Garrick and His Circle

 

PREFACE

THIS book is scarcely, in the strict sense, a biography, for the sequence of years does not constitute its main thread. My aim has been to make each one of a series of vignettes illustrate Garrick's character or career in contact with this or that group of outside characters or events. To whatever interested myself most I have ventured to give the most space.

The Private Correspondence of David Garrick (1831) is the fullest of the sources of authentic information concerning Garrick. Next come those of the Garrick letters among the Forster MSS., in the Victoria and Albert Museum, that are not printed in the Private Correspondence. The two early biographies of Garrick were respectively written by Tom Davies, the actor-bookseller (1780), and Arthur Murphy, the actor - playwright (1801), who both knew him personally. The two modern biographies have been contributed by Mr. Percy Fitzgerald (1868) and Mr. Joseph Knight (1894). There have been no other serious works devoted to the subject of the present unpretending volume, which owes much to the wide suggestions of Mr. Fitzgerald's enthusiastic study, and much to the exact statements of Mr. Knight's, in the main, theatrical history. I have, in addition, had access to the late Sir Henry Irving's four grangerised folios, entitled David Garrick, a Memorial,' sold at Christie's on December 9th, 1905. They contain a number of unpublished autograph letters written by and to Garrick.

Unauthentic information concerning Garrick is scattered broadcast throughout eighteenth century memoirs, theatrical and otherwise. He is as much a centre of legend as King Arthur, and it cannot be too emphatically stated that the ordinary Garrick story rests on a very morass. Two-thirds of the contemporary contes were the invention of coffee-house irresponsibility or professional envy. The other half' consists of variants on the three or four basic stories told of successive famous actors, probably ever since Thespis rode in his cart. An anecdote that must not be read at the foot of the letter may yet show which way the wind blew, and, on that plea, I have not refrained from including many a good story which seemed typically, if not precisely, true.
It has been to me a matter of some concern that I have made so few references to public and national life, seldom in a condition of greater flux and progress than during Garrick's years, The decay of Jacobitism, the gradual softening of religious bigotry in England, the growth of modern forms of political discontent, the American Revolution and its influences here — these weighty matters I have adopted the easy course of relegating to a brief chronicle (pp. xxi—xxiii) of such events as admit of a year-mark. Garrick, his theatre, and his personal links were, after all, my subject, in itself one of embarrassing width.

My grateful thanks are due to the many friends and counsellors who have forwarded the writing of this book, especially to Mrs. Frank Gielgud for her invaluable help and criticisms in connection with the art and methods of actors.

My thoughts have, during the past year, been so continuously occupied with Garrick that I have sometimes almost wondered that the Shade of the kindly actor, wearing—astrally—his blue coat of private life, with the gilt buttons, and that odious scratch' wig his friends all deprecated, has never appeared at my writing-table to acquaint me with the vraie verite.

My task has been, though delightful, not easy, and now, as I look over the completed pages, I realise afresh that the actor's personality is an elusive one, and that I have, in all probability, given no better idea of Garrick's lightness and charm than, to quote Horace Walpole's phrase, the mouldy thigh-bone of a saint would give of the unction of his sermons.

FLORENCE MARY PARSONS
12 WARWICK AVENUE, W.