In and About Drury Lane, and Other Papers, Vol. 2 (of 2): Reprinted from the pages of the 'Temple Bar' MagazineDoran, Dr. (John)
History
In and About Drury Lane, and Other Papers, Vol. 2 (of 2): Reprinted from the pages of the 'Temple Bar' Magazine
Doran, Dr. (John)
London (England) -- Social life and customs -- 19th century; Theater -- England -- London -- Anecdotes
The unfortunate and fallen woman, on her separation from her ruined
admirer, soon learned a deeper misery than she had endured in her
native home and early privations. She was at length on the point of
being turned into the street by her landlord, who had no admiration
for penniless tenants, however greatly endowed with beauty, when
she fell in the way of the most stupendous quack that ever gulled
the most gullible of patient publics. We need hardly name the once
famous Dr. Graham,[2] who, with his mysterious chambers, golden
beds, seraphic music, and impudent medical lectures, for some time
persuaded the people that he could lead them to the fountain where
played the waters endowing man with eternal and vigorous youth. That
he was mysterious only proved that he had a secret, and that it was
well worth knowing and richly worth paying for. This quack hired the
hungry and heart-broken beauty, exhibited her as the ‘Goddess of
Health,’ lectured upon her as the result of his system, and made half
the fashionable women of his day mad to become like her, glowing with
health and splendid with beauty. This public exhibition gave her a
particular fame among artists: she became the eagerly sought after
and highly purchased model of the day. In Romney’s pictures more
especially she is constantly repeated, and the eternal sameness is
ever varied and charming: she was, indeed, Romney’s inspiration rather
than model: he had but to state what he desired or dreamed of, and the
vision stood a breathing reality before him. Heroic, as Joan of Arc;
crushed by her grief, as a Magdalene; joyous, as a Bacchante; sublime,
as Cassandra; winning, as a Wood Nymph; making sorrow graceful, as
Calypso; giving rapture double interpretation--first as the Pythian
priestess on her tripod, and next as St. Cecilia--gentle, as Serena;
lovely, as Sensibility; and perhaps more intellectually lovely still,
as Miranda--we can hardly wonder, as we look on these characters, that
Hayley, who saw the original stand for them all, rushed into rhyme to
immortalise them, and perpetrated verse that was almost tolerable and
very nearly worth reading.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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