SPRANGER AND ANNE BARRY.
Outside the five-and-thirty years of Barry's professional life,
little is known of him. As of Betterton, it may be said, he laboured,
loved, suffered losses, and died. It is the sum of many a man's
biography.
Spranger's professional career is traced in preceding pages; but I
may add to it, that Dublin is to this day, and with reason, proud of
Spranger Barry, and of Margaret Woffington; for mere human beauty
they have never been surpassed; for talents and for genius, with
respect to their profession, they have not often been equalled.
Spranger of the silver tongue, was the only actor who ever shook
Garrick on his throne; but lacking the fulness of the perfection of
Garrick, Barry only shook him for an instant; he never dethroned him.
He is remembered as the vanquished wrestler is remembered, who has
wrestled his best, given a heavy fall or two, has succumbed in the
last grapple, and is carried from the arena on loving arms, amid the
acclamations of the spectators, and with the respect of his conqueror.
In the Irish silversmith's accomplished son, born in 1719, there was
very good blood, with some of the disadvantages attached to that
possession. Of fine personal appearance and bearing, an aristocratic
expression, and a voice that might win a bird from the nest, Spranger
Barry had expensive and too magnificent tastes. He was a gentleman;
but he lived as though he were the lord of countless thousands, and
with an income on which an earl might have existed becomingly, with
moderate prudence, Spranger Barry died poor.
From the very first, Barry took foremost ground; and Mrs. Delaney may
well expatiate on the delight of seeing Garrick, Barry, and Sheridan
together in one piece. Such a triad as those three were, when young,
in the very brightest of their powers, and achieving triumphs which
made their hearts beat to accomplish something higher still, perhaps,
never rendered a stage illustrious.
From 1747 to 1758, Barry was, in some few characters, the best actor
on our stage. After the above period, came the brilliant but ruinous
Irish speculation with Woodward. During the time of that disastrous
Dublin management, Barry's powers were sometimes seriously affected.
He has been depicted as reckless; but it is evident that anxieties
were forced upon him, and a proud man liable to be seized by
sheriffs' officers, ere he could rise from simulated death upon the
stage, was not to be comforted by the readiness of his subordinates
to murder the bailiffs. Mrs. Delaney had been enraptured with him in
his earliest years; but she found a change in him even as early as
1759. The gossiping lady thus exhibits to us the interior of Crow
Street, one night in February, of the year just named, when, despite
the lady's opinion, the handsome and manly fellow was not to be
equalled in the expression of grief, of pity, or of love.
"Now what do you think? Mrs. Delaney with _ditto_ company went to
the _Mourning Bride_ to see the new playhouse; and Mrs. Fitzhenry
performed the part of Zara, which I think she does incomparably.
The house is very handsome, and well lighted; and there I saw Lady
Kildare and her two blooming sisters, Lady Louisa Conolly (the bride)
and Lady Sarah Lennox,"--(the latter lady reckoned among the first
loves of George III.),--"who I think the prettiest of the two. Lord
Mornington" (afterwards father of the Duke of Wellington) "was at the
play, and looked as _solemn_ as one should suppose the young lady
he is engaged to" (Miss Hill) "would have done!... The play, on the
whole, was tolerably acted, though I don't like _their celebrated_
Mr. Barry; he is tall and ungainly, and does not speak sensibly nor
look his part well; he was Osmyn. Almyra was acted by a very pretty
woman, who, _I think_, might be made a _very good actress_. Her name
is Dancer."
Barry _did_ make her an excellent actress, and his wife to boot.
Nevertheless, the Dublin speculation failed; and I find something
characteristic of it among the properties enumerated in the
inventory of articles made over by Barry to his successor, Ryder.
For instance:--"Chambers, with holes in them;" "House, very bad;"
"One stile, broke;" "Battlements, torn;" "Garden wall, very bad;"
"Waterfall, in the Dargle, very bad." The same definition is applied
to much more property; with "woods, greatly damaged;" "clouds, little
worth;" "wings, with holes, in the canvas;" or, "in bad order."
"Mill, torn;" "elephant, very bad;" and Barry's famous "Alexander's
car," is catalogued as "some of it wanting." Indeed, the only
property in good order, comprised eighty-three thunderbolts!
Of Barry's wardrobe, he seems to have parted only with the "bonnet,
bow, and quiver, for Douglas;" but Mrs. Barry's was left in Crow
Street. It consisted of a black velvet dress and train; nine silk and
satin dresses, of various hues, all trained; numerous other dresses,
of inferior material; and "a pair of shepherd's breeches," which
Boaden thinks were designed "for the dear woman's own Rosalind, no
doubt."
The only known portraits of Barry represent him as Timon and
Macheath. They were taken before he entered upon his last ten years,
in London;--years of gradual, noble, but irresistible decay. Like
Betterton, Barry suffered excruciatingly from attacks of gout; but,
like Betterton, and John Kemble in this respect resembled them
both,--he performed in defiance of physical pain: mind triumphing
over matter.
On the 8th of October 1776, he played Jaffier to the Pierre of
Aikin, and the Belvidera of his wife. He was then only fifty-seven
years of age; but there was a wreck of all his qualities,--save
indomitable will. The noble vessel only existed in ruins, but it
presented a majestic spectacle still. Barry, on the stage, was almost
as effective as he had ever been; but, off the charmed ground, he
succumbed to infirmity and lay insensible, or struggling, or waiting
mournfully for renewal of strength between the acts. He continued ill
for many weeks, during which his chief characters passed into the
hands of Lewis, the great-grandson of Harley's secretary, Erasmus
Lewis, but himself the son of a London linendraper. Lewis, who had
now been three years on the London stage, played Hamlet, and Norval,
Chamont, Mirabel, Young Bevil, and Lord Townley; but on the 28th of
November, Barry roused himself, as if unwilling that the young actor,
who had excelled Mossop in Dublin, should overcome, in London, the
player who had competed, not always vainly, with Garrick. On that
night, as I have already recorded, he played Evander to his wife's
Euphrasia, in the "Grecian Daughter;" but he never played or spoke on
the stage again. On January 10th, 1777, he died, to the great regret
of a world of friends and admirers, and to the awakening of much
poetry of various quality. One of the anonymous sons of the Muse, in
a quarto poem, remarks:--
"Scarcely recovered from the stroke severe,
When Garrick fled from our admiring eyes,
Resolv'd no more the Drama's sons to cheer,
To make that stroke more fatal,--Barry dies.
He dies: and with him sense and taste retreat;
For, who can now conceive the Poet's fire?
Express the just? the natural? the great?
The fervid transport? or the soft desire?"
The poet then fancies gathering around the player's tomb, led thither
by the Tragic Muse,--the Moor, "with unrivall'd grace;" ill-fated
Antony; injured Theseus; feeble Lusignan; woe-stricken Evander;
heart-bleeding Jaffier; and, chief of all, Romeo, with "melting
tears," "voice of love and soothing eloquence." Thalia, too, brings
in Bevil and Townley;--
"And oh! farewell, she cries, _my graceful son_!!"
Graceful, but pathetic as he was graceful. This was especially the
case when, in his younger days, he played with Mrs. Cibber,--Castalio
to Monimia,--at which a comic actor, once looking on, burst into
tears, and was foolish enough to be ashamed of it. No two (so critics
thought) played lover and mistress, wife and husband, as they did.
Mrs. Cibber, said these critics, who forgot her Beatrice to Garrick's
Benedick, could, with equal, though different effect, be only the
daughter or sister to Garrick;--Cordelia to Garrick's Lear, but
a Juliet to Barry's Borneo, a Belvidera to his Jaffier. When Mrs.
Bellamy acted with him, the effect was less complete. Colley Cibber
was in the house on the night of his first appearance as Othello--did
what he was not accustomed to do,--applaud loudly; and is said to
have preferred Barry, in this character, to either Betterton or
Booth. In Orestes, Barry was so incomparable, that Garrick never
attempted the part in London. His Alexander lost all its bombast,
in his hands, and gained a healthy vigour; while, says Davies,
"he charmed the ladies repeatedly, by the soft melody of his love
complaints, and the noble ardour of his courtship." The grace of his
exit and entrance was all his own; though he took lessons in dancing,
from Desnoyers, to please the Prince of Wales.
Barry was a well-informed man, had great conversational powers,
and told an Irish story with an effect which was only equalled
by that with which he acted Sir Callaghan O'Brallaghan. In that
accomplishment and this character, Garrick owned that Barry was not
to be approached; but, said the former, "I can beat Barry's head off
in telling all stories, but Irish ones."
It was in pathos on the stage, not in humour off it, that Barry
excelled. "All exquisitely tender or touching writing," says an
anonymous contemporary, "came mended from his mouth. There was a
pathos, a sweetness, a delicacy, in his utterance, which stole upon
the mind, and forced conviction on the memory. Every sentiment of
honour and virtue, recommended to the ear by the language of the
author, were rivetted to the heart by the utterance of Barry."
Excessive sensibility conquered his powers. His heart overcame his
head; but Garrick never forgot himself in his character. Barry felt
all he uttered, before he made his audience feel; but Garrick made
his audience feel, and was not overcome by his own emotions.
Churchill describes the lofty and admired Barry as possessing a
voice too sweet and soft for rage, and as going wrong through too
much pains to err. The malignant bard alludes to the "well-applauded
tenderness" of his Lear; to the march of his speeches, line by
line; to his preventing surprise by preparatory efforts; and to his
artificial style, manifest alike in his passions as in his utterance.
This dark portrait was limned with the idea that it would please
Garrick, whom it could _not_ please. The two actors respected each
other. "You have already," writes Barry, in 1746, to Garrick, "made
me happy by your friendship. It shall be the business and pleasure of
my life to endeavour to deserve it; and I would willingly make it the
basis of my future fortune." This feeling never waned. Above a score
of years later, Barry writes: "I hear you are displeased with me,
which I beg leave to assure you, I shall feel much more than all the
distresses and disappointments that have happened to me."
Previous to the earlier date Lord Chesterfield had said of Barry, "He
is so handsome, he will not be long on the stage; some rich widow
will carry him off." At the later date, Barry was in London, with the
widow, but not a rich widow, he had brought from Dublin. The only
good result of his otherwise unlucky sojourn there as theatrical
manager, was in his second marriage, with Mrs. Dancer. The lady was
admirably trained by him; and when Garrick saw Mrs. Barry play the
Irish Widow, in his own farce, after superbly enacting a tragic part,
he could not help exclaiming, sincerely as he admired Mrs. Cibber,
Pritchard, and Yates--"She is the heroine of heroines!"
In his later days, when infirmity pressed him painfully, Barry
occasionally lost his temper for a moment. Once this occurred
when Miss Pope's benefit interfered with that of Mrs. Barry, and
he wrote an angry letter to Garrick, the ill-temper in which is
indicated by Garrick's indorsement: "--from Barry; he calls Miss Pope
'_trumpery_!'"
Lacy told Davies that the Barrys' salary was £1500 a year (but the
cost of their dresses fell heavily on them). "Mr. Barry is only paid
when he plays," said Garrick to Miss Pope; and this explains Barry's
own remark, "I have lost £48 by the death of the Princess Louisa."
[Illustration: (Spranger Barry)]
In costume and in stage diet, Barry was the reverse of Mossop. Near
ninety years ago, the former played Othello in a gold-laced scarlet
suit, small cocked hat, and knee-breeches, with silk stockings, which
then displayed his gouty legs. His wife, as Desdemona, wore, more
correctly, a fascinating Italian costume, and looked as captivating
as the decaying actor looked grotesque. Barry did not vary his diet
according to the part he had to play. It was his invariable custom,
after acting, to sup on boiled fowl. His house, first in Broad
Street, then in Norfolk, and lastly in Cecil Street, was visited by
the good among the great. Such was Henry Pelham, himself an inelegant
but frank speaker in Parliament, who had a great admiration for
Barry's graceful elocution. The actor was in possession of all his
powers, and his voice was at its sweetest, when he had this honest
statesman for friend. Henry Pelham died in 1754, when Barry and Miss
Nossiter were playing Romeo and Juliet, with the relish of real
lovers. Long before that, however, player and minister had been
friends, but it was the player, the Mark Antony, of the stage, whose
vain-glory made wreck of their friendship. Pelham invited himself
to sup with Barry, and the actor treated his guest as one prince
might another. He invariably did the honours of his table with great
elegance; but on this occasion there was a magnificent ostentation
which offended Pelham. "I could not have given a more splendid supper
myself," he remarked; and he would never consent to be Barry's guest
again.
Of the nineteen characters, of which he was the original actor, there
stands out, more celebrated than the rest, Mahomet, in Johnson's
"Irene;" Young Norval, in London (in the white puckered satin suit);
and Evander, in the "Grecian Daughter." The last was a masterpiece of
impersonation, and Barry drew tears as copiously in this part as ever
his great rival did in King Lear, in which, by the way, Garrick's too
frequent use of his white pocket-handkerchief was looked upon by the
critics as bathos, with respect to the act; and an anachronism, with
regard to the article!
"Were interred, in a private manner, in the cloysters, Westminster,
the remains of Spranger Barry, late of Covent Garden Theatre." Such
is the simple farewell, a week after his death, of the public papers,
to young Douglas, old Evander, the silver-toned actor. Macklin was
one of the funeral procession from Cecil Street to the cloisters.
Looking into the grave, he murmured, "Poor Spranger!" and when some
one would fain have led the old man away, he said mournfully, "Sir, I
am at my rehearsal. Do not disturb my reverie!"[117]
Mrs. Barry survived her great husband nearly a quarter of a century.
Although that great husband did not found a school of acting, he
had his imitators. A Barry school required a manly beauty, and an
exquisitely-toned voice, such as fall to the lot of few actors.
Nevertheless, in 1788, a successor was announced in the person of an
Irish player, Middleton, whose real name was Magann. He had abandoned
the medical profession for the stage, some obstacles to his reaching
which had actually rendered him partially and temporarily insane. He
had fine powers of elocution, and in Romeo and Othello reminded the
old friends of Barry--perhaps painfully--of their lost favourite. The
imitation was, no doubt, strong; but it was stronger off the stage
than on; for, with 30s. a week, Middleton strove to live in Barry's
sumptuous style. Thereby, he soon ceased to live at all, ending a
brief career in abject misery, and leaving his body to be buried by
the charity of his fellow-players.
Mrs. Barry was sufficiently recovered from the grief of losing her
husband, to be able to play Viola, for her benefit, two months after
his decease. When she resumed her great part of Lady Randolph, she
spoke a few lines, written by Garrick, in memory of the first and the
most elegant and perfect of young Norvals. In those lines Barry is
thus alluded to:--
"Of the lov'd pilot of my life bereft,
Save your protection, not a hope is left.
Without that peace your kindness can impart,
Nothing can calm this sorrow-beaten heart.
Urged by my duty, I have ventur'd here;
But how for Douglas can I shed the tear?
When real griefs the burden'd bosom press,
Can it raise sighs feign'd sorrows to express?
In vain will art, from nature, help implore,
When nature for herself exhausts her store.
The tree cut down on which she clung and grew,
Behold, the propless woodbine bends to you;
Your soft'ning pow'r will spread protection round;
And, though she droops, may raise her from the ground."
I will not divide the sketch of the story of Mrs. Spranger Barry
from that of the greatest and most worthy of her three husbands. Her
father was a gay, well-to-do, but extravagant apothecary in Bath,
whose daughter, Miss Street, was one of the belles there, celebrated
for her graceful figure, expressive beauty, and rich auburn hair.
The handsome and clever girl was jilted by a lover, whose affection
for the apothecary's daughter cooled, on a sudden accession of
fortune occurring to himself. Poor Ariadne went for solace to the
North, where, after some while, she found a Bacchus in a hot-headed,
jealous, but seductive actor, named Dancer, who married her, and
placed her, nothing loath, upon the stage.
Her friends were scandalised, and her widowed mother bequeathed her a
trifling annuity, only on condition of her ceasing to be an actress.
Mrs. Dancer declined; and the honest man to whom the annuity was
thereby forfeited, surrendered the whole to her, and bade her prosper!
Prosperity, however, only came after long study and severe labour,
and many trials and vexations. When Barry assumed the management of
the Dublin Theatre, he found Mrs. Dancer a most promising actress,
and her lord the most jealous husband in Ireland. Youth, beauty,
genius, were the endowments she had brought to that husband; and he,
on his death, left her in full possession of all she had brought with
her, and nothing more. But these and a liberal salary were charms
that attracted many admirers. An Irish earl was not ashamed, indeed,
to woo the young, fair, and accomplished creature, with too free a
gallantry; but all the earls in the peerage had no chance against the
manly beauty and the silver tone of Spranger Barry.
Hand-in-hand with her new husband, she came to London. Garrick sat
in the pit, at Foote's theatre, to witness her _début_. He approved;
and forthwith she took a place at the head of her profession,--equal
almost with her great namesake of the previous century, not inferior
to Mrs. Pritchard or Mrs. Cibber, superior to Mrs. Yates, and not to
be excelled till, in the evening of her days, Sarah Siddons came, to
wish her gone, and to speed the going.
Mrs. Barry was otherwise remarkable, she had "a modest gaiety in
her manners and address;" and though in Belvidera, Lady Randolph,
Rutland, Euphrasia, Monimia, and Desdemona, she defied rivalry, she
really preferred to act Lady Townley, Beatrice, the Widow Brady,
Rosalind, and Biddy Tipkin. She acted tragedy, to gratify the house;
comedy, to please herself; and she had a supreme indifference for the
patronage of Ladies of Quality if she could only win the plaudits of
the public at large. In the "Jubilee," however, she represented the
_Tragic_ muse.
Two years after Barry's death, his widow met with and married a
scampish young Irish barrister, named Crawford, who spent her money,
broke her heart, and was the cause of her theatrical wardrobe being
seized by a Welsh landlord, for debt. The General who married the
widow of Napoleon treated her with respect, but young Crawford only
regarded the middle-aged but handsome and accomplished widow of
Spranger Barry as a means whereby he might live. There is something
supremely melancholy in the story of Mrs. Barry, after this time.
She raised her young husband to such efficiency that in London,
he played Pierre, to her Belvidera; and the bad fellow might have
respected a woman who did this, and could also earn £1100 in sixteen
nights of acting, in Ireland. In the latter country, whither Mrs.
Crawford, as I regret to call her, went, after playing Zara, in
1781, thereby leaving a long-desired opening to Mrs. Siddons,--Mr.
Crawford acquired a reputation for shabbiness. On his benefit night,
in a supper scene, he provided no refreshments on the table, for
the actors seated round it, and this omission produced a scene of
unrehearsed effects,--of exposure of Crawford's meanness, on the
part of the players, and indignation against him on the part of the
audience. When he became lessee, after Ryder, his own unhappy wife
could not trust him, and often refused to go on, till Crawford had
collected the amount of her salary from the doorkeepers,--if they
had taken as much. He was reduced to such straits that one night,
on the desertion of his unpaid band, he himself, and alone, played
the violin in the orchestra, dressed as he was for Othello, which
he acted on the stage. The Irish audience enjoyed the fun, and even
Mrs. Crawford was so attached to him, that when Jephson's "Count of
Narbonne" was first produced, in which, from her age, she should have
played the Countess, she chose to act Adelaide, that her husband
might still make love to her, as Theodore!
All that she earned, Crawford squandered. Fortunately, the small
annuity left by her mother was secured to her, and this Crawford
could not touch. What became of this unworthy Irishman I cannot say;
but he helped to spoil Mrs. Crawford, as an actress. Her health
and spirits failed, and her acting grew comparatively languid. The
appearance of Mrs. Siddons, in the best of her years, strength,
beauty, and ability, quickened the jealous pulses of the older
actress's heart, and she once more played Lady Randolph, with
such effect, that the _Morning Chronicle_ asserted, no competitor
could achieve a like triumph. The younger actress at last outshone
Mrs. Crawford, whose very benefits became unprofitable. Her last
appearance on the stage was at Covent Garden, on the 16th of April
1798, in Lady Randolph, a character which Mrs. Siddons did not play
that season,--her Mrs. Haller being the peculiar triumph of that
glorious year.
Mrs. Barry, the original Euphrasia, died in 1801, having reaped
honour enough to enable her to be free from envy of others, and
having means sufficient to render her closing days void of anxiety.
The Grecian Daughter, the Widow Brady, and Edwina, in Hannah More's
"Percy," were the best of her original characters; of her other
characters, Lady Randolph is the most intimately connected with
her name. As between her and Mrs. Siddons, the judgment seems
well-founded which declares that Mrs. Crawford was inferior to Mrs.
Siddons in the terrific, but superior in the pathetic. At Mrs.
Crawford's "Is he alive?" in Lady Randolph, Bannister had seen half
the pit start to their feet. Mrs. Siddons was but a "demi-goddess,"
as Walpole has it, in comedy, where Mrs. Barry was often inimitable.
Walpole saw both actresses in "Percy," and he most admired Mrs.
Siddon's passionate scenes. When, years before, he saw Mrs. Barry
in the same play, his mind was pre-occupied with politics, and he
thought less of the actress than of passing events, of which he was
reminded by passages in the play.
Mrs. Crawford, to take leave of her in her last name, was no admirer
of the great actress by whom she was displaced; and albeit somewhat
smartly, the old lady did not ill distinguish between the school to
which she belonged and that founded by her comparatively young rival.
"The Garrick school," she said, "was all _rapidity_ and _passion_;
while the Kemble school is so full of _paw_ and _pause_ that, at
first, the performers, thinking their new competitors had either lost
their cues, or forgotten their parts, used frequently to prompt them."
As we associate the name of Barry with that of Garrick, so do we
that of Mossop with Spranger Barry. Mossop, whose career on the
stage commenced in 1749, with Zanga,--type of characters in which
alone he excelled,--died in 1773, at the age of forty-five. He was
the ill-fated son of an Irish clergyman, and he was always on the
point of becoming a great actor, but never accomplishing that end.
His syllables fell from him like minute-guns, even in or-din-a-ry
con-ver-sa-tion, and the nickname of the "tea-pot actor," referred
to his favourite attitude with one arm on his hip and the other
extended. In London, an evanescent success in Richard and similar
characters, almost made of him a rival of Garrick. In Dublin, he
ruined Barry by his opposing management, which also brought down ruin
on himself. Of this "monster of perfection," or the "pragmatical
puppy," as he was variously called, we learn something from the
_Dublin Journal_ of May 8th, 1772, which says, "A few days ago, the
celebrated tragedian, Mossop, moved to his new apartments in the
Rules of the Fleet." When Mossop repaired to London his powers had
failed. He could not obtain "first business," declined to accept
"second," and proudly died in poverty, at Chelsea, leaving for all
fortune one poor penny.[118]
Garrick offered to bury him, but a kinsman who would have nothing to
say to the actor, claimed the satisfaction of consigning him to the
grave, whither, after all, his brother actors carried him. So ended
the promising player who combined gastronomy with his study of the
drama, and ordered his dinner according to the part he had to act;
sausages and Zanga; rump-steaks and Richard; pork-chops and Pierre;
veal-cutlets and Barbarossa; and so forth! The antagonism of the two
Irish actors seems to have wearied the Dublin people, who, at last,
"Did not care a toss-up,
If Mossop beat Barry, or Barry beat Mossop."
Of some other actors who left the stage about the same period I will
speak in the next chapter.
FOOTNOTES:
[117] It is perhaps scarcely worth noting, but the form of this
speech seems to me so much better as given by Cooke, that I venture
to quote it:--"Pray, sir, don't disturb me; consider, I am now at _my
rehearsal_."
[118] I cannot help remarking that Dr. Doran does not give Mossop
anything like his proper importance. He was one of the three great
actors of his period: Garrick, Barry, Mossop. I may also say that the
date of his death is uncertain. It may have been 1775.
[Illustration: KITTY CLIVE'S HOUSE, TWICKENHAM.]