London Calling.
London Walks connecting.
This is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets Ahead.
Story time. History time.
Good morning London.
And good morning, London Walkers, wherever you are.
Yesterday we watched six young watermen pulling their boats up the Thames.
We watched the oldest rowing race in the world.
Doggett’s Coat and Badge.
Today I’d like to introduce you to the man who dreamt it up.
Because that’s what happens here.
You pick up a scent and follow it.
One London story opens the door to another.
Thomas Doggett.
The name isn’t nearly as well known as the race.
Which is a pity.
Because he turns out to have been quite a character.
Actor.
Comedian.
Playwright.
Theatre manager.
Entrepreneur.
Political firebrand.
Businessman.
And, by all accounts, one of the funniest men in London.
He was born in Dublin around 1670.
We know almost nothing about his childhood.
But we do know this.
By his early teens he was already acting.
Then, like so many gifted Irish actors after him, he crossed the Irish Sea and made London his stage.
Thomas Doggett was one of the first.
He certainly wasn’t the last.
His London debut came in January 1691 at Drury Lane.
The role?
Deputy Nincompoop.
Now there’s a title to put on your CV.
Some actors make their entrance as Hamlet.
Others as Macbeth.
Thomas Doggett arrived in London as Deputy Nincompoop.
I don’t know about you, but that rather endeared him to me immediately.
And here’s another little mystery.
Nobody really knows where the word “nincompoop” comes from.
Even Samuel Johnson had a crack at explaining it.
He probably got it wrong.
Which somehow seems entirely appropriate.
A year later Doggett landed the role that made his name.
He played Solon in Thomas D’Urfey’s comedy The Marriage-Hater Matched.
The play was a hit.
The newspapers said the playwright ought to hand Doggett half the profits because half the success was down to him.
Imagine getting a review like that.
Not, “Excellent performance.”
More, “Without this fellow we’d have been sunk.”
Over the next twenty years Thomas Doggett became one of the great comic actors of the London stage.
John Downes, the theatre historian, called him “the only Comick Original now Extant.”
I love that phrase.
“The only Comick Original.”
In other words, there wasn’t anybody else quite like him.
Then came one of the biggest compliments an actor can receive.
William Congreve began writing parts with Doggett in mind.
Pause for a moment.
Congreve.
One of the greatest comic playwrights in the English language.
The author of The Way of the World.
If Congreve wanted you in his cast, you were doing something very right indeed.
He created characters specifically for Doggett.
Not because Doggett happened to fit them.
Because nobody else could.
It’s a little like having a Savile Row tailor make you a suit.
Only this was a theatrical part.
Cut to measure.
Tailor-made for Thomas Doggett.
And Doggett repaid the compliment.
Colley Cibber, another great actor of the age, said Doggett had an extraordinary gift.
He didn’t simply wear a costume.
He became the character.
He found the walk.
The stance.
The voice.
The little mannerisms.
He once appeared as Sancho Panza and delivered a prologue sitting on a donkey.
Now that’s making an entrance.
Forget smoke machines.
Forget laser lighting.
Send for the donkey.
He could sing as well.
John Dryden praised his voice.
He even played Shylock.
Comedy was his kingdom.
But he wasn’t confined to it.
Doggett wasn’t content merely to wait for good parts to come along.
He wrote one for himself.
Naturally, he gave himself the best role.
The play was called The Country Wake.
Doggett played Hob.
The audience loved it.
He later reworked it into a shorter piece, Hob, or, The Country Wake.
It ran for decades.
In modern language, Thomas Doggett had created a hit franchise.
Not bad for the fellow who’d begun as Deputy Nincompoop.
But there was another side to Thomas Doggett.
The man behind the laughter.
And, in some ways, he’s even more interesting than the actor.
Funny men are often underestimated.
People assume that because somebody can make us laugh, they must somehow be lightweight.
Thomas Doggett wasn’t.
He was as formidable behind the scenes as he was funny on the stage.
He understood contracts.
He understood business.
And he certainly understood his own worth.
He moved back and forth between rival theatre companies, playing one offer against another.
Today we’d call it career management.
His employers may have called it something rather different.
Then came a showdown with Christopher Rich, the notoriously difficult manager of Drury Lane.
Doggett had gone off to Norwich, where he was managing a company of actors.
Rich wanted him back.
A warrant was issued.
Doggett was summoned before the courts.
Was he intimidated?
Not according to his friend and fellow actor Colley Cibber.
“He was not, in the least intimidated.”
Doggett stood his ground.
He won.
And Cibber delivered one of those marvellous lines that leap across three centuries.
The people who’d tried to bully Thomas Doggett, he said, “had mistaken their man.”
Indeed they had.
Doggett might make a living playing fools.
He most certainly wasn’t one.
Years later he became embroiled in another dispute over the ownership of the Drury Lane Theatre.
Once again he dug in his heels.
His position was crystal clear.
“Nothing but the Law” would make him surrender his share.
There’s the whole fellow in a nutshell.
Warm.
Funny.
Determined.
Stubborn as an old oak.
And then, just to demonstrate that he possessed talents extending beyond the stage and the courtroom, Thomas Doggett married exceedingly well.
A contemporary newspaper announced that his bride was “a gentlewoman of £20,000 fortune.”
Twenty thousand pounds.
In 1718.
That wasn’t merely comfortable.
It was a fortune people talked about.
Which, in fact, they did.
Mind you, Doggett wasn’t exactly destitute before the wedding bells rang.
Years as London’s leading comic actor, playwright and theatre manager had seen to that.
But the marriage certainly didn’t do the household finances any harm.
Then came the gesture that guaranteed Thomas Doggett a place in London history.
He was a committed Whig.
He warmly welcomed the accession of George I in 1714.
Yesterday I neglected to mention why the race is held on the first of August.
That date marked the anniversary of George I’s accession to the throne.
Doggett wanted to celebrate the new Protestant dynasty.
So he endowed a race for young watermen.
A scarlet coat.
A silver badge.
And a tradition that, remarkably, is still alive.
Take a close look at that silver badge and you’ll see the White Horse of Hanover.
At first glance it looks like the emblem of a foreign dynasty.
But perhaps it wasn’t quite as foreign as it seemed.
After all, the legendary founders of Anglo-Saxon England were Hengest and Horsa.
Stallion and Horse – that’s what the names Hengest and Horsa mean.
The Hanoverians inherited the ancient White Horse of Saxony.
England already had the White Horse of Kent.
The White Horse of Uffington.
The chalk horses galloping across the downs.
Symbols have long memories.
George I crossed the North Sea in 1714.
The White Horse had crossed it rather earlier.
But back to our man, Doggett. He retired from the stage in 1717.
He died four years later.
He was buried at Eltham.
Curiously, nobody can say with certainty what he looked like.
There are portraits said to be Thomas Doggett.
But none has been securely identified.
The face has faded.
The legacy hasn’t.
And there’s one more little reminder of him that always gives me pleasure.
On the south side of Blackfriars Bridge there’s a pub called Doggett’s Coat & Badge.
Strictly speaking, it’s named after the prize awarded to the winner of the race.
But one step removed, it’s named after Thomas Doggett himself.
I’ve always liked where it stands.
A watering hole by the water.
Shakespeare’s Globe just downstream.
The National Theatre just upstream.
The river’s his green room. Shakespeare’s Globe one way. The National Theatre the other.
Come to think of it, I suspect a good many actors would rather have a thriving pub named after them than a handprint in the pavement.
Yesterday we celebrated Doggett’s race.
Today we’ve celebrated Doggett himself.
His creation became more famous than its creator.
Which seems just a little unfair.
So perhaps, over these last couple of mornings, we’ve quietly put that right.
Thomas Doggett.
Actor.
Manager.
Entrepreneur.
Legal terrier.
Committed Whig.
Founder of the world’s oldest rowing race.
Not bad for the fellow who first walked onto a London stage as Deputy Nincompoop.
There’s a general principle at work here. The more you know about something the more interesting it becomes. So you’re well and truly set up now. If you watch this year’s Doggett’s Coat and Badge Race you’ll be better equipped than any other spectator lining the banks of the Thames. Because you know the man behind the race.
Thomas Doggett.
And there you go, you’ve just quaffed your daily London fix. See you tomorrow.