Wicked Company (2 page)

Fictional Characters

(In order of appearance)

DANIEL MCGANN

bookseller-printer

SOPHIE HAMILTON MCGANN

dramatist-printer

LORD LEMORE

REVEREND MR. MEEKER

HUNTER ROBERTSON

juggler-dance master-actor-manager

JEAN HUNTER ROBERTSON

singer

RORY ROBERTSON

harpist

HARRIET MCGANN ASHBY

bookseller-printer

LORNA BLOUNT

dancer

MARY ANN SKENE

prostitute

MAVIS PIGGOTT

actress-dramatist

RODERICK DARNLY (
LATER
VISCOUNT GLYN
AND
EARL OF LLEWELYN)

SIR PETER LINDSAY-HOYT, BARONET

MRS. HOOD

housekeeper

TREVOR BEDLOE

estate factor

VAUGHN DARNLY, VISCOUNT GLYN

ROWENA DARNLY, COUNTESS OF LLEWELYN

BASIL DARNLY, EARL OF LLEWELYN

MR. BEEZLE

barrister

CAPTAIN MARSHALL

sea captain

MR. LASLEY

barrister

Historical Figures

MRS. FRANCES ABINGTON, 1737–1815

actress

DOMINICO ANGELO, C. 1760S

Drury Lane special effects director

JOHN ARTHUR, 1708?–1772

Orchard St. theater manager-actor

WILLIAM BATTIE, 1703–1776

physician

JOHN BEARD, 1716–1791

Covent Garden manager

DAVID BEATT, c. 1760s,

playhouse manager

APHRA BEHN, 1640–1689

novelist-dramatist

JAMES BOSWELL, 1740–1795

journalist-barrister-biographer

MR. BRYAN, c. 1760s

Orchard St. prompter

EDMUND BURKE, 1729–1797

Irish statesman-philosopher

EDWARD CAPELL, 1713–1781

Deputy Examiner of plays-Shakespeare scholar

DOROTHEA CELESIA, 1738–1790

dramatist

SUSANNAH CENTLIVRE, c. 1667–c.1723

dramatist

KITTY CLIVE, 1711–1785

actress-dramatist

MR. COLLINS, d. 1783

Drury Lane doorkeeper

GEORGE COLMAN, 1732–1794

theater manager-dramatist

WILLIAM CREECH, 1745–1815

publisher

TOM DAVIES, 1712–1785

actor-bookseller-printer

SAMUEL DERRICK, 1724–1769

author-master of ceremonies, Bath

CHARLES DIBDIN, 1745–1814

songwriter-dramatist

DAVID DOUGLASS, c. 1770s

American Company manager

THADDEUS FITZPATRICK, c. 1760s

rioter

SAMUEL FOOTE, 1720–1777

dramatist-actor-manager

DR. FORD, C. 1770S

Drury Lane Patentee

DAVID GARRICK, 1717–1779

actor-manager-dramatist-Patentee

EVA-MARIA GARRICK, 1724–1822

dancer

GEORGE GARRICK, 1723–1779

theater servant

KING GEORGE III, 1738–1820

King of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales

ANNE CATHERINE GREEN, c. 1767–1777

printer-publisher

ELIZABETH GRIFFITH, 1727–1793

dramatist

THOMAS HARRIS, d. 1820

Covent Garden manager-Patentee

ELIZA HAYWOOD, c.1693–1756

novelist-dramatist

JOHN HENRY, c. 1770s

American Company manager

WILLIAM HOPKINS, d.1780

Drury Lane prompter

WILLIAM HUNT, c. 1760s

Stratford town clerk

MR. JACKSON, c. 1760s

Tavistock Street costumer

DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON, 1709–1784

lexicographer-writer-critic

JAMES LACY, 1696–1774

Drury Lane theater manager

WILLOUGHBY LACY, 1749–1822

actor-Drury Lane Patentee

MR. LATIMORE, c. 1760s

Stratford Jubilee architect

ELIZABETH LINLEY, 1754–1792

singer (later Mrs. Richard Sheridan)

THOMAS LINLEY, 1732–1795

composer-Drury Lane Patentee

JAMES LOVE, 1721–1774

actor

MRS. JAMES LOVE, c.1719–1807

actress

SALLY LUNN, c. 1680

Bath baker

SIR JAMES MANSFIELD, 1733–1821

Chief Justice, Court of Common Pleas

DR. JOHN MONRO, 1715–1791

Bethlehem Hospital director

HANNAH MORE, 1745–1833

dramatist-essayist

CONSTABLE MUNRO, c. 1760s

city of Edinburgh

RICHARD (“BEAU”) NASH, 1674–1762

master of ceremonies, Bath

JOHN PAYTON c.1760s

Stratford innkeeper

MRS. (PERKINS) PHILLIPS, c. 1760–1780

Green Canister apothecary

HANNAH PRITCHARD, 1709–1768

actress

MR. & MRS. REYNOLDS, c. 1770s

Annapolis tavern keepers

THOMAS ROSOMAN, c.1746–1772

Sadlers’ Wells owner

FRANCES SHERIDAN, 1724–1766

novelist-dramatist

RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN, 1751–1816

dramatist-manager-Parliamentarian

THOMAS SHERIDAN, 1719–1788

actor-manager-educator

PEG WOFFINGTON, 1720–1760

actress

Book 1

1761-1762

Thro’ all the drama—whether damned or not—

Love gilds the scene, and women guide the plot.

—Richard Brinsley Sheridan, “Epilogue,”
The Rivals

One

E
DINBURGH,
M
AY 1761

Sophie, lass! Quickly! Hide your book!” Daniel McGann urged his daughter, as he peered anxiously through the square windowpanes at the front of his small book shop. Outside, a group of dour, somberly attired men were striding like avenging angels along Edinburgh’s High Street. “’Tis the kirk elders!” he confirmed, wringing his ink-stained hands. “They’re coming this way!”

Sophie sprang from her stool in front of the diminutive hearth that was the shop’s only source of heat. She quickly shoved her copy of Fielding’s
Tom Jones,
along with Rousseau’s novel
La Nouvelle Heloise,
beneath a pile of pungent chunks of peat stored in a wooden box next to the fire. Without further instructions, she grabbed several other books that she, even at the age of sixteen, knew would be judged “ungodly” by the gaggle of religious fanatics bearing down on her father’s book-and-printing establishment. Swiftly she stashed the offending volumes behind a row of Bibles displayed prominently on one of the front shelves and reserved precisely for just such an emergency.

Daniel McGann, his gray periwig slightly askew and his upper lip sheened with sweat, was greatly alarmed that for the second time in scarcely a month his shop was the apparent target of the wrath of Calvinist churchmen from nearby St. Giles Cathedral. The local Presbyterian clergy had long voiced disapproval of the novels, plays, and engravings that had made McGann’s one of the most popular gathering places for the
literati
in Edinburgh. From the angry looks on their faces today, the zealots seemed determined to drive McGann’s out of business.

Somber bells in the church tower overhead tolled the noon hour as Daniel McGann reached beneath a counter and pushed several parcels wrapped in outdated theater playbills into Sophie’s hands.

“Out the back portal with you!” he croaked over the tolling bells. “Deliver the thin packet to Lord Lemore and the thick one to the Canongate Playhouse.” As his daughter bolted toward the rear exit, he called after her, “Hurry, now! And mind that you collect the siller for ’em! We’ve scarcely two Scots pennies in the till.”

Making her escape, Sophie heard the sound of the front door opening as the imperious men in black once again invaded her father’s domain. She sped through the back room that housed the small wooden hand press and a variety of implements that comprised their modest printing business. Several sheets from a recently completed order hung drying on lengths of cord stretched across the back of the low-ceilinged chamber. As she rushed through the squat door at the rear of the press room that was permeated with a perpetual smell of carbon black and linseed oil, she prayed—blasphemously, she supposed—that no offending political broadside, pamphlet, or chapbook would be inadvertently discovered by the raiding churchmen. Pausing to listen, she heard a chorus of angry voices fill the front chamber.

“Vile works!
Abominations!”
a voice thundered from inside the shop. “You, sir, traffic in the Devil’s commerce!”

Those squawking black vultures should leave us alone!
Sophie thought defiantly as she darted down the narrow alleyway shadowed by St. Giles’s bell tower looming overhead.

Inside her father’s book shop, the churchmen were systematically pulling books from the shelves and flinging them onto the flagstones beneath their feet.

“We’ve given you ample warning, McGann,” the Reverend Mr. Meeker pronounced, “yet
still
you trade in the works of Satan!”

Daniel McGann stared with growing dismay at the pile of volumes by the likes of Defoe, Molière, and the dramatist William Congreve, heaped on the floor next to his desk.

“Surely you don’t consider Shakespeare—” Daniel began to protest, as he watched several of the bard’s comedies join the pile.

“’Tis bawdry!” Reverend Meeker retorted. “Full of jesters and fools mouthing blasphemy. ’Tis intolerable!”

Briefly, Daniel imagined how his wife, Margaret, would have responded to such an invasion, such absurd pronouncements. When Margaret was alive, her dark head bent over her weekly correspondence with the best book agents in London, he had boldly challenged the arguments and actions of these kirk zealots and had been a leader in local efforts to beat back the meddling churchmen’s attempts to dictate cultural and religious standards to the entire city.

But that was before the bleak winter when the tumor had first appeared on his wife’s neck, the malignancy that had squeezed the breath and life out of the poor woman by the time nearby Whinny Hill was splashed with autumn heather. These days, he could barely summon the energy to peruse his stock of books, much less battle the fanatics holding forth from the pulpit next door. Many buyers had stayed away and sales were dwindling. When he was forced to sack his clerk, Sophie, bless her, had taken over minding the accounts‚ and had acquired a working knowledge of the shop’s inventory. She had even learned the skills necessary to run the small printing press in the back chamber where broadsides, chapbooks, and playbills earned them much needed extra income.

“Have you been struck
dumb,
McGann?” demanded the rotund Reverend Meeker. “I’m asking you to forswear selling such ungodly texts in future, or stand ready to accept the dire consequences that God shall mete out! What
say
you?”