University of Virginia Library

11. CHAPTER XI.

We go to England, and what we did there.

Shakspeare.

As we are writing the memoirs of Zebediah Spiffard, and
not of his mother, we will be as brief as possible in all that remains
to be said respecting this weak and unhappy woman.

It is generally acknowledged that there is considerable affinity

between a man and his mother: and Zeb was not an exception
to the rule—if rule it be. He was not only the son of
his mother, but his mother's character and conduct propelled
him through life—they were present to his imagination in
every situation, to the day of his death.

The thoughts and images that passed through our hero's
mind during the scene of his reception, were never erased. He
found the state of his father's family worse than he could have
imagined from any previous information that he had received.
Of three sisters and a brother, the two elder girls (feeble and
sickly) were at a distant school,—the boy was a cripple, and
almost an idiot,—and the youngest girl was such as we have
described above. During this visit, poor Spiffard received impressions,
or rather renewed and strengthened those already
received, which influenced his actions ever after.

Owing to the skill of Doctor Woodward, his mother became
convalescent; but it was only a flattering ray of light on the
darkness of her condition. Her constitution was undermined;
her feeble body and feeble mind could not be sustained.
There was no redeeming spring in either. However, it was
during the season of hope and re-establishment, that the young
man took leave of his father's house, and returned to Boston to
make preparations for his European tour. His indulgent uncle
furnished him with money and credit; and in due season, the
green-mountain boy found himself in the great metropolis of
the great nation which he claimed as the source from which himself
and his ancestors issued. Relatives of his father, he knew
of none. No trace of the noble family of Spiffards existed;
but to his mother's father, residing in Lincolnshire, he bore
letters; and after seeing the lions of London, he took the mailcoach
for Stamford, and there found the house of his grandfather
a scene of mourning and desolation.

His mother's second sister, Sophia, the beauty of the family,
the pet and pride of her parents, had eloped with a titled libertine
of fortune, one of the hereditary lawgivers of England,
and was living in splendour in the great city her nephew had
just left. In the lap of luxury, devoted to infamy, she was
flattered by being the admired of depravity, though condemned
to be the companion of libertinism and prostitution. Her fall
and flight had murdered her mother. Her father, sinking to
the grave, was supported in penurious gentility by the energy
and industry of the youngest daughter, (who was a child when
in America,) one who had been the neglected of her foolish parents,

because plain in person, and retiring in manners; but
who had cultivated a mind of quick perception so as to rear
the fruit of filial piety; and was adorned by that knowledge and
those virtues which shine brightest when the darkness of adversity
falls on all around: like the good deed of the poet “in a
naughty world.” Such was Eliza Atherton.

Spiffard was not made acquainted with the fall of his aunt
Sophia. He was told in such a manner, that they had lost
Mrs. Atherton and Sophia, as to lead him to suppose both dead.
Eliza said nothing on the subject; and her father was confined
to a sick chamber. The young man felt that there was a mystery,
but did not feel authorized to pry into it; he saw that his
grandfather was in poverty; he admired his remaining aunt; and
he did his duty.

The first thing our yankee water-drinker did, after leaving
his grandfather and aunt, was to purchase a small annuity for
the two lives, and transmit the necessary papers to them from
London. This left him almost without funds, but he felt richer
and happier for the transaction. Before visiting the European
continent, he determined to await the answers he should receive
from his uncle, to whom he communicated the particulars of
his journey, and made him acquainted with the disposal of his
funds, and the paucity of the trifle which yet remained to his
credit, with the banker.

His passion for the theatre was indulged, and grew with indulgence.
It was connected with his love of literature. It
was a love for the drama, not for the playhouse. The desire
to become an actor was revived. He had leisure to acquire
those accomplishments so essential to the profession. He studied
music, instrumental and vocal, assiduously; while the practice
of the sword of every description, and of dancing, gave him
that ease of deportment so necessary to those who aspire to
please on the stage. Zeb's voice was powerful and of great
compass. He became a first-rate burletta singer, and his accurate
ear, by cultivation, led to taste and execution which few
could rival. Always active and athletic, his skill in fencing
and every sword exercise, was uncommon. Grace as a dancer
he could not acquire, and nature had denied him stature for
the heroic in tragedy, or beauty of form or face, to compensate
the deficiency.

There was, at the time of which we are writing, and perhaps
still is, a theatre for amateur performers, in the neighbourhood
of Soho Square, to which Spiffard had been invited. Here he
soon found a congenial spirit, in some respects, and became

intimate with him. This was Thomas Hilson, so well known
in America for his histrionic talents. To Hilson, Spiffard communicated
his desire to tread the stage for amusement, and
Tom promised him a trial.

“What part shall it be?”

“Alexander the Great.”

“Oh, no, no,—you are not up to that by a foot.”

“Alexander was not tall.”

“Always six feet on the stage. Suppose you try Scrub?”

Never was poor hero more cut down. By way of compromise,
it was at length decided that he should play Young Norval,
and appear as Caleb Quotem in the farce.

The important night came. Zeb exerted his heroics and
pathetics manfully; he was very serious, and the audience very
merry. At length he died, to the great relief of the company,
who applauded long and loud. The mist which besets young
actors on first appearances, and had enveloped Zeb's mental
faculties, during the tragedy, was not fully dispelled, but he had
an awkward kind of uncomfortable notion that all was not as it
ought to be in his reception. Hilson assisted to prepare him
for Caleb. The tragedians of the company complimented him
on his success in Norval, with as much sincerity as if they
belonged to a regular Theatre Royal. Hilson said nothing on
the subject. The farce began, and if the audience laughed at
the tragedy, they laughed ten times more with the comedy of
the new performer. But when he gave the songs, the plaudits
were so dissimilar from those Young Norval had received, that
the mist was dispelled, and Zeb saw plainly that he was no tragedian—at
least in the opinion of his auditors. He felt that
his powers for creating merriment and delighting by song, were
rapturously acknowledged by all. Hilson shook him by the
hand, and without any of that paltry feeling which rivalry is
supposed to generate among artists of all descriptions, welcomed
the yankee as a brother, and true son of Thalia.

This was our hero's golden age—his days were couleur de
rose, and the intoxication of applause rendered his nights, it
not peaceful, yet pleasant. No other intoxication had charms
for him. He drank water, to the astonishment of his male
companions; and the ladies thought him utterly devoid of feeling.
He never saw the preparations for riot or revelry, or witnessed
its effects, without thinking of his father's house; or
looked on the smiles which were meant to allure, but that the
desolation he had witnessed at Stamford, was shadowed to his
imagination. The egis of Minerva presented an image which

turned the beholder to stone. The images impressed upon
Spiffard at home, and in Lincolnshire, made memory an ægis
against the assaults of vice. The conduct of his grandfather
and youngest aunt, in respect to the lost daughter and sister,
had appeared mysterious to him, and although he had not pryed
into that which they did not think fit to reveal, he, since, had
recollected circumstances and words, which to his quick mind,
told the tale of a sorrow worse than poverty or disease can inflict.

News from home was tardy in arriving. Spiffard's money
was exhausted. His uncle's banker would advance no more.
He found himself under the necessity of playing for bread, instead
of playing for amusement. Once more he tried his tragic
powers. He was permitted to appear at one of the great
Theatres Royal, (not yet like all royals, shorn of their beams,)
in Othello: but he was overwhelmed by an Iago of six feet. It
was remembered that Garrick had declined Othello, for fear of
being compared to a black pompey handing the tea-kettle, and
that he had refused to play to Barry's Iago, thinking he might
be said to bully the monument. Spiffard was condemned for
want of height, by those who were in raptures at the physical and
mental powers of the baby actors who wielded the broad-sword
or bullied the towering Palmers, Popes, and Barrymores of the
stage. Again the comic powers and the musical skill of our
hero rescued him from utter failure, and he went down to the
provincial theatres as a star, though not suffered to shine permanently
in that heaven of the English theatrical system—
London.

It is not my intention to follow our hero from Bath to Bristol,
from Manchester to Liverpool. We are principally concerned
in his adventures and his fate in America. We only
wish to account for the uncommon success of a yankee green-mountain
boy, on the metropolitan stage of New York, where
we found him one of the principal low comedians, at the opening
of our story, which we now hasten to pursue for the gratification
of our impatient readers. But we shall have to show
how his expected fortune vanished,—how he became permanently
an actor, and the husband of the lady who made him
as happy as he appeared to be at the commencement of our
memoir, by the gift of her hand.

The first is a very short story, and the second not much
longer. Most of my readers will remember how often hope
has been disappointed; and many a Benedict will bear me out
in the assertion that there are those who say they will live bachelors,

and only keep their promise—until they are married.
Our hero feared the fate of his father: but no person on earth
was less like his mother than Mrs. Trowbridge: the towering in
person and thought, the high-minded, fire-eyed, black-browed
Mrs. Trowbridge.

As to fortune, we Americans know that men become rich
or poor as quickly as a scene changes at a theatre from a palace
to a prison at the slap of a Harlequin's sword. Zeb's
riches were only in expectancy; and such are of the least substantial
kind. You, Mr. Broker, expected to make ten thousand
dollars by the rise of stocks: they fell, and you lost what
you never had. You, young gentleman, expected a fortune at
the death of your father, and lo! he is a bankrupt. And you,
Madam, the lovely mother of those two fine boys, though your
husband possessed millions, you live to see them dependant—
perhaps happily—on their own exertions for bread. Our heros'
fortune was lost to him by the simple circumstance, that his
good old uncle Abraham, who had deferred making that will
which was to make his nephew rich, died unexpectedly, like a
great many other old men, although every step he took might
have warned him that he was tottering to the tomb. He died
unexpectedly of apoplexy, though neither fat nor short-necked,
and his property devolved on his brother. This would have
been no source of grief to the right-minded Zebediah, if that
brother (his father) could have been made happier thereby;
but his mother, who had been partially restored to health by
the skilful Doctor Woodward, and the benevolent Mr. Wilford,
sunk under the loss of children who were the victims of her
misconduct; and her husband lived but two weeks after her—
just long enough to make him the legal heir of his brother, and
thereby deprive his son of the inheritance. He had been induced
to buy lands on credit, to a great amount, in a cold and
barren northern region of the State of New York; he had borrowed
money to a large amount on interest; his property had
been so neglected of late years, that even the estate left by his
brother was insufficient to satisfy his creditors; and his son, instead
of being a man of independent fortune, was only an independent
man. Independent he was, as he possessed youth,
health, habits of temperance, and a profession for which he was
well qualified.

When Mr. Thomas Apthorpe Cooper went to England in
search of recruits for the New York theatre, his experienced
eye and ear determined him to engage Spiffard, whom he found
starring it at Liverpool. The success of the comedian was

great at New York, his love of tragedy led him to become an
admirer of Mrs. Trowbridge. Her talents in her profession,
her decided manner, her ready wit, added to her known approbation
of his efforts as an actor, fixed him as a lover of the
lady, and then,—but what need we say more, after saying that
he was a lover? He was blind, and his blindness, added to a
naturally confiding disposition, brought them to that precise situation
in which we found them in the month of October, in the
year eighteen hundred and eleven, when we introduced them to
the reader.

Between the time of Spiffard's return to America, and his marriage,
the manager of the New York theatre had sent out George
Frederick Cooke, had come back to the United States himself,
had enriched the theatrical world with Hilson—and many other
events, in the real and mimic world, had occurred, of which we
say nothing, and perhaps know as little as we say. We gladly
return to the point at which we left the actors in our drama, and
now pursue our story with as few deviations as the nature of
the case (and the information necessary to be imparted to our
readers) will permit.