Wilks had gone through many months of probation, watched by good Joseph Ashbury, and honest Richards, when one morning the latter called on the young actor, with an introductory letter to Betterton in his hand. Wilks accepted the missive with alacrity, bade farewell to secretaries and managers, and in a brief space of time was sailing over the waters, from the Pigeon House to Parkgate.
The meeting of Wilks and Betterton, in the graceful costume of those days, the young actor travel-worn, a little shabby, anxious, and full of awe; the elder richly attired, kind in manner, his face bright with intellect, and his figure heightened by the dignity of a lofty nature and professional triumph, borne with a lofty modesty, is another subject for a painter.
Betterton instructed the stranger as to the course he should take, and, accordingly, one bright May morning of 1690,7 a handsome young fellow, with a slight Irish accent, presented himself to Christopher Rich as a light comedian. He was a native of Dublin county, he said, had left a promising Government clerkship, to try his fortune on the Irish stage; and, tempted by the renown of Betterton, had come to London to see the great actor, and to be engaged, if that were possible, in the same company.
Christopher Rich was no great judge of acting, but he thought there was something like promise of excellence in the easy and gentleman-like young fellow; and he consented to engage him for Drury Lane, at the encouraging salary of fifteen shillings a week, from which half a crown was to be deducted for instruction in dancing! This left Wilks twelve and sixpence clear weekly income; and he had not long been enjoying it, when he married Miss Knapton, daughter of the Town Clerk of Southampton. Young couple never began life upon more modest means; but happiness, hard work, and good fortune came of it.
For a few years, commencing with 1690,8 Wilks laboured unnoticed, at Drury Lane, by all save generous Betterton, who seeing the young actor struggling for fame, with a small salary, and an increasing family, recommended him to return to Ashbury, the Dublin manager, who, at Betterton's word, engaged him at £50 a year,9 and a clear benefit. "You will be glad to have got him," said Betterton to Ashbury. "You will be sorry you have lost him," said he, to Christopher Rich. Sorry! In three or four years more, Rich was imploring him to return, and offering him Golconda, as salaries were then understood. But Wilks was now the darling of the Dublin people, and, at a later period, so universal was the desire to keep him amongst them, that the Duke of Ormond, Lord Lieutenant, issued a warrant to prohibit his leaving the kingdom. But, on the other hand, £4 per week awaited him in London. It was nearly as high a salary as Betterton's!10 Wilks, however, caring less for the terms than for the opportunity of satisfying his inordinate thirst for fame, contrived to escape, with his wife. With them came a disappointed actor, soon to be a popular dramatist, Farquhar; who, in the year 1699, after opening the season with his "Love and a Bottle," produced his "Constant Couple," with Wilks as Sir Harry Wildair. On the night of Wilks's first appearance, in some lines written for him by Farquhar, and spoken by the debutant, the latter said: —
"Void of offence, though not from censure free,
I left a distant isle, too kind to me;"
and confessing a sort of supremacy in the London over the Dublin stage, he added: —
"There I could please, but there my fame must end,
For hither none must come to boast – but mend."
This the young actor did apace. Applauded as the latter had been the year before, in old parts, the approbation was as nothing compared with that lavished on him in this his first original character. From the first recognition of Vizard down to the "tag" with which the curtain descends, and including even the absurd and unnatural scene with Angelica, he kept the audience in a condition of intermittent ecstasy. The piece established his fame, gave a name to Norris, the frequently mentioned "Jubilee Dicky," and made the fortune of Rich. It seems to have been played nearly fifty times in the first season. In its construction and style it is far in advance of the comedies of Aphra Behn and Ravenscroft; and yet it is irregular; not moral; as often flippant as witty; improbable, and not really original. Madam Fickle is to be traced in it, and the denouement, as far as Lurewell and Standard are concerned, is borrowed from those of Plautus and Terence.
Wilks, now the great favourite of the town, justified all Betterton's prognostications. Like Betterton, he was to the end convinced that he might become more perfect by study and perseverance. Taking the extant score of judgments recorded of him, I find that Wilks was careful, judicious, painstaking in the smallest trifles; in comedy always brilliant, in tragedy always graceful and natural. For zeal, Cibber had not known his equal for half a century; careful himself, he allowed no one else to be negligent; so careful, that he would recite a thousand lines without missing a single word. The result of all his labour was seen in an ease, and grace, and gaiety which seemed perfectly spontaneous. His taste in dress was irreproachable; grave in his attire on the streets, on the stage he was the glass of fashion. On the stage, even in his last season, after a career of forty years, he never lost his buoyancy, or his young graces. From first to last he was perfection in his peculiar line. "Whatever he did upon the stage," says an eminent critic, quoted by Genest, "let it be ever so trifling, whether it consisted in putting on his gloves, or taking out his watch, lolling on his cane, or taking snuff, every movement was marked by such an ease of breeding and manner, everything told so strongly the involuntary motion of a gentleman, that it was impossible to consider the character he represented in any other light than that of reality; but what was still more surprising, that person who could thus delight an audience, from the gaiety and sprightliness of his character, I met the next day in a street hobbling to a hackney-coach, seemingly so enfeebled by age and infirmities that I could scarcely believe him to be the same man."
The grace and bearing of Wilks were accounted of as natural in a man whose blood was not of the common tap. "His father, Edward Wilks, Esq., was descended from Judge Wilks, a very eminent lawyer, and a gentleman of great honour and probity. During the unhappy scene of our civil wars he raised a troop of horse, at his own expense, for the service of his royal master." A brother of the judge was in Monk's army,11 with the rank of Colonel, and with more of honest intention than of commonplace discretion. The civil wars took many a good actor from the stage, but they also contributed the sons and daughters of many ancient but impoverished families to the foremost rank among distinguished players. Some of the daughters of these old and decayed houses thought it no disparagement to wed with these players, or to take humble office in the theatre. Wilks's first wife, Miss Knapton, was the daughter of the Town Clerk of Southampton, and Steward of the New Forest, posts of trust, and, at one time, of emolument. The Knaptons had been Yorkshire landholders, the estate being valued at £2000 a year; and now we find one daughter marrying Wilks, a second espousing Norris, "Jubilee Dicky," and a third, Anne Knapton, filling the humble office of dresser at Drury Lane, and probably not much flattered by the legend on the family arms, "Meta coronat opus."
The greatest trouble to Wilks during the period he was in management, arose from the "ladies" of the company. There was especially Mrs. Rogers, who, on the retirement of Mrs. Barry and Mrs. Bracegirdle, played the principal serious parts. It was the whim of this lady to act none but virtuous characters; her prudery would not admit of her studying others. In the epilogue to the "Triumphs of Virtue," in which she played the innocent Bellamira, she pronounced with great effect the lines, addressed to the ladies, for whose smiles, she said,
"I'll pay this duteous gratitude; I'll do
That which the play has done; I'll copy you.
At your own virtue's shrine my vows I'll pay,
And strive to live the character I play."
In this,