Your much valued friend, and my beloved brother, in his last illness, said something, which on reflection appears to me as a hint, that he wish’d the scatter’d fragments of his Virginia might ultimately fall into your hands. The only compleat and perfect copy of his play, as himself approved, was got into some hands, from whom he never could recover it. The then manager (it was thought from — ) would not suffer the too much approved, and greatly admired performance, to be acted as in its pristine state, but insisted on many alterations, greatly against the author’s judgement, and inclination, which however he was necessitated to comply with, if he would ever have it brought on the stage. I have neither time nor capacity to select all the beautiful passages that deserve to be kept from the blotted papers that had better be destroy’d. But as I would not omit even in the most trifling instance, doing whatever I thought he wish’d, I send you the whole; which you will please to dispose of as you think proper, selecting what you think worth preserving, and destroying the rest.
* * * * *
Your ever affectionate
SOPHIA GAST.
April 27, 1784.
This was the packet which reached us apparently in the same state as when it was seen by Fanny in 1784. The copy of “Virginia” was (as Mrs. Gast wrote) incomplete. Those scenes in which no changes had been made were wanting. It was a bundle of mere draughts of scenes, some of which had been thrice or four times copied, as corrections came into the mind of Mr. Crisp, or were suggested to him by others. There were memoranda in the manuscript of letters to and from Lord Deerhurst (afterwards sixth Earl of Coventry) upon the tragedy, and of Garrick’s suggestions as to alterations in it. Garrick’s hints as to verbal changes were few, and chiefly technical. They referred, not to the quality of the blank verse, but to the means of bringing it into the best condition for the actor to utter with good effect. But there were also traces of a more than verbal alteration. There seemed to have been a change of structure in the first act, if not elsewhere; at any rate, there was a tentative change. Mr. Crisp had shrunk from no labour; nay, with his own pen, had declared that this alteration of structure could easily be made.
There is no sign of anything but gratitude to Garrick in the manuscript, or in the “advertisement” to the printed play. If Mr. Crisp had any sore feelings with regard to Garrick’s treatment of his tragedy, they seem to have been after-feelings; perhaps only after-thoughts. With his own pen he has, unconsciously, cleared himself from the reproach of falling out with Garrick because of “Virginia.” This is in a letter to Fanny of the year 1779. She had been urged into writing a comedy, which, in the joint judgement of her father and of Mr. Crisp, was a failure. To what she has called the “severe criticism” of Mr. Crisp, she replied with a good-humoured meekness of submission which drew from him an affectionate answer, deprecating his own frankness of utterance.
“This sincerity I have smarted for, and severely too, ere now; and yet, happen what will, (where those I love are concern’d) I am determin’d never to part with it. All the world (if you will believe them) profess to expect it, to demand it, to take it kindly, thankfully, &c., &c.; and yet how few are generous enough to take it as it is meant! It is imputed to envy, ill-will, a desire of lowering, and certainly to a total want of taste. Is not this, by vehement importunity, to draw your very entrails from you, and then to give them a stab? — On this topic, I find I have, ere I was aware, grown warm; but I have been a sufferer. My plain dealing (after the most earnest solicitations, professions, and protestations) irrecoverably lost me Garrick. But his soul was little! — Greville, for a while, became my enemy, though, afterwards, through his constitutional inconstancy, he became more attach’d than before; and since that time, thro’ absence, whim, and various accidents, all is (I thank Fortune) dwindled to nothing.”
Can this be read otherwise than in reference to some disagreement of Mr. Crisp’s opinion with that of Garrick, to whom the question was probably personal, since it was pressed upon Mr. Crisp with so much urgency, and its adverse answer resented by an actor whose native susceptibility had been heightened by just applause? The openness, natural to Mr. Crisp’s character, led him, when asked an opinion, to say what Garrick could not bear. Others beside Mr. Crisp (even Dr. Burney himself in some degree) had experience of Garrick’s mutability, even when they had given no occasion of offence, or of mortification.
“He cast off his friends as a huntsman his pack, For he knew, when he pleased, he could whistle them back.”
This extract seems to show that Garrick’s friendship towards Mr. Crisp underwent a change after some conversation unconnected with “Virginia”; years, it may be, after it was acted, and possibly when Mr. Crisp was Garrick’s neighbour at Hampton-upon-Thames. It must be borne in mind that Mr. Crisp and Garrick were intimate friends long before the representation of “Virginia” at Drury Lane Theatre; that the play was put into the hands of Garrick when finished; that, “season after season,” it was kept back by Garrick, who (justly) thought that it fell short of what was expected from its author; that it was in abeyance while Mr. Crisp lived on the Continent, that is, for some years between 1749-50, and 1754; that Garrick gave way at last to the production of the tragedy in deference only to pressure from such potent friends of Mr. Crisp as Lord and Lady Coventry, supported by the judgement of the great Commoner, Mr. Pitt.
What a life Garrick had among the play-wrights, may be seen in his “Correspondence.” There were three “Virginias” at nearly the same time, two of which were acted; — Mr. Crisp’s, at Drury Lane, in 1754; another, by John Moncreif, at Covent Garden, in 1755 (under the name of “Appius”), old Mr. Sheridan playing Virginius, and Mrs. Bellamy, Virginia; Mrs. Brooke, the novelist, offered Garrick a third, which he would not even read until the “Virginia” of Mr. Crisp had been not only played, but printed. The “Virginia” of Mrs. Brooke was written before the other two were acted. In 1756 she published her tragedy, seeing that there was no chance of its being played. If Garrick were partial, it was to Mr. Crisp, and his lords and ladies of rank and ton. He even advised the restoration in the printed tragedy of the “beautiful passages” which he had cancelled, for actor’s reasons, in the manuscript play. He himself acted Virginius. He wrote and spoke the prologue; he also wrote the epilogue. Could he have done more? To the charge of jealousy he was so used, that he plays with it as a jest, in one of his prologues or epilogues. It would have had more force if Mr. Crisp had written a good comedy.
It is obvious that in 1754 there was no cause of coolness, as Garrick did his very best for the tragedy, and the notes in the manuscript and the tentative changes of plan indicate submission to his judgement even to the extent of laborious effort, deemed to be light by the author.
The next of Mrs. Gast’s letters to Fanny is dated from Burford, “June 22nd, 1784,” and begins thus:
“The sight of that dear hand, which has so often given exquisite pleasure to my best beloved on earth, could not fail of awakening keen sensations in a heart so much his, and yours. — I don’t apprehend he wish’d the relics I sent you should live in any memory but your own. Your approbation I believe was his aim, and might cause his regret at not recovering the compleat copy. Very long absences, even from our childhood, makes it more than probable I knew less of his mind than his favourite adopted child; with whom he so frequently, with great delight conversed. I cannot suppose that he thought of any future renown.” This letter Fanny did not answer until the 14th of November, 1785, when she wrote, “I am happy to find we thought so exactly alike with respect to my most beloved friend, your honoured and truly incomparable brother. As to his ‘Virginia,’ I believe, indeed, it was his wish and intention that everything belonging to it should rest in silence and quiet, till they finally sank into oblivion. With me nothing can, that ever belonged to him; but I shall keep all the papers with which you have so kindly entrusted me entirely to myself.”
About forty years afterwards, Fanny wrote the pages from which Macaulay drew his details con
cerning Mr. Crisp. “Oblivion” seems now further off than ever, as paraphrases of Macaulay are what we encounter whensoever we light upon the name of Samuel Crisp.
As concerns the error, of which Macaulay writes, that on looking for Samuel Crisp “in a copious Dictionary of Dramatic Authors published while he was still alive, he found only that Mr. Henry Crisp, of the Custom House, had written a play called ‘Virginia,’ acted in 1754,” blunders are apt to be made in, errors to creep into, such books; as those who consult them much know well. It was a double mistake, for Henry Crisp, of the Custom House, died in 1747, as his will testifies. The man meant was a reverend Henry Crispe, who, as Samuel Crisp did not put his name to his play, seems to have been taken for its author. Perhaps being called “the reverend author” by Boaden and Arthur Murphy, would have not a little annoyed our Mr. Crisp, who was born when it was the mode to sneer at “parsons.” The play, of which there are two copies in the British Museum, is said in the catalogue to be by Henry Crisp. There are also two copies in the Bodleian Library, which the editor found in the catalogue as being by Henry Crisp. Probably both catalogues followed the book which Macaulay consulted, namely, the “Biographia Dramatica” of Baker, Reed, and Jones. If we examined the catalogue of the Cambridge University Library, we should probably find in it also, “Virginia, a Tragedy, &c. [by Henry Crisp].”
“The Gentleman’s Magazine” of 1754, says that the author of the play “is not known.” Bell, and Harrison besides, reprinted the play as by “Mr. Crisp”; Nichols has “Henry Crispe, of the Custom House,” as author of “Virginia”; but the mistake of Arthur Murphy is the most remarkable, and may, perhaps, be put down to that confusion of memory which led him to believe, thirty years after the time, that he was present when Boswell first met Johnson, in Tom Davies’s back-parlour, — for Murphy must often have heard of Mr. Crisp, in Fanny’s days at Streatham.
We give the accounts of Murphy, and of Boaden, of the production of the play. Arthur Murphy writes of “Virginia,” that “The fable, ‘tho it cannot boast of situations to alarm and agitate the heart, is conducted in regular order, and a well-connected train of events. The Rev. Mr. Crisp, who wrote the play, seems to have been a scholar, and a man of taste — Lady Coventry, as Garrick often related, drove to his house, and sent in word that she had a moment’s business. He went to the side of her carriage—’ There, Mr. Garrick,’ said Lady Coventry, ‘I put into your hands a play which the best judges tell me will do honour to you and the author.’ It was not necessary for her to say more... Garrick obeyed as if she had been the tenth Muse, and prepared the play with the utmost despatch He, in the character of Virginius, Mossop in that of Appius, and Mrs. Cibber in that of Virginia, deserved the compliments paid them by the author in his preface. The representation was attended by another advantage. Mrs. Yates, at that time Mrs. Graham, made her first appearance on the English stage, in the character of Marcia, and by her extraordinary beauty, and an early promise of great talent, helped to give attraction to the piece. But the great stroke which crowned it with success, was Garrick’s manner of uttering two words, — which were, after all, ‘thou traitor,’ to the tool of Appius, who claimed Virginia as his slave, — but it was his previous demeanour... and the working of his countenance, which electrified the whole audience, who gave him a thunder of applause.” Murphy adds that “the subject required a Shakespeare, an Otway, or perhaps such a genius as Rowe.”
Next comes the account of Mr. Boaden, in his Memoir prefixed to the Garrick Correspondence.
“The season of 1753-4 saw Mrs. Cibber again at Drury Lane, with her old friend, Mr. Garrick; and her substitute in the Juliet business, Miss Bellamy, returned to Covent Garden; Bellamy, in fact, had failed miserably in the Brothers; and, as a general heroine, was faint and inefficient. Tragedies now were like the regal spectres in Macbeth, whose great representative uttered to them unwillingly —
‘ Come like shadows! so depart.’
Thus it was with the Boadicea of Glover, and the Virginia of Crisp, and the Creusa of Whitehead.
“The writer of this epitome remembers that Murphy, with whom he passed an evening at his old haunt, Slaughter’s Coffee House, gave the party, after supper, a notion of Garrick in the character of Virginius, in Crisp’s tragedy. Appius being seated on his tribunal, Claudius, the villainous tool of the Decemvir, claims Virginia as a slave born in his house. During this declaration Garrick stood on the opposite side of the stage, with his arms folded, his eyes fixed on the ground, mute and motionless as a statue. By slow degrees, he at length raised his head — after a slight pause, during which the spectators could read the struggle within him, in a face that kept no secrets — he turned round slowly, till his eyes rested upon Claudius; then, in the low, smothered voice of anguish, tears gushing as he spoke the words, his broken heart sobbed out, i Thou traitor!’ The audience was, for once, electrified without noise; and the applause became abundant and universal. Such things atone for much wearisome length of blank song. However, Garrick’s reception of Virginia was secured by the irresistible sweetness of the beautiful Lady Coventry, who patronized the reverend author of the play.”
We are told by Madame D’Arblay that Lord Coventry advised “sundry changes” in, and a “new trial” of, the play upon the stage; that Mr. Crisp proceeded to re-cast his tragedy, but that, when it was complete, Garrick was polite in form, but fixed in mind not to revive it; that Lady Coventry was unable through decline of health to use once more the influence of her beauty and fashion, and it is implied that “Virginia” was (to the disgust of the author) never again represented. It is possible that the sketches of a change of structure in the play which we have mentioned were made at such a time, for such a purpose, although there was nothing in the manuscript to indicate that they were not written in 1748-9; but it is hard to suppose that the ill-health and death of Lady Coventry, who lived up to the year 1760, had anything to do with the revival or non-revival of the play. As a matter of fact, it appears that “Virginia” was revived at Drury Lane, and played at Covent Garden, if it were but for one night only in either case, in the life-time of Mr. Crisp.
Evidence to this effect has been found by Mr. Gibbs, from whose obliging letters we sum the following details, which appear to us conclusive that there were reproductions of “Virginia” of which Fanny had perhaps never heard.
Mr. Gibbs writes: “The cast of the play in the first printed edition, (Mr. Crisp’s own, in 1754) shows Garrick as ‘L. Virginius,’ Mrs. Cibber as ‘Virginia,’ and Mrs. Graham as ‘Marcia,’ but Bell’s British Theatre (1778) has a portrait of Mrs, Yates (formerly Mrs. Graham) as ‘Virginia’; this must, I think, indicate a reproduction of the play. There is additional evidence in the facts that in the title of the reprint of ‘Virginia’ in Harrison’s series of plays (1781) we have the words, ‘as performed at the Theatres Royal, Drury Lane and Covent Garden,’ and as a frontispiece to the same reprint, there is a portrait of Mr. Clarke as ‘L. Virginius.’ Clarke made his first appearance at Covent Garden in 1755 (October 30), and played to about 1786. Mrs. Yates made her first appearance, under the name of Graham, in 1754, in Crisp’s play. In 1767, she went over to Covent Garden, where she played ‘till 1774, then returned to Drury Lane. Again she went over to the rival house in 1780, where she remained till 1785. From these dates and facts I am inclined to draw the conclusion that the supplemental performance, or performances, of Crisp’s play at Covent Garden occurred between 1767 and 1774. They may however have been benefit performances, for one night only. Mrs. Yates may have chosen the part of Virginia for a benefit performance because she made her entry upon the stage as Marcia in that play, and also to show herself in Mrs. Cibber’s original part of Virginia. The play, too, might have been chosen for a benefit performance by Clarke, for the sufficient reason that he would in it play Virginius, first played by Garrick.”
Mr. Gibbs adds that Genest (in his “History of the Stage”) makes no mention of Clarke’s having played “Virginius,” but states that
“Genest’s list is confessedly a selection only of Clarke’s characters.” The same is the case with Mrs. Yates and “Virginia”; “but Genest’s record, although the fullest we have, is by no means without omissions, as I have often found before.”
IV.
“THE DESERTER.”
The literary puzzle which occurs in Fanny’s diary for 1770 (see page 97, Vol. I) seems to be settled by the discovery in the British Museum of a poem entitled “The Deserter,” published in 1770. It is a quarto pamphlet of eighteen pages, with the title-page of “The Deserter, a Poem. London. Printed for J. Robson at the Feathers in New Bond Street, 1770. Price One Shilling.” The author was Edward Jerningham, a cadet of the Norfolk Jerninghams, who may have been a friend, or even a connexion of Alexander Seton. About four and twenty years later he published a play called “The Siege of Berwick,” having for its subject the heroism of Sir Alexander Seaton, Governor of Berwick, and his two sons, Alexander and Thomas Seaton. This drama, which was played at Covent Garden theatre in 1793, has been reprinted by Mr. H. E. H. Jemingham, sometime M.P. for Berwick, with a dedication to the Mayor of that town.
Fanny was mistaken in supposing Mr. Jemingham’s unfortunate hero to be, like Mr. Seton, a deserter from love. He is a soldier who deserts for love, and suffers the penalty of death.
V.
MRS. PAPENDIEK’S REMINISCENCES.
In 1887, two volumes were published bearing the title of “Court and Private Life in the Time of Queen Charlotte: being the Journals of Mrs. Papendiek, Assistant Keeper of the Wardrobe and Reader to Her Majesty,” &c.
Mrs. Papendiek was a daughter of Frederick Albert, who passed from the service of the Duke of Mecklenberg Strelitz to that of the Duke’s sister Charlotte when, in 1761, she became Queen of England. At first Albert’s service was unclassed, but, later on, we find him third page of the backstairs to the Queen, and hair-dresser to George III. He rose in the end to be “Principal Barber.” His second child, Mrs. Papendiek, was born in England, in January 1765, sent to school at Streatham in 1773, finally taken from school in 1780, and married in 1783 to Mr. Christopher Papendiek, page to the Princess Royal.
Complete Works of Frances Burney Page 511
