Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/383

F O O T E 309 Woffington, whose tones had an occasional squeak in tlicm, as an orange-woman crying her wares and the bill of the play) ; and Mr Foote s Chocolate, which was afterwards con verted into an evening Tea, became an established favourite with the town. The way to fame and its fruits having now at last been found, the remainder of Foote s professional career was on the whole prosperous enough. He seems, indeed, after this to have contrived to spend a third fortune, and to have found it necessary to eke out his means by a speculation in small-beer, as is recorded in an amusing anecdote told of him by Johnson. But whatever abstract arguments ho might find in favour of the life of a man in debt and against the practice of "muddling away money in trades men s bills," he could now command a considerable in come ; and when money came he seems (like a true actor) to have freely divided it between the pleasures of hospi tality and the claims of charity. During his engagements at Covent Garden and at Drury Lane (of which he was, in passing, joint-manager), and in professional trips to Scot land, and more especially to Ireland, he appeared both in comedies of other authors and more especially in his own. Among the latter, of which something will be said below, Taste (1752) is the first of a series numbering (exclusively of tho Diversions and one or two similar pieces) eighteen. The majority of them were produced at the Haymarket, which continued the favourite home of Foote s entertain ments, and for which in 1760 he succeeded in obtaining a licence from the lord chamberlain, afterwards (in 17GG) con verted into a licence for summer performances for life. The entertainments in question may be briefly described as a suc cession of variations on the original idea of the Diversions and the Tea. Now, it was an Auction of Pictures (1748), of part of which an idea may be formed from the second act of the comedy Taste ; now, a lecture on Orators (1754), suggested by some bombastic discourses given by Macklin in his old age at the Piazza Coffee-house in Covent Garden, where Foote had amused the audience and confounded the speaker by interposing his humorous comments. The Orators is preserved in the shape of a hybrid piece, which begins with a mock lecture on the art of oratory and its re presentatives in England, and ends with a very diverting scene of a pot-house forum debate, to which Holberg s Politician-Tinman can hardly have been a stranger. At a later date (1773) a new device was introduced in a Puppet- show; and it is a pity that the piece played in this by the puppets should not have been committed to print. It was called Piety in Pattens, and professed to show " by the moral how maidens of low degree might become rich from the mere effects of morality and virtue, and by the litera ture how thoughts the most commonplace might be concealed under cover of words tho most high flown." In other words, it was an attack upon sentimental comedy, to which more than one blow had been already dealt, but which was still not altogether extinguished. Indeed, though no one now reads Pamela, it may bo doubted whether she and her cousiuhood will ever be altogether suppressed on the modem stage. The Puppet-show was also to have contained a witty attack upon Garrick in connexion with the notorious Shakespeare jubilee ; but this was withdrawn, and thus was avoided a recurrence of the quarrel which many years before had led to an interchange of epistolary thrusts, when the manager of Drury Lane had permitted Woodward to attempt an imitation of Foote. On the whole, tho relations between the two public favourites were very friendly, and on Foote s part (notwithstanding a number of witticisms directed especially against Garrick s interest in Queen Anne s farthings and the like) unmistakably affectionate ; and they have been by no means fairly, or at least gener ously, represented by Garrick s most recent biographer. A comparison between the two as actors is of course out of the question ; but, though Foote was a buffoon, and his tongue a scurrilous tongue, there is nothing in the well-authen ticated records of his life to suggest that his character was one of malicious heartlessness. On tho other hand, it was not altogether tho fault of his position that he was unable to conciliate the respect of society, though, unlike Garrick, he could hardly have expected to form one of the chosen circle into which (though not without protest) the former gained admittance. It is at the same time charac teristic of the difference between the London of that day and the London of our own, where club secrets are among tho favourite morsels of public gossip, that the famous Club had been ten years in existence before Foote knew of it. Of Johnson s opinions of him many well-known records remain in Boswell ; and if it is remembered that when Johnson had at last found his way into Foote s company (he afterwards found it to Foote s own table) he was unable to " resist " him, it should likewise not be forgotten that on hearing of Foote s death he recognized his career as worthy of a lasting biographical record. Meanwhile most of poor Foote s friendships in high life were probably those that are sworn across the table, and require " t other bottle " to keep them up. It is not a pleasant picture of Lord Mexborough and his royal guest the duke of York, and their companions, bantering Foote on his ignorance of horsemanship, and after he had weakly protested his skill, taking him out to hounds on a dangerous animal. He was thrown and broke his leg, which had to be amputated, the "patientee" (in which character he said he was now making his first appearance) consoling himself with the reflexion that he would now be able to take off " old Faulkner " (a pompous Dublin alder man with a wooden leg, whom he had brought on the stage as Peter Paragraph in The Orators) " to the life." The duke of York made him the best reparation in his power by promising him a life-patent for the theatre in the Haymarket (1766) ; and Foote not only resumed his pro fession, as if, like Sir Luke Limp, he considered the leg he had lost " a redundancy, a mere nothing at all," but ingeniously turned his misfortune to account in two of his later pieces, The Lame Lover and The Devil on Two Sticks, while, with the true instinct of a public favourite, making constant reference to it in plays and prologues. He seemed to have lost none of his energy with his leg, though it may be observed that the characters played by him in several of his later plays are comparatively short and light. He continued to retain his hold over the public, and about the year 1774 was beginning to think of withdrawing, at least for a time, to the Continent, when he became involved in what proved a fatal personal quarrel. Neither in his entertainments nor in his comedies had he hitherto (except in Garrick s case, and it is said in Johnson s) put the slightest restraint upon tho personal satire by which he terrified his victims and delighted their neighbours. One of his earlier experiments of this kind (The Author), in which, under the infinitely humorous character of Cadwallader, he had brought a Welsh gentlemen of the name of Ap-llice on the stage, had, indeed, ultimately led to the suppression of the play. But, to an extent of which it is impossible fully to judge, he had pursued his hazardous course, mercilessly exposing to public ridicule and contempt not only fribbles and pedants, quacks or supposed quacks in medicine (as in The Devil on Tuo Sticks), impostors or supposed impostors in religion, such as Dr Dodd (in The Cozeners) and Whitfield and his connexion (in The Minor). He had not only dared the wrath of the whole Society of Antiquaries (in The Nalob), and been rewarded by the withdrawal, from among the pundits who rationalized away Whittington s Cat, of Horace Walpole and other eminent members of the body, but had IX. - 47