Читать книгу: «The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 10, No. 283, November 17, 1827», страница 4

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

ROMEO COATES

What was Kemble, Cooke, Kean, or Young, to the celebrated Diamond Coates, who, about twenty years since, shared with little Betty the admiration of the town? Never shall I forget his representation of Lothario at the Haymarket Theatre, for his own pleasure, as he accurately termed it; and certainly the then rising fame of Liston was greatly endangered by his Barbadoes rival. Never had Garrick or Kemble, in their best times, so largely excited the public attention and curiosity. The very remotest nooks of the galleries were filled by fashion, while in a stage-box sat the performer's notorious friend, the Baron Ferdinand Geramb.

Coates's lean Quixotic form, being duly clothed in velvets and in silks, and his bonnet richly fraught with diamonds, (whence his appellation,) his entrance on the stage was greeted by such a general crowing, (in allusion to the large cocks, which as his crest adorned his harness,) that the angry and affronted Lothario drew his sword upon the audience, and actually challenged the rude and boisterous inhabitants of the galleries, seriatim, or en masse, to combat on the stage. Solemn silence, as the consequence of mock fear, immediately succeeded. The great actor, after the overture had ceased, amused himself for some time with the baron, ere he condescended to indulge the wishes of an anxiously expectant audience. At length he commenced; his appeals to his heart were made by an application of the left hand so disproportionably lower than the "seat of life" has been supposed to be placed; his contracted pronunciation of the word "breach," and other new readings and actings, kept the house in a right joyous humour, until the climax of all mirth was attained by the dying scene of "the gallant and the gay;" but who shall describe the prolonged agonies of the dark seducer! his platted hair escaping from the comb that held it, and the dark crineous cordage that flapped upon his shoulders in the convulsions of his dying moments, and the cries of the people for medical aid to accomplish his eternal exit. Then, when in his last throes his bonnet fell, it was miraculous to see the defunct arise, and after he had spread a nice handkerchief on the stage, and there deposited his head-dress, free from impurity, philosophically resume his dead condition; but it was not yet over, for the exigent audience, not content "that when the man were dead, why there an end," insisted on a repetition of the awful scene, which the highly flattered corpse executed three several times to the gratification of the cruel and torment-loving assembly.

Coates, too, was destined to participate somewhat in the celebrated fête in honour of the Bourbons in 1811. Having no opportunity of learning in the West Indies the propriety of being presented at court, ere he could be upon a more intimate footing with the prince, he was less astonished than delighted at the reception of an invitation on that occasion to Carlton house. What was the fame acquired by his cockleshell curricle, (by the way, the very neatest thing seen in London before or since;) his scenic reputation; all the applause attending the perfection of histrionic art; the flatteries of Billy Finch, (a sort of kidnapper of juvenile actors and actresses, of the O. P. and P. S. in Russell-court;) the sanction of a Petersham; the intimacy of a Barrymore; even the polite endurance of a Skeffington to this! To be classed with the proud, the noble, and the great. It seemed a natural query, whether the Bourbon's name were not a pretext for his own introduction to royalty, under circumstances of unprecedented splendour and magnificence. It must have been so. What cogitations respecting dress, and air, and port, and bearing! What torturing of the confounded lanky locks, to make them but revolve ever so little! then the rich cut velvet—the diamond buttons—ay, every one was composed of brilliants! The night arrived: ushered by well-rigged watchmen to clear the way, the honoured sedan bore its precious burthen to the palace, and the glittering load was deposited in the royal vestibule itself. Alas! what confusion, horror, and dismay were there, when the ticket was pronounced a forgery! All that the considerate politeness of a Bloomfield or a Turner might effect was done to alleviate the fatal disappointment. The case was even reported instanter to the prince himself; but etiquette was amongst the other "restrictions" imposed upon his royal highness; and, however tempered by compliment and excuse, "the diamonds blaze" reached not farther than the hall, and were destined to waste their splendour, for the remainder of the night, in the limited apartments of Craven-street.

New Monthly Magazine.

THE VOICE OF NATURE

 
I heard a bird on the linden tree,
From which November leaves were falling,
Sweet were its notes, and wild their tone;
And pensive there as I paused alone,
They spake with a mystical voice to me,
The sunlight of vanish'd years recalling
From out the mazy past.
 
 
I turned to the cloud-bedappled sky,
To bare-shorn field and gleaming water;
To frost-night herbage, and perishing flower;
While the Robin haunted the yellow bower;
With his faery plumage and jet-black eye,
Like an unlaid ghost some scene of slaughter:
All mournful was the sight.
 
 
Then I thought of seasons, when, long ago,
Ere Hope's clear sky was dimm'd by sorrow,
How bright seem'd the flowers, and the trees how green,
How lengthen'd the blue summer days had been;
And what pure delight the young spirit's glow,
From the bosom of earth and air, could borrow
Out of all lovely things.
 
 
Then my heart leapt to days, when, a careless boy,
'Mid scenes of ambrosial Autumn roaming,
The diamond gem of the Evening Star,
Twinkling amid the pure South afar,
Was gazed on with gushes of holy joy,
As the cherub spirit that ruled the gloaming
With glittering, golden eye.
 
 
And oh! with what rapture of silent bliss.
With what breathless deep devotion,
Have I watch'd, like spectre from swathing shroud,
The white moon peer o'er the shadowy cloud,
Illumine the mantled Earth, and kiss
The meekly murmuring lips of Ocean,
As a mother doth her child.
 
 
But now I can feel how Time hath changed
My thoughts within, the prospect round us—
How boyish companions have thinn'd away;
How the sun hath grown cloudier, ray by ray;
How loved scenes of childhood are now estranged;
And the chilling tempests of Care have bound us
Within their icy folds.
 
 
'Tis no vain dream of moody mind,
That lists a dirge i' the blackbird's singing;
That in gusts hears Nature's own voice complain,
And beholds her tears in the gushing rain;
When low clouds congregate blank and blind,
And Winter's snow-muffled arms are clinging
Round Autumn's faded urn.
 

DELTA.

Blackwood's Magazine.

CALAIS

Calais will merit to be described by every Englishman who visits it, and to be read of by every one who does not—so long as Hogarth, and "Oh! the Roast Beef of Old England!" shall be remembered, and—which will be longer still—till the French and English become one people, merely by dint of living, within three hours' journey of each other. Calais has been treated much too cavalierly by the flocks of English, who owe to it their first, and consequently most fixed impressions of French manners, and the English want of them. Calais is, in fact, one of the most agreeable and characteristic little towns in France. It is "lively, audible, and full of vent"—as gay as a fair, and as busy as a bee-hive—and its form and construction as compact.

Calais, unlike any English town you could name, is content to remain where it is—instead of perpetually trying to stretch away towards Paris, as our's do towards London, and as London itself does towards them. Transporting you at once to the "Place" in the centre of the town (an entirely open square, of about 150 paces by 100,) you can scarcely look upon a more lively and stirring scene. The houses and their shops (they have all shops) are like nothing so much as so many scenes in a pantomime—so fancifully and variously are they filled, so brightly and fantastically painted, and so abruptly do they seem to have risen out of the ground! This last appearance is caused by the absence of a foot-path, and of areas, porticoes, railings, &c.—such as, in all cases, give a kind of finish to the look of our houses. The houses here seem all to have grown up out of the ground—not to have been built upon it. This is what gives to them their most striking effect of novelty at the first view. Their brilliant and various colourings—so unlike our sombre brick-work—is the next cause of the novel impression they produce. The general strangeness of the effect is completed by the excellence of the pavement, which is of stones, shaped like those of our best London carriage-ways, but as white as marble in all weathers, and as regular as the brick-work of a house-front. The uniformity of the "Place" is broken (not very agreeably) by the principal public edifice of Calais—the Town Hall; a half-modern, half-antique building, which occupies about a third of the south side, and is surmounted at one end by a light spiring belfry, containing a most loquacious ring of bells, which take up a somewhat unreasonable proportion of every quarter of an hour in announcing its arrival; and, in addition, every three hours they play "Le petit chaperon rouge" for a longer period than (I should imagine) even French patience and leisure can afford to listen to it. Immediately behind the centre of this side of the "Place" also rises the lofty tower, which serves as a light-house to the coast and harbour, and which at night displays its well-known revolving lights. Most of the principal streets run out of this great Square. The most busy of them—because the greatest thoroughfare—is a short and narrow one leading to the Port—(Rue du Havre:) in it live all those shopkeepers who especially address themselves to the wants of the traveller. But the gayest and most agreeable street is one running from the north-east corner of the "Place" (Rue Royale.) It terminates in the gate leading to the suburbs (Basse Ville,) and to the Netherlands and the interior of the country. In this street is situated the great hotel Dessin—rendered famous for the "for ever" of a century or so to come, by Sterne's Sentimental Journey. The only other street devoted exclusively to shops is one running parallel with the south side of the "Place." The rest of the interior of Calais consists of about twenty other streets, each containing here and there a shop, but chiefly occupied by the residences of persons directly or indirectly connected with the trade of Calais as a sea-port town.

If you believe its maligners, Calais is no better than a sort of Alsatia to England, a kind of extension of the rules of the King's Bench. The same persons would persuade you that America is something between a morass and a desert, and that its inhabitants are a cross between swindlers and barbarians; merely because its laws do not take upon them to punish those who have not offended against them! If America were to send home to their respective countries, in irons, all who arrive on her shores under suspicion of not being endowed with a Utopian degree of honesty—or, if (still better) she were to hang them outright, she would be looked upon as the most pious, moral, and refined nation under the sun, and her climate would rival that of Paradise. And if Calais did not happen to be so situated, that it affords a pleasant refuge to some of those who have the wit to prefer free limbs and fresh air to a prison, it would be all that is agreeable and genteel. It seems to be thought, that a certain ci-devant leader of fashion has chosen Calais as his place of voluntary exile, out of a spirit of contradiction. But the truth is, he had the good sense to see that he might "go farther and fare worse;" and that, at any rate, he would thus secure himself from the intrusions of that "good company," which had been his bane. By-the-by, his last "good thing" appertains to his residence here. Some one asked him how he could think of residing in "such a place as Calais?" "I suppose," said he, "it is possible for a gentleman to live between London and Paris."

The interior of Calais I need not describe further, except to say that round three-fourths of it are elevated ramparts, overlooking the surrounding country to a great extent, and in several parts planted with trees, which afford most pleasant and refreshing walks, after pacing the somewhat perplexing pavements of the streets, and being dazzled by the brilliant whiteness which reflects from that, and from the houses. The port, which occupies the other fourth, and is gained by three streets parallel to each other, and leading from the "Place," is small, but in excellent order, and always alive with shipping, and the amusing operations appertaining thereto; and the pier is a most striking object, especially at high water, when it runs out, in a straight line, for near three quarters of a mile, into the open sea. It is true our English engineers—who ruin hundreds of their fellow citizens by spending millions upon a bridge that nobody will take the trouble to pass over, and cutting tunnels under rivers, only to let the water into them when they have got all the money they can by the job—would treat this pier with infinite contempt as a thing that merely answers all the purposes for which it was erected! as if that were a merit of any but the very lowest degree. "Look at Waterloo Bridge!" they say; "we flatter ourselves that was not a thing built (like the pier of Calais) merely for use. Nobody will say that any such thing was wanted! But, what a noble monument of British art, and what a fine commemoration of the greatest of modern victories!" True: but it would have been all this if you had built it on Salisbury Plain; and in that case it would have cost only half the money. The pier of Calais is, in fact, every thing that it need be, and what perhaps no other pier is; and yet it is nothing more than a piece of serviceable carpentery, that must have cost about as much, perhaps, as to print the prospectuses of some of the late undertakings, and pay the advertisements and the lawyer's bill.