TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
The oe ligature has been replaced by 'oe' or 'OE'.
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within
the text and consultation of external sources.
More detail can be found at the end of the book.
NOTE.--_Three Hundred copies of this Edition printed on fine deckle-edge
Royal 8vo paper. The fifty Portraits are given in duplicate, one
on Japanese and the other on plate paper, as India proofs._
_Each of these copies is numbered._
_No._ ........
"Their Majesties' Servants"
DR. DORAN, F.S.A.
VOLUME THE SECOND
Ballantyne Press
BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO.
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
[Illustration:(Frontispiece, Garrick and his Wife)]
"_THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS_"
ANNALS
OF
THE ENGLISH STAGE
FROM
THOMAS BETTERTON TO EDMUND KEAN
BY
DR. DORAN, F.S.A.
_EDITED AND REVISED BY ROBERT W. LOWE_
With Fifty Copperplate Portraits and Eighty Wood Engravings
_IN THREE VOLUMES_
VOLUME THE SECOND
LONDON
JOHN C. NIMMO
14, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND
MDCCCLXXXVIII
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. PAGE
MRS. OLDFIELD 1
CHAPTER II.
FROM THE DEATH OF ANNE OLDFIELD TO THAT OF WILKS 21
CHAPTER III.
ROBERT WILKS 32
CHAPTER IV.
ENTER GARRICK 49
CHAPTER V.
GARRICK, QUIN, MRS. PORTER 71
CHAPTER VI.
RIVALRY; AND ENTER, SPRANGER BARRY 86
CHAPTER VII.
THE OLD DUBLIN THEATRE 99
CHAPTER VIII.
GARRICK AND QUIN; GARRICK AND BARRY 108
CHAPTER IX.
THE AUDIENCES OF 1700-1750 127
CHAPTER X.
EXIT, JAMES QUIN 160
CHAPTER XI.
ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND 181
CHAPTER XII.
MARGARET WOFFINGTON 198
CHAPTER XIII.
COLLEY CIBBER 213
CHAPTER XIV.
ENGLAND AND IRELAND 240
CHAPTER XV.
RYAN, RICH, O'BRIEN 253
CHAPTER XVI.
SUSANNA MARIA CIBBER 268
CHAPTER XVII.
REAPPEARANCE OF SPRANGER BARRY--RETIREMENT OF MRS.
PRITCHARD 277
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE LAST YEARS OF GARRICK AND BARRY 290
CHAPTER XIX.
DAVID GARRICK 304
CHAPTER XX.
SPRANGER AND ANNE BARRY 336
CHAPTER XXI.
KITTY CLIVE, WOODWARD, AND SHUTER 354
CHAPTER XXII.
SAMUEL FOOTE 371
LIST OF COPPERPLATE PORTRAITS.
VOLUME II.
ENGRAVED BY MESSRS. ANNAN & SWAN, LONDON.
PAGE
I. GARRICK AND HIS WIFE { Painted by Zoffany, the }
PLAYING PIQUET { property of Henry Graves, } _Frontispiece_
{ Esq., Pall Mall }
II. MRS. OLDFIELD From a rare mezzotint by Simon 8
III. ROBERT WILKS { From the original painting by }
{ J. Ellys } 38
IV. THEOPHILUS CIBBER From the Worlidge Collection 49
V. DAVID GARRICK 74
VI. GEORGE ANNE BELLAMY 95
VII. MR. MOSSOP From the original by Mortimer 125
VIII. PEG WOFFINGTON Painted by J. Haytley 200
IX. MRS. YATES From a rare engraving 242
X. MRS. CIBBER 272
XI. MRS. PRITCHARD 282
XII. MR. MACKLIN 299
XIII. SPRANGER BARRY 344
XIV. KITTY CLIVE { From the original at Strawberry }
{ Hill } 359
XV. SAMUEL FOOTE Painted by F. Colson, 1769 380
XVI. TATE WILKINSON From the original by F. Atkinson 394
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ON WOOD.
VOLUME II.
ENGRAVED BY DEL. ORME & BUTLER, LONDON, AND PRINTED ON JAPANESE PAPER
BY ED. BADOUREAU, LONDON.
PAGE
1. MRS. OLDFIELD 1
2. GOODMAN'S FIELDS THEATRE 21
3. PEG WOFFINGTON--From a painting by Pond 32
4. GARRICK'S BIRTHPLACE, HEREFORD 49
5. IPSWICH THEATRE--In which Garrick made his first
appearance 71
6. A PIT ADMISSION CHECK--Goodman's Fields Theatre 86
7. JAMES LACY 99
8. GARRICK AND MRS. ABINGTON IN THE "SUSPICIOUS
HUSBAND" 108
9. WOODWARD IN "EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR" 127
10. QUIN AS CORIOLANUS 160
11. OLD THEATRE ROYAL, EDINBURGH--1769-1859 181
12. MRS. GARRICK--Painted by Hogarth 198
13. THEOPHILUS CIBBER--Drawing by Hogarth 213
14. THEATRE ROYAL, DUBLIN 240
15. RICH AS HARLEQUIN--1753 253
16. THEATRE ROYAL, DRURY LANE 268
17. DAVID GARRICK--From a miniature by Louisa Lane 277
18. GARRICK'S HOUSE, HAMPTON 290
19. GARRICK BETWEEN TRAGEDY AND COMEDY 304
20. MR. AND MRS. BARRY IN "TAMERLANE" 336
21. KITTY CLIVE'S HOUSE, TWICKENHAM 354
22. MR. FOOTE AS MRS. COLE IN "THE MINOR" 371
LIST OF TAILPIECES ON WOOD.
VOLUME II.
PAGE
1. MRS. CLIVE AS MRS. HEIDELBERG 20
2. MR. CLARKE AS ANTONIO 48
3. MRS. YATES AS LADY MACBETH 126
4. MR. MACKLIN AS SHYLOCK 159
5. MR. KING AS LORD OGLEBY 180
6. MR. POWELL AS LOVEWELL 212
7. MR. POWELL AS CYRUS 252
8. MR. GARRICK AS MACBETH 289
9. MR. GARRICK AS SIR JOHN BRUTE 335
10. MR. SHUTER AS JUSTICE WOODCOCK 370
11. MRS. YATES AS MANDANE 406
[Illustration: MRS. OLDFIELD.]
CHAPTER I.
MRS. OLDFIELD.
Artists who have been wont to look into the _Vicar of Wakefield_,
_Gil Blas_, and last century comedies, for picturesque subjects,
would find account in referring to the lives of our actresses. Here
is not a bad picture of its class. The time is at the close of the
seventeenth century; the scene is at the Mitre Tavern in St. James's
Market, kept by one Mrs. Voss. It is a quiet summer evening, and
after the fatigues of the day are over, and before the later business
of the night has commenced, that buxom lady is reclining in an easy
chair, listening to a fair and bright young creature, her sister,[1]
who is reading aloud, and is enjoying what she reads. Her eyes, like
Kathleen's in the song, are beaming with light, her face glowing with
intelligence and feeling. Even an elderly lady, their mother, turns
away from the picture of her husband, who had ridden in the Guards,
and held a commission under James II.--she turns from this, and
memories of old days, to gaze with tender admiration on her brilliant
young daughter; who, be it said, at this present reading, is only an
apprentice to a seamstress in King Street, Westminster.
But the soul of Thalia is under her bodice, into a neater than which,
Anadyomene could not have laced herself. She is rapt in the reading,
and with book held out, and face upraised, and figure displayed at
its very best, she enthrals her audience, unconscious herself that
this is more numerous than she might have supposed. On the threshold
of the open door stand a couple of guests; one of them has, to
us, no name; the other is a gay, rollicking young fellow, smartly
dressed, a semi-military look about him, good humour rippling over
his face, combined with an air of astonishment and delight. This is
Captain Farquhar. His sight and hearing are wholly concentrated on
that enchanted and enchanting girl, who, unmindful of aught but the
"Scornful Lady," continues still reading aloud that rattling comedy
of Beaumont and Fletcher. How the mother listened to it all is not to
be told; but nearly a century later Queen Charlotte could listen to
her daughters reading "Polly Honeycombe," and no harm done. We may
fancy the young reader at the Mitre, whose name is Anne Oldfield, in
that silvery voice for which she was famed, half in sadness and half
in mirth, reading the lines in which the lady says:--
"All we that are call'd woman, know as well
As men, it were a far more noble thing
To grace where we are graced, and give respect
There where we are respected: yet we practise
A wilder course, and never bend our eyes
On men with pleasure, till they find the way
To give us a neglect. Then we too late
Perceive the loss of what we might have had,
And dote to death."
Captain Farquhar, at whatever passage in the play, betrayed his
presence by his involuntary applause. The girl looked towards him
more pleased than abashed; and when the captain pronounced that there
was in her the stuff for an exquisite actress, the fluttered thing
clasped her hands, glowed at the prophecy, and protested in her turn,
that of all conditions it was the one she wished most ardently to
fulfil. From that moment the glory and the mischief were commenced.
The tall girl stood up, her large eyes dilating, the assured future
Lady Betty Modish and Biddy Tipkin, Farquhar's own Sylvia and Mrs.
Sullen, the Violante and the Lady Townley that were to set the
playgoing world mad with delight; the Andromache, Marcia, and Jane
Shore, that were to wring tears from them; the supreme lady in all,
but chiefest in comedy; and that "genteel," for which she seemed
expressly born.
Farquhar talked of her to Vanbrugh, and Vanbrugh introduced her to
Rich, and Rich took her into his company, assigned her a beginner's
salary, fifteen shillings a week, and gave her nothing to do. She had
a better life of it at the seamstress's in King Street. But she had
time to spare and leisure to wait. She was barely fifteen, when, in
1700, she played Alinda, in Vanbrugh's adaptation from Beaumont and
Fletcher, the "Pilgrim." The next three or four years were those of
probation; and when, in the season of 1704-5, Cibber assigned to her
the part of Lady Betty Modish, in his "Careless Husband," the town at
once recognised in her the most finished actress of such difficult
yet effective parts of her day.
The gentle Alinda suited the years and inexperience of Mrs. Oldfield;
her youth was in her favour, and her figure, but therewith was such
great diffidence, that she had not courage enough to modulate her
voice. Cibber watched her; he could see nothing to recommend her,
save her graceful person. But there reached his ear occasional silver
tones, which seemed to assure him of the rare excellence of the
instrument. Still, like "the great Mrs. Barry," her first appearances
were failures; and such were those of Sarah Siddons, in after years.
Warmed by encouraging applause, however, the promise ripened, and
with opportunity, the perfection that came was demonstrated both to
watchful Cibber and an expectant public.
In 1703 the company was at Bath, where Queen Anne might have
been seen in the Pump Room in the morning,--later in the day, at
the play. But the joyous and brilliant queen of comedy was _not_
there. Mrs. Verbruggen, the Mrs. Mountfort of earlier days, was ill
in town, nursing a baby, whose birth ultimately cost the life of
the mother. There was a scramble for her parts. Each of the more
influential actresses obtained several; but to young and unobtrusive
Mrs. Oldfield, there fell but one,--the mediocre part of Leonora,
in "Sir Courtly Nice." Cibber reluctantly ran over the scenes with
her, at her request, in which the Knight and the Lady meet. He was
careless, from lack of appreciation of the actress; _she_ was piqued,
and sullenly repeated the words set down for her. There was, in
short, a mutual distaste. _But_, when the night came, Colley saw
the almost perfect actress before him, and as he says,--"she had a
just occasion to triumph over the error of my judgment by the almost
amazement that her unexpected performance awaked me to; so sudden
and forward a step into nature I had never seen. And what made her
performance more valuable was, that I knew it all proceeded from
her own understanding,--untaught and unassisted by any one more
experienced actor." Any other player but Cibber, in his place, would
have laid Anne Oldfield's success to the instruction he had given her
at rehearsal.
Colley Cibber had then in his desk the unfinished manuscript of his
"Careless Husband;" it had long lain there, through the author's
hopelessness of ever finding an actress who would realise his idea of
Lady Betty Modish. He had no longer any doubt. He at once finished
the piece, brought it on the stage, and silent as to his own share
in the triumph, attributed it all, or nearly all, to Mrs. Oldfield.
"Not only to the uncommon excellence of her action; but even to her
personal manner of conversing." I must repeat what Cibber tells us,
that many of the sentiments were Mrs. Oldfield's, dressed up by him,
"with a little more care than when they negligently fell from her
lively humour." Respecting what Cibber adds, that "had her birth
placed her in a higher rank of life, she had certainly appeared to
be, in reality, what in the play she only excellently acted,--an
agreeably gay woman of quality, a little too conscious of her natural
attractions," I will remark that, as she really appeared to be so,
her birth (she was a gentleman's daughter) could not prevent her
from appearing so. And Cibber avows, what the testimony of Walpole
confirms, that he had "often seen her in private societies, where
women of the best rank might have borrowed some part of her behaviour
without the least diminution of their sense of dignity."
In 1702, the merit of Mrs. Oldfield was not recognised by Gildon,
who, in his "Comparison between the two Stages," classes her among
"the rubbish," of which the stage should be swept. Of Mrs. Verbruggen
(Mountfort), he speaks as "a miracle." He could not see that Oldfield
would be her successor, and would, in some parts, even excel her.
By the year 1706, however, she had risen to be on an equality with
such a brilliant favourite as Mrs. Bracegirdle, whom, in the opinion
of many, her younger competitor surpassed. The salary of the latter
then, and for some years later, was not, however, a large one, if
measured by modern rule. Four pounds a week, with a benefit,--in all,
little more than £250 a year, cannot be called excessive guerdon. Her
own benefit was always profitable; but I am sorry to add, that this
joyous-looking creature, apparently brimful of good nature, was very
reluctant to play for the benefit of her colleagues. Subsequently,
her revenue from the stage-salary and benefit averaged about £500 a
year.
A remark of hers to Cibber, shows how she entered into the spirit of
her parts. Cibber had replaced Dicky Norris, who was ill, in the part
of Barnaby Brittle, in the "Amorous Widow," in which Mrs. Oldfield
played Barnaby's wife. The couple are a sort of George Dandin and his
spouse. When the play was over, Cibber asked her, in his familiar
way, "Nancy, how did you like your new husband?" "Very well," said
she; "but not half so well as Dicky Norris." "How so?" asked Cibber.
"You are too important a figure," she answered; "but Dicky is so
diminutive, and looks so sneaking, that he seems born to be deceived;
and when he plays with me, I make him what a husband most dislikes to
be, with hearty good will."
Genest cites Cibber, Chetwood, and Davies, in order to describe her
adequately. "After her success in Lady Betty Modish," he says, "all
that nature had given her of the actress seemed to have risen to its
full perfection; but the variety of her powers could not be known
till she was seen in variety of characters which, as fast as they
fell to her, she equally excelled in. In the wearing of her person
she was particularly fortunate; her figure was always improving, to
her thirty-sixth year; but her excellence in acting was never at a
stand. And Lady Townley, one of her last new parts, was a proof that
she was still able to do more, if more could have been done for her."
Davies, after noticing her figure and expression, says of her "large
speaking eyes," that in some particular comic situations she kept
them half shut, "especially when she intended to give effect to some
brilliant or gay thought. In sprightliness of air and elegance of
manner, she excelled all actresses, and was greatly superior in the
clear, sonorous, and harmonious tones of her voice."
How are Wilks and the inimitable She photographed for posterity?
"Wilks's Copper Captain was esteemed one of his best characters. Mrs.
Oldfield was equally happy in Estifania. When she drew the pistol
from her pocket, pretending to shoot Perez, Wilks drew back, as if
greatly terrified, and in a tremulous voice, uttered, 'What, thine
own husband!' To which she replied, with archness of countenance and
a half-shut eye, 'Let mine own husband then be in 's own wits,' in a
tone of voice in imitation of his, that the theatre was in a tumult
of applause."
[Illustration: (Mrs. Oldfield)]
From Cibber, again, we learn that she was modest and
unpresuming; that in all the parts she undertook, she sought
enlightenment and instruction from every quarter, "but it was a hard
matter to give her a hint that she was not able to improve." With
managers she was not exacting; "she lost nothing by her easy conduct;
she had everything she asked, which she took care should be always
reasonable, because she hated as much to be grudged as to be denied a
civility."
Like Mrs. Barry, she entered fully into the character she had to
represent, and examined it closely, in order to grasp it effectually.
When the "Beaux' Stratagem" was in rehearsal (1707), in which she
played Mrs. Sullen, she remarked to Wilks, that she thought the
author had dealt too freely with Mrs. Sullen, in giving her to
Archer, without such a proper divorce as would be a security to her
honour. Wilks communicated this to the author. "Tell her," said poor
Farquhar, who was then dying, "that for her peace of mind's sake,
I'll get a real divorce, marry her myself, and give her my bond she
shall be a real widow in less than a fortnight."
Mrs. Oldfield was the original representative of sixty-five
characters. The greater number of these belong to genteel comedy, as
it is called, a career which she commenced as peculiarly her own,
in 1703, when chance assigned to her the part of Leonora, in "Sir
Courtly Nice." Her wonderful success in this, induced Cibber to trust
to her the part of Lady Betty Modish, in the "Careless Husband," the
comedy which he had put aside in despair of finding a lady equal
to his conception of the character. Her mere conversation in that
play intoxicated the house. At a later period, her audiences were
even more ecstatic at her Lady Townley,--an ecstasy in which the
managers must have shared, for they immediately added fifty guineas
to her salary. It was just the sum which the benevolent actress gave
annually to that most contemptibly helpless personage, Savage. Her
highest salary never, I believe, exceeded three hundred guineas; but
this was exclusive of benefits, occasions on which gold was showered
into her lap.
Humour, grace, vivacity,--all were exuberant on the stage, when she
and Wilks were playing against each other. Indeed, one can hardly
realise the idea of this supreme queen of comedy wearing the robe and
illustrating the sorrows of tragedy. She, for her own part, disliked
the latter vocation. She hated, as she said often, to have a page
dragging her tail about. "Why do not they give these parts to Porter?
She can put on a better tragedy-face than I can." Earnest as she was,
however, in these characters before the audience, she was frolicsome
at rehearsal. When "Cato" was in preparation, Mrs. Oldfield was cast
for Marcia, the philosophical statesman's daughter. Addison attended
the rehearsals, and Swift was at Addison's side, making suggestions,
and marking the characteristics of the lively people about him. He
never had a good word for woman, and consequently he had his usual
coarse epithet for Mrs. Oldfield, speaking of her as "the drab that
played Cato's daughter;" and railing at her for her hilarity while
rehearsing that passionate part, and, in her forgetfulness, calling
merrily out to the prompter, "What next? what next?"
Yet this hilarious actress played Cleopatra with dignity, and
Calista with feeling. She accepted with great reluctance the part
of Semandra, in "Mithridates," when that tragedy was revived in
1708; but Chetwood says she performed the part to perfection, and
became reconciled to tragedy by reason of her success. In these
characters, however, she could be excelled by others, but in Lady
Betty Modish and Lady Townley she was probably never equalled. In
the comedy of lower life she was, perhaps, less original; at least,
Anthony Aston remarks, that in free comedy she borrowed something
from Mrs. Verbruggen's manner. When Wilks, as Lord Townley, exclaimed
"Prodigious!" in the famous scene with his lady, played by Mrs.
Oldfield, the house applied it to her acting, and broke into repeated
rounds of applause.
"Who should act genteel comedy, perfectly," asks Walpole, "but people
of fashion that have sense? Actors and actresses can only guess at
the tone of high life, and cannot be inspired with it. Why are there
so few genteel comedies, but because most comedies are written by
men not of that sphere. Etherege, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Cibber
wrote genteel comedy, because they lived in the best company; and
Mrs. Oldfield played it so well, because she not only followed, but
often set the fashion. General Burgoyne has writ the best modern
comedy for the same reason; and Miss Farren is as excellent as
Mrs. Oldfield, because she has lived with the best style of men in
England. Farquhar's plays talk the language of a marching regiment in
country quarters. Wycherley, Dryden, Mrs. Centlivre, &c., wrote as if
they had only lived in the _Rose Tavern_; but then the Court lived in
Drury Lane, too, and Lady Dorchester and Nell Gwyn were equally good
company."
In this there is some injustice against Mrs. Centlivre, for whose
name should be supplied that of Aphra Behn. Walpole judges more
correctly of the comic writers of the seventeenth century, when
he places Molière "Senor Moleiro," as Downes absurdly calls him,
at the head of them all. "Who upon earth," he says, "has written
such perfect comedies? for the 'Careless Husband' is but one; the
'Non-juror' was built on the 'Tartuffe,' and if the Man of Mode
(Etherege) and Vanbrugh are excellent, they are too indelicate; and
Congreve, who beat all for wit, is not always natural, still less,
simple."
It has been said of Mrs. Oldfield, that she never troubled the peace
of any lady at the head of a household; but I think she may have
marred the expectations of some who desired to reach that eminence.
She early captivated the heart of Mr. Maynwaring. He was a bachelor,
rich, connected with the government, and a hard drinker, according to
the prevailing fashion. He was Cymon subdued by Iphigenia. He loved
the lady's refinement, and she kept his household as carefully as if
she had been his wife, and presided at his table with a grace that
charmed him. There was something of Beauty and the Beast in this
connection, but the end of the fable was wanting; the animal was
never converted to an Azor, and a marriage with Zemira was the one
thing wanting.
When Maynwaring died, society almost looked upon her as an honest
widow. Indeed, it had never rejected her. The standard of morals was
low, and when the _quasi_ widow accepted the proposal of General
Churchill to place her at the head of his establishment, as she had
been in that of Mr. Maynwaring, no one blamed her. Marriage, indeed,
seems to have been thought of, and Queen Caroline, who did not at all
disdain to stoop to little matters of gossip, one day remarked to
Mrs. Oldfield, who had, I suppose, been reading to a court circle, "I
hear, Mrs. Oldfield, that you and the General are married?" "Madam,"
said the actress, playing her very best, "the General keeps his own
secrets!"
The two love passages in the life of Anne Oldfield were, in short,
founded on sentiment and not on interest. The Duke of Bedford offered
her more brilliant advantages than the General or the Squire; but
the disinterested actress spurned them, and kept sisterhood with
duchesses. She was to be seen on the terrace at Windsor, walking with
the consorts of dukes, and with countesses, and wives of English
barons, and the whole gay group might be heard calling one another by
their Christian names. In later days, Kitty Clive called such fine
folk "damaged quality;" and later still, the second Mrs. Barry did
not value such companionship at a "pin's fee;" but Anne Oldfield drew
from it many an illustration, which she transported to the stage.
During her last season, her sufferings were often so acute that when
the applause was loudest, the poor actress turned aside to hide the
tears forced from her by pain. She never gave up till the agony was
too great to be endured, and then she refused to receive a salary
which, according to her articles, was not to be discontinued in
illness. She lingered a few months in her house in Lower Grosvenor
Street; the details of her last moments, as given by Pope, mingle a
little truth with much error and exaggeration:--
"'Odious! in woollen? 'twould a saint provoke!'
Were the last words that poor Narcissa spoke.
'No, let a charming chintz and Brussels lace
Wrap my cold limbs and shade my lifeless face;
One would not sure be frightful when one's dead.
And, Betty, give this cheek a little red!'"
Betty was the ex-actress, Mrs. Saunders, who resided with Narcissa.
She had quitted the stage in 1720, and, says Mr. Urban, "attended
Mrs. Oldfield constantly, and did the office of priest to the last."
Poor Narcissa, after death, was attired in a Holland night-dress,
with tucker and double ruffles of Brussels lace, of which latter
material she also wore a head-dress, and a pair of "new kid gloves."
This, another writer calls being "buried in _full dress_." The report
seems to have been founded on Mrs. Oldfield's natural good taste
in costume. Flavia, such is her name in the _Tatler_, "is ever well
drest, and always the genteelest woman you meet; her clothes are so
exactly fitted that they appear part of her person."
It was in the above described dress that the deceased actress
received such honour as actress never received before, nor has ever
received since. The lady lay in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, a
distinction not unfrequently, indeed, conceded to persons of high
rank and small merit, but which, nevertheless, seemed out of place
in the case of Anne Oldfield; but had she been really a queen, the
public could not have thronged more eagerly to the spectacle.
The solemn lying in state of an English actress in the Jerusalem
Chamber, the sorrow of the public over their lost favourite, and the
regret of friends in noble, or humble, but virtuous homes, where
Mrs. Oldfield had been ever welcome, contrast strongly with the
French sentiment towards French players. It has been already said,
that as long as Clairon exercised the power, when she advanced to
the footlights, to make the (then standing) pit recoil several feet,
by the mere magic of her eyes, the pit, who enjoyed the terror as a
luxury, flung crowns to her, and wept at the thought of losing her;
but Clairon infirm was Clairon forgotten, and to a decaying actor or
actress a French audience is the most merciless in the world. The
brightest and best of them, as with us, died in the service of the
public. Monfleury, Mondory, and Bricourt, died of apoplexy, brought
on by excess of zeal. Molière, who fell in harness, was buried with
less ceremony than some favourite dog. The charming Lecouvreur,
that Oldfield of the French stage, whose beauty and intellect were
the double charm which rendered theatrical France ecstatic, was
hurriedly interred within a saw-pit. Bishops might be exceedingly
interested in, and unepiscopally generous to, living actresses of
wit and beauty, but the prelates smote them with a "Maranatha!" and
an "Avaunt ye!" when dead. Even Bossuet would attend the theatre to
learn grace and elocution from them and their brethren: but when he
had profited by the instruction, he denounced them all as "children
of the devil!" Louis XVIII., however, put an effectual check on the
unseemly practice of treating as dead dogs the geniuses who had been
idolised when living. When the priests of the Church of St. Roch
closed its doors against the body of Rancourt, brought there for a
prayer and a blessing, Paris rose against the insulters; and the
King, moved by Christian charity, or dread of a Paris riot, sent his
own chaplain to recite the prayer, give the benediction, and to show
that an honest player was not a something less than a fellow-creature.
After the lying in state of Mrs. Oldfield, there was a funeral of
as much ceremony as has been observed at the obsequies of many a
queen. Among the supporters of the pall were Lord Hervey, Lord
Delawarr, and Bubb Dodington, afterwards Lord Melcombe. The first
used to ride abroad with Mrs. Oldfield, as Mrs. Delaney has recorded.
Lord Delawarr was a soldier who became a great "beau," and went a
philandering. His wife and the Countess of Burlington headed the
Faustina party at the opera against the faction which supported
Cuzzoni. There were anthems, and prayers, and sermon; and Dr. Parker,
who officiated, remarked, when all was over, to a few particular
friends, and with some equivocation, as it seems to me, that he
"buried her very willingly, and with much satisfaction." Her sons
Maynwaring and Churchill were present, and the contemporary notices
say that she had no other children. Her friends were apt to express
a different opinion; and Mrs. Delaney, in one of the very first
passages in her _Autobiography_ says:--"At six years old I was placed
under the care of Mdlle. Puelle, a refugee of a very respectable
character, and well qualified for her business. She undertook but
twenty scholars at a time, among whom were Lady Catherine Knollys,
daughter to the" (self-styled) "Earl of Banbury, and great aunt
to the present Lord; Miss Halsey, daughter to a very considerable
brewer, and afterwards married to Lord Temple, Earl of Cobham; Lady
Jane Douglas, daughter of the Duke of Douglas, and Miss Dye Bertie, a
daughter of Mrs. Oldfield the actress, who, after leaving school, was
the _pink of fashion_ in the _beau monde_, and married a nobleman."
Whom did this mysterious Diana marry?[2]
This daughter is not mentioned in Mrs. Oldfield's will; but to the
two sons Mrs. Oldfield bequeathed the bulk of a fortune which she
had amassed more by her exertions than by the generosity of their
respective fathers. She was liberal, too, in leaving memorials to
numerous friends; less so in her bequests to old relations of her
sempstress and coffee-house days. A very small annuity was Narcissa's
parting gift to her mother, who long survived her.
In such wise went her money; but whither has the blood of Oldfield
gone? When Winnifred, the dairymaid, married into the family of the
Bickerstaffes, she is said to have spoilt their blood, while she
mended their constitutions. The great actress herself was at least
an honest man's daughter, a man of fair descent. Her son, Colonel
Churchill, once, unconsciously, saved Sir Robert Walpole from
assassination, through the latter riding home, from the House, in the
Colonel's chariot instead of alone in his own. Unstable Churchill
married a natural daughter of Sir Robert, and _their_ daughter Mary
married, in 1777, Charles Sloane, first Earl of Cadogan. The son of
this Mary is the present Earl, the great grandson of charming Anne
Oldfield. When Churchill and his wife were travelling in France, a
Frenchman, knowing he was connected with poets or players, asked him
if he was Churchill the famous poet. "I am not," said Mrs. Oldfield's
son. "Ma foi!" rejoined the polite Frenchman, "so much the worse for
you!"
I have seen many epitaphs to her memory, but there is not one which
is so complete and beautiful as the following, which tells the reader
that she lies amid great poets, not less worthy of praise than
they, whose works she has illustrated and ennobled. It records the
apt universality of her talent, which made her seem not _made_, but
born for whatever she undertook. In tragedy, the glory of her form,
the dignity of her countenance, the majesty of her walk, touched the
rudest spectator. In comedy, her power, her graceful hilarity, her
singular felicity, were so irresistible, that the eyes never wearied
of gazing at her, nor the hands of applauding her.
"Hic juxta requiescit
Tot inter poetarum laudata nomina,
ANNA OLDFIELD.
Nec ipsa minore laude digna,
Quippe quæ eorum opera.
In scenam quotidies prodivit,
Illustravit semper et nobilitavit.
Nunquam ingenium idem ad parties diversissimas
Habilius fuit.
Ita tamen ut ad singulas
Non facta sed nata esse videretur,
In tragoediis
Formæ splendor, oris dignitas, incessus majestas,
Tanta vocis suavitate temperabantur.
Ut nemo esset tam agrestis, tam durus spectator,
Quin in admirationem totus raperetur.
In comoedia autem
Tanta vis, tam venusta hilaritas, tam curiosa felicitas
Ut neque sufficerent spectando oculi,
Neque plaudendo manus."
I have said that her last original part was Sophonisba. Among the
last words she uttered in it, when mortal illness was upon her, were
these:--
"And is the sacred moment then so near,
The moment when yon sun, these heavens, this earth
Shall sink at once, and straight another state,
New scenes, new joys, new faculties, new wonders,
Rise, on a sudden, round?"
These words were first spoken by her, on the last day of February
1730. On the 23rd of the following October she died, in her
forty-seventh year. A week later, Dr. Parker "buried her very
willingly, and with much satisfaction!"
[Illustration: Mrs. Clive as Mrs. Heidelberg.]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Her niece.
[2] She married J. Cator.--_Doran MS._
[Illustration: GOODMAN'S FIELDS THEATRE.]