"His Majesty has sent me ten guineas because I am poor and live in an alley. Go and tell him his soul lives in an alley."
Jonson died on the 6th August, 1637, having long outlived his wife and all his children.
It is curious still to note how many of our literary lions began to make their way in the world, as Jonson did, on the stage. It was so with William Leman Rede, who, starting as an actor at Margate (the Margate boards formed indeed the porch through which a very large number of histrionic aspirants entered the theatrical profession), became an itinerant actor, at one time playing Hamlet in a barn and at another Rover on a billiard-table; sometimes foodless and hungry, travelling on foot and sometimes luxuriating in a waggon, but always light-hearted and gay. Once when he was laughing merrily at the plight he was in on a "treasury day," when, in the phraseology of the profession, "the ghost didn't walk," that is to say when there was no money in hand to pay the actors' salaries, some one asked how he continued to be jolly under such miserably depressing circumstances. He replied, "I drink spring water and dance." Rede was always a sober, abstemious man. Coming to London in 1825, he published his first novel, 'The Wedded Wanderer,' which was followed by a second, 'The White Tower,' each in three volumes. This was followed by his 'Crimes and Criminals in Yorkshire,' and his connection with a weekly publication belonging to his brother Thomas, called _Oxberry's Dramatic Biography_--Thomas having married the widow of Oxberry the comedian, by whom the serial had been started.
As actor, magazine writer, dramatist, journalist and novelist Rede acquired fame but not wealth. One evening he was arrested for debt while acting on the stage, by a sheriff's officer, who sprang from the pit over the orchestra and footlights to secure his prisoner. Rede originated the Dramatic Authors' Society.
Sheridan, to whom I have previously alluded, was another famous literary man familiar with the boards and--need I say?--with impecuniosity. He was, according to Haydon, "in debt all round to milkman, grocer, baker, and butcher. Sometimes his wife would be kept waiting for an hour or more while the servants were beating up the neighbourhood for coffee, butter, eggs and rolls. While Sheridan was Paymaster of the Navy, a butcher one day brought a leg of mutton; the cook took it and clapped it in the pot to boil and went upstairs for the money, but the cook not returning, the butcher removed the pot-lid, took out the mutton, and walked away with it." On another occasion Michael Kelly, the musical celebrity, was complaining to him of a wine merchant at Hochheim who instead of six dozen of wine had sent him sixteen. Sheridan said he would take some off his hands if he were not quite able to pay for it, but, said he, "you can get rid of it easily, put up a sign over your door and write on it, 'Michael Kelly, Composer of Wines and Importer of Music;'" a sly rub which the composer received with a laugh, wittily retorting that there was one wine so poisonous and intoxicating that he would neither compose nor import, and that was "Old Sherry" (Sheridan's nickname).