JOHN MADDISON MORTON.THEpresent generation is familiar enough with “Box and Cox,” that best and brightest of good old English farces, and hundreds of other plays of the same kind, that were written years ago by one of the driest of humorists and most genial of gentlemen; but few young play-goers, I take it, are aware how much the stage owes to John Maddison Morton. Of the form and features of one of the most prolific writers for the stage, I believe many of my own contemporaries to be absolutely ignorant. They know little of his antecedents or history, and yet they, and their fathers before them, have laughed right merrily over the quips and cranks, the quaint turns of expression, the odd freaks of humor that distinguished a writer of fun belonging to the old school. No one has ever filled the place left vacant by John Maddison Morton. Managers for many years past have assumed that the public does not want farces, and are content to tolerate badly-acted rubbish before the play of the evening begins. But a strong reaction is setting in. The pit and gallery are not content any longer to remain open-mouthed while the scenes of the play of the evening are being set, or to be deluded into applauding the silly stuff that is nowadays served up as farce, and in which the principal actors and actresses do not condescend to appear. Why, when I first began to consider myself a regularplay-goer, some five-and-twenty years ago, when I struggled with the young men of my time into the pit, I could see, quite irrespective of the play of the evening, Webster at the Adelphi in “One Touch of Nature,” say at seven o’clock in the evening; Toole and Paul Bedford and Selby and Billington and Bob Romer, always in some favorite farce that began or ended the evening’s amusement, at the Haymarket; Buckstone, old Rogers, and Chippendale in such plays as “The Rough Diamond,” at the Haymarket, with an after-farce for Compton, Howe, and Walter Gordon; and at the Strand such excellent little plays as “Short and Sweet” or the “Fair Encounter,” in which we were sure to find Jemmy Rogers and Johnnie Clarke, and most probably Belford, Marie Wilton, Fanny Josephs, and Miss Swanborough. In those days artists were not above their business, which was, and ever should be, to amuse the public; they were not taken up and patronized by society; they did not lecture their audiences, but were modest, hard-working, and unassuming. There were no young fops in the ranks of the dramatic profession with extravagant salaries and diminutive talent, and the young ladies who adopted the profession had to work, and work hard, in order to obtain a name. Farces were then well acted, for the simple reason that the best members of the company played in them. It was worth paying for the pit at half or full price when Robson was set down for “Retained for the Defence” or “Boots at the Swan,” and when Leigh Murray, most accomplished of comedians, appeared in “His First Champagne.”John Maddison Morton was born on January 3, 1811, at the lovely Thames-side village of Pangborne, above Reading. His father was the famous dramatist Thomas Morton,author of “Speed the Plough,” “Town and Country,” “The Way to get Married,” “Secrets worth Knowing,” “Cure for the Heartache,” “School of Reform,” etc. The elder Morton resided at Pangborne for thirty-five years, and only removed to London in 1828. It must have been on the lovely reaches, back-waters, and weirs of the lovely Thames that the future author of “Box and Cox” acquired such a love of angling, and became so enthusiastic and excellent a fisherman. A few years ago I was in the habit of meeting Maddison Morton at the hospitable table of my old friend Robert Reece. They were both members of the old Dramatic Authors’ Society, and on committee days Reece would bring the jovial dramatist home to dinner, when, over a glass of old port-wine, and with frequent intervals of snuff-taking, he would delight us with stories of actors, and many adventures with the rod and line. In fact, he told us that he devoted the best part of his after-life to two principal objects, “Fishing and Farce-writing.”But to return to his younger days. He was educated in Paris and Germany from 1817 to 1820. After that he went to school at Islington for a short time, and from 1820 to 1827 we find the future dramatist at Dr. Richardson’s celebrated seminary at Clapham. Under the roof of the famous author of the English dictionary he found, and soon took for companions, Julian Young, Charles James Mathews, John Kemble, Henry Kemble, John Liston, Dick Tattersall, young Terry, son of Terry the actor, whose widow subsequently married the lexicographer, Dr. Richardson. In 1832 Maddison Morton was appointed to a clerkship in Chelsea Hospital by Lord John Russell, but he did not appear to relish the desk any more than his subsequent friends,W. S. Gilbert and Robert Reece. He did not wait patiently for a pension, like Tom Taylor, Anthony Trollope, etc., but got sick of government office-work in 1840, when he resigned his situation.It was in April, 1835, that Maddison Morton produced his first farce at the little theatre in Tottenham Street destined afterwards to flourish as the Prince of Wales Theatre, and to be the nursery of Robertsonian comedy. The farce was called “My First Fit of the Gout,” and the principal parts were played by Wrench, Morris Barrett, and Mrs. Nisbett. As I have said before, Maddison Morton lived in the happy days when farces were popular, when programmes were ample, and when actors were not ashamed of their work. Among the cultivated artists who have played in Maddison Morton’s farces are the elder Farren, Liston, Keeley, Buckstone, Wright, Compton, Harley, Robson, Mrs. Glover, Mrs. Stirling, Charles Mathews, and many more of our own day, such as Toole, Howe, etc.I once asked Maddison Morton some particulars concerning his subsequent career as a dramatist, when he observed, quaintly enough, “My dear boy, it would never do for me to blow my own trumpet. In the first place, I haven’t got one, and I am sure I could not blow it if I had.” It is sometimes brought as a charge against Maddison Morton that his plays are taken from the French, and as such are devoid of original merit. But how little such as these understand Maddison Morton or his incomparable style. He may have borrowed his plots from France, but what trace of French writing is to be found in the immortal “Box and Cox,” or “Woodcock’s Little Game?” “Box and Cox” is taken from two French farces, one called “Frisette,” andthe other “Une Chambre à Deux Lits,” but the writing of the farce as much belongs to the man, and is as distinctly original and personal to him as anything ever said or written by Henry James Byron. For my own poor part, I consider that Maddison Morton is funnier than any writer for the stage in his day. It is the kind of dry, sententious humor that tickles one far more than the extravagances, the puns, and the strained tomfooleries of the modern writer of burlesque—the very burlesque that Maddison Morton considers was the death-blow to the old-fashioned English farce. Players may yet find it profitable to revive the taste for short farces, and they need not hesitate to do so because several excellent and funny plays by the author of “Box and Cox” remain unused. Benjamin Webster told Maddison Morton, not long before his death, that he had made more money by farces than by any other description of drama. This is not difficult to account for. The author was certainly not overpaid; the farces were evidently well acted; it cost next to nothing to produce them, and if successful, the world and his wife went to see them.Writing to a friend the other day, Maddison Morton observes: “The introduction of ‘Burlesque’ gave the first ‘knock-down blow’ to the old-fashioned farce. I hoped against hope that its popularity would return, and that some employment might still be found for my pen. I was disappointed; and as the only means of discharging liabilities which I had in the mean time unavoidably contracted, I was compelled to part with my copyrights, the accumulation of a life’s laborious and not unsuccessful work.”It is interesting to note that Maddison Morton’s “Box and Cox” was the pioneer of the movement that resultedin the literary and musical partnership of Gilbert and Sullivan. If it had not been for Burnand’s “Cox and Box,” in all probability the “Sorcerer” and the rest of the operas would never have been written. And happily the reign of Maddison Morton is not yet over. On Monday, December 7, 1885, was produced at Toole’s Theatre a three-act farce called “Going It,” that kept the house in a continual roar of laughter. It is in the old vein, bright, witty, and bristling with verbal quip. When the farce was over the call for “author” was raised, but no one imagined that it would be responded to. To the surprise of all, Mr. Toole led on an elderly gentleman of the old school, prim, neat, well set up, and rosy-cheeked as a winter apple. This was Maddison Morton. At last the young play-goer had seen the author of “Box and Cox.”In the year 1881, on the nomination of her Majesty, this great and accomplished gentleman, who never mixed in Bohemian or literary society, was appointed a “poor brother of the Charter House.” Who that has read Thackeray is not familiar with the fine old hospital of “Greyfriars,” and its pleasant old “codds,” under whose shadow and in whose society Colonel Newcome breathed his last, and said “Adsum.” Here in this pleasant retreat, quiet and retired although in the heart of the busiest part of the city, Maddison Morton met another “brother,” John A. Heraud, a dramatist and dramatic critic who had often sat in judgment on Morton’s plays. What chats about old times they must have within those venerable walls that circle round the poet-dramatist and the dramatic farce-writer. “Here,” writes Maddison Morton, in his well-known cheerful and contented frame of mind, “I shall doubtless spend the shorttime I may have to live, and then be laid in the quiet little church-yard at Bow—not, I hope, entirely ‘unwept, unhonored, nor unsung.’”Good, kindly, gentle heart thus to speak with such fervor and such faith in the long evening of your days! Shut up in your cloistered home, the hearts of those who had the honor and pleasure of knowing you often go out to you! And on the stage the laughter evoked by your fanciful wit, and the true humor that sprung from your merry heart, will soothe you and delight many more who honor your excellent name.CLEMENTSCOTT.
THEpresent generation is familiar enough with “Box and Cox,” that best and brightest of good old English farces, and hundreds of other plays of the same kind, that were written years ago by one of the driest of humorists and most genial of gentlemen; but few young play-goers, I take it, are aware how much the stage owes to John Maddison Morton. Of the form and features of one of the most prolific writers for the stage, I believe many of my own contemporaries to be absolutely ignorant. They know little of his antecedents or history, and yet they, and their fathers before them, have laughed right merrily over the quips and cranks, the quaint turns of expression, the odd freaks of humor that distinguished a writer of fun belonging to the old school. No one has ever filled the place left vacant by John Maddison Morton. Managers for many years past have assumed that the public does not want farces, and are content to tolerate badly-acted rubbish before the play of the evening begins. But a strong reaction is setting in. The pit and gallery are not content any longer to remain open-mouthed while the scenes of the play of the evening are being set, or to be deluded into applauding the silly stuff that is nowadays served up as farce, and in which the principal actors and actresses do not condescend to appear. Why, when I first began to consider myself a regularplay-goer, some five-and-twenty years ago, when I struggled with the young men of my time into the pit, I could see, quite irrespective of the play of the evening, Webster at the Adelphi in “One Touch of Nature,” say at seven o’clock in the evening; Toole and Paul Bedford and Selby and Billington and Bob Romer, always in some favorite farce that began or ended the evening’s amusement, at the Haymarket; Buckstone, old Rogers, and Chippendale in such plays as “The Rough Diamond,” at the Haymarket, with an after-farce for Compton, Howe, and Walter Gordon; and at the Strand such excellent little plays as “Short and Sweet” or the “Fair Encounter,” in which we were sure to find Jemmy Rogers and Johnnie Clarke, and most probably Belford, Marie Wilton, Fanny Josephs, and Miss Swanborough. In those days artists were not above their business, which was, and ever should be, to amuse the public; they were not taken up and patronized by society; they did not lecture their audiences, but were modest, hard-working, and unassuming. There were no young fops in the ranks of the dramatic profession with extravagant salaries and diminutive talent, and the young ladies who adopted the profession had to work, and work hard, in order to obtain a name. Farces were then well acted, for the simple reason that the best members of the company played in them. It was worth paying for the pit at half or full price when Robson was set down for “Retained for the Defence” or “Boots at the Swan,” and when Leigh Murray, most accomplished of comedians, appeared in “His First Champagne.”
John Maddison Morton was born on January 3, 1811, at the lovely Thames-side village of Pangborne, above Reading. His father was the famous dramatist Thomas Morton,author of “Speed the Plough,” “Town and Country,” “The Way to get Married,” “Secrets worth Knowing,” “Cure for the Heartache,” “School of Reform,” etc. The elder Morton resided at Pangborne for thirty-five years, and only removed to London in 1828. It must have been on the lovely reaches, back-waters, and weirs of the lovely Thames that the future author of “Box and Cox” acquired such a love of angling, and became so enthusiastic and excellent a fisherman. A few years ago I was in the habit of meeting Maddison Morton at the hospitable table of my old friend Robert Reece. They were both members of the old Dramatic Authors’ Society, and on committee days Reece would bring the jovial dramatist home to dinner, when, over a glass of old port-wine, and with frequent intervals of snuff-taking, he would delight us with stories of actors, and many adventures with the rod and line. In fact, he told us that he devoted the best part of his after-life to two principal objects, “Fishing and Farce-writing.”
But to return to his younger days. He was educated in Paris and Germany from 1817 to 1820. After that he went to school at Islington for a short time, and from 1820 to 1827 we find the future dramatist at Dr. Richardson’s celebrated seminary at Clapham. Under the roof of the famous author of the English dictionary he found, and soon took for companions, Julian Young, Charles James Mathews, John Kemble, Henry Kemble, John Liston, Dick Tattersall, young Terry, son of Terry the actor, whose widow subsequently married the lexicographer, Dr. Richardson. In 1832 Maddison Morton was appointed to a clerkship in Chelsea Hospital by Lord John Russell, but he did not appear to relish the desk any more than his subsequent friends,W. S. Gilbert and Robert Reece. He did not wait patiently for a pension, like Tom Taylor, Anthony Trollope, etc., but got sick of government office-work in 1840, when he resigned his situation.
It was in April, 1835, that Maddison Morton produced his first farce at the little theatre in Tottenham Street destined afterwards to flourish as the Prince of Wales Theatre, and to be the nursery of Robertsonian comedy. The farce was called “My First Fit of the Gout,” and the principal parts were played by Wrench, Morris Barrett, and Mrs. Nisbett. As I have said before, Maddison Morton lived in the happy days when farces were popular, when programmes were ample, and when actors were not ashamed of their work. Among the cultivated artists who have played in Maddison Morton’s farces are the elder Farren, Liston, Keeley, Buckstone, Wright, Compton, Harley, Robson, Mrs. Glover, Mrs. Stirling, Charles Mathews, and many more of our own day, such as Toole, Howe, etc.
I once asked Maddison Morton some particulars concerning his subsequent career as a dramatist, when he observed, quaintly enough, “My dear boy, it would never do for me to blow my own trumpet. In the first place, I haven’t got one, and I am sure I could not blow it if I had.” It is sometimes brought as a charge against Maddison Morton that his plays are taken from the French, and as such are devoid of original merit. But how little such as these understand Maddison Morton or his incomparable style. He may have borrowed his plots from France, but what trace of French writing is to be found in the immortal “Box and Cox,” or “Woodcock’s Little Game?” “Box and Cox” is taken from two French farces, one called “Frisette,” andthe other “Une Chambre à Deux Lits,” but the writing of the farce as much belongs to the man, and is as distinctly original and personal to him as anything ever said or written by Henry James Byron. For my own poor part, I consider that Maddison Morton is funnier than any writer for the stage in his day. It is the kind of dry, sententious humor that tickles one far more than the extravagances, the puns, and the strained tomfooleries of the modern writer of burlesque—the very burlesque that Maddison Morton considers was the death-blow to the old-fashioned English farce. Players may yet find it profitable to revive the taste for short farces, and they need not hesitate to do so because several excellent and funny plays by the author of “Box and Cox” remain unused. Benjamin Webster told Maddison Morton, not long before his death, that he had made more money by farces than by any other description of drama. This is not difficult to account for. The author was certainly not overpaid; the farces were evidently well acted; it cost next to nothing to produce them, and if successful, the world and his wife went to see them.
Writing to a friend the other day, Maddison Morton observes: “The introduction of ‘Burlesque’ gave the first ‘knock-down blow’ to the old-fashioned farce. I hoped against hope that its popularity would return, and that some employment might still be found for my pen. I was disappointed; and as the only means of discharging liabilities which I had in the mean time unavoidably contracted, I was compelled to part with my copyrights, the accumulation of a life’s laborious and not unsuccessful work.”
It is interesting to note that Maddison Morton’s “Box and Cox” was the pioneer of the movement that resultedin the literary and musical partnership of Gilbert and Sullivan. If it had not been for Burnand’s “Cox and Box,” in all probability the “Sorcerer” and the rest of the operas would never have been written. And happily the reign of Maddison Morton is not yet over. On Monday, December 7, 1885, was produced at Toole’s Theatre a three-act farce called “Going It,” that kept the house in a continual roar of laughter. It is in the old vein, bright, witty, and bristling with verbal quip. When the farce was over the call for “author” was raised, but no one imagined that it would be responded to. To the surprise of all, Mr. Toole led on an elderly gentleman of the old school, prim, neat, well set up, and rosy-cheeked as a winter apple. This was Maddison Morton. At last the young play-goer had seen the author of “Box and Cox.”
In the year 1881, on the nomination of her Majesty, this great and accomplished gentleman, who never mixed in Bohemian or literary society, was appointed a “poor brother of the Charter House.” Who that has read Thackeray is not familiar with the fine old hospital of “Greyfriars,” and its pleasant old “codds,” under whose shadow and in whose society Colonel Newcome breathed his last, and said “Adsum.” Here in this pleasant retreat, quiet and retired although in the heart of the busiest part of the city, Maddison Morton met another “brother,” John A. Heraud, a dramatist and dramatic critic who had often sat in judgment on Morton’s plays. What chats about old times they must have within those venerable walls that circle round the poet-dramatist and the dramatic farce-writer. “Here,” writes Maddison Morton, in his well-known cheerful and contented frame of mind, “I shall doubtless spend the shorttime I may have to live, and then be laid in the quiet little church-yard at Bow—not, I hope, entirely ‘unwept, unhonored, nor unsung.’”
Good, kindly, gentle heart thus to speak with such fervor and such faith in the long evening of your days! Shut up in your cloistered home, the hearts of those who had the honor and pleasure of knowing you often go out to you! And on the stage the laughter evoked by your fanciful wit, and the true humor that sprung from your merry heart, will soothe you and delight many more who honor your excellent name.
CLEMENTSCOTT.