Part 14

Collaboration rarely enables us to see the share of each author in the work. The bouquet we fling to the successful pair is smelt by both. The lately deceased Mr. P. Lébrun made the reception speech when M. Émile Angier was admitted to one of the forty seats of the French Academy. There was a spice of sarcasm in the following words addressed to one of the two authors of ‘Le Gendre de M. Poirier:’ ‘What is your portion therein? and are we not welcoming, not only yourself, to the Academy, but also your _collaborateur_ and friend?’ The fact is that in the highest class of co-operative work the work itself is founded on a single thought. The thought is discussed through all its consequences, till the moment for giving it dramatic action arrives, and then the pens pursue their allotted work. There is, however, another method. MM. Legouvé and Prosper Dinaux wrote their drama of ‘Louise de Lignerolles’ in this way. The two authors sat face to face at the same table, and wrote the first act. The two results were read, compared, and finally, out of what was considered the best work in the two, a new act was selected with some new writing in addition. Thus three acts were really constructed to build up one. This ponderous method is not followed by many writers. Indeed, how some co-operative dramatists work is beyond conjecture. A vaudeville in one act sometimes has four authors; indeed, several of these single-act pieces have been advertised as the work of a dozen; in one case, according to M. Goizot, of _sixteen_ authors, who probably chatted, laughed, drank, and smoked the piece into existence at a café; and the piece becoming a reality, the whole company of revellers were named as the many fathers of that minute bantling.

Undoubtedly the most marvellous example of dramatic eccentricity that was ever put upon record is the one which tells us of a regular performance by professional actors in a public theatre, before an ordinary audience, who had extraordinary interest in the drama. The locality was in Paris, in the old theatre of the Porte Saint-Martin. The piece was the famous melodrama, ‘La Pie Voleuse,’ on which Rossini founded ‘La Gazza Ladra,’ and which, under the name of ‘The Maid and the Magpie,’ afforded such a triumph to Miss Kelly as that lady may remember with pride; for we believe that most accomplished and most natural of all actresses still survives--or was surviving very lately--with two colleagues at least of the olden time, Mrs. W. West and Miss Love. When ‘La Pie Voleuse’ was being acted at the above-named French theatre, the allied armies had invaded France; a portion of the invading force had entered Paris. The circumstance now to be related is best told on French authority. An English writer might almost be suspected of calumniating the French people by narrating such an incident, unsupported by reference to the source from which he derived it. We take it from one of the many dramatic _feuilletons_ of M. Paul Foucher, an author of several French plays, a critic of French players and play-writers, and a relative, by marriage, of M. Victor Hugo. This is what M. Paul Foucher tells us: ‘On the evening of the second entry of the foreign armies into Paris, the popular melodrama “La Pie Voleuse,” was being acted at the Porte Saint-Martin. There was one thousand eight hundred francs in the house, which at that time was considered a handsome receipt. During the performance the doors were closed, because the rumbling noise of the cannon, rolling over the stones, interrupted the interest of the dialogue, and it rendered impossible the sympathetic attention of the audience.’ Frenchmen there were who were ashamed of this heartless indifference for the national tragedy. Villemot was disgusted at this elasticity of the Parisian spirit, and he added to his rebuke these remarkable words:--‘I take pleasure in hoping that we may never again be subjected to the same trial, and that, in any case, we may bear it in a more dignified fashion.’ How Paris bore it, when the terrible event again occurred, is too well known to be retold; but the incident of ‘La Pie Voleuse’ is perhaps the most eccentric of the examples of dramatic and popular eccentricity to be found in the annals of the French stage.

_NORTHUMBERLAND HOUSE AND THE PERCYS._

When Hotspur treads the stage with passionate grace, the spectator hardly dreams of the fact that the princely original lived, paid taxes, and was an active man of his parish, in Aldersgate Street. _There_, however, stood the first Northumberland House. By the ill-fortune of Percy it fell to the conquering side in the serious conflict in which Hotspur was engaged; and Henry IV. made a present of it to his queen, Jane. Thence it got the name of the Queen’s Wardrobe. Subsequently it was converted into a printing office; and in the course of time, the first Northumberland House disappeared altogether.

In Fenchurch Street, not now a place wherein to look for nobles, the great Earls of Northumberland were grandly housed in the time of Henry VI.; but vulgar citizenship elbowed the earls too closely, and they ultimately withdrew from the City. The deserted mansion and grounds were taken possession of by the roysterers. Dice were for ever rattling in the stately saloons. Winners shouted for joy, and blasphemy was considered a virtue by the losers. As for the once exquisite gardens, they were converted into bowling-greens, titanic billiards, at which sport the gayer City sparks breathed themselves for hours in the summer time. There was no place of entertainment so fashionably frequented as this second Northumberland House; but dice and bowls were at length to be enjoyed in more vulgar places, and ‘the old seat of the Percys was deserted by fashion.’ On the site of mansion and gardens, houses and cottages were erected, and the place knew its old glory no more. So ended the second Northumberland House.

While the above mansions or palaces were the pride of all Londoners and the envy of many, there stood on the strand of the Thames, at the bend of the river, near Charing Cross, a hospital and chapel, whose founder, William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, had dedicated it to St. Mary, and made it an appanage to the Priory of Roncesvalle, in Navarre. Hence the hospital on our river strand was known by the name of ‘St. Mary Rouncivall.’ The estate went the way of such property at the dissolution of the monasteries; and the first lay proprietor of the forfeited property was a Sir Thomas Cawarden. It was soon after acquired by Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, son of the first Earl of Surrey. Howard, early in the reign of James I., erected on the site of St. Mary’s Hospital a brick mansion which, under various names, has developed into that third and present Northumberland House which is about to fall under pressure of circumstances, the great need of London, and the argument of half a million of money.

Thus the last nobleman who clung to the Strand, which, on its south side, was once a line of palaces, has left it for ever. The bishops were the first to reside on that river-bank outside the City walls. Nine episcopal palaces were once mirrored in the then clear waters of the Thames. The lay nobles followed, when they felt themselves as safe in that fresh and healthy air as the prelates. The chapel of the Savoy is still a royal chapel, and the memories of time-honoured Lancaster and of John, the honest King of France, still dignify the place. But the last nobleman who resided so far from the now recognised quarters of fashion has left what has been the seat of the Howards and Percys for nearly three centuries, and the Strand will be able no longer to boast of a duke. It also recently possessed an English earl; but _he_ was only a modest lodger in Norfolk Street.

When the Duke of Northumberland went from the Strand, there went with him a shield with very nearly nine hundred quarterings; and among them are the arms of Henry VII., of the sovereign houses of France, Castile, Leon, and Scotland, and of the ducal houses of Normandy and Brittany! _Nunquam minus solus quam cum solus_, might be a fitting motto for a nobleman who, when he stands before a glass, may see therein, not only the Duke, but also the Earl of Northumberland, Earl Percy, Earl of Beverley, Baron Lovaine of Alnwick, Sir Algernon Percy, Bart., two doctors (LL.D. and D.C.L.), a colonel, several presidents, and the patron of two-and-twenty livings.

As a man who deals with the merits of a book is little or nothing concerned with the binding thereof, with the water-marks, or with the printing, but is altogether concerned with the life that is within, that is, with the author, his thoughts, and his expression of them, so, in treating of Northumberland House, we care much less for notices of the building than of its inhabitants--less for the outward aspect than for what has been said or done beneath its roof. If we look with interest at a mere wall which screens from sight the stage of some glorious or some terrible act, it is not for the sake of the wall or its builders: our interest is in the drama and its actors. Who cares, in speaking of Shakespeare and Hamlet, to know the name of the stage carpenter at the Globe or the Blackfriars? Suffice it to say, that Lord Howard, who was an amateur architect of some merit, is supposed to have had a hand in designing the old house in the Strand, and that Gerard Christmas and Bernard Jansen are said to have been his ‘builders.’ Between that brick house and the present there is as much sameness as in the legendary knife which, after having had a new handle, subsequently received in addition a new blade. The old house occupied three sides of a square. The fourth side, towards the river, was completed in the middle of the seventeenth century. The portal retains something of the old work, but so little as to be scarcely recognisable, except to professional eyes.

From the date of its erection till 1614 it bore the name of Northampton House. In that year it passed by will from Henry Howard, Lord Northampton, to his nephew, Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk, from whom it was called Suffolk House. In 1642, Elizabeth, daughter of Theophilus, second Earl of Suffolk, married Algernon Percy, tenth Earl of Northumberland, and the new master gave his name to the old mansion. The above-named Lord Northampton was the man who has been described as foolish when young, infamous when old, an encourager, at threescore years and ten, of his niece, the infamous Countess of Essex; and who, had he lived a few months longer, would probably have been hanged for his share, with that niece and others, in the mysterious murder of Sir Thomas Overbury. Thus, the founder of the house was noble only in name; his successor and nephew has not left a much more brilliant reputation. He was connected, with his wife, in frauds upon the King, and was fined heavily. The heiress of Northumberland, who married his son, came of a noble but ill-fated race, especially after the thirteenth Baron Percy was created Earl of Northumberland in 1377. Indeed, the latter title had been borne by eleven persons before it was given to a Percy, and by far the greater proportion of the whole of them came to grief. Of one of them it is stated that he (Alberic) was appointed Earl in 1080, but that, _proving unfit for the dignity_, he was displaced, and a Norman bishop named in his stead! The idea of turning out from high estate those who were unworthy or incapable is one that might suggest many reflections, if it were not _scandalum magnatum_ to make them.

In the chapel at Alnwick Castle there is displayed a genealogical tree. At the root of the Percy branches is ‘Charlemagne;’ and there is a sermon in the whole, much more likely to scourge pride than to stimulate it, if the thing be rightly considered. However this may be, the Percys find their root in Karloman, the Emperor, through Joscelin of Louvain, in this way: Agnes de Percy was, in the twelfth century, the sole heiress of her house. Immensely rich, she had many suitors. Among these was Joscelin, brother of Godfrey, sovereign Duke of Brabant, and of Adelicia, Queen Consort of Henry the First of England. Joscelin held that estate at Petworth which has not since gone out of the hands of his descendants. This princely suitor of the heiress Agnes was only accepted by her as husband on condition of his assuming the Percy name. Joscelin consented; but he added the arms of Brabant and Louvain to the Percy shield, in order that, if succession to those titles and possessions should ever be stopped for want of an heir, his claim might be kept in remembrance. Now, this Joscelin was lineally descended from ‘Charlemagne,’ and, _therefore_, that greater name lies at the root of the Percy pedigree, which glitters in gold on the walls of the ducal chapel in the castle at Alnwick.

Very rarely indeed did the Percys, who were the earlier Earls of Northumberland, die in their beds. The first of them, Henry, was slain (1407) in the fight on Bramham Moor. The second, another Henry (whose father, Hotspur, was killed in the hot affair near Shrewsbury), lies within St. Alban’s Abbey Church, having poured out his lifeblood in another Battle of the Roses, fought near that town named after the saint. The blood of the third Earl helped to colour the roses, which are said to have grown redder from the gore of the slain on Towton’s hard-fought field. The forfeited title was transferred, in 1465, to Lord John Nevill Montagu, great Warwick’s brother; but Montagu soon lay among the dead in the battle near Barnet. The title was restored to another Henry Percy, and that unhappy Earl was murdered, in 1489, at his house, Cucklodge, near Thirsk. In that fifteenth century there was not a single Earl of Northumberland who died a peaceful and natural death.

In the succeeding century the first line of Earls, consisting of six Henry Percys, came to an end in that childless noble whom Anne Boleyn called ‘the Thriftless Lord.’ He died childless in 1537. He had, indeed, two brothers, the elder of whom might have succeeded to the title and estates; but both brothers, Sir Thomas and Sir Ingram, had taken up arms in the ‘Pilgrimage of Grace.’ Attainder and forfeiture were the consequences; and in 1551 Northumberland was the title of the dukedom conferred on John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, who lost the dignity when his head was struck off at the block, two years later.

Then the old title, Earl of Northumberland, was restored in 1557, to Thomas, eldest son of that attainted Thomas who had joined the ‘Pilgrimage of Grace.’ Ill-luck still followed these Percys. Thomas was beheaded--the last of his house who fell by the hands of the executioner--in 1572. His brother and heir died in the Tower in 1585.

None of these Percys had yet come into the Strand. The brick house there, which was to be their own through marriage with an heiress, was built in the lifetime of the Earl, whose father, as just mentioned, died in the Tower in 1585. The son, too, was long a prisoner in that gloomy palace and prison. While Lord Northampton was laying the foundations of the future London house of the Percys in 1605, Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, was being carried into durance. There was a Percy, kinsman to the Earl, who was mixed up with the Gunpowder Plot. For no other reason than relationship with the conspiring Percy, the Earl was shut up in the Tower for life, as his sentence ran, and he was condemned to pay a fine of thirty thousand pounds. The Earl ultimately got off with fifteen years’ imprisonment and a fine of twenty thousand pounds. He was popularly known as the Wizard Earl, because he was a studious recluse, companying only with grave scholars (of whom there were three, known as ‘Percy’s Magi’) and finding relaxation in writing rhymed satires against the Scots.

There was a stone walk in the Tower which, having been paved by the Earl, was known during many years as ‘My Lord of Northumberland’s Walk.’ At one end was an iron shield of his arms; and holes in which he put a peg at every turn he made in his dreary exercise.

One would suppose that the Wizard Earl would have been very grateful to the man who restored him to liberty. Lord Hayes (Viscount Doncaster) was the man. He had married Northumberland’s daughter, Lucy. The marriage had excited the Earl’s anger, as a _low match_, and the proud captive could not ‘stomach’ a benefit for which he was indebted to a son-in-law on whom he looked down. This proud Earl died in 1632. Just ten years after, his son, Algernon Percy, went a-wooing at Suffolk House, in the Strand. It was then inhabited by Elizabeth, the daughter and heiress of Theophilus, Earl of Suffolk, who had died two years previously, in 1640. Algernon Percy and Elizabeth Howard made a merry and magnificent wedding of it, and from the time they were joined together the house of the bride has been known by the bridegroom’s territorial title of Northumberland.

The street close to the house of the Percys, which we now know as Northumberland Street, was then a road leading down to the Thames, and called Hartshorn Lane. Its earlier name was Christopher Alley. At the bottom of the lane the luckless Sir Edmundsbury Godfrey had a stately house, from which he walked many a time and oft to his great wood wharf on the river. But the glory of Hartshorn Lane was and is Ben Jonson. No one can say where rare Ben was born, save that the posthumous child first saw the light in Westminster. ‘Though,’ says Fuller, ‘I cannot, with all my industrious inquiry, find him in his cradle, I can fetch him from his long coats. When a little child he lived in Hartshorn Lane, Charing Cross, where his mother married a bricklayer for her second husband.’ Mr. Fowler was a master bricklayer, and did well with his clever stepson. We can in imagination see that sturdy boy crossing the Strand to go to his school within the old church of St. Martin (then still) in the Fields. It is as easy to picture him hastening of a morning early to Westminster, where Camden was second master, and had a keen sense of the stuff that was in the scholar from Hartshorn Lane. Of all the figures that flit about the locality, none attracts our sympathies so warmly as that of the boy who developed into the second dramatic poet of England.

Of the countesses and duchesses of this family, the most singular was the widow of Algernon, the tenth Earl. In her widowhood she removed from the house in the Strand (where she had given a home not only to her husband, but to a brother) to one which occupied the site on which White’s Club now stands. It was called Suffolk House, and the proud lady thereof maintained a semi-regal state beneath the roof and when she went abroad. On such an occasion as paying a visit, her footmen walked bareheaded on either side of her coach, which was followed by a second, in which her women were seated, like so many ladies in waiting! Her state solemnity went so far that she never allowed her son Joscelin’s wife (daughter of an Earl) to be seated in her presence--at least till she had obtained permission to do so.

Joscelin’s wife was, according to Pepys, ‘a beautiful lady indeed.’ They had but one child, the famous heiress, Elizabeth Percy, who at four years of age was left to the guardianship of her proud and wicked old grandmother. Joscelin was dead, and his widow married Ralph, afterwards Duke of Montague. The old Dowager Countess was a matchmaker, and she contracted her granddaughter, at the age of twelve, to Cavendish, Earl of Ogle. Before this couple were of age to live together, Ogle died. In a year or two after, the old matchmaker engaged her victim to Mr. Thomas Thynne, of Longleat; but the young lady had no mind to him. In the Hatton collection of manuscripts there are three letters addressed by a lady of the Brunswick family to Lord and Lady Hatton. They are undated, but they contain a curious reference to part of the present subject, and are thus noticed in the first report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts: ‘Mr. Thinn has proved his marriage with Lady Ogle, but she will not live with him, for fear of being “rotten before she is ripe.” Lord Suffolk, since he lost his wife and daughter, lives with his sister, Northumberland. They have here strange ambassadors--one from the King of Fez, the other from Muscovett. All the town has seen the last; he goes to the play, and stinks so that the ladies are not able to take their muffs from their noses all the play-time. The lampoons that are made of most of the town ladies are so nasty that no woman would read them, else she would have got them for her.’

‘Tom of Ten Thousand,’ as Thynne was called, was murdered (shot dead in his carriage) in Pall Mall (1682) by Königsmark and accomplices, two or three of whom suffered death on the scaffold. Immediately afterwards, the maiden wife of two husbands _really_ married Charles, the proud Duke of Somerset. In the same year, Banks dedicated to her (_Illustrious Princess_, he calls her) his ‘Anna Bullen,’ a tragedy. He says: ‘You have submitted to take a noble partner, as angels have delighted to converse with men;’ and ‘there is so much of divinity and wisdom in your choice, that none but the Almighty ever did the like’ (giving Eve to Adam) ‘with the world and Eden for a dower.’ Then, after more blasphemy, and very free allusions to her condition as a bride, and fulsomeness beyond conception, he scouts the idea of supposing that she ever should die. ‘You look,’ he says, ‘as if you had nothing mortal in you. Your guardian angel scarcely is more a deity than you;’ and so on, in increase of bombast, crowned by the mock humility of ‘my muse still has no other ornament than truth.’