The satin bills of their
majesties and the princesses were then duly displayed--and the dingy
green curtain drew up. The performances were invariably either a comedy
and farce, or more frequently three farces, with a plentiful
interlarding of comic songs. Quick, Suett, and Mrs. Mattocks were the
reigning favourites; and, about 1800, Elliston and Fawcett became
occasional stars. But Quick and Suett were the king's especial delight.
When Lovegold, in the "Miser," drawled out "a pin a day's a groat a
year," the laugh of the royal circle was somewhat loud; but when Dicky
Gossip exhibited in his vocation, and accompanied the burden of his
song, "Dicky Gossip, Dicky Gossip is the man," with the blasts of his
powder-puff, the cachinnation was loud and long, and the gods prolonged
the chorus of laughter, till the echo died away in the royal box. At
the end of the third act, coffee was handed round to the court circle;
and precisely at eleven the performances finished,--and the flambeaux
gleamed through the dimly-lighted streets of Windsor, as the happy
family returned to their tranquil home.
There was occasionally a good deal of merriment going forward at
Windsor in these olden days. I have a dim recollection of having danced
in the little garden which was once the moat of the Round Tower, and
which Washington Irving has been pleased to imagine existed in the time
of James I.
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