry-comb, and she became
an adept in all the mysteries of the stable. She next
applied herself to the study of physic, obtained some drugs,
and with formal gravity practised among those poor people
who were credulous enough to swallow her concoctions.
Her next employment was gardening, which she pursued
with her usual enthusiasm, and after two or three hours
hard work would not allow herself rest even for her meals,
but with some bread and bacon in one hand, and a pruning
knife in the other, continue unremittingly her self-imposed
labour. At this time her father was abroad, and the man
who acted in the double capacity of groom and gardener,
was for some irregularity dismissed. Charlotte was in
ecstasies, as she was now arch-empress of his two-fold
domain, and unceasing were her manoeuvres to prevent the
engagement of a successor. The dismissed servant having
been seen straying near the house one evening, suspicions
Digitized by VjOOQIC
284 COLLEY CIBBER.
were aroused, which Charlotte skilfiilly inflamed by her
dark suggestions, and then boldly undertook the defence
of the leaguered house. The plate was carried up into
her room, which she gamishdd with all the weapons of
war the establishment could aflford, and then sent the
household to bed. After a long vigil, to her great mor-
tification, no attack was made, universal silence prevailed,
when luckily a ciu* began to bark. Up went the window,
and volley after volley was poured into the unoffending
void, while her mother and the domestics lay below in
trembling consternation. While still a girl, she married
Mr. Charke, an eminent composer on the violin, but he
was a worthless libertine, and after the birth of a daughter,
they separated. She then obtained an engagement on the
stage, and relates with childish simplicity, how for a whole
week she did nothing but walk from one end of the town
to the other, to read her name on the bills. Her success
was such as to justify expectations of her becoming a most
accomplished actress, and as Lucy in " George Barnwell,"
she attracted considerable attention ; but she soon quarrelled
with the manager, and afterwards satirized him in a farce
she wrote, termed " The Art of Management." She then
tried a new sphere, and opened a shop in Long Acre, as
oil-woman and grocer, and her whole soul was absorbed
in the fluctuations of sugar. The shop did not pay, and
she quitted it to become the proprietress of a puppet-show%
by which she lost all she had, and was arrested for a debt
of seven pounds. Her release was effected by the con-
tributions of some acquaintances, when she dressed herself
in male attire, and assumed the name of Mr. Brown.
Under this disguise, she engaged the affections of a young
heiress, to whom, in order to escape a private marriage
urged by the amatory damsel, she was compelled to disclose
her secret. Shortly afterwards, she exhibited her valorous
spirit by knocking a man down with a cudgel for having
Digitized by VjOOQIC
COLLEY GIBBER. 285
fabricated some story at her expense. She next obtained
a situation as valet-de-chambre to a nobleman, where she
appears for a short time to have known something like
comfort; but on being dismissed from this place, she
became extremely reduced, her child fell ill, and ruin stared
her in the face. A timely supply from a friend relieved
her from her more immediate necessities^ and with some
small remainder she set up as an itinerant sausage-seller.
This, Kke her other avocations, did not prove remunerative ;
and we next hear of her as a singer at some musical enter-
tainment, then as a performer at Bartholomew fair, then as
assistant to a master of legerdemain. She next, by means
of some advances made by an uncle, opened a public-house
in Drury Lane, the first she saw vacant, which of course
failed ; and her next employment was as a waiter in a tavern
at Marylebone. Here she made herself so useftil that a
kinswoman of the landlady intimated that her hand would
not be refused if applied for, and the captivating waiter to
escape a second involuntary marriage, was obliged again to
reveal the secret of her sex. She next engaged herself to
manage Punch at a puppet-show, and afterwards joined a
band of strolling players. Tired of wandering, it would
seem, she settled at Chepstow, and opened a pastry-cook's
shop. When she had built her oven, she had not where-
withal to heat it, and when she had obtained the fuel, she
was without the necessary materials for her trade; but
every obstacle gave way before her ingenuity and perse-
verance. Afler a short trial, she removed her business to
Pell, a place near Bristol, received a small legacy, with
which she paid off her debts, tod commenced life afresh.
She wrote a short tale for a newspaper, and obtained there-
by a situation as corrector of the press ; but her earnings
at this toilsome occupation being insufficient to support
her, she obtained employment as prompter at the theatre
at Bath. She afterwards returned to London, and kept a
Digitized by VjOOQIC
286 COLLBY GIBBER.
public-house at Islington, but as we here lose the aid of her
narrative, her movements at this epoch are uncertain. She
finally had recourse to her pen for subsistence, and began
the publication of her memoirs. Her next production was
a novel, and a graphic picture has been given of her home
at this period. When the publisher with a friend called
for the purpose of purchasing her manuscript, she was
living in a wretched hut near the Clerkenwell prison. The
furniture consisted of a dresser extremely dean, ornamented
with a few plates ; and a fractured pitcher stood underneath
it. A gaunt domestic guarded the establishment, while
on a broken chair by the grate sat the mistress in her
strange attire. A monkey was perched on one hob, a
cat on the other, at her feet lay a half-starved cur, and a
magpie chattered from her chair. The remains of a pair
of bellows laid upon her knees served as a desk, her ink-
stand was a broken teacup, and her solitary pen was worn
to the stump. On her visitors seating themselves on a
rough deal board, for there was not a second chair in the
room, she began with her beautiful, clear voice to read from
the manuscript before her, and asked thirty guineas for the
copyright. The grim handmaiden stared aghast at the
enormity of the demand. The iron-hearted publisher pro-
posed five pounds, but finally doubled the sum, and offered
in addition fifty copies of the work. The bargain was
struck, and the authoress was left in temporary affluence.
From this time Mrs. Charlotte Charke disappears from our
view, and she died shortly afterwards on the 6th of April,
1760.
So strange a stoiy coulfl hardly be paralelled from the
wildest pages of romance. Through an infinite variety
of endeavours, success never once shone upon her path, and
old age found her in a state of the most abject penury.
After so fitful a fever, how welcome must have been the
advent of repose.
Digitized by VjOOQIC
WILLIAM WHITEHEAD.
To those who are giving to contemporaries some mention
of an age that is past, and of names well-nigh forgotten,
it is a hard task to judge how much it may be worth a
struggle to save from the wreck of oblivion. If heroes
have perished, because no song of poet hymned their
daring deeds, has not the fame of poets themselves been
oftentimes perilled by their biographers ? William Mason,
the author of *' Caractacus," wrote a memoir of his friend
Whitehead, which has been condemned by Boswell as a
mere dry narrative of facts. The world has been content
to forget the book and its subject ; and but for the brief
biographical notice of Mr. Campbell, how few would
know anything of Cofley Gibber's immediate successor.
And yet the author of "The Roman Father," and of
"Creusa" has much in his "writings more worthy of
perusal, much in his literary history more deserving of
record, than many of the poetasters whose names the
genius of Johnson has saved from that silent sentence of
forgetfulness which time so sternly passes upon mediocrity.
It is as difficult not to regret, as it is easy to account
Digitized by VjOOQIC
288 WILLIAM WHITEHEAD.
for, this general ignorance of all save our greatest writers.
The history of our literature is biographical. Its annals
teach by examples. • And so we speak of the age of
Dryden, and of Pope, and of Johnson, as if the literature
of each of the eras was represented by these men alone,
and there was no work for others to do in it. The long
line of light is shed through the dark centui'ies by the
great stars. Where they shine at distant intervals the
heaven is blacker, but need we close our eyes to the
twinklings of those lesser fires, without whose ray the
interspace were darkness ?
W. Whitehead was born in the parish of St. Botolph's,
in the town of Cambridge. He was the son of a baker,
whose notoriety for worldly waste and mismanagement has
been perpetuated by the nickname of " Whitehead's Folly"
being given to a few acres of land, on which he expended
large sums of money " in ornamenting rather than culti-
vating." Mr. Mason has penned an elaborate apology for
the poet's humble parentage, and Mr. Campbell has ridi-
culed Mr. Mason for a defence so needless. William was
the second son ; his elder brother John was educated for
the Church, and, by the interest of Lord Montfort, obtained
the living of Penshore in the diocese of Worcester. The
baker's taste for model farming so involved him, that he
died considerably in debt ; and the subject of this memoir,
from the profits of his theatrical writings, most honourably
discharged the claims of his creditors. Mr. Mason speaks
of this conduct of his friepd with exultation, and for once
indulges a facetious vein in terming it " a rare instance of
poetical justice."
Whitehead was at first sent to a school in Cam-
bridge, and thence removed to Winchester. Mr. Mason
quotes an account given of him by Dr. Balguy, who, as
Canon of Winchester Cathedral, had enjoyed opportunities
of procuring some information in reference to Whitehead's
Digitized by VjOOQIC
WILLIAM WHITEHEAD. 289
school career. He very early showed his taste for poetry,
and is said to have written a comedy at sixteen. Through
life he was a good reader and reciter of poetry, and early
evinced some histrionic talent ; for in the winter of 1 732,
he took a female part in the " Andrea" of Terence, and
also gained much applause by his impersonation of Marcia
in « Cato."
Some proof of his early poetical powers is ^ven by
an anecdote told of a visit of Pope to the school in 1733.
The veteran satirist was staying at the Earl of Peter-
borough's, near Southampton, and was taken by his
Lordship to Winchester to see the College. The Earl
gave on the occasion ten guineas, to be disposed of in
prizes to the boys, and Pope set as a subject for English
verse " Peterborough." Whitehead was one of six who
gained prizes.
His successful essays in verse were confined to his
mother-tongue ; for in Latin epigrams and verses he
was deficient. We are told, however, that he was em-
ployed to translate into Latin the first epistle of the
"Essay on Man." Next to his poetical and histrionic
tastes, his school-days have been chiefly mentioned as
the time when he formed some of those fiiendships with
the great which were ultimately of much advantage to
him. At Winchester he was the associate of Lord
Drumlanrig, Sir Charles Douglas, Sir Robert Burdett,
Sir Bryan Broughton, and other boys of patrician birth.
For this, and his long residence in the house of Lord
and Lady Jersey, he has not escaped the charge of
toadyism. Mr. Macaulay has called him "the most
successful tuft-hunter of his day." One of his biographers
suggests that his delicacy of inind and body may have
led 1pm to such companions, in preference to boys of
coarser habits. The apology is more amiable than
sagacious. Though he may possibly have preferred such
u
Digitized by VjOOQIC
290 WILLIAM WHITEHEAD.
society, on grounds less culpable and more disinterested,
there was doubtless a mixture of prudence and vanity
in his selection of his friends. A boy of his parentage
was flattered by the friendship of the great. And he
lived in days when, unless a poor man had transcendent
parts, he could not prosper without patronage.
."Principibus placiusse viris hand ultima laus est,"
was a line in those days much quoted, and very frieely
translated ; and though Whitehead lived in what has
been called called the transition age, from the protection
of patrons to that of the public, many men will be found
in that era, and later too, who, in dedications and else-
where, have laid themselves open to the charge of
toadyism, as much as ever he did. We should also
remember, that a boy of such humble birth would scarcely
have been received as an equal by the sons of gentlemen ;
and if he was to be a dependent at aU, he doubtless
preferred being so among the greatest.
In September, 1735, he stood among the candidates
for New College, but was placed so low on the roll that
he was not sent up. Being superannuated, he was com-
pefled to leave Winchester. He returned to his mother
at Cambridge, and now derived more advantage from his
humble extraction, than from his own abilities, or his
aristocratic school-friendships. Mr. Thomas Pyke, a
baker at Cambridge, had founded some scholarships at
Clare Hall. Whitehead's daim, as the orphan son of
a man of the founder's vocation, was admitted, and he
entered as a sizar. His career a& an author conomenced
at the University ; for as a student little is known of
him, except that he was industrious and economical, and
enjoyed the friendship of Hurd, Stebbing, Ogden, and
other distinguished contemporaries. He wrote some
verses in 1736, as did many other young men at both
Digitized by VjOOQIC
WILLIAM WHITEHEAD. 291
Universities, on the marriage of the Prince of Wales,
But his first poem, which attracted any attention, was
his epistle, " On the Danger of Writing Verse," which *-
may indeed he said to point its own moral, and belongs
to that class of composition of which Dr. Johnson has
observed, that he would rather praise than read.
We hear, however, that it was generally admired, and
that Pope himself spoke of it with commendation.
Smooth verse of average merit, from a very young man
at College, striving by his pen to supply his necessities,
was not likely to provoke hostile criticism, especially when
there was nothing in it bold, new, or heterodox, to jar
against prevailing tastes and prejudices ; and imitation is
flattery so delicate and sincere, that Pope would doubtless
encourage even a faint echo of his own matchless lines
from an admirer and disciple.
In 1739 betook his Bachelor's degree. In 1742 he
was elected a Fellow of his College, and the following
year was made Master of Arts. It was now his intention
to take orders. That he was about to embrace this
profession with no higher motive than a wish to gain a
competence, which might enable him to pursue his
literary avocations, we have some reason to believe. He
was actuated by no very high or holy impulse, for he
speaks, in a fragment of verse to a friend, with great
levity of his professional prospects :
" Whether in wide-spread scarf and rustling gown.
My borrow'd Rhetoric soothes the saints in Town,
Or makes in country pews soft Matrons weep,
Gay damsels smile and tir'd Churchwardens sleep/*
Before, however, he took this step, he was oflfered by
Lord Jersey the place of domestic tutor to his son, Lord
Villiers. He not only relinquished, at Lord Jersey's
request, aH idea of entering on the clerical profession, but
he ultimately gave up his Fellowship, in order to keep his
u 2
<
^- Digitized by Google
292 WILLIAM WHITEHEAD.
position in that family. After the publication of his poem,
" On the Danger of Writing Verse," he wa& not idle with
his pen, but gave to the world, in 1743, "Atys and
Adrastus," " A Letter of Anne Boleyn to Henry VIII.,"
and "An Essay on Ridicule." There is a manifest
improvement in all these on his first production. After
all, however, he but feebly imitates Pope. Some who
lack originality, seem to atone for it by the force of their
language. By this they cheat the indiscriminating, and
therefore the majority of readers, into admiration. But this
showy talent, much at a premium in these days, White-
head, in his poems, does not display. His thoughts are
not original, and they are expressed in obscure, meagre,
and sometimes ungrammatical language.
He now entered the family of Lord Jersey, and at this
time he appears to have been a frequent hdbitv^ of
theatres, and to have turned his thoughts to dramatic
composition. His first production was a ballad farce,
called " The Edinburgh Ball," in which the young Pre-
tender is ridiculed. Had it ever seen the Ught, posterity
might have been tempted to connect with this triumph
over the fallen, his appointment to the laurel, but it was
neither printed nor performed. He next employed himself
on a tragedy, and produced "The Roman Father," in
imitation of Comeille's " Les Horaces." Mr. Campbell ob^
serves " that Mason has employed a good deal of criticism
to show that the piece would have been better if the artist
had bestowed more pains upon it." It turns on the well-
known story, told with such graphic power in the first
book of livy. Those who remember that beautiful narra^
tive, will feel convinced that no drama could place it in a
clearer or more picturesque light before them. In the
tale itself there is not material for a five act play ; and
where Whitehead has added or altered, he has not im-
proved.
Digitized by VjOOQIC
WILLIAM WHITEHEAD. 293
The scene is laid at Rome. There are six dramatis
persoTUB; onlf two women, Horatia and a confidential
friend, Valencia. The armies are encamped opposite to