REAPPEARANCE OF SPRANGER BARRY--RETIREMENT OF MRS. PRITCHARD.
After playing some nights at the Opera House, in 1766, and with Foote
at the little house in the Haymarket, where Thalia and Melpomene
reigned on alternate nights, in 1767, Barry and Mrs. Dancer,--the
former after an absence of ten years,--appeared at Drury Lane, in
October of the last-named year. Direct rivalry with Garrick there
was none: for the latter and Mrs. Pritchard acted together on one
night; Barry and Mrs. Dancer played their favourite characters the
next; while King, Dodd, Palmer, Parsons, Mrs. Abington, Mrs. Clive,
and Miss Pope, led in comedy. The two great tragedians acted in the
same company till 1774, when Barry passed to Covent Garden, where
he remained till his death, in 1777,--a few months only before that
of Woodward, and about half a year subsequent to the retirement of
Garrick, from Drury Lane and the stage.
"I hear the stage in England is worse and worse," wrote Fox to
Fitzpatrick, from Nice in 1768. I do not know what foundation there
was for such a report, save that the school of sentimental comedy
had then come in and established itself,--the founder being Kelly,
an honest, clever, Irish ex-staymaker, and his essay being made with
"False Delicacy" (Cecil, King; Lady Betty Lambton, Mrs. Abington).
Mrs. Pritchard, too, had then just retired, leaving the tragic throne
to be contended for by Mrs. Yates and Mrs. Dancer, who subsequently
reigned as Mrs. Barry, and who, as Mrs. Crawford, was finally
superseded by Mrs. Siddons.
So firmly as well as suddenly had sentimental comedy come into
fashion, that when Goldsmith's "Good-Natured Man" (Croaker,
Shuter; Honeywood, Powell--who disliked his part; Miss Richland,
Mrs. Bulkley) was produced in 1768, at Covent Garden, it nearly
failed, through the scene of the bailiffs, which was considered too
farcical for genteel comedy! The age was rapidly becoming almost
too fastidious. The reaction was carrying it too far; and the moral
Mrs. Sheridan's first comedy, "The Dupe," was condemned,[93] for
offences which it was said to contain against decorum. Even Johnson
disapproved of the bailiffs, in Goldsmith's comedy, though he was the
first to enjoy the rich humour of the lower characters in "She Stoops
to Conquer." The sage did not spare sarcasm. "Are you going to make
a scholar of him?" asked Goldsmith, in reference to the petted boy
who waited on Johnson. "Aye, sir," was the reply, "scholar enough to
write a bailiff scene in a comedy!"
Garrick now rested entirely on his old triumphs; but he acted
repeatedly with Mrs. Barry. Romeo dropped from the repertory of
Garrick and Barry; but Lear and Macbeth were played by each of them
to the Cordelia and Lady of Barry's wife, whose versatility was
remarkable, for she was the first, the best, and the richest-brogued
of Widow Bradys, as she was the most touching and dignified of Lady
Randolphs. As Lord and Lady Townley, the Barrys drew great houses;
but Garrick was not disturbed, for his Ranger and his Hamlet drew
greater still; and none of the original characters played by Barry
during this, his last engagement at Drury Lane, reached a popularity
which could ruffle Garrick's peace of mind. These were Rhadamistus,
in "Zenobia;" Ronan, in "Fatal Discovery;" Tancred, in "Almida;"
Timon, in Cumberland's version of "Timon of Athens;" Aubrey, in
the "Fashionable Lover;" Evander (to his wife's Euphrasia), in
the "Grecian Daughter;" Melville, in the "Duel;" and Seraphis, in
"Sethona." Of these, Evander showed the actor's mastery over the
feelings of his audience; Aubrey was distinguished for its grave,
and Melville for its touching, dignity. With his admirers, he was
still the "silver-tongued Barry," and the "silver-toned lover;"
but the thick-and-thin adherents to Garrick repeated these phrases
satirically, in allusion only to the _silversmith_, who was Spranger
Barry's father.
Voltaire had written a criticism against Shakspeare's Hamlet, which
Garrick adopted; and, mangling the bard whom he professed to love,
he put "Hamlet" on the stage without the Grave-diggers and without
Osrick! This mutilation passed for Shakspeare, until John Bannister
restored the original, on playing the Dane, for his own benefit, in
1780. Yet, so irreverent to the spirit of Garrick did this proceeding
seem to old Wrighton, that when Bannister came off the stage, the
elder player said to him: "Well, sir, if ever you should meet with
Mr. Garrick in the next world, you will find that he will never
forgive you for having restored the Grave-diggers to Hamlet!"[94]
The most serious event, however, of this time, was the retirement
of Mrs. Pritchard--a more serious loss to the stage, perhaps,
than the death of Mrs. Cibber. She had well earned repose, after
five-and-thirty years of most arduous labour.
In 1733, Mrs. Pritchard, a young and well-reputed married woman, was
acting at our suburban fairs, but how much earlier, as Miss Vaughan,
does not appear. Her slender cultivation, or rather her total want of
education, is no proof that she was not of a respectable family; and
the pertinacity of her brother, a clever low comedian, Henry Vaughan,
in pursuing a claim to property left by a relative, Mr. Leonard,
of Lyon's Inn, shows that there was one quality connected with the
family which the world respects.
Mrs. Pritchard did not at once win, but long worked for her fortune.
Her husband held a subordinate post in the theatre, till her
talents raised him above it. Her history, in one point, resembles
Betterton's; it was a life of pure, honest, unceasing labour; she
was too busy to afford much material for further record. In another
point, it resembled Mrs. Betterton's, in the unobtrusive virtue of
her character. While Margaret Woffington was pretending to lament
over the temptations to which she yielded, and George Anne Bellamy
yielded without lamenting, honest Mrs. Pritchard neither yielded
nor lamented. It is true, she was not so inexpressibly beautiful as
Margaret, not so saucily seductive as George Anne, but she carried
with her the lustre of rectitude, and the beauty of honesty and
truth; living, she was welcomed wherever virtue kept home; and
dying, she left fairly-acquired wealth, a good example, and an
irreproachable name to her children.
At first she fought her way very slowly, but played everything, from
Nell to Ophelia; and throughout her career she originated every
variety of character, from Selima, in "Zara," to Tag, in "Miss in
her Teens;" from Mrs. Beverley, in the "Gamester," to Clarinda, in
the "Wedding Day;" from Hecuba to Mrs. Oakley.
We are so familiar with the prints of her as Hermione and Lady
Macbeth, and to hear of her awful power in the latter, as well as of
the force and dignity of her Merope, Creusa, and Zara, her almost too
loud excess of grief in Volumnia, and the absolute perfection of her
two queens, Katherine and Gertrude, that we are apt to remember her
as a tragedian only. Her closet-scene, as the queen in "Hamlet," was
so fine and finished in every detail that its unequalled excellence
remains a tradition of the stage, like the Ophelia of Mrs. Cibber.
There was a slight tendency to rant,[95] and some lack of grace in
her style, which, according to others, marred her tragedy. On the
other hand, there is no dispute as to her excellence in comedy,
particularly before she grew stout; and, indeed, in spite of her
becoming so, as in Millamant, in which, even in her latest years,
her easy manner of speaking and action charmed her audience, though
elegance of form and the beauty of youth were no longer there.
[Illustration: (Mrs Pritchard)]
As a perfectly natural actress, she was admirable in such parts as
Mrs. Oakley, Doll Common, and the Termagant, in the "'Squire of
Alsatia." With such characters she identified herself. I find her
less commended in artificial ladies like Clarissa and Lady
Dainty; and for queens of fashion, like Lady Townley and Lady Betty
Modish. Yet, although she only pleased in these high-bred personages,
she was "inimitably charming" in Rosalind and Beatrice, in Estifania
and Clarinda, in Mrs. Sullen and Lady Brute; and in all characters
of intrigue, gaiety, wit, playfulness, and diversity of humour. I
may sum up all by repeating that her distinguishing qualities were
natural expression, unembarrassed deportment, propriety of action,
and an appropriateness of delivery which was the despair of all her
contemporaries, for she took care of her consonants, and was so
exact in her articulation, that, however voluble her enunciation,
the audience never lost a syllable of it. Mrs. Pritchard and Mrs.
Abington were selected, at various periods, to represent the Comic
Muse, and nothing can better indicate their quality and merits.
Garrick, Quin, Mrs. Cibber, and Mrs. Pritchard, acting in the same
piece, at Covent Garden! No wonder that Walpole, in 1746, says,
"Plays only are in fashion," and calls the company, which included
Woodward, Ryan, and Mrs. Horton, as "the best company that, perhaps,
ever were together." In Mrs. Pritchard's Beatrice, as in Mrs.
Clive's Bizarre, Garrick, as Benedict to the first, and Duretete
to the second, had an antagonism on the stage which tested his
utmost powers. Each was determined to surpass the other; but Walpole
intimates that Mrs. Pritchard won in _her_ contest, and states that
Garrick hated her because her Beatrice (which he preferred to Miss
Farren's) had more spirit and originality than his Benedict. Walpole
also praised her Maria ("Nonjuror"), and only smiled at her Jane
Shore when she had become so fat, that for her to talk of the pangs
of starvation seemed ridiculous. But the highest mark of his, never
easily won, estimation of this great actress consisted in his refusal
to allow his "Mysterious Mother" to be acted, as Mrs. Pritchard was
about to leave the stage, and there was no one else who could play
the Countess.
Walpole knew her as a neighbour as well as a player, for Mrs.
Pritchard purchased Ragman's Castle, a villa on the Thames, between
Marble Hill and Orleans House, which she bought against an opposing
bidder, Lord Lichfield, and resided in it till Walpole took it of
her, for his niece, Lady Waldegrave. The actress was occasionally
his guest, and he testifies to the becomingness and propriety of her
behaviour; but sneers a little at that of her son, the Treasurer of
Drury Lane, as being better than he had expected.
Johnson said that it was only on the stage Mrs. Pritchard was
inspired with gentility and understanding; but Churchill exclaims,
"Pritchard, _by Nature_ for the stage designed,
In person graceful, and in sense refined,
Her wit, as much as Nature's friend became,
Her voice as free from blemish as her fame,
Who knows so well in Majesty to please,
Attempered with the graceful charms of ease?"
And contrasting her great qualities with the increasing figure which,
perhaps, offended, in her later years, "the eye's too curious sense,"
Churchill adds,
"But when perfections of the mind break forth,
Honour's chaste sallies, judgment's solid worth,
When the pure, genuine flame by Nature taught,
Springs into sense and every action's thought,
Before such merit all objections fly,
Pritchard's genteel, and Garrick six feet high."
I believe that the French actress, Rachel, was so ignorant of the
true history of that which she represented, that, to her, all the
events, in the various pieces in which she played, happened in
the same comfortable chronological period "once upon a time." One
of the greatest actresses of the Garrick period, in some respects
perhaps _the_ greatest, was equally ignorant. Mrs. Pritchard, it is
said, had never read more of the tragedy of "Macbeth" than her own
part, as it was delivered to her in manuscript, by the prompter, to
be got "by heart." Quin was nearly as ignorant, if a questionable
story may be credited. Previously to Garrick's coming, the "Macbeth"
which was played as Shakspeare's was really Davenant's, with Locke's
music. When Garrick announced that, for the future, he would have
Shakspeare's tragedy and not Davenant's opera acted, no man was
more surprised than Quin; "Why!" he exclaimed, "do you mean to say
that we have not been playing Shakspeare all this while?" Quin had
less excuse than Mrs. Pritchard,--for how was that poor lady--"the
inspired idiot," Johnson styled her--a strange sort of person, who
called for her "gownd," but whose acquired eloquence was beautiful
and appropriate,--how was poor Mrs. Pritchard to know anything of
the chronology of the story, when Garrick played the Thane in a
modern gold-laced suit, and she herself might have called on the
Princess Amelia, in her dress for the Thane's wife? Nevertheless,
the incomparable two were as triumphant as if they had been dressed
according to time and place. Nor were they less so in two other
characters which they dressed to the full as much out of propriety,
though not of grace,--namely, Benedict and Beatrice.
I have alluded to the essay made by Miss Pritchard. Let me add that
when the young lady first appeared as Juliet, Mrs. Pritchard as her
mother, Lady Capulet, led her on the stage. The scenes between them
were heightened in interest, for Lady Capulet hovered about Juliet
with such maternal anxiety, and Juliet appealed by her looks so
lovingly to her mother, for a sign of guidance or approval, that many
of the audience were moved to tears.
The house was moved more deeply still on an after night,--the 24th
of April 1768,--the night of Mrs. Pritchard's final farewell, when
Garrick played Macbeth in a brown court suit, laced with gold, and
she the "lady," with a terrible power and effect such as even the
audiences in those days were little accustomed to. Her "Give _me_ the
daggers!" on that night was as grand as her "Are you a man?" and when
the curtain descended, such another intellectual treat was not looked
for in that generation.
There was a "tremendous house," to which she tremblingly delivered a
poetical address, written by Garrick, in which she said--
"In acted passion tears must seem to flow,
But I have that within that passeth show."
Her old admirers stood by their allegiance, and even Mrs. Siddons'
Lady Macbeth, in long after years, could not shake it. Lord Harcourt,
no lukewarm friend of Mrs. Siddons, missed in _her_ Lady Macbeth
"the unequalled compass and melody of Mrs. Pritchard." In the
famous sleep-walking scene, his lordship still held Mrs. Siddons
to be inferior,--there was not the horror in the sigh, nor the
sleepiness in the tone, nor the articulation in the voice, as in
Mrs. Pritchard's, whose exclamation of "Are you a man?" was as much
superior in significance to that of Mrs. Siddons, as the "Was he
alive?" of Mrs. Crawford's (Barry's) Lady Randolph was, in the depth
of anxious tenderness.
Mrs. Pritchard retired to Bath to enjoy her hard-earned leisure;
but met the not uncommon fate of those who withdraw from toil, to
breathe awhile, and repose, in the autumn of their days. A trifling
accident to her foot took a fatal turn, and in the August of the year
in which she withdrew, she closed her honoured and laborious career.
Her name, her example, and her triumphs all deserve to be cherished
in the memory of her younger sisters, struggling to win fame and
resolved not to tarnish it. Garrick's respect for her was manifested
in the remark once made at the mention of her name: "_She_ deserves
everything we can do for her."
Mrs. Pritchard's daughter failed to sustain the glory of her mother's
name. The season of 1767-68 was the last for both ladies, as it was
for Mrs. Pritchard's son-in-law, the first and more coxcombical of
the two John Palmers. Mrs. Palmer was short, but elegant and refined;
unequal to tragedy, except, perhaps, in the gentle tenderness of
Juliet; she was a respectable actress in minor parts of comedy, such
as Harriet ("Jealous Wife"), and Fanny ("Clandestine Marriage"),
of which she was the original representative. Palmer died three
months before his mother-in-law, at the early age of forty, leaving
bright stage memories as the original representative of the Duke's
servant in "High Life below Stairs," Sir Brilliant Fashion, Brush
("Clandestine Marriage"), &c. His widow remarried with Mr. Lloyd, a
political writer, and a _protégé_ of Lord North.
The inheritance of Mrs. Cibber and Mrs. Pritchard was to be won by
a young girl, who, about the time of Mrs. Pritchard's death, was
playing Ariel and other characters in barns and hotel-rooms,--namely,
Sarah Kemble,--subsequently Siddons. Miss Seward saw the three great
actresses; the first two in her younger days. She never forgot
the clear, distinct, and modulated voice of Mrs. Pritchard, nor
the pathetic powers, the delicate, expressive features, and the
silvery voice, sometimes too highly pitched, of Mrs. Cibber. Mrs.
Pritchard's figure, we are told, was then "coarse and large, nor
could her features, plain even to hardness, exhibit the witchery of
expression. She was a just and spirited actress; a more perfectly
good speaker than her more elegant, more fascinating contemporary.
Mrs. Siddons has all the pathos of Mrs. Cibber, with a thousand
times more variety in its exertion, and she has the justness of Mrs.
Pritchard, while only Garrick's countenance could vie with her's in
those endless shades of meaning which almost make her charming voice
superfluous, while the fine proportion and majesty of her form, and
the beauty of her face, eclipse the remembrance of all her consummate
predecessors." Tate Wilkinson states, in his memoirs, that Mrs.
Siddons always reminded him of Mrs. Cibber, in voice, manner, and
features.
But before we address ourselves to Sarah Kemble, we have to chronicle
the last years of two great actors, with whose period she is
connected by having played with the greater of the two,--Garrick and
Barry.
[Illustration: Mr. Garrick as Macbeth.]
FOOTNOTES:
[93] On 10th December 1763.
[94] In the Memoirs of Bannister a speech to this effect is
attributed to Waldron.
[95] This is scarcely accurate. The fault referred to was that of
"too loud and profuse expression of grief;" or, as Garrick put it,
"She was apt to _blubber_ her grief."
[Illustration: GARRICK'S HOUSE, HAMPTON.]