Part 5 (1/2)
FOOTNOTES:
[9] ”If it had not been for you English, I should have been Emperor of the East; but wherever there is water enough to float a s.h.i.+p, we are sure to find you in our way.”--_Napoleon to Captain Maitland._ See Maitland's ”Narrative of the Surrender of Bonaparte,” p. 99.
[10] _London Chronicle_, December 6th, 1806.
[11] See also Gillray's previous satire of the 23rd of January, 1806 (which probably suggested this), _Tiddy Doll, the Great French Gingerbread Baker, drawing out a new batch of kings_.
[12] See also Gillray's cartoon of 1st October, 1807, _British Tars towing the Danish Fleet into Harbour_.
[13] See vol. ii., p. 92, _et seq._
[14] In a loose age, Madame Tallien, notwithstanding such virtues as she possessed, was a loose character. Between 1798 and 1802 she had three children, who were registered in her family name of _Cabarrus_. On the 8th of April, 1802, at her own request a divorce was p.r.o.nounced from Tallien, and with two husbands still alive she married (14th July, 1805,) Count Joseph de Caraman, soon after heir of the Prince de Chimay. She died in the odour of sanct.i.ty, on the 15th of January, 1835.
[15] O'Meara, vol. i, p. 250.
[16] ”English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.”
[17] According to Mr. Grego, 2,000.
CHAPTER III.
_MISCELLANEOUS CARICATURES AND SUBJECTS OF CARICATURE, 1812-1819._
1812. REBUILDING OF DRURY LANE THEATRE.
Drury Lane Theatre, which was burnt down in 1811, was rebuilt the following year, and the committee, anxious to celebrate the opening by an address of merit corresponding to the occasion, advertised in the papers for such a composition. Theatrical addresses, however, as we all know by reference to a recent occasion,[18] are not always up to the mark; and whether the result of their appeal was unsatisfactory, or whether--as appears not unlikely--they were appalled by the number of compet.i.tors, which is said to have been upwards of one hundred, not one was accepted, the advertisers preferring to seek the a.s.sistance of Lord Byron, who wrote the actual address which was spoken at the opening on the 10th of October, 1812. Among the compet.i.tors was a Dr. Busby, living in Queen Anne Street, who apparently unable to realize the fact that competent men could have the effrontery to reject his ”monologue,”
refused to accept the verdict of the committee. A few evenings afterwards, the audience and the company were electrified by an unexpected sensation. Busby and his son sat in one of the stage boxes; and the latter, to the amazement of the audience, stepped at the end of the play from his box upon the stage, and began to recite his father's nonsense, as follows:--
”When energizing objects men pursue, What are the prodigies they cannot do?”
DR. BUSBY'S ”MONOLOGUE.”
The question remained unanswered; for Raymond, the stage manager, walked at this moment upon the stage accompanied by a constable, and gave the amateur performer into custody. It is said that his father, not content with this failure, actually made an attempt to recite the ”monologue” from his box, until hissed and howled down by the half laughing, half indignant audience. The circ.u.mstance is commemorated by an admirable pictorial satire ent.i.tled, _A Buz in a Box, or the Poet in a Pet_, published by S. W. Fores on the 21st of October, in which we see the doctor gesticulating from his box, and imploring the audience to listen to his ”monologue.” Young Busby, seated on his father's Pegasus (an a.s.s), quotes one of the verses of the absurd composition, while the animal (after the manner of its kind) answers the hisses of the audience by elevating its heels and uttering a characteristic ”hee haw.” By the side of Busby junior stands the manager (Raymond), apologetically addressing the audience. Certain pamphlets lie scattered in front of the stage, on which are inscribed (among others) the following doggerel:--
”A Lord and a Doctor once started for Fame, Which for the best poet should pa.s.s; The Lord was cried up on account of his name, The Doctor cried down for _an a.s.s_.”
”Doctor Buz, he a.s.sures us, on Drury's new stage No horses or elephants there should engage; But pray, Doctor Buz, how comes it to pa.s.s, That you your own self should produce there an a.s.s?”
Dr. Busby was a person desirous of achieving literary notoriety at any amount of personal inconvenience. He translated _Lucretius_, and is said to have given public recitations, accompanied with bread and b.u.t.ter and tea; but in spite of these attractions, the public did not come and the book would not sell, facts which a wicked wag of the period ridiculed, by inserting the following announcement in the column of births of one of the newspapers: ”Yesterday, at his house in Queen Anne Street, Dr.
Busby of a stillborn _Lucretius_.”
1813.
The medical profession is ridiculed in a satire published in 1813: _Doctors Differ, or Dame Nature against the College_.[19] Four physicians have quarrelled in consultation over the nature of their patient's malady, and the proper mode of administering to his relief.