The Chaste Diana

IT was the winter season of the year 1727 and the great Mr. Rich, patentee and manager of the playhouse in Portugal Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields; was seated in his own parlour where he received the budding players of both sexes and made and marred careers like a very Fate. To Portugal Street come trembling beauties whose voices die in their throats as that piercing eye falls on them appraising every feature with no thought but how many guineas are like to be made on the strength of it. To Portugal Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, come also the anxious dramatists from Grub Street, some with a cheap swagger that Mr. Rich quells on the instant, some with lank cheeks and threadbare cuffs and an entreaty for a hearing which is apt to provoke the great man’s ire and contempt as he sits to receive his courtiers in a velvet coat and breeches, sober enough, but with a good bit of lace at the throat, and a wig handsomely curled about his shoulders. For whatever may be the standing of player-folk, and God knows it is none too high, Mr. Rich is minded that their manager shall win respect. What! hath not Mrs. Oldfield been received at Court in spite of blots on the scutcheon in the shape of two gentlemen—Mr. Mainwaring and his successor General Churchill, setting aside certain passages with Captain Farquhar, the gay dramatist, which might or might not be censurable? Yet, notwithstanding, the lady went where she would, and the Princess of Wales (willing to oblige this charming person) informing her that she had heard she was the wife of General Churchill, Mrs. Oldfield did but sweep the prettiest curtsey and reply, “So it is said, please your Royal Highness, but we have not owned it yet.”

An example of coolness, thinks Mr. Rich, for all who would exalt the profession to follow. So there he sits, a gobbling turkey-cock of a man when crossed, kindly when humoured, his eyes very shrewd and keen between their layers of flesh. A choleric, genial, short-nosed man, himself the unrivalled Harlequin and a player after a fashion, he falls a little on the side of rudeness to inferiors lest he slip into that of servility to superiors, an uneasy matter but always to be kept in view.

On this evening he had done his day’s work and routed not a few miserable pretenders to parts in the new raree-show shortly to be produced to the public. He had two companions—fine, careless easy gentlemen both, and almost as much at home behind the scenes as himself.

The one, lounging in an armed-chair was a young man of almost effeminate beauty. Disguise him in paint, powder and hoop, and you had a charming Lady Easy, with the absolute manner of bon ton, and should The Careless Husband be needed to play up to her Ladyship, as in the comedy of that name, the other young man dangling a pair of handsome legs from Mr. Rich’s table was your very fit! None better! and in real life as careless a husband as any that ever trod the boards, perhaps not altogether by his own choice.

Permit me to present the first—fair, blue-eyed, and slender, a pretty man indeed, though with not too many inches to spare. Prodigious fine in velvet and embroidery, yet steel and fire under the graceful mask of languor. ’Tis the American Prince as they call him about town—my Lord Baltimore, a potentate after a fashion, since he holds by due succession the patent of Maryland in the New World, paying yearly as fee two Indian arrows at Windsor Castle every Easter Tuesday, and the more substantial rent of a fifth part of the gold and silver ore therein found. A very great gentleman with his American principality, and the most fascinating bachelor in London, an arrant rake and favourite in all the boudoirs. Scarce a fine lady but aspired to be the American Princess.—But this tale will show his Lordship as he was and more words are not now needed.