Shooting Victoria (21 page)

Covent Garden Theatre had been for the last few years conducted by a series of renowned actor-managers. Francis and son worked under the most famous actor of the day, William Charles Mac-ready, who in his two seasons at Covent Garden—1837 through
1839—introduced a number of productions of Shakespeare which were extremely well received, but which did not turn a profit. He left to manage Drury Lane, and was succeeded by the celebrated comic couple, Madame Lucia Vestris and Charles James Mathews. Vestris and Mathews kept the theatre going, with more success than their predecessors, for three seasons. The key to their relative success was spectacle. They employed well over a hundred men (including twenty-six carpenters) to deal with creating props and machinery—and to shift scenery and to deploy special effects during performances. The results could be stunning. In honor of the marriage of Victoria and Albert, for example, Vestris and Mathews produced J. R. Planché's
The Fortunate Isles
, a sumptuous masque with breathtaking transformations to represent all of English history, culminating, according to a review, in the rising of a hymeneal altar, heraldic cupids flying about the air, and a “Star of Brunswick” rising out of the ocean, “which opens as it enlarges, and discovers the word ‘Victoria' in brilliant letters, surrounded by smaller revolving stars.” Then there was their production of
A Midsummer Night's Dream
: the first performance in London in which Mendelssohn's famous music was employed, and the first in which an actress played the role of Oberon, King of the Fairies: Madame Vestris, renowned for her beautiful legs and for displaying them in breeches roles, was responsible for that innovation. The play was a hit largely because of its showstopping finale, in which fairies as blue and yellow lights burst from the stage and filled the theatre—floating among the galleries, flying through the air.

Not surprisingly, it is with pantomime that the stage crew at Covent Garden showed off its most amazing effects, and where an aspiring stage carpenter and machinist could best demonstrate his talent. Indeed, young John Francis was specifically noted for his cleverness in the construction of pantomime tricks. The one Christmas pantomime at Covent Garden with which Francis was certainly involved,
The Castle of Otranto or, Harlequin and the Giant Helmet
, was arguably the most mechanically laden
pantomime of all time—a “machinist's Sabbath,” according to one historian, a pantomime possibly even
written
by a Covent Garden machinist to show off his crew's talents. The pantomime essentially ditched the frenetic human interaction which, when the clown Joseph Grimaldi ruled the pantomime stage two decades before, was crucial to the genre. Instead, in this production, machinery took the starring role.
The Castle of Otranto
, a burlesque of Horace Walpole's gothic novel, brought to life a monstrous, robotic giant, of a size too immense to completely fit in the playhouse's sizeable stage, and thus appearing in parts: in one scene, a giant head rolls its eyes, smiles, and thumbs its nose; in another, immense arms converged from the wings upon human actors, clutching, lifting, shaking, and then dropping them; or, in the climactic scene, a gigantic arm rose from the stage, drew a sword, and hacked down a life-sized castle tower.

One can imagine young John Francis, not only helping to design this immense and complicated machinery, but also, lithe and quickwitted, clambering into the stage machinery in order to operate it. On a February night in 1841 he performed before the Queen, who stayed to watch the pantomime after viewing all of
A Midsummer Night's Dream
. For all the effort of Francis and his fellow machinists, the Queen very likely was not amused; she was truly eclectic in her love of performance, but of all forms of entertainment, she liked pantomime least—noting in her journal after one that it was “noisy and nonsensical as usual.”

Francis seemed to have the skill to continue in the theatre for as long as his father had. But after his quarrel with his father at the end of 1841, he turned his back on Covent Garden and on his family. Francis's move, as it happens, was a prescient one, for, a few months after he left, the Vestris-Mathews management had collapsed, and the pair had finished their third season in serious arrears. Charles James Mathews was arrested for debt and had spent the two weeks before Good's execution at Queen's Bench Prison. Covent Garden never completely survived as a full-fledged theatre
after this season; successive managers experienced even greater losses, and after extensive renovations, the theatre finally found success opening in 1847 as an opera house—which it is today.

Why did Francis quit? Perhaps he suffered under the oppression of too many employers—his own father, Sloman the head machinist, George Bartley the stage manager, Vestris and Mathews—and perhaps, in Francis's mind, the Queen. Perhaps the demands on his time—hours of preparation every day, followed by five hours of frantic scene-shifting—were simply too great for someone of Francis's character: Robert Gibbs, the proprietor of the Caledonian Coffee House, who had endless opportunities to observe him, considered him “idle and reckless.” Perhaps, despite his talent at carpentry, his interests lay elsewhere: he wrote poetry, for one thing, and preferred musing over coffee to seeking work. Perhaps he simply considered that carpentry would never provide him with the wealth he dreamed of.

His actions a year before had demonstrated his discontent with the life he was living. On 14 July 1841, between Covent Garden seasons, Francis was arrested on suspicion of stealing more than thirty-two sovereigns from an 85-year-old man he had met at a coffee house. While visiting the man in his lodgings, Francis excused himself to wash his hands; the old man later discovered the money gone from a box in his bedroom. Francis was jailed for three days, until the charge was dismissed for lack of evidence. The officer who arrested him, Inspector Maclean of the City police, was certain that he had committed the robbery, but a search of his room at his family's home turned up nothing.

The episode could not have improved relations with his family; now, on this day—23 May 1842—as he prepared to open his tobacconist's shop to make his fortune, he knew he could not look to them for support. Charles Johns, an outfitter of chemists and tobacconists, would in two days, on Wednesday, be delivering a full inventory to Francis's shop, and he would be expecting full
payment on delivery. Francis thus needed hundreds of pounds, but he had nothing; he would need to sell much of the stock before he could hope to pay for it. To fill his shop, then, he had lied to Johns outright, presenting himself as a young man with great expectations. He told Johns that his grandmother had recently died, and that once the executors to her will signed off on the necessary documents, he would be in possession of several thousand pounds. Johns, amazingly, believed Francis, and drew up the agreement. The goods would arrive on Wednesday—when Francis would have to come up with a further excuse to delay payment.

On Wednesday morning, Johns's men drew up in a cab to 63 Mortimer Street and unloaded into the shop all that Francis needed to commence business: bundles of Havana cigars (and imitation Havanas), bales of loose Virginia and Middle Eastern tobacco, packages of snuff; clay and meerschaum pipes—perhaps even a hookah or two—and very likely canisters of a patent medicinal snuff popular in 1842: “Grimstone's Eye Snuff,” promising “cataract, inflammations, and all other diseases of the eye and head completely eradicated, glasses left off after using them 20 years, and the breath rendered impervious to contagion.” With the stock laid in and his name on the door, Francis commenced selling—or, at least, commenced waiting for custom. Few, if anyone, came in on that day. Francis's friends at the coffee house, and the youth he slept next to, William Elam, were startled by Francis's sudden foray into keeping shop, and dubious about his prospects; but until this moment, it must have seemed so simple to Francis: take in stock, sell it at a profit, replenish the stock, sell that—and in time make his fortune. Now, he realized that success would take time—time that he did not have.

Charles Johns was the one certain visitor to Francis's shop on this day; he came for his payment. Francis fended him off: the executors of his grandmother's will were being difficult, delaying on signing off on his inheritance. They had promised, however, to call on him at the shop at noon tomorrow—Thursday; they would
then comply the terms of the will, and give him his thousands, after which Francis could pay Johns immediately.

Again, remarkably, Johns agreed to wait. When he returned to Francis's lonely shop at noon Thursday, however, he returned with a companion, ready to confiscate all of the shop's contents. Francis had another excuse ready. The executors were creating problems; he now knew that his grandmother's thousands would not be soon forthcoming, and that he could not hope to discharge his debt completely. He proposed instead a renegotiation of the deal: by the next day—Friday—he would borrow £10 from “the old man” and with that, make a payment on the whole; he would pay the rest in installments.

And Johns agreed one more time to wait a day—or, quite possibly, he walked out of the shop on Thursday fully intending to bring a larger crew to clean it out on Friday.

Francis knew that he could no longer stall with excuses. He had to come up the cash overnight. He also knew that coming up with £10 honestly was impossible. The proceeds of the shop so far had amounted to a few coppers. The “old man” might have enough money, but Francis could not—would not—go to him now. And he must have been aware of the skepticism about his project shown by his friends and his roommate. He could not hope to borrow £10 from them for this. He felt cornered and desperate. To gain his future of respectability and riches, he would have to commit one—just one—despicable act of robbery.

Francis was, according to those who knew him, “good-tempered” and “inoffensive,” a sober lad, patron of coffee houses—not public houses or gin palaces—who came to his meals regularly and did not stay out late at night. On this Thursday night, then, he likely dined with the Fosters at the usual time and climbed early into bed next to William Elam, ready for a full day's work on Friday. And he must have done his best to appear untroubled, even cheerful, for he would not want anyone at the house on Great Titchfield Street to know of his desperate resolve.

nine

R
OYAL
T
HEATRE

O
n that same Thursday night, 26 May 1842, Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, and their household set out from Buckingham Palace in six carriages for the short drive down the Mall, past St. James's and the gentlemen's clubs on Pall Mall to the Queen's favorite theatre: Her Majesty's, Haymarket. Usually, that theatre housed the Italian Opera, just reaching the peak of its season with performances of Donizetti's
Lucia di Lammermoor
and
Lucrezia Borgia
. Tonight, however, the royal couple had not come to hear the soprano Persiani or the celebrated tenor Mario sing. Tonight, Victoria and Albert were themselves to be the star attractions, performing before a packed house.

Just before 10:30, the carriages drew up to the entrance on Charles Street reserved exclusively for the Queen's use. Victoria and Albert, with their visiting uncle Count Mensdorff-Pouilly, descended from the last carriage to meet the Count's four sons, who had emerged from the carriage in front of them. Together
they entered the theatre and waited a few moments for the Duchess of Kent and her suite to arrive. They ascended to the royal box, which had on this night been converted into an antechamber that opened through a scarlet curtain to a magnificent, white and gold Corinthian-pillared royal pavilion—draped with crimson damask, lined with glowing velvet, trimmed with gold lace—extending into the center of the theatre. As they came into view, the sounds of a thousand humming voices and one of two full orchestras suddenly hushed, and a “simultaneous sensation of delight” thrilled the audience. Victoria looked down and around to see Her Majesty's Theatre magically transformed. The pit was covered over and raised to the level of the stage, forming an enormous ballroom floor. The walls around the boxes and the stage were festooned with the richest of fabrics—silks, satins, and velvets—in a rainbow of colors. Suits of armor and displays of weaponry brought in from the Tower of London by royal command ranged the stage and bedecked the walls. Extra gas chandeliers had been rigged up inside and outside the pavilion to illuminate the house and the royal party in particular. Gazing from floor below to boxes above, Victoria saw a “perfect crush”: 2,300 of her subjects, the men in their nattiest suits and uniforms, the women in brilliant new dresses of the finest silk.

For a few moments, there was a quiet confusion; no one quite knew whether the etiquette of the situation called for acknowledging the royal presence. Then both orchestras struck up the National Anthem, and all doubt was removed; the crowd burst into cheers.

It was the beginning of a triumphant evening for Victoria, the second ball she had thrown this month, in which she demanded that her wealthiest subjects display shameless, highly conspicuous consumption. Admission to this ball had been pricey: a guinea to join the crowd on the ballroom floor; five guineas to let the best boxes; five shillings apiece to observe the finery from the upper gallery. Anyone able to afford tickets and appropriate
couture
was welcome. The draw, of course, was the spectacle of the splendidly
dressed royal couple, appearing as it were both in state and on stage, greeting notables and condescending to observe the festivities from their elevated state and station.

Two weeks before this ball, the British nobility had had their chance to display their wealth when the Queen threw at Buckingham Palace a glorious, invitation-only
masque
or costume ball, an event which the papers of the day unanimously deemed the social event of the century. The theme was medieval. Albert came elaborately dressed and bejeweled as Edward III, the hero-king of the Hundred Years' War, and Victoria came as his faithful (and fertile) queen, Philippa. Others masqueraded as monarchs and courtiers of all of Europe, and beyond: elaborately attired as French, Germans, and Spaniards,
Cosaques
and Saracens, Highlanders, Knights Templars, and Hungarians. The elite among the guests were organized into various
quadrilles
representing each foreign court. They assembled in the Palace's lower rooms and were led by heralds up the throne room, where they passed before Victoria and Albert, made obeisance to the couple, sitting above them on elaborate gothic-revival thrones, and danced in accordance with the nations they represented. The latest in Victorian technology—530 jets of naphthalized gas—spotlit the thrones and drew all eyes to the royal couple.