New Albion

by Dwayne Brenna

  The actors, for their part, have begun taking up a collection for Mr. Farquhar Pratt. They have asked me to present the money to him at the week’s end, when they say they will surely have ten pounds or more.

  Friday, 10 January 1851

  I awoke this morning at eight o’clock but only after having had a most unusual nightmare. In my oneiric state, I had dreamt that Mr. Farquhar Pratt and myself were set the task of ascending endless flights of stairs. Together we performed this task with unsurpassed jocularity for the first while, and then, when it became apparent to us that our task was unending, I grew surly. It seemed that we were ascending to the moon. At last, I looked Pratty full in the face and saw that his eyes were burning coals in his head.

  I was relieved when Sophie awakened me from the possibility of these endless tortures. I washed and shaved and ate my breakfast. Little Susan brought the morning edition of The Times to the table. I turned the pages and found the following brief article:

  Death of a Stock Playwright. At approximately eight o’clock Wednesday evening was discovered the body of Mr. Ned Farquhar Pratt, who had hanged himself from a railway tressel in the Nichol. Mr. Farquhar Pratt had formerly been stock playwright at the New Albion Theatre, the Victoria Theatre, the Standard Theatre, Shoreditch, and several other minor theatres in London. He had fallen upon hard financial times and was recently arraigned at Worship Street Court, where he appeared to be in a state of mental turmoil, on charges of stealing and pawning the furniture from his Bethnal Green lodgings. Mr. Farquhar Pratt leaves to mourn his wife, Anna, who has been admitted to the Spitalfields Workhouse. The Nightman, who was first upon the grisly scene, remarked that suicides are quite common in Friar’s Mount and that this was not the first self-hanging he had encountered in the area.

  Internment will take place at the public cemetery in Islington on Sunday, January 12, at ten o’clock.

  Poor Mr. Farquhar Pratt. Poor all of us.

  Sunday, 12 January 1851

  Attended Mr. Farquhar Pratt’s funeral this morning. Not for him the pageantry of an ostrich-plumed hearse. Not for him the crepe armbands and the long line of mutes, pretending to be sad. Not for him the ivory-inlaid casket.

  I had half-expected him to be buried at a crossroad, shoved into a pit of lime after a stake had been driven through his heart. These were the burial rites afforded suicides thirty years ago. And what of Mr. Farquhar Pratt’s suicide? Is the act in itself evidence of a diseased mind? Is it truly an act of ungodliness, as so many of our philosophers tell us? Or is it a plausible reaction to a future of squalor and ignominy? White hairs have no honour when they are buried, buried down in London Town.

  The morning was not propitious. Rain fell in torrents as I waited by the cemetery gates for the crude pine coffin to arrive. I had fortunately brought an umbrella with me, and I stood under it in my suit of black, waiting. Another mourner materialized out of the rain, at last, a woman in a fashionable crepe gown. As she drew closer, I recognized Fanny Hardwick, her face pale and her eyes downcast. I shook her hand and wanted to embrace her warmly, but didn’t. “Thank you for coming, Miss Hardwick,” I said.

  “Have the others arrived?” She was pinning a crepe armband to my sleeve.

  “Not yet,” I replied. “It would have meant so much to Mr. Farquhar Pratt that you attended today.”

  “We must respect our own,” Miss Hardwick said. “The Theatre is a noble calling, and we do a disservice to the Theatre if we are unable to respect our veterans. That is what I have always believed.”

  We waited in vain, the two of us, for the remainder of the company of the New Albion Theatre to arrive. I shared my umbrella with Miss Hardwick and she held my arm gently as the ground around us turned to a sodden mess. At last, a drayman arrived, the casket bouncing along in the back of his horse-drawn wagon. The rain had started to abate as clouds wisped by like phantasms overhead. We waited some time for the Sexton to appear and, when he did, we followed the dray wagon through the maze of gravestones – past the stone of the Great Grimaldi, whom I hadn’t realized was buried there – to a gaping, mud-filled hole at the far end of the churchyard. Notably absent from this maimed procession was Mr. Farquhar Pratt’s widow, who had likely been unable to obtain permission to leave the workhouse on this sad day. And I did think that Mr. and Mrs. Wilton would have made an appearance, whether out of a sense of fellow feeling or out of a sense of obligation.

  The drayman set out two thick-knotted ropes in parallel lines on the wet grass. He enlisted the Sexton and me to lift one end of the casket while he lifted the other, and together we placed the pine box over the ropes. “My apologies for putting you to work,” the burly drayman mumbled, mud spattering his leathery cheeks, “but we don’t stand on ceremony at paupers’ funerals.” The Sexton and I each tugged on a rope’s end at one side of the casket while the drayman handled both ropes on the other side, and we managed to lower the box into the soupy mud of the grave without losing our footing and sliding into the grave with it.

  Breathing heavily from the exertion, the Sexton then pulled a small Bible from the inside pocket of his greatcoat and began reading a passage from Job. At that moment, thunder cracked immediately overhead, causing Fanny, who was holding my elbow and weeping softly, to startle. The clouds opened again, and the rain fell in torrents, drenching my clothes, drowning the steeple of the church in its flood. The Sexton promptly closed his Bible and shouted, above the ratatatat of pelting rain, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” He scattered a lump of wet dirt over the coffin, offered his brisk condolences to Fanny and me, and then hurried across the churchyard to the sanctuary of the church.

  After a few moments, the drayman approached me and said, “If it is all the same to you, I’ll commence shoveling now.”

  “Yes, of course,” I said, half-stunned by the brevity of the ceremony, Fanny still clutching my arm. We heard the harsh clang of the drayman’s spade on stones and gravel as we made our way past the Great Grimaldi, who was quietly buried here amidst no great pomp and pageantry some years ago. The Theatre is a hateful place, I thought to myself, a false, fickle, and primal place where one man might acquire great favour while all the rest might exist in a degraded state. Mr. Farquhar Pratt had been deserving of favour, if for no other reasons than for his tenacity and longevity, and favour had been denied him. The rain scourged us as I escorted Fanny through the churchyard gates and handed her over to her brother who was waiting in a private carriage in the street.

  “Won’t you ride home with us?” Fanny asked. Her gloved hand was on the shoulder of my overcoat.

  “I think I must walk,” I said to her. “It’s not far.”

  “But the rain?” she said.

  “I think I must walk.”

  Thursday, 16 January 1851

  This obituary for Mr. Farquhar Pratt appeared in The Era today:

  On the instant of eight o’clock, January 8, 1851, Mr. Edward Farquhar Pratt passed away near the Nova Scotia Gardens, Shoreditch. His funeral took place at Islington churchyard on Sunday, January 12.

  Mr. Farquhar Pratt trained as an actor in the company of Edmund Kean in Exeter and with several other provincial theatre circuits. In 1820, he made his debut at the Surrey Coal-hole, playing various comic roles, including Sam Snealy to T.P. Cooke’s William in Black-ey’d Susan. While his acting can be characterized as broad and archaic, Mr. Farquhar Pratt also became stock author at various minor theatres in the Capitol, most recently at the New Albion Theatre. He is the author of, we are told, upwards of five hundred burlettas, pantomimes, and melodramas, most notably Sally Sadly, or the Vicissitudes of a Servant Girl, which ran for over one hundred nights at the Royal Victoria during Mr. Farquhar Pratt’s employment there.

  Through his life, Mr. Farquhar Pratt claimed to have derived from theatrical royalty; he purported to have been a descendant of the great George Farquhar, author of The Recruiting Officer, etc. We can find absolutely no proof for this assertion, however, and certainly Mr. Farquhar Prat
t’s work does not manifest a wondrous inherited talent.

  He leaves to mourn only his wife Anna Farquhar Pratt, currently of the Spitalfields Workhouse.

  Perhaps I am overly sensitized to innuendo, but I am left to wonder why the author of this obituary sought to mention Mr. Farquhar Pratt’s disputed claim to be descended from the great playwright? Why the mention of his wife in the workhouse? Is this an obituary or a cautionary tale about embarking on a career in the theatre?

  Mr. Heywood’s Hector, the Pirate of the Spanish Main has been playing with great success these past few evenings. For some reason unknown to me – perhaps because there is little else to do – spectators have returned to the New Albion Theatre in droves.

  In the mornings, we are rehearsing Old Bones, a minstrel show which Eustace Heywood whipped up, with locomotive-like efficiency, in a matter of days. I am certain that the play will entertain; the actors are hardly able to contain their mirth during rehearsals. I am nevertheless struck by the vacuity of the proceedings. Yesterday, Neville Watts appeared for the first time in burnt cork and sang “Ol’ Swanee,” but there was something ludicrous in his impeccable Macreadyan diction and in his ponderous acting style as he dialogued with the Master of Ceremonies on the virtues of black-eyed peas, grits, and banjo-picking. “Grits is truly a marvelous thing, massa,” he declaimed in a meticulous aristocratic accent, to the increased merriment of all present.

  Mr. Wilton no longer calls me into his office for our daily conference on the state of finances, the state of the advertising, or the state of productions. He seems content to let me work out my remaining few weeks in the theatre with little fanfare and little input from him. That is probably for the best, considering the antipathy I feel towards him over his shoddy treatment of Mr. Farquhar Pratt.

  Sunday, 19 January 1851

  For no other reason than to satisfy my own curiosity, I absented myself from the bosom of my family this afternoon and walked to the gates of Spitalfields Workhouse. A yawning gatekeeper asked me if I had any relatives inside, and I said, “No, just the wife of a good friend.”

  “I’m afraid we do not issue visitor’s passes to see wives of good friends,” he replied. “You can stay here and watch through the gates all you please, though.”

  The sky was blue and cloudless, and the day pleasant, so I lingered awhile at the gates, peering through its bars at the imposing brick structure of the workhouse proper. What atrocities must be committed inside that building under the pretense of a new austerity program conceived by an uncaring government. “The system is abused,” the people say. “Make the blackguards work for their daily bread!” And so the workhouse authorities have their inmates – I call them inmates because they are in a prison of sorts – many of them aged or maimed, labouring sixteen hours each day. I picture poor Mrs. Farquhar Pratt forced to walk a treadmill, her aged legs fumbling with every misstep, because she cannot keep up with the new work ethic of the place.

  While I was standing at the workhouse gates, two elderly men came gabbling up the cobblestones, stopping here and there to pick up a dirty apple peels and cores. These they unhesitatingly put into their mouths and chewed with little apparent enjoyment. What a state their intestines must be in if they are forced to consume the waste of others! I had thought at first that they were madmen, and their state of dress further reinforced that impression. Neither man wore cap or greatcoat; they braved the elements of this January day wearing little more than threadbare cotton shirts and gingham trousers, probably gotten in the waste bins around Petticoat Lane. When I heard them speak to the gatekeeper, however, I realized that they were sane, cognizant old men, no more deserving of their fate than I was. “Me mate and me spent twenty years aservin in Her Majesty’s Navy,” one said. “We’ve washed up short a few bob, and we need a place to slumber for a night.”

  The gatekeeper’s comparatively friendly demeanor, which he had displayed toward me only moments before, vanished into the crisp air. “Place is full up,” he said with finality.

  The two old men shared a weary glance between them. “Well, First Mate,” one of them said, with grim good humour, “looks li’ the streets again for us tonight.”

  I watched as they disappeared in the direction from which they had come. Before long, my attention was again directed to the narrow front doors of the workhouse, which had been thrown open in preparation for a mass exodus of the inmates into the yard, there to enjoy the wintry sunshine for fifteen or twenty minutes before returning to their character-building labours. Among the entourage of unwed mothers, slender children, old men and women, was Mrs. Farquhar Pratt, who had been consigned to a wheelchair for some reason unknown to me and who was rolled on to the brown grass by a curt young lady in a dark dress. Mrs. Farquhar Pratt’s own attire was institutional and grey; she was afforded no sign of mourning, not in the week following her husband’s funeral. I could not see her eyes, but her aged grey head was moving about frenetically, like a wounded bird’s, and she seemed to focus on nothing and no one. In her lap was a ball of wool and in her hands a carding instrument, and her fingers kept a deliberate pace, carding the wool, quite independently of what the rest of her body was absorbed with. As I watched her, my sadness deepened, and I was somewhat relieved when the staff herded Mrs. Farquhar Pratt and the others inside and the doors were shut behind them.

  Tuesday, 23 January 1851

  The theatre is abuzz today with a new scandal. Some young swell – Mrs. Toffat is certain that it is young Colin Tyrone himself – has seen fit to publish a poem about the ladies of the New Albion Theatre in a slim volume titled Tales of the Green Room which seems to be widely available throughout the city. The poem, one of several in the volume that treats of theatrical matters, delves into the personal lives of our actresses. I quote:

  “Tale of the New Albion Theatre”

  The Albion’s a theatre for doing the funny,

  For riotous acts, burlettas and crime,

  But mostly she’s known for all sorts of cunny

  To keep the swells happy some of the time.

  First Mrs. Simpson, who can sing and can dance,

  Whose virtue is perfect, whose modesty’s known,

  When her husband’s not looking, she’ll offer a chance

  To Tom, Dick or Bancroft to cock leg and moan.

  And then Fanny Hardwick who longs for a hard prick,

  Of genteel airs and fainting and sighs,

  She can sing “Hearts of Oak” while turning a trick

  And play Sally Sadly while spreading her thighs.

  The last and the greatest is fine Mrs. Wilton

  Whose venal behavior nothing can cure.

  Her breasts are ahanging, her __ smells like Stilton,

  She’ll __ any man buys a theatre for her.

  I feel sadness for Mrs. Wilton and Mrs. Simpson, and especially for Fanny, in all of this. It is a journalistic cheap shot, whoever is responsible for its composition. At the same time, I wonder at the temperament of any lady who would voluntarily put her good reputation in harm’s way by indulging in a life in the theatre. Why would anyone volunteer to be an actress, as Fanny has done?

  I must admit that I shall be relieved, finally, to be away from a world where everyone’s life is an open book. But I shall also miss these mad, mad actors, their quick wits and quick tempers, their flights of fancy and displays of emotion, their superficiality and their camaraderie. The furniture-making business cannot offer anything as jubilant in the high moments or as unhappy in the low.

  Friday, 26 January 1851

  Two members of the local constabulary last night apprehended Neville Watts at the behest of Master Weekes’ father. The esteemed actor has been charged with sodomy, a crime, under the laws of this country, punishable by imprisonment and transportation. Young Master Weekes has not appeared in the theatre these past two days; we are told that he has relinquished his position as juvenile lead, and Mr. Wilton is actively searching for someone to take his place.

&nb
sp; Despite that Master Weekes has been an innocent victim of Neville Watts’ duplicity, I find myself feeling sorry for Mr. Watts. He has fallen from a great height, for his career as an actor is surely at an end. I understand that he is locked away at Newgate, and I know that gentlemen of his persuasion tend to be ill-treated there. He awaits trial and sentencing.

  Nor was this the looked-for boost toward moral reclamation which the New Albion’s management has so fervently sought. Mr. Wilton came to me this morning and expressed his dismay at Neville Watts’ stealth. “It amazes me,” he said, “that Mr. Watts could have conducted himself in such a perverted manner and that no one in this establishment recognized his behaviour.”

  “It is amazing,” I admitted. While I have endeavoured to effect a private cure for Mr. Watts’ perversion, I am not also prepared to take credit for his moral relapse.

  Sunday, 28 January 1851

  Knowing that my sojourn in London will soon be finished, I hired a hansom cab and ventured one last time with Sophie to Hyde Park and the Crystal Palace. We drove through Piccadilly, down Kensington Road, and finally along the south side of the park. With the Prince Consort’s Great Exhibition less than six months away, Sir Joseph Paxton’s mighty Crystal Palace is nearing completion. Workmen tinkered with the bolts of the steel framework inside the structure. Hundreds of onlookers were standing agog at the foot of the Palace.

  We stood across the street from the Palace and craned our necks to get a view of the edifice. It glinted, like a mirror, reflecting the sun that was low in the January sky. I thought of Coleridge: “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree…” For what once seemed to me a window on the world, a free and healthy exchange of ideas, is now a vast panopticon and we are the prisoners inside, allowed neither privacy nor the right to cease our labours, viewed from all angles and at all hours of the day by surly prison guards. Who are these guards? They are ourselves. We have been enthralled by a sense of our own greatness. As I shielded my eyes with my hand to protect them from the scourging reflection of the sun’s rays off the glass, I felt I had glimpsed the future.