Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/18

10  dismal intelligence awaited Astley’s arrival in England. His faithful wife was dead, and his theatre a smoking ruin, having been a second time burned to the ground. Once more he rebuilt and opened it, as the Royal Amphitheatre. This last erection, as many will recollect, was burned in 1841, when under the management of Ducrow, who died shortly afterwards.

Space does not permit our following Astley through his varied and energetic career, to recount his travels over Europe, or enumerate the theatres—nineteen it is said—that he erected. He lived, however, to see another peace with France, and recover his property in Paris; for he died at the advanced age of seventy-two years in his own house in the Fauxbourg du Temple, and was buried in the well-known cemetery of Père le Chaise. His son, who was always termed “Young Astley,” died in 1821, in the same bed, in the same house, and was buried in the same grave as his father.

A notice of Astley would be incomplete without a reference to the famous white charger presented to him by General Eliott. The life of this animal far exceeded the usual limit allotted to its race. For forty-two years it was at Astley’s, more than thirty of which it passed in the service and amusement of the public; and when old age rendered it incapable of performing, it was still retained as an honoured pensioner of the establishment. At one time it was turned out to graze at “Young Astley’s” country seat in Surrey; but the old performer, even in the richest pasture, pined for the long-accustomed music, noise, bustle, and acclamations of the amphitheatre. So it was brought back to its old stall, and as its failing teeth were unable to masticate oats, and oat-bruisers were not then invented, the treasury allowed it two quartern loaves per day; while every man, woman, and child about the circus delighted to feed it with cakes, carrots, apples, and other equine delicacies. At the first conflagration, in 1794, it was one of the horses that were saved, and at the second fire, in 1803, it walked as coolly out of the stable as if performing in a previously rehearsed piece. By thus quietly showing the way, it was instrumental in saving all the other horses, which, amidst fire, uproar, and confusion, without the slightest panic, followed their accustomed leader. At last the old horse died, and Mr. Davis, the then manager, with a keen eye to the fitness of things, caused its skin to be tanned, and converted into what is technically termed “a thunder drum,” for the use of the establishment. And speaking of this noisy instrument reminds us that Astley, when he first started his riding school, had no other music than a common drum, which was beaten by his wife. To this he subsequently added a fife, the players standing on a kind of small platform, placed in the centre of the ring, and it was not till he opened the Royal Grove that he employed a regular orchestra.

Indeed, as an accompaniment to equestrian exercises, Astley always considered that loudness was the most desirable quality in music. And though he overtook care to have an excellent band, with a well-qualified leader, he, nevertheless, considered them more as an indispensable drain on the treasury, than a useful auxiliary to the performances. “Any fool,” he used invariably to say, “can handle a fiddle, but it takes a man to manage a horse; and yet I have to pay a fellow that plays upon one fiddle as much salary as a man that rides upon three horses.” Such opinions, freely expressed, not unfrequently led to angry scenes, of which amusing anecdotes have been related.

On one occasion Astley requested his leader to arrange a few bars of music for a broad-sword combat—“a rang, tang, bang; one, two, three; and a cut sort of thing, you know;” for thus he curtly expressed his ideas of what he required. At the subsequent rehearsal Astley shouted out to his stage-manager, “Stop! stop! This will never do. It’s not half noisy enough; we must get shields,” simply meaning that the mimic combatants should be supplied with shields to clash against the broad-swords, causing the noise so excitingly provocative of applause from the audience. But the too sensitive leader, thinking it was his music that was “not half noisy enough,” and it was Shields, the composer, to whom Astley alluded, jumped out of the orchestra, and, tearing the score to pieces, indignantly exclaimed, “Get Shields, then, as soon as you please, for I am heartily sick and tired of you.”

At another time, on the first night of a new piece, as the curtain rose to slow and solemn music, Astley, who was in the front observing the effect, overheard a carpenter sawing a board behind the scenes. “Go,” said the manager to Smith, his rough-rider and aide-de-camp in ordinary, “go and tell that stupid fellow not to saw so infernally loud.”

Smith, fancying it was the music Astley alluded to, went at once to the orchestra, and whispered in the leader’s ear, “Mr. Astley has desired me to tell you not to saw so infernally loud.”

“Saw!” retorted the enraged musician. “Go back and tell him, this is the very last night I shall saw in his infernal stables.”

Of course, when the curtain fell, the musician’s wrath was appeased by the mistake being explained.

Besides the publications already mentioned, Astley’s name is appended to two more, respectively entitled, “A Descriptive and Historical Account of the Places now the Seat of War in the Low Countries;” and “Natural Magic, or Physical Amusements revealed.” These are mere compilations, in every respect inferior to his other two works on the horse and horsemanship; the last being exceedingly characteristic of the sound, sterling sense of its author. They were written from his dictation by his niece and constant amanuensis, and afterwards prepared for the press by his dramatist James Upton, a clever but erratic Irishman, the respected author of a well-known song, “The Lass of Richmond Hill.”

Astley’s letters, having been written by a not too-well-educated amanuensis, exhibit a curious mixture of the first and third persons. With the following verbatim specimen, containing a curious bit of information on the tractability of the monkey-race, we must conclude: