GODOLPHIN’S PASSION FOR THE
STAGE. THE DIFFERENCE IT ENGENDERED IN HIS
HABITS OF LIFE.
Now this event produced a great influence
over Godolphin’s habits and I suppose,
therefore, I may add, over his character. He renewed
his acquaintance with the lively actress.
“What a change!” cried both.
“The strolling player risen into celebrity!”
“And the runaway boy polished into fashion!”
“You are handsomer than ever, Fanny.”
“I return the compliment,” replied Fanny;
with a curtsey.
And now Godolphin became a constant
attendant at the theatre. This led him into a
mode of life quite different from that which he had
lately cultivated.
There are in London two sets of idle
men: one set, the butterflies of balls; the loungers
of the regular walks of society; diners out; the “old
familiar faces,” seen everywhere, known to every
one: the other set, a more wild, irregular, careless
race; who go little into parties, and vote balls a
nuisance; who live in clubs; frequent theatres; drive
about late o’ nights in mysterious-looking vehicles
and enjoy a vast acquaintance among the Aspasias of
pleasure. These are the men who are the critics
of theatricals: black-neckclothed and well-booted,
they sit in their boxes and decide on the ankles of
a dancer or the voice of a singer. They have
a smattering of literature, and use a great deal of
French in their conversation: they have something
of romance in their composition, and have been known
to marry for love. In short, there is in their
whole nature, a more roving, liberal, Continental character
of dissipation, than belongs to the cold, tame, dull,
prim, hedge-clipped indolence of more national exquisitism.
Into this set, out of the other set, fell young Godolphin;
and oh! the merry mornings at actresses’ houses;
the jovial suppers after the play; the buoyancy, the
brilliancy, the esprit, with which the hours, from
midnight to cockcrow, were often pelted with rose-leaves
and drowned in Rhenish.
By degrees, however, as Godolphin
warmed into his attendance at the playhouses, the
fine intellectual something that lay yet undestroyed
at his heart stirred up emotions which he felt his
more vulgar associates were unfitted to share.
There is that in theatrical representation
which perpetually awakens whatever romance belongs
to our character. The magic lights; the pomp
of scene; the palace, the camp; the forest; the midnight
wold; the moonlight reflected on the water; the melody
of the tragic rhythm; the grace of the comic wit;
the strange art that give such meaning to the poet’s
lightest word; the fair, false, exciting
life that is detailed before us crowding
into some three little hours all that our most busy
ambition could desire love, enterprise,
war, glory! the kindling exaggeration of the sentiments
which belong to the stage like our own
in our boldest moments: all these appeals to our
finer senses are not made in vain. Our taste
for castle-building and visions deepens upon us; and
we chew a mental opium which stagnates all the other
faculties, but wakens that of the ideal.
Godolphin was peculiarly fascinated
by the stage; he loved to steal away from his companions,
and, alone, and unheeded, to feast his mind on the
unreal stream of existence that mirrored images so
beautiful. And oh! while yet we are young while
yet the dew lingers on the green leaf of spring while
all the brighter, the more enterprising part of the
future is to come while we know not whether
the true life may not be visionary and excited as
the false how deep and rich a transport
is it to see, to feel, to hear Shakspeare’s
conceptions made actual, though all imperfectly, and
only for an hour! Sweet Arden! are we in thy
forest? thy “shadowy groves and unfrequented
glens”? Rosalind, Jaques, Orlando, have
you indeed a being upon earth! Ah! this is true
enchantment! and when we turn back to life, we turn
from the colours which the Claude glass breathes over
a winter’s landscape to the nakedness of the
landscape itself!