255—to Lord Holland
September 28.
I have altered the
middle
couplet, so as I hope partly to do away with W.'s objection. I
do
think, in the present state of the stage, it had been unpardonable to pass over the horses and Miss Mudie
, etc. As Betty is no longer a boy, how can this be applied to him? He is now to be judged as a man. If he acts still like a boy, the public will but be more ashamed of their blunder. I have, you see,
now
taken it for granted that these things are reformed. I confess, I wish that part of the
Address
to stand; but if W. is inexorable, e'en let it go. I have also new-cast the lines, and softened the hint of future combustion, and sent them off this morning. Will you have the goodness to add, or insert, the
approved
alterations as they arrive?
They
"come like shadows, so depart,"
occupy me, and, I fear, disturb you.
Do not let Mr. W. put his
Address
into Elliston's hands till you have settled on these alterations. E. will think it too long:—much depends on the speaking. I fear it will not bear much curtailing, without
chasms
in the sense.
It is certainly too long in the reading; but if Elliston exerts himself, such a favourite with the public will not be thought tedious.
I
should think it so, if
he
were not to speak it.
Yours ever, etc.
P.S.—On looking again, I doubt my idea of having obviated W.'s objection. To the other House allusion is
non sequitur
—but I wish to plead for this part, because the thing really is not to be passed over.
Many
afterpieces of the Lyceum by the
same company
have already attacked this "Augean
Stable
"—and Johnson, in his prologue against "Lunn" (the harlequin manager, Rich),— "Hunt,"—"Mahomet," etc. is surely a fair precedent
.
Footnote 1:
For
the horses, see p. 156,
1. Miss Mudie, another "Phenomenon," with whom the Covent Garden manager hoped to rival the success of Master Betty, was announced in the
Morning Post
, July 29, 1805, as the "Young Roscia of the Dublin Stage." She appeared at Covent Garden, November 23, 1805, in the part of "Peggy" in
The Country Girl
, Miss Brunton being "Alithea," C. Kemble "Harcourt," and Moody "Murray." Being hissed by the audience, she walked with great composure to the front of the stage, and said, as reported in the
Morning Post
(November 25, 1805)
"Ladies and gentlemen,—I know nothing I have done to offend you, and has set (sic) those who are sent here to hiss me; I will be very much obliged to you to turn them out."
This unfortunate speech made matters worse; the audience refused to hear her, and her part was finished by Miss Searle.
Miss Mudie was said to be only eight years old. But J. Kemble, being asked if she were really such a child, answered,
"Child! Why, sir, when I was a very young actor in the York Company, that little creature kept an inn at Tadcaster, and had a large family"
(Clark Russell's
Representative Actors
, p. 363,
note
2). The
Morning Post
(April 5, 1806) says that Miss Mudie afterwards joined a children's troupe in Leicester Place, where,
"though deservedly discountenanced at a great theatre, she will, no doubt, prove an acquisition to the infant establishment"
(Ashton's
Dawn of the XIXth Century in England
, pp. 333-336).
Footnote 2:
Macbeth
, act iv. sc. 1.
Footnote 3:
For
Lun, or Rich, see p. 157, end of
1 [Footnote 2]. Hunt, in the notes to Johnson's
Prologue
(Gilfillan's edition of Johnson's
Poestical Works
, p. 38), is said to be "a famous stage-boxer, Mahomet, a rope-dancer."
