* * * * *

In fine, Master Colley resolved that it would be the course of wisdom to stay at Drury Lane, where he seems to have enjoyed to an unusual degree the confidence of the very manager whom afterwards he did not hesitate to abuse.  So when Cibber came up to London from Gloucestershire, where he had been spending his vacation, he returned to the fold of his old master.

* * * * *

“But I found our company so thinn’d that it was almost impracticable to bring any one tolerable play upon the stage.  When I ask’d him where were his actors, and in what manner he intended to proceed? he reply’d, Don’t you trouble yourself, come along, and I’ll shew you.

“He then led me about all the by-places in the house, and shew’d me fifty little backdoors, dark closets, and narrow passages in alterations and contrivances of which kind he had busied his head most part of the vacation; for he was scarce ever without some notable joyner or a bricklayer extraordinary, in pay, for twenty years.  And there are so many odd obscure places about a theatre, that his genius in nook-building was never out of employment, nor could the most vain-headed author be more deaf to an interruption in reciting his works, than our wise master was while entertaining me with the improvements he had made in his invisible architecture; all which, without thinking any one part of it necessary, tho’ I seem’d to approve, I could not help now and then breaking in upon his delight with the impertinent question of—­But, Master, where are your actors?”

* * * * *

This exhibition of a spirit so commonplace and inartistic proved too much for Cibber.  Perhaps he might have pardoned it had there been no salary owing him, for your greatest apostle of the drama will sometimes do a good deal of winking at glaring inconsistencies when a money quid pro quo looms up in the distance.  Here was a case, however, where the quid pro quo loomed not at all, and the author of the “Careless Husband” became correspondingly disgusted.  I told him (Rich) I came to serve him at a time when many of his best actors had deserted him; that he might now have the refusal of me; but I could not afford to carry the compliment so far as to lessen my income by it; that I therefore expected either my casual pay to be advanced, or the payment of my former sallary made certain for as many days as we had acted the year before.  No, he was not willing to alter his former method; but I might chuse whatever parts I had a mind to act of theirs who had left him.

* * * * *

“When I found him, as I thought, so insensible, or impregnable, I look’d gravely in his face, and told him—­He knew upon what terms I was willing to serve him, and took my leave.”

* * * * *

Shortly after the interview Cibber joined the Haymarket company, and one result of his defection was an open quarrel between Rich and Swiney.