I
If only she had a heart she would be perfect,” said Mr. Garrick to his
friend, Mrs. Woffington.
“Ay, as an actress, not as a woman,” said Mrs. Woffington. “'T is
not the perfect women who have been most liberally supplied with that
organ.”
“Faith, Madam Peggy, I, David Garrick, of Drury Lane Theatre, have good
reason to set much more store upon the perfect actress than the perfect
woman,” said Mr. Garrick. “If I had no rent to pay and no actors to pay,
I might be led to spend a profitable hour or two over the consideration
of so interesting a question as the relative merits of the perfect woman
with no heart worth speaking of and the perfect actress with a dangerous
superfluity of the same organ. Under existing conditions, however, I beg
leave to--”
“Psha! Davy,” said Margaret; “try not your scholarship upon so poor a
thing as myself! It seems to me that you have never quite recovered
from the effects of your early training at the feet of our friend, Mr.
Johnson.”
“Alas! Peggy,” said Garrick, “I have forgot all the better part of Mr.
Johnson's instruction. He has no reason to be proud of me.”
“And yet he is proud of you, and, by my faith, he has some reason to be
so. Was it not he made you an actor?”
“He! Mr. Johnson? oh, Lord, he never ceased to inculcate upon us a just
hatred and contempt of all that appertains to the stage.”
“Ay, and that was the means of making you thoroughly interested in all
that appertains to the stage, my friend. But I hold as I have always
held, that Mr. Johnson gave you first chance.
“What sophistry is this that you have seized upon, my dear? My first
chance?”
“Yes, sir; I hold that your first and, I doubt not, your greatest,
success as an actor, was your imitation for the good of your
schoolfellows, of the mighty love passages between your good preceptor
and that painted piece of crockery who had led him to marry her, that
was old enough--ay, and nearly plain enough--to be his mother. What did
he call her?--his Tiffy?--his Taffy?”
“Nay, only his Tessy, The lady's name was Elizabeth, you must know.”
“Call her Saint Elizabeth, Davy--your patron saint, for, by the Lord
Harry, you would never have thought of coming on the stage if it had not
been for the applause you won when you returned to the schoolroom after
peeping through the door of the room where your schoolmaster chased his
Tessy into a corner for a kiss! Davy, 't is your finest part still. If
you and I were to act it, with a prologue written by Mr. Johnson, it
would draw all the town.”
“I doubt it not; but it would likewise draw down upon me the wrath of
Mr. Johnson; and that is not to be lightly faced. But we have strayed
from our text, Margaret.”
“Our text? I have forgotten that there was some preaching being done.
But all texts are but pretexts for straying, uttered in the hearing of
the strayed. What is your text, Davy?”
“The text is the actress without the heart, Margaret, and the evil that
she doeth to the writer of the tragedy, to the man who hath a lease
of the playhouse, and above all to her sister actress, Mistress
Woffington.”
“The last of the three evils would imperil the soul's safety of as
blameless a lady as Kitty Clive herself. But, if Mistress Woffington
acts her part well in the new tragedy, I scarce see how she can be hurt
by the bad acting of Miss Hoppner.”
“That is because you are a trifle superficial in your views of the
drama, Mistress Woffington. What would you think of the painter who
should declare that, if the lights in his picture were carefully put in,
the shadows might be left to chance?”
“Where is the analogy, David?”
“It is apparent: the tragedy is the picture, Mrs. Woffington represents
the lighting, and Miss Hoppner the shading. Heavens! Mrs. Woffington,
madam, do you flatter yourself that the playgoers will be willing to
accept the author's account of the fascinations of the woman whom
you are representing, if you fail to rouse your rival to any point of
jealousy? Miss Hoppner, for all the strong language the poet puts into
her mouth, will not make the playgoers feel that the Lady Oriana bears
you a grudge for having taken her lover from her; and when she stabs you
with her dagger, she does so in such a halfhearted way that the whole
house will perceive that she is not in earnest.”
“Then they will blame her, and she will deserve the blame. They cannot
blame me.”
“Cannot they, indeed? Lord, my good woman, you little know the
playgoers. You think that they are so nice in their discrimination?
You should have learnt better since the days you hung on to Madame
Violanti's feet on the tight rope. If you had wriggled so that Violanti
had slipped off her rope, would her patrons have blamed aught but her?
Nay, you know that they would only have sneered at her clumsiness, and
thought nothing of the little devil who had upset her.”
“Ay; I begin to perceive your meaning. You apprehend that the playgoers
will damn the play and all associated with it, because Miss Hoppner does
not kill me with sufficient good-will?”
“I feel sure that they will say that if Mrs. Woffington had only acted
with sufficient intensity she would have stirred her rival into so real
a passion of jealousy that she would have stabbed you in a fury.”
“Look you here, friend Davy; if it be in your thoughts that Mairgaret
Woffington is to be held accountable for the mistakes of all the other
members of your company, you would do well to revise your salary list.”
“Nay, Peggy; I only said what the playgoers will, in their error, mind
you, assume.”
“Come, Mr. Garrick, tell me plainly what you want me to do for you in
this business. What, sir, are we not on sufficiently friendly terms for
plain speaking? Tell me all that is on your mind, sir?”
Garrick paused for some moments, and then laughed in a somewhat
constrained way, before walking on by the side of his friend.
“Come, sir,” continued Mrs. Woffington. “Be as plain as you please. I am
not prone to take offence.”
“We'll talk of that anon,” said Garrick. “Perhaps Mr. Macklin will be
able to give us his helpful counsel in this business.”
“Psha!” said Peggy. “Mr. Macklin could never be brought to see with your
eyes.”
“Then he will be all the better able to give us the result of Mr.
Macklin's observation,” said Garrick.
“Ay, but that is not what you want, Davy,” said Mrs. Woffington, with a
pretty loud laugh. “No one ever calls in a counsellor with the hope of
obtaining an unprejudiced opinion; the only counsellor in whom we have
confidence is he who corroborates our own views.”