The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) Part 1

The Fine Lady's Airs (1709).

by Thomas Baker.

INTRODUCTION

In the first decade of the eighteenth century, with comedy in train to be altered out of recognition to please the reformers and the ladies, one of the two talented writers who attempted to keep the comic muse alive in something like her "Restoration" form was Thomas Baker.[1] Of Baker's four plays which reached the stage, none has been reprinted since the eighteenth century and three exist only as originally published. Of these three the best is _The Fine Lady's Airs_; hence its selection for the _Reprints_.

Baker's career in the theatre was as successful as should have been expected by any young man who after his first play attempted to swim against rather than with the current of taste. His first effort, ent.i.tled _The Humour of the Age_, was produced at D.L. c. February 1701, and published March 22,[2] the author having then but reached his "Twenty First Year" (Dedication). It must have been well received, for Baker speaks of "the extraordinary Reception this Rough Draught met with."

Indeed, it has in it, despite some "satire," a number of motifs which would recommend it to the audience. Railton, the antimatrimonialist and libertine of the piece, is given the wittiest lines, but his attempt to seduce Tremilia, a grave Quaker-clad beauty, is frowned on by everyone, including the author; and when the rake attempts to force the lady, Freeman, a man of sense, intervenes with sword drawn and gives him a stern lecture. In the end, when Tremilia, giving her hand to Freeman, turns out to be an heiress who had a.s.sumed the Quaker garb to make sure of getting a disinterested husband, the error of Railton's ways becomes apparent. At the same time his cast mistress, whom he had succeeded in marrying off to a ridiculous old Justice, is impressed by Tremilia's "great Example."

"How conspicuous a thing is Virtue!" says she, in an aside; and she resolves to make the Justice a model wife. Despite much wit the play is thus, in its main drift, exemplary.

Baker followed with _Tunbridge-Walks: Or, The Yeoman of Kent_, D.L. Jan.

1703, a play good enough to pa.s.s into the repertory and to be revived many times in the course of the century. The variety of company and the holiday atmosphere of the English watering-place had inspired good comedies of intrigue, manners, and character eccentricities before this date (e.g.

Shadwell's _Epsom Wells_ and Rawlins' _Tunbridge-Wells_). Baker decorates his scene with such "humours" as Maiden, "a Nice Fellow that values himself upon all Effeminacies;" Squib, a bogus captain; Mrs. Goodfellow, "a Lady that loves her Bottle;" her niece Penelope, "an Heroic Trapes;"

and Woodc.o.c.k, the Yeoman, a rich, sharp, forthright, crusty old fellow with a pretty daughter, Belinda, whom he is determined never to marry but to a substantial farmer of her own cla.s.s: her suitor, a clever ne'er-do-well named Reynard, of course tricks the old gentleman by an intrigue and a disguise. It is Reynard's sister Hillaria, however, "a Railing, Mimicking Lady" with no money and no admitted scruples, but enough beauty and wit to match when and with whom she chooses, who dominates the play; and though Loveworth, whom she finally permits to win her, is rather substantial than gay, she is gay enough for them both. The action, though somewhat farcical, has verve throughout, and the dialogue crackles. And, as regards the nature of comedy, Baker now knows where he stands. There is no character who could possibly be taken as an "example."

On the contrary, whenever a pathetic or "exemplary" effect seems imminent Hillaria or Woodc.o.c.k is always there to knock it on the head. Thus when Belinda goes into blank verse to lament the paternal tyranny which was threatening to separate her from Reynard,

What Noise and Discord sordid Interest breeds!

Oh! that I had shar'd a levell'd State of Life, With quiet humble Maids, exempt from Pride, And Thoughts of Worldly Dross that marr their Joys, In Any Sphere, but a Distinguished Heiress, To raise me Envy, and oppose my Love.

Fortune, Fortune, Why did you give me Wealth to make me wretched!

Hillaria comes in:

Belinda in Tears--Now has that old Rogue been Plaguing her--Poor Soul!...

Come, Child, Let's retire, and take a Chiriping Dram, Sorrow's dry; I'le divert you with the New Lampoon, 'tis a little s.m.u.tty; but what then; we Women love to read those things in private. _(Exeunt)_

Within a year Baker had another play ready--_An Act at Oxford_, with the scene laid in the university town and some of the characters Oxford types.

Whether through objections by the University authorities or not (they would perhaps have thought themselves justified in bringing pressure, for Baker certainly does not treat his _alma mater_ with great respect) the play in this form was not acted. Baker published it in 1704, in the Dedication referring to "the most perfect Enjoyment of Life, I found at Oxford" and disclaiming any intention to give offence, he then salvaged most of the play in a revision, _Hampstead Heath_ (D.L. Oct. 1705), with the scene changed to Hampstead. It is as non-edifying as _Tunbridge-Walks_. The note is struck on the first page, when Captain Smart, who has been trying to read a new comedy ent.i.tled _Advice to All Parties_, flings it down with expressions of ennui; shortly thereafter Deputy Driver, a member of a Reforming Society, appears on the scene to be twitted because while pretending to reform the whole world he can't keep his own wife from gadding; and matters proceed with Smart's project to trick a skittish independence-loving heiress into keeping a compact she had made to marry him, and his friend Bloom's attempts at the cagey virtue of Mrs. Driver. The latter project comes to nothing, but both hunter and hunted find pleasure in the chase while it lasts. When Mrs. D. returns to the Deputy at the end, her motive for rea.s.suming his yoke is a sound one-- she's out of funds; and her advice to him, "If you'd check my Rambling, loose my Reins," is sound Wycherleyan sense. It must be admitted that when one compares the dialogue of _Hampstead Heath_ with that of the _Act_ some punches are shown to have been pulled in the revision.[4] While keeping the play comic Baker still did not wish to push the audience too far.

In December, 1708 he made his fourth and (as it proved) final try for fame and fortune in the theatre with _The fine Lady's Airs,_ He claims that it was well received (see Dedication) and he had his third night, but D'Urfey, whose enmity Baker had incurred, says (Pref. to _The Modern Prophets_) that the play was "hist," and _The British Apollo_, which carried on a feud with Baker in August and September of 1709, makes the same a.s.sertion in several places.[5] This, to be sure, is testimony from enemies. But obviously the play was far less liked than _Tunbridge-Walks_ had been, and thus (to compare a small man with a great one) Baker's experience was something like Congreve's, when, after the great success of _Love for Love, The Way of the World_ won only a tepid reception. And it is chiefly Congreve whom he takes for his model; the play is an attempt at a level of comedy higher than Baker had aimed at before. He does not always succeed: Congreve's kind of writing was not natural to Baker, and the lines sometimes labor. Still, the Bleinheim-Lady Rodomont duel has merit; and Sir Harry Sprightly (though of course he owes something to Farquhar's Wildair), Mrs. Lovejoy, and Major Bramble are all in Baker's best manner. On the whole it was a better play than the audience in 1708 deserved. Presumably Baker felt this, for he wrote no more for the stage.

Most of the account of Baker's life pulled together in the DNB article on him has a decidedly apocryphal ring to it. The statement (first made in _The Poetical Register_, 1719) that he was "Son of an Eminent Attorney of the City of London" sounds like something manufactured out of whole cloth by a compiler who in fact had no idea whose son Baker was. The _Biographia Dramatica_ had "heard" that the effeminate Maiden in _Tunbridge-Walks_

was absolutely, and without exaggeration, a portrait of the author's own former character, whose understanding having at length pointed out to him the folly he had so long been guilty-of, he reformed it altogether ... and wrote this character, in order to ... warn others from that rock of contempt, which he had himself for some time been wrecked on.

Nothing on its face more improbable than this could well be imagined.

And that Baker could have "died ... of that loathsome Distemper the _Morbus Pediculosus_" (sketch of him in _Scanderbeg,_ 1747) does not sound likely, either.[6]

A lead to more solid information is furnished by the circ.u.mstance of Baker's having been educated at Oxford. We have seen (above) that he was barely twenty-one when _The Humour of the Age_ was printed in March of 1701. A Thomas Baker, son of John Baker of Ledbury, Hereford, was entered at Brasenose College, Oxford, on March 18, 1697, aged seventeen.[7] The ages falling so pat, this must be our dramatist. Upon taking his B.A. at Christ Church in 1700 he must immediately have set to scribbling his first play (the Dedication says that it was "writ in two months last summer").

Perhaps at this time he lived in London in some such boarding-house as furnishes the scene for the play.

He may have been already studying law, for at least by 1709 (we cannot tell how much earlier) he was "by trade an Attorney."[8] It seems likely that various touches in the comedies reflect his training for this calling. In _The Humour of the Age_, Pun and Quibble, the princ.i.p.al fops, are a pair of articled law-clerks who detest green-bags and (it comes out at one point) are collaborating on a play. (Readers of the present reprint will note, also, that the money which Master Totty brings with him from the country is to recompense an attorney for training him in law).

Perhaps Baker could never afford to study law as those well off did: there may be a tinge of sour grapes in the observation in _Tunbridge-Walks_ that "since the Lawyers are all turn'd Poets, and have taken the Garrets in Drury Lane, none but Beaus live in the Temple now, who have sold all their Books, burnt all their Writings, and furnish'd the Rooms with Looking-gla.s.s and China." But this is light-hearted, as becomes a man who has not yet had a setback as a stage-poet. Two years later, after the stopping of _An Act at Oxford_ had put him to much trouble, he is souring somewhat, for the poor Oxford scholar says in _Hampstead Heath_ that no profession nowadays offers much prospect of success for a man trained as he, and, as for poetry, one can only expect to be "two years writing a Play, and sollicit three more to get it acted; and for present Sustenance one's forc'd to scribble _The Diverting Post, A Dialogue between Charing-Cross and Bow Steeple_, and Elegies upon People that are hang'd."

When in December 1708 _The Fine Lady's Airs_ gained only a moderate success Baker must have thought of a living in the Church as a _pis aller_, for he enrolled at Sidney Suss.e.x College, Cambridge, March 8, 1709, and took an M.A. there the same year. In a final attempt to succeed with his pen he seems to have tried periodical journalism in the guise of "Mrs. Crackenthorpe" in _The Female Tatler. The British Apollo_, at least, pinned this on him. "The author poses as a woman," it says, in effect, "and some may thus be taken in,"

But others will swear that this wise Undertaker By Trade's an At--ney, by Name is a B--r, Who rambles about with a Female Disguise on And lives upon Scandal, as Toads do on Poyson.[9]

Perhaps it was this which, taken quite literally, produced the _Biographia Dramatica's_ canard as to Baker's effeminacy (see above).

After grinding out a greater or less amount of this hack-work,[10] Baker gave up trying to write. His disappearance from the scene thereafter is accounted for by his appointment (1711) to a living in Bedfords.h.i.+re, where he was Rector of Bolnhurst till his death, and (1716-31) Vicar of Ravensden. As the Bolnhurst school was founded upon a bequest from him in 1749,[11] he presumably died in that year--but not, I should guess, of _morbus pediculosus_.

_John Harrington Smith University of California, Los Angeles_

NOTES TO INTRODUCTION

[Footnote 1: The other was William Burnaby. His plays have been given a modern editing by F.E. Budd (Scholartis Press, 1931).]

[Footnote 2: Nicoll, _Early Eighteenth Century Drama_, Handlist of Plays.

For all subsequent statements as to dates of production I follow this source.]

[Footnote 3: It was still too lively, however, to be acted outside London.

The Harvard Theatre Collection has a copy once owned by Joe Haines with "cuts" designed to soften it for playing in the provinces. Such lines as, "The G.o.dly never go to Taverns, but get drunk every Night at one another's Houses," "Citizens are as fond of their Wives, as their Wives are of other People," and "Virtue's an Impossibility ... every Citizen's Wife pretends to't," are carefully expunged.]

[Footnote 4: E.g., Bloom to Mrs. Driver, "One moment into that Closet, if it be but to read the Practice of Piety" becomes "One Moment into that Closet, Dear, dear Creature; they say it's mighty prettily furnish'd," And in her aside, "I vow, I've a good mind; but Virtue--the Devil, I ne're was so put to't i' my Life," for the words "the Devil" are subst.i.tuted the words "and Reputation."]

[Footnote 5: No. 50, Sept. 14; No. 61, Oct. 26.]

[Footnote 6: According to the impression I have of this "morbus" it was a skin-ailment particularly appropriated to beggars, who might contract it upon long exposure to filth and louse-bites. Even then, though there would doubtless be a certain amount "of discomfort about it, it would scarcely prove fatal.]

[Footnote 7: This and subsequent vital statistics as to Baker's university and clerical career are from the account of him in J. and J.A. Venn, _Alumni Cantabrigienses_, 1922 _et sq_.]

[Footnote 8: _British Apollo_, No. 49, Sept. 14, 1709.]

[Footnote 9: _Ibid._]

[Footnote 10: Both Paul Bunyan Anderson, "The history and authors.h.i.+p of Mrs. Crackenthorpe's _Female Tatler_," _MP_, XXVIII (1931), 354-60, and Walter Graham, "Thomas Baker, Mrs. Manley, and _The Female Tatler_," _MP_, x.x.xIV (1937), 267-72, think that some, at least, of the _F.T._ is from Baker's pen, but they disagree as to what part and how much. I am considering the matter and may have an opinion to express in future.]

[Footnote 11: _Victoria History of Bedfords.h.i.+re_, II, 181 n.; III, 128.]

TO

Sir _ANDREW FONTAINE_

To Address a Man of your Character, gives me greater Concern than to finish the most Elaborate Play, and support the various Conflicts which naturally attend ev'ry Author; how the Town in general will receive it.

To harangue some of the First Quality, whose t.i.tles are the greatest Ill.u.s.tration we can give 'em, is a sort of Common-Place Oratory; which Poets may easily vary in copying from one another; but, when I'm speaking to the most finish'd young Gentleman any Age has produced, whose distinguish'd Merits exact the nicest Relation, I feel my inability, and want a Genius barely to touch on those extraordinary Accomplishments, which You so early, and with so much ease, have made Your self perfect Master of.

But, when I reflect on the Affability of Your Temper, the generous and obliging Reception, You always gave me, and the ingaging Sweetness of Your Conversation, I'm the more incourag'd to pay my Duty to You in this Nature, fully persuading my self, You'll lay aside the Critick, by considering, in how many Respects, Your condescending Goodness has shown You are my Friend.

The vast stock of Learning You acquir'd in Your Non-age, has manifested to the World, that a Scholar, and a fine Gentleman are not Inconsistent, and rendered You so matchless an Ornament to the University of _Oxford_, particularly to _Christ-Church-_College, where You imbib'd it.

'Tis a Misfortune that attends many of our _English_ Gentlemen to set out for Travel without any Foundation; and wanting a Tast of Letters, and the Knowledge of their own Country, the Observations they make Abroad, to reflect no further, are generally useless and impertinent.