The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield | Page 9

To the white Elephant
Buitenacke. And thou alone shall have from me Jimminy, Gomminy,
whee, whee, whee, The Gomminy, Jimminy, whee."
To which the lovely maiden answers:
"The great Jaw-waw that rules our Land, And pearly Indian sea Has not
so absolute Command As thou hast over me, With a Jimminy,
Gomminy, Gomminy, Jimminy, Jimminy, Gomminy, whee."
[Footnote A: Theatrical performances in this reign generally began at 5
p.m.]
When the play is over Nance can take a new part, that of a feminine
conqueror. She has overshadowed Colley Cibber, who is more dazed
than chagrined at the _dénouement_, and she has proved more potent
for the public amusement than all the beauties of "Jimminy,
Gomminy," with its elephants, its jaw-waw, and its pearly Indian Sea.
As she sits in the green-room, smiling in girlish triumph while she
looks around at the beaux and players who crowd about her, anxious to
worship the rising star, her eloquent glance falls on George Farquhar.
There is a tear in his eye, but a radiant expression about the face. What
does the Oldfield's success mean to the Captain? Perhaps Anne knows,
as she throws him a tender recognition; perhaps she thinks of that song
in "Sir Courtly Nice" which runs:
"Oh, be kind, my dear, be kind, Whilst our Loves and we are Young;
We shall find, we shall find, Time will change the face or mind, Youth
will not continue long. Oh, be kind, my dear, be kind."

CHAPTER II
AN ENTRE-ACTE
While Anne Oldfield is resting from her first triumph and preparing for

another, let us glance for a moment at the theatrical conditions which
surround her. Curious, perplexing conditions they are, marking as they
do a transition between the brilliant but generally filthy period of the
Restoration--a period in which some of the worst and some of the best
of plays saw the light--and the time when the punctilio and artificial
decency of the age will cast over the stage the cold light of formality
and restraint. The nation is but slowly recovering from the
licentiousness which characterised the merry reign of Charles II., that
witty, sceptical sovereign, who never believed in the honesty of man
nor the virtue of frail woman. The playwrights are recovering too, yet,
if anything, more tardily than the people; for when a nasty cynicism,
like that pervading the old comedies, is once boldly cultivated, many a
long day must elapse ere it can be replaced by a cleaner, healthier spirit.
Charles has surely had much to answer for at the bar of public opinion
(a bar for which he evidently felt a profound contempt), and the evil
influence which he and his Court exerted on the drama supplies one of
the greatest blots on his moral 'scutcheon. Augustus William Schlegel,
that foreigner who studied the literature of the English stage as few
Britons have ever done, well pointed out that while the Puritans had
brought Republican principles and religious zeal into public odium, this
light-hearted monarch seemed expressly born to dispel all respect for
the kingly dignity. "England was inundated with the foreign follies and
vices in his train. The Court set the fashion of the most undisguised
immorality, and this example was the more extensively contagious, as
people imagined that they showed their zeal for the new order of things
by an extravagant way of thinking and living. The fanaticism of the
Republicans had been accompanied with true strictness of manners, and
hence nothing appeared more convenient than to obtain the character of
Royalists by the extravagant inclination for all lawful and unlawful
pleasures.
"The age of Louis XIV. was nowhere imitated with greater depravity.
The prevailing gallantry at the Court of France was not without reserve
and tenderness of feeling; they sinned, if I may so speak, with some
degree of dignity, and no man ventured to attack what was honourable,
though his own actions might not exactly coincide with it. The English

played a part which was altogether unnatural to them; they gave
themselves heavily up to levity; they everywhere confounded the
coarsest licentiousness with free mental vivacity, and did not perceive
that the sort of grace which is still compatible with depravity,
disappears with the last veil which it throws off."
As Schlegel goes on to say, we can easily imagine into what direction
the tastes of the English people drifted under such auspices. "They
possessed no real knowledge of the fine arts, and these were merely
favoured like other foreign fashions and inventions of luxury. They
neither felt a true want of poetry, nor had any relish for it; they merely
wished to be entertained in a brilliant and light manner. The theatre,
which in its former simplicity had attracted the spectators solely by the
excellence of the dramatic works