The Torrington Diaries

Source: C. Bruyn Andrews (ed., abridged into one by volume by Fanny Andrews), The Torrington Diaries: A selection from the tours of the Hon. John Byng (later Fifth Viscount Torrington) between the years 1781 and 1794 (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode), pp. 375-376

Production: George Colman the Younger and Samuel Arnold, Inkle and Yarico, Biggleswade, 19 July 1791

Text: July 19th … After dinner sent to my Jonas, as it appear’d a very fishable day, and he appointed me to come to him at 4 o’clock. G– soon arrived, with the mare, who now wants grass, and rest, and she shall have them. At 4 o’clock I walk’d to the barber’s, who weaves lines, and wigs, (a connectd trade) and with him walk’d a mile to a pleasant spot; but no fish; the air now turn’d cold, making me repent thus trying the chance of illness. I ask’d him after the players? ‘Why they are still here, Sir; and perform to night’. ‘Then I suppose they are so hampered by debt, that they cannot move, and must stay till pity and forgiveness permit them to go?’ ‘Sir, I believe they are very poor; and that my son, who dresses the company, will never see a penny of payment’. from idleness, or from curiosity, (put charity out of the case) I went again; greater wretchedness is not to be seen! How much they should envy the haymakers. The play was Inkle and Yarico, with variety of other entertainments: it would be right if they were not tolerated. Tho’ they get little, they get all that this town can give; and that is too much by every sixpence: nothing could approach nearer to Hogarth’s Barm, for many faces were seen peeping thro’ the holes of the barn, which we who had paid, and were in the castle, thought unfair, and repulsed these assailants. I sat next to Mr Knight and his niece, but left them at 10 o’clock, when the play finish’d, and half the sports were to come; so this threw me into fashionable hours and I did not retire till 12 o’clock.

Comments: John Byng, Fifth Viscount Torrington (1743-1813) produced several volumes of diaries covering the period 1781–1794, during which he travelled all over England and Wales. During a country tour he stayed at Biggleswade and saw a local troupe of players performing in a barn. Inkle and Yarico was a popular comic opera set in the West Indies, with libretto by George Colman the Younger and music by Samuel Arnold, first performed in 1787.

The Torrington Diaries

Source: C. Bruyn Andrews (ed., abridged into one by volume by Fanny Andrews), The Torrington Diaries: A selection from the tours of the Hon. John Byng (later Fifth Viscount Torrington) between the years 1781 and 1794 (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode), pp. 479-480

Production: John Fletcher/William Shakespeare, Henry VIII, Drury Lane, London, 14 May 1794

Text: May 14th. My next morning was employ’d in walking about my detestation, London; waiting upon my lawyer; and lounging about till what I thought a good hour of dining: When I put in at the Piazza Coffee House Covent Garden and had the room to myself at such an unatural hour: Thence like an old country put, I adjourned to Drury Lane Playhouse where I enjoy’d the highly wrought exhibition of Mrs Siddons’s performance in Catherine in Henry 8th, altho’ lost and sent to waste in this wild wide theatre, where close observation cannot be maintain’d, nor quick applause received!

Restore me, ye overuling powers to the drama, to the warm close, observant, seats of Old Drury where I may comfortably criticise and enjoy the delights of scenic fancy: These now are past! The nice discriminations, of the actors face, and of the actors feeling, are now all lost in the vast void of the new theatre of Drury Lane.

Garrick – thou didst retire at the proper time – for wer’t thou restor’d to the stage, in vain, would now thy finesse, thy bye play, thy whisper, thy aside, and even thine eye, assist thee.

Thus do I crawl about in London I Where are my old friends? All gone before me!!! Where are thy new ones? Why, they understand me not; they speak a new language, they prescribe fashions, I think they do not understand comforts. ‘Why here is a fine theatre,’ say they? ‘Aye, it may be fine, it may be magnificent; but I neither hear, nor see in it! !’ ‘Thats your misfortune.’ ‘So it is I allow; but not yet my failing.’

‘Does it proceed from the narrowness of my faculties; or the width of your new stage? Answer me that? Is my decrease equal to your increase?’ No; No; fill your stage with monsters – gigantic cars, and long train’d processions – whilst the air vibrates with the sound of trumpets, and kettle drums: These will beat all your actors, and actresses out of the field. Who will listen to, or who can hear the soliloquies of Shakespeare, the inward terrors of the mind-perturbed imaginations and the strugglings of a guilty conscience?

To see a fellow hunting a dagger about the stage; or an old princess wasting in a great chair?

Who will go hereafter to see their tiresome attitudes? To hear them none will attempt, so let us have the battlements, the combat, the sulphur, the torches, the town in flames, and the chorus.

The countryman came home; and went early to bed.

Comments: John Byng, Fifth Viscount Torrington (1743-1813) produced several volumes of diaries covering the period 1781–1794, during which he travelled all over England and Wales. The production of Henry VIII was a redaction of Shakespeare and Fletcher’s original, undertaken by Charles Kemble, who played Cromwell. His sister, Sarah Siddons, played Katherine. Byng saw it at Drury Lane Theatre, London on 14 May 1794. The third theatre on the Drury Lane site had opened on 12 March 1794, having replaced the previous Theatre Royal which closed in 1791. The new theatre could seat 3,611 people, as opposed to the 2,000 offered by its previous incarnation.