"A full, true, and particular account of the life and surprising adventures of the notified Bet Cheatley, Duchess of Knightsbridge, showing as how she came up to town a poor distressed girl, and how by the recommendation of a mighty great patriot,* to whom she used to read story-books, she was taken into a great house in Lister-square, out of compassion and charity, and how she was ruinated by Wolly, a Scotch boy, who took her into a strange land, and then forsak'd her; how Billy the Boatswain fall'd in love with her, married her, and left her under the care of a surgeon and poticary. And how Bet afterwards took to company keeping, wearing fine clothes, and told her comrogues she had them from her mother, a poor, distressed widow-woman in the country. And how she met with the great squire Peper-pint, a mighty rich and great gentleman; and how she spread her net, and the squire fell into her snare; and how she gave Billy the Boatswain twenty guineas to deny his marriage, and then persuaded squire Peper-pint to wed her, make a will, and wrong all his kindred, by which she came into a mort of his money; and how all the squire's rich relations rose up in a body, and wanted Bet to give back her ill-got possessions; and how then Bet fled over the raging seas, for fear of being nabbed, and clapped up in Newgate; and how she changed her religion, and took to papish ways; and how she afterwards came back again for fear of being outlawried; and how she had a horrible quarrel with Billy the Boatswain; and how she came to Westminster-hall, all the lawyers flocked about her, in hopes of her custom. The whole being a most excellent warning-piece against Sabbath-breaking and disobedience to our parents: "As 'twill always be found, that for such evil deeds, A certain, though it's a slow punishment, surely succeeds; The Duchess did not, as Walpole had predicted, escape her trial. She was arraigned before her peers, was convicted, and stripped of her title as Duchess; but pleading the privilege of the peerage, through the death of her first husband's brother, Lord Bristol, left the court punished only by a lower step in the rank of nobility. Â few months after, Foote recast the Trip to Calais, and striking out Lady Kitty Crocodile, put in as Dr. Viper, his slanderer Dr. Jackson, and reproduced the piece as the Capuchin, at the Haymarket. The opposition was violent, but the piece continued to be acted until the close of the season. Jackson now resumed with more intensity his libels against Foote: nevertheless, he opened his season of 1776 with the Bankrupt, when an attempt was made to drive him from the stage, but he manfully appealed to the audience, which produced a reaction in his favour. Jackson was subsequently convicted of libel; when a discarded servant preferred against *The late Earl of Bath. Foote a charge of the worst nature. In the interval between this and the trial, his friends flocked round him, and he played his comedies as usual. The trial came on, the charge was demolished, and Foote was triumphantly acquitted. Nevertheless, his spirits fell. FOOTE DISPOSES OF THE HAYMARKET THEATRE, Previously to starting for France, in September, 1776, Foote thus announced his intention to Garrick, of letting his theatre: "There is more of prudence than of pleasure in my trip to the Continent: to tell you the truth, I am tired of racking my brain, talking like a horse, and crossing seas and mountains in the most dreary seasons, merely to pay servants' wages and tradesmen's bills. I have therefore directed my friend Jewel to discharge the lazy vermin of my hall, and to let my hall, too, if he can meet with a proper tenant. Help me to one, if you can." Garrick did not believe Foote to be in earnest, and did not reply to the above letter. In the meantime a negotiation was opened, which ended in the transfer of the Haymarket Theatre to George Colman for 16007., as a life-annuity to Foote, for his patent, and some particular advantages as a performer; but Foote died soon. after the first half of the annuity became due, October 21, 1777. George Colman the younger gives the following details of this purchase. His father was to pay Foote also for his services as an orator, although, as it happened, he performed only three times; and Colman purchased the copyright of Foote's unpublished dramatic pieces for 500l. The patent enabled the holder to open his house annually, for all English dramatic performances, from May 15 to September 15. With the lease was included Foote's wardrobe, which might fetch at a sale 207. "the fading gaiety of Major Sturgeon's regimentals, trimmed with tarnished copper-lace, was splendour itself compared with the other threadbare rubbish of this repository. "Foote's stock plays were in fact chiefly of his own writing, and his dramatis persone required little more than a few common coats and waistcoats: when he wanted more habiliments than he possessed, he resorted to a friperie in Monmouth-street, not to purchase, but to job them by the night; and so vilely did some of the apparel fit the actors, that he was obliged to make a joke of the disgrace, and get the start of the audience, if he could, in a laugh against his own troop of tatterdemalions. There was a skeleton of a man belonging to his company, who performed a minor part in the scene of a debating club, in which Foote acted the president: this anatomie vivante was provided with a coat which would not have been too big even for the late Stephen Kemble-the arms were particularly wide, and the cuffs covered his hands. Foote, during the debate, always addressed this personage as 'the much respected gentleman in the sleeves.' So improvident was he, that he even hired most of the printed music which was played between the acts, whereby he had given its original price ten times over; and in the end not a scrap of it was his own property. * "My father, as the proposing renter of the Haymarket Theatre, employed a matter-of-fact person of business to negotiate the business for him; and Foote did not know, till the terms had been fully agreed upon, the principal with whom he was in treaty. He often, however, met the principal at dinner pending the transaction, little dreaming that he was in company with his future lessee. On these occasions, as it was publicly avowed that the patent was about to be farmed, there was no indelicacy in talking about it to Foote; and one day when the subject was introduced, he turned towards my father, saying, Now, here is Mr. Colman, an experienced manager, he will tell you that nobody can conduct so peculiar a theatrical concern as mine but myself; but there is a fat-headed fellow of an agent, who has been boring me every morning at breakfast with terms from some blockhead who knows nothing about the stage, but whose money burns in his pocket.'* 'Playhouse mad, I presume,' said my father. 'Right,' replied Foote, and if bleeding will bring him to his senses, he'll find me a devilish good doctor.' "When the parties met to sign and seal, anybody but Foote, who never blushed in his life, might have looked a little foolish, upon recollection of the bleeding system, which he had unconsciously avowed to his patient." Mr. Colman then explains how, in consequence of Foote's death, being in possession as lessee, he quietly held the theatre as his successor,-after having purchased all the pro * Dashwood, in Murphy's Know your own Mind, a comedy played in Covent Garden Theatre in 1777, was an avowed portrait of the above man-of-business, and conveys the best idea of that conversational prodigy. perty in it. "But," adds Mr. Colman, "the assertion that the patent, after the death of my father, was transferred to me, is erroneous. My father, and I after him, held this property under the gracious protection of the Crown, and opened the house by annual Licence of the Lord Chamberlain. The theatre, which has been built near the old site, on the east side of the Haymarket, is carried on in the same way, with an understanding that the yearly possession will always be renewed, as a quamdiù se bene gesserit Licence; but there has been no Patent for a Summer Theatre in London since Foote's death."-Recollections, in Peake's Memoirs of the Colman Family. The Haymarket was for thirty years the scene of Foote's theatrical successes. The first theatre was built by one Potter, a carpenter, and opened Dec. 23, 1720, by "the French Comedians :" it was called "The Little Theatre," to distinguish it from another theatre on the opposite side of the street, built by Vanbrugh, a few years earlier : it was next called "the New French Theatre." Hay had been sold in the street since the reign of Elizabeth ; and Charles II. in 1664 granted the right of holding a cattle-market twice a week. In 1723, the theatre was occupied by English actors; 1726, Italian operas, rope-dancing, and tumblers, by subscription; 1731, gladiators and backswordsmen; 1732, English opera, upon the Italian model; 1734-5, Fielding opened the theatre with "the Great Mogul's Company of Comedians," for whom he wrote his Pasquin, the satire of which upon the Walpole administration gave rise to the Licensing Act. In 1738, a French company re-opened the theatre, but were driven from the stage the first night. In 1741, English operas were played here; 1744, Foote first appeared here as Othello; and in 1747, Foote became manager, commencing his own Entertainments. In 1748, (Jan. 16,) the Bottle Conjuror's hoax and riot took place here. 1762, the Haymarket was established as a regular summer theatre. In 1766, the King granted Foote a royal patent: he almost entirely rebuilt the theatre, and erected a handsome new front; it thence became a Theatre Royal. In Foote's days there was scarcely any space between the audience and the street, so that their attention was frequently distracted by post-horns, and the out-of-doors cry of “extraordinary news from France," while Foote upon the stage was threatening French invaders with "peppering their flat-bottomed boats," in the character of Major Sturgeon. In 1777, Foote sold his licence to the elder Colman, who died in 1795, and was succeeded by his son. Feb. 3, 1794, sixteen persons were trodden to death or suffocated in attempting to gain admission on a royal visit. Colman the elder opened the theatre every night, whereas Foote only opened his doors every alternate night. "The Little Theatre" was taken down in 1820; its site is now occupied by the Café de l'Europe; at a few feet lower down was built the present theatre, by Nash, and opened July 14, 1821; it has a lofty Corinthian portico, and has altogether a fine architectural front. In 1853, Mr. Ben. jamin Webster concluded here a lesseeship of sixteen years; and the theatre has since been let to Mr. Buckstone. It is worthy of remark that although the early performances at the Haymarket were very irregular, for a century past the legitimate drama (more especially comedy) has been regularly performed here; and for several years past, whilst the two large patent theatres (Drury Lane and Covent Garden) have been closed or devoted to foreign performances, the Haymarket has held on its steady success as the home of the English drama. FOOTE'S "ENVY." Colman relates the following incidents which occurred soon after he had purchased the Haymarket patent. He tells us, (with undue severity, for jealousy was not a feature of Foote's character,) that he, Foote, could not bear to see anybody or anything succeed in the Haymarket but himself and his own writings, and forgot that a failure of the new scheme might possibly endanger the regular payment of his annuity. His pique broke out sometimes in downright rudeness. One morning he came hopping upon the stage during the rehearsal of the Spanish Barber, then about to be produced; the performers were busy in that scene of the piece when one servant is under the influence of a sleeping draught, and another of a sneezing powder. "Well," said Foote dryly to the manager, "how do you go on?" "Pretty well," was the answer; "but I cannot teach one of these fellows to gape as he ought to do." "Can't you?" replied Foote, "then read him your last comedy of The Man of Business, and he'll yawn for a month." On another occasion, he was not less coarse though more laughable, to an actor, than he had been to the manager. This happened when Digges, of much celebrity out of London, and who had come to town from Edinburgh, covered with Scottish laurels, made his first appearance in the Haymarket. He had studied the antiquated style of acting; in short, he was a fine bit of old stage buckram, and Cato was therefore selected for his first essay. He "discharged the character" in the same costume as it is to be supposed was adopted by Booth, when the play was originally acted; that is, in a shape, as it was technically termed, of the stiffest order, decorated with gilt leather upon a black ground, with black stockings, black gloves, and a powdered periwig. Foote had planted himself in the pit, when Digges stalked on before the public thus formidably accoutred. The malicious wag waited till the customary round of applause had subsided, and then ejaculated, in a pretended under-tone, loud enough to be heard by all around him, "A Roman chimney-sweeper on May-day!" The laughter which this produced in the pit was enough to knock up a débutant, and it startled the old stager personating the stoic of Utica: the sarcasm was irresistibly funny, but Foote deserved to be kicked out of the house for his cruelty, and his insolence in mingling with the audience for the purpose of disconcerting a brother actor.-Peake's Memoirs of the Colman Family. This is stronger language than the occasion seems to warrant; for most of the above is the sort of waggery which is constantly floating about the green-room, and is that kind |