William Foote

“ But the lad still following him, he peevishly cried out, “Get about your business, God mend me! I will not give you a farthing; it’s light enough.” “It’s light enough!” echoed the lad; “what’s light enough? your head or your pocket? God mend you, indeed! it would be easier for God Almighty to make two men, than mend one such as you.”
WILLIAM DUKE OF CUMBERLAND.
Foote rattling away one evening in his green-room with great wit and brilliancy, as usual, the Duke of Cumberland, who was present, and seemed highly entertained, cried out, “Well, Foote, you see I swallow all your good things.” ”

“ But the pious showman cannot disown the responsibility for it. He will not allow the officers of the Army to marry without his sanction; he forbids them to accept any private present; he keeps a sharp eye on every detail of the organisation. Surely, then, he will not have the face to say that he knew nothing of Railton's circular. He has face enough for almost anything, but hardly for this. There is one damning fact which he cannot shirk. Bailton asks that all contributions shall be made "payable to William Booth, as usual."
Bailton spreads the butter pretty freely on Booth and his family. ”

“ For nearly a week the kitchen was as busy as an ant-hill. The fat was prepared to fry the doughnuts, the spices were pounded, the flour was sifted, the materials for the flips were collected. Catherine was assisted by eleven-year-old Mary; William, Edward and George split and brought in an incredible amount of wood for the oven, and the girls sat all the evening about the kitchen fire stoning raisins, with the best story-teller in the midst to make the time pass—and she, we are sure, could have been none other than Harriet. ”

“ Taste (1752) , in which parts of the Diversions were incorporated, was followed by some eighteen pieces, the majority of which were produced at the Haymarket, the favourite home of Foote’s entertainments. In 1760 he succeeded in obtaining for this theatre a licence from the lord chamberlain, afterwards (in 1766) converted into a licence for summer performances for life. The entertainments were a succession of variations on the original idea of the Diversions and the Tea. Now, it was an Auction of Pictures (1748) , of part of which an idea may be formed from the second act of the comedy Taste ”

“ Here's a hundred fur the pup. Don't break a leg gettin' him out of the stall.'
"I don't stop to answer Peewee's questions, but leads the hoss back to the fat guy.
"'Here's Salvini,' I says. 'He cost you a hundred.'
"'S. R. O. for you,' says he, 'n' slips me the hundred. 'Now, take him and Edwin Booth to the livery-stable round the corner from the Alhambra Theater. Come to the Gilsey House at six o'clock and ask for me. ”

“ AS A MAN THE ONE THING NEEDFUL THE SWINBURNE CONTROVERSY GREAT CHRIST IS DEAD RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION OF JESUS SOME MUSLIM LAWS AND BELIEFS THE CHRISTIAN WORLD AND THE SECULARIST THE ATHANASIAN CREED OUR OBSTRUCTIONS MR. KINGSLEY'S CONVERTITES THE PRIMATE ON THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD SPIRITISM IN THE POLICE COURT A COMMISSION OF INQUIRY ON ROYALTY Draft A BIBLE LESSON ON MONARCHY PRINCIPAL TULLOCH ON PERSONAL IMMORTALITY THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH ”

“ The different amusements of the present day will come under review in another place.
Mr. Foote had long entertained the inhabitants of London with a variety of scenic representations, and met with the most rapturous applause; his dramatic pieces are pregnant with satire, and he stung the votaries of vice and folly by the most pointed applications. His dispute with the Dutchess of Kingston has been too often repeated to bear another recital ”

“ Foote was then in Ireland. It was said, at table, that the modern Aristophanes (so Foote was called) had been horsewhipped by a Dublin apothecary, for mimicking him on the stage. "I wonder," said Garrick, "that any man should show so much resentment to Foote; he has a patent for such liberties; nobody ever thought it worth his while to quarrel with him in London." "I am glad," said Johnson, "to find that the man is rising in the world." The expression was afterwards repeated to Foote, who, in return, gave out, that he would produce the Caliban of literature on the stage. ”

“ The duke of York made him the best reparation in his power by promising him a life-patent for the theatre in the Haymarket (1766) ; and Foote not only resumed his profession, as if, like Sir Luke Limp, he considered the leg he had lost “a redundancy, a mere nothing at all,” but ingeniously turned his misfortune to account in two of his later pieces, The Lame Lover and The Devil on Two Sticks, while, with the true instinct of a public favourite, making constant reference to it in plays and prologues. ”

“ The race is goin' on, 'n' Edwin Booth is layin' down to it right. A piece of scenery either falls under his feet or else jims the machine, I never knows which, anyhow, all of a sudden the hoss gets real footin'. Bingo! We're on our way like we're shot out of a gun. We go through all the scenery on that side 'n' Edwin Booth does a flop when he hits the brick wall at the end of the stage. The ole hound ain't even scratched. I ain't hurt neither.
"The curtain rings down 'n' De Mott comes a-lopin' to where I'm gettin' a painted grand-stand off of Edwin Booth's front legs. ”

“ She's making herself comfortable now in the corn-bin.”
“She ought to be made an example of; that's the way of the world, however,—retribution doesn't fall always on the right shoulders. I must go now. We'll take your mother and Jimmy first, and then, if you won't come, you shall let me stay with you. The mill is safe enough, anyhow.”
Evesham returned with the chaise and a man, who, he insisted, should drive away old John and the cows, so that Dorothy should have less care. The mother was packed into the chaise with a vast collection of wraps, which almost obliterated Jimmy. ”

“ CHAPTER XXII. SAMUEL FOOTE.
"One Foote, a player," is Walpole's contemptuous reference to him who was otherwise designated as the "British Aristophanes." But, as often happens, the player was as good a man by birth, and at least as witty a man by nature, as he who despised him. His father was a Cornish gentleman, and an M.P.; his mother a daughter of Sir Edmund Goodere, Bart., through whom Foote called cousins with the ducal family of Rutland. A lineal successor of this baronet followed Mrs. Clive, as Walpole's tenant at Little Strawberry Hill, and Horace called him "a goose." ”

“ A person talking to Foote of an acquaintance of his, who was so avaricious as even to lament the prospect of his funeral expences, though a short time before he had been censuring one of his own relations for his parsimonious temper—"Now is it not strange," continued he, "that this man would not remove the beam from his own eye, before he attempted to take the mote out of other peoples?" "Why, so I dare say he would," cried Foote, "if he were sure of selling the timber." ”

“ Her father, Samuel T. Foote (1761-1840) , who claimed to be a descendant of Samuel Foote [q. v.] , sold out of the army, became manager of the Plymouth theatre, and married a Miss Hart. In July 1810 Miss Foote appeared as Juliet at her father's theatre, in which also she played as Susan Ashfield in 'Speed the Plough,' and Emily Worthington in the 'Poor Gentleman.' Foote afterwards took an hotel in Exeter. The experiment not succeeding, his daughter appeared at Covent Garden, 26 May 1814, as Amanthis in the 'Child of Nature' of Mrs. ”

“ Foote was sometimes beaten with his own weapons. After he had leased the Edinburgh Theatre from Ross, for three years, at five hundred guineas a year, a dispute arose, followed by a lawsuit, in which Foote was defeated. The Scottish agent for the vanquishing side, called on Foote, in London, with his bill of costs, which the actor had to defray. ”

“ Foote is generally considered to be the greatest of the dramatic authors of his class, while in power of mimicry and broad humour he had few equals. In late life he lost his leg through an accident in riding, a circumstance that led to his producing a play, The Lame Lover, in which his loss of a limb might be made a positive advantage. ”

“ But 's I was sayin', Cap'n Green took them two—cheerful, loud-talkin' men they was both of 'em—aboard of her to go through her, for he hadn't no notion o' goin' into that cap'n's stateroom alone, even in broad daylight; but 'twan't there the secret of her lay; there wan't nothin' in there to scare anybody. She was trimmed up, I tell you, just elegant. Real mahogany, none of your veneerin', but the real stuff; lace curt'ins to the berth, lace on the pillows, and a satin coverlid, rumpled up as though the cap'n had just turned out ”

“ The water was dallying down its untried channel, searching the new dry earth-banks, seeping, prying, and insinuating sly, minute forces which multiplied and insisted tremendously the moment a rift had been made. And the orders were to “watch” and “puddle;” and the watchmen were as other men, and some of them doubtless remembered they were working for a company.
Travis, the black-eyed young lumberman from the upper Columbia, had been sent down with a special word from the manager commending him as a tried hand, equal to any post or service. The ditch superintendent was looking for such a man. ”

“ Foote's satire is direct and scathing. Much of it is directed against individuals, not seldom with no conceivable vindication, since Foote singled out those, such as Garrick, to whom he was under deepest obligations. During his lifetime and for some years subsequently Foote was known as the English Aristophanes. Without being deserved, the phrase is less of a misnomer than such terms ordinarily are. As an actor Foote seems to have attracted attention only in his own pieces. ”

“ The travelers' bags were in the office, the carriage at the door, when a letter—pigeon-holed and forgotten since received some three weeks before—was put into Paul's hand.
I run up against your ad. in the Silver City Times [the communication began] . If you haven't found your man yet, maybe I can put you onto the right lead. I'm driving a jerky on the road from Mountain Home to Oriana, but me and the old man we don't jibe any too well. I've got a sort of disgust on me. Think I'll quit soon and go to mining. Jimmy Breen he runs the Ferry, he can tell you all I know. ”

“ Reuby followed the yearling, that had disappeared over the orchard slope, upsetting an obstacle in its path, which happened to be Jimmy. He was wailing now on the bank, while Dorothy, with the ewe's nose tucked comfortably in the bend of her arm, was parting and squeezing the fleece, with the water swirling round her. Her stout arms ached, and her ears were stunned with the incessant bleatings; she counted with dismay the sheep still waiting in the pen. “Oh, Jimmy! Do stop crying, or else go to the house!” ”

“ One good turn deserves another, you know."
"When I want a turn of that description done for me, I will be sure to let you know," Foote continued; "but if I have any sort of luck, it will be many years before I come to you with such a request. When I remember that, but for my folly in showing you that picture in Waterloo Place, we should by this time be on the other side of the Eddystone, en route for the Mediterranean and sunshine, I feel as if I could sit down and weep. However, it is kismet, I suppose?"
Browne offered no reply. ”

“ He wished to change this for one of the horses from the fishing-camp, but they were back on the bluffs and he concluded to go on and change at Gillespie’s. He had traveled about fifty miles that night, on horseback and on foot, over a trail that some of us would not enjoy riding over by daylight.
His wife and their young child were at his horse-ranch away back on the hills, alone, except for some of the cowboys. He had gone up to Atlanta to attend the ball. The man who had been shot was a stranger to him,—had [Pg 77] a brother in Boise, he believed. ”

“ Shaves as well as any man in England—almost—not quite.”
Foote (who loved any thing eccentric) saw these inscriptions, and hoping to extract some wit from the author, whom he justly concluded to be an odd character, he pulled off his hat, and thrusting his head through a paper pane into the shop, called out “Is Jemmy Wright at home?” The barber immediately forced his own head through another pane into the street, and replied, “No, sir, he has just popt out.” Foote laughed heartily, and gave the man a guinea. ”

“ While the houses were thus contending, Foote was filling the little theatre in the Haymarket with an entertainment of his own; but there were authors of a higher class offering more intellectual pieces to the town. Fourteen years before, when Samuel Johnson was keeping school near Lichfield, he wrote his tragedy "Irene," which, in its rough state, he brought to London, when he and Garrick came up together in search of fortune. With poet, as with actor, the aspects of life had improved; but most with the latter. ”

“ Don't you know how to act when a gentleman slips you somethin'?'
"'But look a-here,' says Pete. 'He ain't got—' I gives Pete a poke in the slats. 'Much obliged, sir,' he says, 'n' puts the bone in his pocket.
"'You are entirely welcome, mah boy,' says ole man Sanford, wavin' his hand.
"'Say,' Pete says to me, 'I think this hoss'll cop without shot in the arm. ”

“ One of his most original pieces is the Capriccio of his D minor Suite, which is also un228usually brilliant in color at times; and he has an Allegretto that is a scherzo of the good old whole-souled humor. Foote, in fact, is never sickly in sentiment.
Of his rather numerous songs, the older English poets, like Marlowe, Sidney, Shakespeare, Suckling, and Herrick, have given him much inspiration. The song "It Was a Lover and his Lass" is especially taking. ”