Anfarwol: Neu, Diflaniad Theophilus Cibber

SAMPLE: Containing the prologue and first two chapters

Translated by Peredur Glyn

PROLOGUE

I was born in a storm and I vanished in a storm. Perhaps the tempest always had me in its grasp.

My name is Theophilus Cibber. That name is no longer remembered, but once it was on lips throughout the land. I was of note, once – but some time has passed since then.

Can you conceive how it was, to live in that tumultuous age, before the blue sky turned grey, before your culture became moribund? When the world was emptier, when the Infinite Magic was yet to flow into every part ot it? Was that the dawn of your Wales, or its sunset?

We all start in darkness and move towards the light, worshipping the light, for in light is found truth, and in truth, knowledge. But if the purpose of life is to acquire knowledge, why are your lives so short?

Yes, I was born in a storm and I vanished in a storm. But this story is not about the period between those two events. It is a tale about what happened after.

The curtain rises...

THE FIRST ACT

CHAPTER I

I am an actor. It is true that I have held many different posts and duties during my life and have gained mastery over a great many disciplines, but, in my bones, I am an actor.

When my career was in its heyday, the first George sat on the British throne and Walpole was First Lord of the Treasury. Not that I ever bothered with politics, since it is on the boards of the stage and in the roar of the crowds that the meaning of life resides, not in the halls of Court or the corridors of state. It was in Drury Lane that I was apprenticed, not Gray’s Inn.

I followed in the footsteps of my father, Colley Cibber, who was in his time an actor, an author and (for a while) the maestro of the Drury. He won a crumb of popularity through his plays. His comedies – Love’s Last Shift, The Careless Husband, and the like – are long-forgotten but they experienced some notice in their day. He was, I dare say, a comedian of some merit; when I was a child, people were forever telling me how much they had enjoyed his Lord Foppington (even though I, of course, gave a far better rendition of the character later). I remember spending many hours in the wings watching him as he worked. I recall the smell of the oil paint, the clatter of the sets as they were dragged into place, the trembling lights of the candles in the girandoles...

But I learnt nothing from my father. Apart from his clowning, as an actor he was not worth his salt. His plays may have pleased the green seats, but they had no culture, only folly. Poet Laureate he may well have been, but I am in agreement with Johnson that it was a farce that my father was ever granted that privelege. He should have kept his eye on managing his theatre, instead of leaving it in my impecunious hands...

I do not blame him. Not everyone is born with the promise of becoming an artist.

I came into the world during the Great Storm of 1703, as wind and rain thrashed the country. Theophilus means ‘God loves me’. When I used to believe in God, I was convinced that He had sent that tempest to rid the world of the undeserving in order to make way for me. Since I was a mite, my mother had told me I would be an actor. That I would fill the world with my voice. That I would make this a better world for other people.

No-one remembers me now. Mathonwy is to blame for that. But at my zenith the audiences surely loved me. And such characters I brought to life upon the stage! Pistol, Ptolemy, Philander, Capten Bellamant, Melissander, Looby Headpiece, Squire Chip... I transformed myself into each of them with little more than a dab of facepaint, a feathered cap and my performance. I could raise my voice until those in the next street could hear me. It was not only my voice that was famed, but the fact that I poured my entire soul into that voice, each word, each syllable. At the end of some shows I would be in agony, such had been my utter devotion to the role. I acted until my face hurt. None of the other actors did that. They lacked the dedication – and the skill. That is why I knew not only that the stage was my home, but that, by and by, I would be the most famous actor in the land.

But not everyone appreciates talent.

**

It is a costly matter, to run a theatre, and actors are not given a fair wage for their sacrifices. Furthermore, in order for me to live life to the fullest, it was necessary to make nightly expenditures at the card tables, on claret and on women. As a youth I revelled in the company of Wharton and his fellows, and the rake’s life is not a cheap one. I would have made a better profit by burning pound notes. Thus it was that I needed some means to make money.

As I said, little remains of me in the pages of the history books, but, were you to dig deeply and diligently enough, you might eventually chance across my name in connection with that unfortunate business with my wife and John Sloper. Susannah Maria had always been a conniving jade, her thoughts more on her next performance than on our marriage bed. It is a difficult thing to work alongside your own wife, and I was eager to exit the theatre immediately after each show in order to avoid her scornful eyes and shrewish tongue. The whorehouses and the clubs became my haven from the chill of her nocturnal company. That is when Sloper slipped into our lives.

It was obvious that they were sleeping together. I did not even need to ask her: his hands were all over her whenever I saw them. Sloper came more or less daily to gawp at her onstage and to drool over her, to stride into the green room at times with the specific aim of speaking to her. Even though she had, I would say, aged poorly and with celerity after we were married, she could put on enough rouge to bewitch him as she had bewitched many a capricious audience. She opened her legs to John Sloper – a matter of which I accused her one evening.

‘You are too drunk,’ retorted the jezebel.

‘I am not,’ said I, ‘nearly drunk enough! Where the devil is Sloper? In your bed?’

‘I have not seen him tonight.’

Lies! Her mendacity was plain to see in how she folded her hands in her lap and turned her dark eyes away.

‘He is here, is he not?’ I suspect I was roaring by this stage, to the point that I was hurting my own ears. I began bellowing the bastard’s name. ‘Sloper! Sloper! Come out, you blackguard, that I may give you a thrashing!’

‘He is not here!’ said Susannah. That is what she was bound to say.

I was by then climbing the stairs in bounds, shouting, ‘Sloper, you knave!’ again and again. I sought him wildly.

He was not in our bed.

He was not in the boudoir.

But he was in the cupboard.

I spent a long while berating him and my wife, and there is nothing more terrible to endure than an enraged actor ennumerating unto you your transgressions. By the end (if I recall aright), Susannah was weeping and Sloper was on his knees, his face pale, pleading for my forgiveness; I myself towering above them, my fist raised to damn the ceiling and my eyes akin to those of Moses before the Pharaoh.

But then, after I came to my senses, I realised that there lay here an opportunity. To Hell with my wife: she could demean herself with that reprobate as much as she liked – as long as no-one else knew. There were dozens of other, prettier, girls in London that were that very minute warming their beds for me – dozens – and so she was no great loss. And Squire John Sloper was a well-off man...

Fair play to the bastard, the sovereigns that made their way from his pouch to my pocket funded several of James Miller’s plays that were reasonably successful – I took the best parts myself – and it made me laugh to imagine the face of the sanctimonious Miller were he ever to learn that the copulation royalties of that pair had paid for staging his Universal Passion!

No doubt every man – even the very best – commits the occasional error. My own was to expect Susannah and Sloper to keep the secret, so as to ensure the regular flow of his money into my coffer, so that they in turn could continue to act upon their animal desires and I could be at liberty to run the Drury – and my various other activities – in the manner that suited me best.

But, alas, Susannah and Sloper were unable to keep their affair under a bushel. They went out daily, arm in arm, shamefacedly kissing in public. The coffee shops were abuzz with gossip of them within months. People started murmurs about me. Imagine – my good name being dragged through the mud in this fashion! It appears that Susannah did not have even the slightest iota of shame that she was making me a cuckold in the eyes of England. Oh, false wife! The most faithless, artful and ungrateful woman that ever disturbed the heart of a weak man!

Now, in my view back then – and the view of most legal minds – the wife’s money belonged to her husband. Yet Susannah forced me, before we were wed, to sign a contract that permitted her to keep all her earnings once she became my wife. I did not, at the time, give much thought to putting my name to such an agreement, since I took it for granted that Susannah would cease acting after having children. But she did not. More than that, she was making good money (more than she deserved) – and not a single penny of it would find its way into my purse; me, her husband in the eyes of God! It was simply not right.

Naturally, when the hussy eventually found out where her wages had been ending up (for I had bills that needed paying), things went much more poorly between us. After that it was in John Sloper’s home and not mine that Susannah spent her days.

I contrived to regain my wife. I must now admit that I did not entirely behave in a manner that was befitting of a gentleman. I dragged her out of her house one evening to where a coach and horses lay waiting. As I attempted to depart with her, Sloper came rushing out in nothing but his drawers and waving a pistol. No-one was injured in the events that ensued, but I confess that the whole adventure was somewhat of a mess.

In spite of all this, my creditors still had me in their grasp. Even going to France provided no escape from their talons. There was only one thing for it: to turn the tables on the profligate pair.

Because running a theatre is a costly matter.

I had entirely persuaded myself that the men of the jury would believe me (me, Theophilus Cibber, the renowned actor who had seflessly served their community by providing regular quality entertainment for them). In court I brought forth a host of witnesses that swore under oath that they had seen Susannah going behind my back – and upon hers – with John Sloper. The newspapers were delighted to learn about my dear wife’s villainy and I was equally delighted that the attention of said newspapers had been diverted from myself. I proclaimed to the magistrate, in full sail, that discovering this licentious liaison had caused tremendous injury to my health, an injury that should be valued at a minimum of five thousand in damages.

But who can triumph over the nobs? Sloper hired the most expensive counsel in the city, and I was forced to sit there and listen to the giggles and whispers from the gallery as his red-faced attorney spent an entire hour blackening my name.

I won all of ten pounds.

George Chapman was right. The law is an ass.

**

My father died in 1757, a few days before Christmas. By then Susannah had left me (‘for good,’ quoth she) and the fickle audiences had turned their attention to her once more. That was the time when my star should have been at its highest, but everyone’s eyes were on Susannah and that milksop Garrick. I got the occasional acting job but my talent was still not being appreciated. Pope’s libel of me in his Dunciad was the last straw. England did not deserve me.

As I have said, acting was in my blood and gave me life. Indeed, whenever I was not onstage I felt pangs of longing. I could not face the prospect of not being an actor. Acting was the purpose of my being.

So I set my sights on Ireland.

Thomas Sheridan, an Irishman with whom I had shared a stage some years prior, had once more taken up his role as manager of the Theatre Royal in Dublin. The theatre, said he, was thriving and he foresaw great success with his next production. He sent me a letter inviting me personally to take the principal part in it. ‘I have the perfect Role for you,’ wrote Sheridan. ‘I can, good Sir, make you Immortal!’

A good actor is never defeated. He can survive anything.

So it was that, on the morning of the fifteenth of October, 1758, I arrived at Holyhead on the island of Anglesey, ready to board the Dublin Merchant and sail to immortality.

And that is when I heard his voice...

CHAPTER II

I had not been to Holyhead prior to that day in 1758. The main London-Dublin road runs through it, of course, but there is no theatre in that part of the kingdom – they held their amusements in the taverns and barns back then, and scarcely anyone in the region had ever seen a real play – therefore I had had no reason to go near the town. I recall my father mentioning Holyhead once, claiming that Swift himself had hated the town and had called it ‘the worse place in Wales’. I have no reason not to concur with that description.

I expected to catch the Dublin Merchant the next day. That ship sailed regularly from Park-gate in Merseyside, passing by Holyhead in order to load and unload cargo and passengers, before proceeding to voyage over the Irish Sea to the port at Dublin. Sheridan had purchased for me a ticket and had secured a cabin on board that I would be sharing with a fellow named Maddox.

It so happened that I met Maddox mere minutes after arriving in Holyhead, although not by design. He overheard my name as I introduced myself to the serving boy, and he came boldly towards me and shook my hand before I could react.

‘I have heard much about you, sir; much!’ he said. He spoke English, naturally, not Welsh; I could not speak Welsh either back then.

‘I do not believe that I have—’

‘Maddox, Anthony Maddox, at your service, dear sir!’

‘Oh, yes, Sheridan said—’

‘Sheridan! Yes, that is so! The maestro! We shall both be travelling together – and thereafter workingtogether!’ He laughed heartily.

I stared at him from head to foot, endeavouring to conceal my instinctive disdain. Maddox was a small, thin man with a lady’s fingers but evident muscularity in his shoulders and thighs. He held himself stiff as a poker and his blue eyes sparkled up at me.

'Are you an actor, then, Mr Maddox?'

Again he laughed. ‘No, sir, not an actor. Not like yourself, at least! No, but I am a performer like yourself.’

That I can scarcely believe, thought I.

He explained, in unsought minutiae, that he was a ‘wire-dancer’. That is, he would entertain (if that was the appropriate term) audiences by standing upon a wire stretched between two high ladders, doing tricks without falling off. Such acrobats were relatively unknown in Britain at the time, even though they have since become much more common, of course. As he described himself to me, I had a faint recollection of having heard of him – no doubt I had seen a poster advertising his act of tomfoolery, perhaps in some den of fops like Sadler’s Wells or the like.

‘I am so glad,’ Maddox burbled, ‘that we shall be able to share our talents with the good folk of Dublin! I am certain that they are looking forward to our arrival.’ He leant unpleasantly closer to me. ‘My act is celebrated, sir! I was given praise by the King of France himself! Think of it!'

As well the clodpoll might, thought I. The French had no idea who was deserving of accolade. This man? This man? He barely reached my shoulder!

I could not fathom why Sheridan had coupled me with such a curious fellow, nor why anyone would want a tightrope-walker and an actor of my standing on the same bill. Maddox must have misunderstood, and in fact his role would be to offer some street entertainment, leaving the quality performances in the hands of myself and the other actors.

Regardless, I never found out the answer either way.

Maddox insisted that we should breakfast together, but I refused his request with every fibre of my being. I retired to the room I had rented in the Eagle and Child hotel, intending to remain there until the signal came that the Dublin Merchant had arrived and was ready for me to board.

When in my room, a sudden intense weariness came upon me. I had been sitting in the Stage-coach from London for many days, squashed in between two fat merchants from Kent who had been snoring alternately as the miles dragged unbearably by. It was a warm October and I was drenched in sweat, with the dust from the road all over my clothes and skin. I washed myself before eating a late breakfast in my room; the food was poor and the wine sour.

Bumping into Maddox had made my mood sour also. I had intended to venture out to explore the streets of Holyhead to see what they held – despite the glimpse I’d had from the Coach’s window not filling me with enthusiasm on that front – but I stank and was exhausted and sullen, so instead I lay on the narrow bed and fell immediately into an uncomfortable and listless sleep.

I shall never forget the moment I awoke. It was as if a voice had whispered in my ear, speaking a word or words that I could not understand but which seemed both a warning and an invitation. I felt hot; not merely because of the weather but as if I was burning from within, my breath scalding. I fell wildly out of bed, ridding myself swiftly of my clothes and bathing again in the basin’s lukewarm water.

The voice had been a dream. That is what I suspected at the time. A mere phantasm conjured by a weary mind.

Somewhat recovered, I left the hotel – keeping a beady eye out for any lurking Maddoxes that might seek to accost me – and sought some fresh air as a tonic. But there was (and there remains) no fresh air to be found in Holyhead. The dock was very close to the hotel and, though the Dublin Merchant’s mast was not yet to be seen, many other ships and boats were there, men busying sweatily up and down the gangplans, bellowing at each other in languages which I did not understand. The stench of horse dung filled the streets, vying for supremacy with the smell of gin from some nearby alcove. Suddenly I could not tolerate the concert of sensations. Despite being a native of London and well-accustomed to bustling towns, in that moment I experienced a feeling of intense dizziness; therefore, clutching a handkerchief over my mouth, I hastened up the hill and away from the quay towards where I hoped that a blue sky could be seen.

I found no blue sky, but instead a quieter district that was far from the hectic high street. I walked on, the houses to either side becoming less and less frequent, until I found myself by a small beach where the water was slow and brown and the grass dead. My only company were two periwinkle-pickers, thin as skeletons, standing up to their ankles in the sea. They gazed sullenly at me before turning away forever.

I sat upon a rock and took off my jacket. I was still hot. I ruined my silk handkerchief removing the inch-thick cake of dust and sweat from my brow. Feebly I berated the sky, cursing the effects that the Coach and Holyhead and Maddox and the weather had had on my good spirits on the threshold of this renaissance in my career. A man’s mental state can change in a flash, like luck at the Whist table. Thus it was for me. The day before, I had been light of step and imagining the adoring faces in the audience being brought to tears by my latest masterpiece. Now, I was a miserable heap in a back corner of the worst town in Wales – wishing naught but a plague on all the occasions that had informed against me.

Immortality. That was what Sheridan had promised in his letter. That was my fate, was it not? Theophilus, loved by God and Fortune both, facing all the slings and arrows of life until his great moment came?

I would give anything, I decided in that moment, to get the place I deserve in history.

'Theophilus Cibber?'

The voice had come from behind me. I briefly imagined that it was the same voice from my dream, but on turning I found that a woman was standing there on the side of the path, some yards away. She stared at me with extraordinarily bright green eyes. She was a young thing, scarcely twenty years old, well-dressed and her skin was clean; she was no peasant. She wore a red cloak over her dress. A comma of golden hair fell out of her hood and across her cheek.

I thought to myself that here was one of the most beautiful women I had ever laid eyes upon.

Oh! that I knew then what was to come!

I must have been gawping at her, because the woman said again, ‘Theophilus Cibber?’ This was not said in any disbelieving nor appreciative nor threatening manner, but without fuss and matter-of-factly, albeit more firmly than before.

‘Yes.’ I managed to find my voice. ‘Yes, I am Cibber? And you are...?’

‘Follow me, Mr Cibber,’ was her response, and she began walking up the path that led further from the town and towards the desolate peninsula.

I followed her. At the time I had no idea why I had done so – curiosity? Desire? The heat? – but follow her I did, blustering up the slope as she kept several paces ahead of me.

As we walked I hurled further questions at her, asking who she was, where we were going, and how she knew my name. But answer came there none. She said nothing and she did not turn to look at me until, all of a sudden, she halted.

I nearly ploughed into her. I clutched my knees and breathed heavily; I was a fit person but this short walk had knocked the wind out of me. I could taste dust and midges in the back of my throat.

‘Where are we?’ I enquired presently.

‘Someone wishes to meet you,’ said the woman.

I realised we were standing outside a house. ‘House’ is not an appropriate word to describe the building: it was little more than a hut, half-sunk into the soil and rock, with no windows and with noxious black smoke streaming from a gap in its thatched roof. I shivered in revulsion.

‘You intend to rob me,’ I said in fearful realisation, backing away slowly. I felt a fool for having been lured here by this siren. ‘But I have no money. Truly, it is of no profit stealing from me!’

An annoyed shadow flitted over the woman’s face. ‘No, Mr Cibber,’ she said, her lips narrowing. ‘We are here to help you.’

‘We?’ I stopped reversing, but did not approach.

‘Yes. We do not want your money, but only to give you a chance to take hold of that which you have yearned for all your life.’

Suddenly I heard that voice again, deep in my ear, saying... something. Three clear, but unintelligible, syllables. My feet nearly buckled beneath me. I stared madly at the woman in order to see if she too could hear the voice, but, if she did, her face was unmoving. She was still staring at me.

‘Yearned?’ I asked. I noticed how fragile my voice sounded. ‘Yearned for what?’

‘Only you know that, Mr Cibber,’ said the lady gently.

The door of the cottage opened. I did not see who opened it; it was somebody who lay within. Without moving from where she stood, the woman lifted her hand towards the door, beckoning me inside.

I paused. Who would not? Images flooded my mind of what might be lurking within this decrepit hovel – cannibals ready to eat me; murderers with their long knives ready to cut me into pieces; a witch waiting to turn me into a toad...? Only a lunatic would have gone through that door.

So in I went.