On the noon of the 14th of November, 1743 or 4, I forget which it was,
just as the clock had struck one, Barbara S----, with her accustomed
punctuality ascended the long rambling staircase, with awkward
interposed landing-places, which led to the office, or rather a sort
of box with a desk in it, whereat sat the then Treasurer of (what few
of our readers may remember) the Old Bath Theatre. All over the island
it was the custom, and remains so I believe to this day, for the
players to receive their weekly stipend on the Saturday. It was not
much that Barbara had to claim.
This little maid had just entered her eleventh year; but her important
station at the theatre, as it seemed to her, with the benefits which
she felt to accrue from her pious application of her small earnings,
had given an air of womanhood to her steps and to her behaviour. You
would have taken her to have been at least five years older.
Till latterly she had merely been employed in choruses, or where
children were wanted to fill up the scene. But the manager, observing
a diligence and adroitness in her above her age, had for some few
months past intrusted to her the performance of whole parts. You may
guess the self-consequence of the promoted Barbara. She had already
drawn tears in young Arthur; had rallied Richard with infantine
petulance in the Duke of York; and in her turn had rebuked that
petulance when she was Prince of Wales. She would have done the elder
child in Morton's pathetic after-piece to the life; but as yet the
"Children in the Wood" was not.
Long after this little girl was grown an aged woman, I have seen some
of these small parts, each making two or three pages at most, copied
out in the rudest hand of the then prompter, who doubtless transcribed
a little more carefully and fairly for the grown-up tragedy ladies
of the establishment. But such as they were, blotted and scrawled,
as for a child's use, she kept them all; and in the zenith of her
after reputation it was a delightful sight to behold them bound up in
costliest Morocco, each single--each small part making a _book_--with
fine clasps, gilt-splashed, &c. She had conscientiously kept them
as they had been delivered to her; not a blot had been effaced
or tampered with. They were precious to her for their affecting
remembrancings. They were her principia, her rudiments; the elementary
atoms; the little steps by which she pressed forward to perfection.
"What," she would say, "could Indian rubber, or a pumice stone, have
done for these darlings?"
I am in no hurry to begin my story--indeed I have little or none to
tell--so I will just mention an observation of hers connected with
that interesting time.
Not long before she died I had been discoursing with her on the
quantity of real present emotion which a great tragic performer
experiences during acting. I ventured to think, that though in the
first instance such players must have possessed the feelings which
they so powerfully called up in others, yet by frequent repetition
those feelings must become deadened in great measure, and the
performer trust to the memory of past emotion, rather than express a
present one. She indignantly repelled the notion, that with a truly
great tragedian the operation, by which such effects were produced
upon an audience, could ever degrade itself into what was purely
mechanical. With much delicacy, avoiding to instance in her
_self_-experience, she told me, that so long ago as when she used to
play the part of the Little Son to Mrs. Porter's Isabella, (I think it
was) when that impressive actress has been bending over her in some
heart-rending colloquy, she has felt real hot tears come trickling
from her, which (to use her powerful expression) have perfectly
scalded her back.
I am not quite so sure that it was Mrs. Porter; but it was some great
actress of that day. The name is indifferent; but the fact of the
scalding tears I most distinctly remember.
I was always fond of the society of players, and am not sure that an
impediment in my speech (which certainly kept me out of the pulpit)
even more than certain personal disqualifications, which are often got
over in that profession, did not prevent me at one time of life from
adopting it. I have had the honour (I must ever call it) once to
have been admitted to the tea-table of Miss Kelly. I have played at
serious whist with Mr. Listen. I have chatted with ever good-humoured
Mrs. Charles Kemble. I have conversed as friend to friend with her
accomplished husband. I have been indulged with a classical conference
with Macready; and with a sight of the Player-picture gallery, at Mr.
Matthews's, when the kind owner, to remunerate me for my love of the
old actors (whom he loves so much) went over it with me, supplying
to his capital collection, what alone the artist could not give
them--voice; and their living motion. Old tones, half-faded, of Dodd
and Parsons, and Baddeley, have lived again for me at his bidding.
Only Edwin he could not restore to me. I have supped with ----; but I
am growing a coxcomb.
As I was about to say--at the desk of the then treasurer of the old
Bath theatre--not Diamond's--presented herself the little Barbara
S----.
The parents of Barbara had been in reputable circumstances. The father
had practised, I believe, as an apothecary in the town. But his
practice from causes which I feel my own infirmity too sensibly that
way to arraign--or perhaps from that pure infelicity which accompanies
some people in their walk through life, and which it is impossible to
lay at the door of imprudence--was now reduced to nothing. They were
in fact in the very teeth of starvation, when the manager, who knew
and respected them in better days, took the little Barbara into his
company.
At the period I commenced with, her slender earnings were the sole
support of the family, including two younger sisters. I must throw
a veil over some mortifying circumstances. Enough to say, that her
Saturday's pittance was the only chance of a Sunday's (generally their
only) meal of meat.
One thing I will only mention, that in some child's part, where in
her theatrical character she was to sup off a roast fowl (O joy to
Barbara!) some comic actor, who was for the night caterer for this
dainty--in the misguided humour of his part, threw over the dish
such a quantity of salt (O grief and pain of heart to Barbara!) that
when he crammed a portion of it into her mouth, she was obliged
sputteringly to reject it; and what with shame of her ill-acted part,
and pain of real appetite at missing such a dainty, her little heart
sobbed almost to breaking, till a flood of tears, which the well-fed
spectators were totally unable to comprehend, mercifully relieved her.
This was the little starved, meritorious maid, who stood before old
Ravenscroft, the treasurer, for her Saturday's payment.
Ravenscroft was a man, I have heard many old theatrical people besides
herself say, of all men least calculated for a treasurer. He had no
head for accounts, paid away at random, kept scarce any books, and
summing up at the week's end, if he found himself a pound or so
deficient, blest himself that it was no worse.
Now Barbara's weekly stipend was a bare half guinea.--By mistake he
popped into her hand a--whole one.
Barbara tripped away.
She was entirely unconscious at first of the mistake: God knows,
Ravenscroft would never have discovered it.
But when she had got down to the first of those uncouth
landing-places, she became sensible of an unusual weight of metal
pressing her little hand.
Now mark the dilemma.
She was by nature a good child. From her parents and those about her
she had imbibed no contrary influence. But then they had taught her
nothing. Poor men's smoky cabins are not always porticoes of moral
philosophy. This little maid had no instinct to evil, but then she
might be said to have no fixed principle. She had heard honesty
commended, but never dreamed of its application to herself. She
thought of it as something which concerned grown-up people--men
and women. She had never known temptation, or thought of preparing
resistance against it.
Her first impulse was to go back to the old treasurer, and explain
to him his blunder. He was already so confused with age, besides a
natural want of punctuality, that she would have had some difficulty
in making him understand it. She saw _that_ in an instant. And then
it was such a bit of money! and then the image of a larger allowance
of butcher's meat on their table next day came across her, till
her little eyes glistened, and her mouth moistened. But then Mr.
Ravenscroft had always been so good-natured, had stood her friend
behind the scenes, and even recommended her promotion to some of her
little parts. But again the old man was reputed to be worth a world
of money. He was supposed to have fifty pounds a year clear of the
theatre. And then came staring upon her the figures of her little
stockingless and shoeless sisters. And when she looked at her own neat
white cotton stockings, which her situation at the theatre had made it
indispensable for her mother to provide for her, with hard straining
and pinching from the family stock, and thought how glad she should
be to cover their poor feet with the same--and how then they could
accompany her to rehearsals, which they had hitherto been precluded
from doing, by reason of their unfashionable attire--in these thoughts
she reached the second landing-place--the second, I mean from the
top--for there was still another left to traverse.
Now virtue support Barbara!
And that never-failing friend did step in--for at that moment a
strength not her own, I have heard her say, was revealed to her--a
reason above reasoning--and without her own agency, as it seemed (for
she never felt her feet to move) she found herself transported back to
the individual desk she had just quitted, and her hand in the old hand
of Ravenscroft, who in silence took back the refunded treasure, and
who had been sitting (good man) insensible to the lapse of minutes,
which to her were anxious ages; and from that moment a deep peace fell
upon her heart, and she knew the quality of honesty.
A year or two's unrepining application to her profession brightened
up the feet, and the prospects, of her little sisters, set the whole
family upon their legs again, and released her from the difficulty of
discussing moral dogmas upon a landing-place.
I have heard her say, that it was a surprise, not much short of
mortification to her, to see the coolness with which the old man
pocketed the difference, which had caused her such mortal throes.
This anecdote of herself I had in the year 1800, from the mouth of
the late Mrs. Crawford,[1] then sixty-seven years of age (she died
soon after); and to her struggles upon this childish occasion I have
sometimes ventured to think her indebted for that power of rending
the heart in the representation of conflicting emotions, for which in
after years she was considered as little inferior (if at all so in the
part of Lady Randolph) even to Mrs. Siddons.
[Footnote 1: The maiden name of this lady was Street, which she
changed, by successive marriages, for those of Dancer, Barry, and
Crawford. She was Mrs. Crawford, and a third time a widow, when I
knew her.]