ABOUT the middle of the last century, at eight o'clock in the evening,
in a large but poor apartment, a man was slumbering on a rough couch.
His rusty and worn suit of black was of a piece with his uncarpeted
room, the deal table of home manufacture, and its slim unsnuffed candle.
The man was Triplet, scene painter, actor and writer of sanguinary
plays, in which what ought to be, viz., truth, plot, situation and
dialogue, were not; and what ought not to be, were--_scilicet,_ small
talk, big talk, fops, ruffians, and ghosts.
His three mediocrities fell so short of one talent that he was sometimes
_impransus._
He slumbered, but uneasily; the dramatic author was uppermost, and his
“Demon of the Hayloft” hung upon the thread of popular favor.
On his uneasy slumber entered from the theater Mrs. Triplet.
She was a lady who in one respect fell behind her husband; she lacked
his variety in ill-doing, but she recovered herself by doing her one
thing a shade worse than he did any of his three. She was what is called
in grim sport an actress; she had just cast her mite of discredit on
royalty by playing the Queen, and had trundled home the moment the
breath was out of her royal body. She came in rotatory with fatigue,
and fell, gristle, into a chair; she wrenched from her brow a diadem and
eyed it with contempt, took from her pocket a sausage, and contemplated
it with respect and affection, placed it in a frying-pan on the fire,
and entered her bedroom, meaning to don a loose wrapper, and dethrone
herself into comfort.
But the poor woman was shot walking by Morpheus, and subsided
altogether; for dramatic performances, amusing and exciting to youth
seated in the pit, convey a certain weariness to those bright beings who
sparkle on the stage for bread and cheese.
Royalty, disposed of, still left its trail of events. The sausage began
to “spit.” The sound was hardly out of its body, when poor Triplet
writhed like a worm on a hook. “Spitter, spittest,” went the sausage.
Triplet groaned, and at last his inarticulate murmurs became words:
“That's right, pit now, that is so reasonable to condemn a poor fellow's
play before you have heard it out.” Then, with a change of tone, “Tom,”
muttered he, “they are losing their respect for specters; if they do,
hunger will make a ghost of me.” Next he fancied the clown or somebody
had got into his ghost's costume.
“Dear,” said the poor dreamer, “the clown makes a very pretty specter,
with his ghastly white face, and his blood-boltered cheeks and nose. I
never saw the fun of a clown before, no! no! no! it is not the clown, it
is worse, much worse; oh, dear, ugh!” and Triplet rolled off the couch
like Richard the Third. He sat a moment on the floor, with a finger
in each eye; and then, finding he was neither daubing, ranting, nor
deluging earth with “acts,” he accused himself of indolence, and sat
down to write a small tale of blood and bombast; he took his seat at the
deal table with some alacrity, for he had recently made a discovery.
How to write well, _rien que cela._
“First, think in as homely a way as you can; next, shove your pen under
the thought, and lift it by polysyllables to the true level of fiction,”
(when done, find a publisher--if you can). “This,” said Triplet,
“insures common sense to your ideas, which does pretty well for a
basis,” said Triplet, apologetically, “and elegance to the dress they
wear.” Triplet, then casting his eyes round in search of such actual
circumstances as could be incorporated on this plan with fiction, began
to work thus:
TRIPLET'S FACTS. TRIPLET'S FICTION.
A farthing dip is on the table. A solitary candle cast its pale
gleams around.
It wants snuffing. Its elongated wick betrayed an owner
steeped in oblivion.
He jumped up, and snuffed it. He rose languidly, and trimmed it with
his fingers. Burned his with an
instrument that he had by his fingers,
and swore a little. side for that
purpose, and muttered a silent
ejaculation
Before, however, the mole Triplet could undermine literature and level
it with the dust, various interruptions and divisions broke in upon his
design, and _sic nos servavit_ Apollo. As he wrote the last sentence, a
loud rap came to his door. A servant in livery brought him a note from
Mr. Vane, dated Covent Garden. Triplet's eyes sparkled, he bustled,
wormed himself into a less rusty coat, and started off to the Theater
Royal, Covent Garden.
In those days, the artists of the pen and the brush ferreted patrons,
instead of aiming to be indispensable to the public, the only patron
worth a single gesture of the quill.
Mr. Vane had conversed with Triplet, that is, let Triplet talk to him in
a coffee-house, and Triplet, the most sanguine of unfortunate men, had
already built a series of expectations upon that interview, when this
note arrived. Leaving him on his road from Lambeth to Covent Garden, we
must introduce more important personages.
Mr. Vane was a wealthy gentleman from Shropshire, whom business had
called to London four months ago, and now pleasure detained. Business
still occupied the letters he sent now and then to his native county;
but it had ceased to occupy the writer. He was a man of learning and
taste, as times went; and his love of the Arts had taken him some time
before our tale to the theaters, then the resort of all who pretended
to taste; and it was thus he had become fascinated by Mrs. Woffington, a
lady of great beauty, and a comedian high in favor with the town.
The first night he saw her was an epoch in the history of this
gentleman's mind. He had learning and refinement, and he had not great
practical experience, and such men are most open to impression from the
stage. He saw a being, all grace and bright nature, move like a goddess
among the stiff puppets of the scene; her glee and her pathos were
equally catching, she held a golden key at which all the doors of
the heart flew open. Her face, too, was as full of goodness as
intelligence--it was like no other farce; the heart bounded to meet it.
He rented a box at her theater. He was there every night before the
curtain drew up; and I'm sorry to say, he at last took half a dislike
to Sunday--Sunday “which knits up the raveled sleave of care,” Sunday
“tired nature's sweet restorer,” because on Sunday there was no Peg
Woffington. At first he regarded her as a being of another sphere, an
incarnation of poetry and art; but by degrees his secret aspirations
became bolder. She was a woman; there were men who knew her; some of
them inferior to him in position, and, he flattered himself, in mind.
He had even heard a tale against her character. To him her face was its
confutation, and he knew how loose-tongued is calumny; but still--!
At last, one day he sent her a letter, unsigned. This letter expressed
his admiration of her talent in warm but respectful terms; the writer
told her it had become necessary to his heart to return her in some way
his thanks for the land of enchantment to which she had introduced him.
Soon after this, choice flowers found their way to her dressing-room
every night, and now and then verses and precious stones mingled with
her roses and eglantine. And oh, how he watched the great actress's
eye all the night; how he tried to discover whether she looked oftener
toward his box than the corresponding box on the other side of the
house. Did she notice him, or did she not? What a point gained, if she
was conscious of his nightly attendance. She would feel he was a friend,
not a mere auditor. He was jealous of the pit, on whom Mrs. Woffington
lavished her smiles without measure.
At last, one day he sent her a wreath of flowers, and implored her, if
any word he had said to her had pleased or interested her, to wear this
wreath that night. After he had done this he trembled; he had courted a
decision, when, perhaps, his safety lay in patience and time. She
made her _entree;_ he turned cold as she glided into sight from the
prompter's side; he raised his eyes slowly and fearfully from her feet
to her head; her head was bare, wreathed only by its own rich glossy
honors. “Fool!” thought he, “to think she would hang frivolities upon
that glorious head for me.” Yet his disappointment told him he had
really hoped it; he would not have sat out the play but for a leaden
incapacity of motion that seized him.
The curtain drew up for the fifth act, and!--could he believe his
eyes?--Mrs. Woffington stood upon the stage with his wreath upon her
graceful head. She took away his breath. She spoke the epilogue, and, as
the curtain fell, she lifted her eyes, he thought, to his box, and made
him a distinct, queen-like courtesy; his heart fluttered to his mouth,
and he walked home on wings and tiptoe. In short--
Mrs. Woffington, as an actress, justified a portion of this enthusiasm;
she was one of the truest artists of her day; a fine lady in her
hands was a lady, with the genteel affectation of a gentlewoman, not a
harlot's affectation, which is simply and without exaggeration what the
stage commonly gives us for a fine lady; an old woman in her hands was
a thorough woman, thoroughly old, not a cackling young person of epicene
gender. She played Sir Harry Wildair like a man, which is how he ought
to be played (or, which is better still, not at all), so that Garrick
acknowledged her as a male rival, and abandoned the part he no longer
monopolized.
Now it very, very rarely happens that a woman of her age is high enough
in art and knowledge to do these things. In players, vanity cripples art
at every step. The young actress who is not a Woffington aims to display
herself by means of her part, which is vanity; not to raise her part by
sinking herself in it, which is art. It has been my misfortune to see
----, and----, and ----, et ceteras, play the man; Nature, forgive them,
if you can, for art never will; they never reached any idea more manly
than a steady resolve to exhibit the points of a woman with greater
ferocity than they could in a gown. But consider, ladies, a man is not
the meanest of the brute creation, so how can he be an unwomanly female?
This sort of actress aims not to give her author's creation to the
public, but to trot out the person instead of the creation, and shows
sots what a calf it has--and is.
Vanity, vanity! all is vanity! Mesdames les Charlatanes.
Margaret Woffington was of another mold; she played the ladies of high
comedy with grace, distinction, and delicacy. But in Sir Harry Wildair
she parted with a woman's mincing foot and tongue, and played the man
in a style large, spirited and _elance._ As Mrs. Day (committee) she
painted wrinkles on her lovely face so honestly that she was taken for
threescore, and she carried out the design with voice and person, and
did a vulgar old woman to the life. She disfigured her own beauties to
show the beauty of her art; in a word, she was an artist! It does not
follow she was the greatest artist that ever breathed; far from it. Mr.
Vane was carried to this notion by passion and ignorance.
On the evening of our tale he was at his post patiently sitting out one
of those sanguinary discourses our rude forefathers thought were
tragic plays. _Sedet aeternumque Sedebit Infelix Theseus,_ because Mrs.
Woffington is to speak the epilogue.
These epilogues were curiosities of the human mind; they whom, just to
ourselves and _them,_ we call our _forbears,_ had an idea their blood
and bombast were not ridiculous enough in themselves, so when the
curtain had fallen on the _debris_ of the _dramatis personae,_ and
of common sense, they sent on an actress to turn all the sentiment so
laboriously acquired into a jest.
To insist that nothing good or beautiful shall be carried safe from a
play out into the street was the bigotry of English horseplay. Was a
Lucretia the heroine of the tragedy, she was careful in the epilogue
to speak like Messalina. Did a king's mistress come to hunger and
repentance, she disinfected all the _petites maitresses_ in the house
of the moral, by assuring them that sin is a joke, repentance a greater,
and that she individually was ready for either if they would but cry,
laugh and pay. Then the audience used to laugh, and if they did not,
lo! the manager, actor and author of heroic tragedy were exceeding
sorrowful.
While sitting attendance on the epilogue Mr. Vane had nothing to
distract him from the congregation but a sanguinary sermon in five
heads, so his eyes roved over the pews, and presently he became aware of
a familiar face watching him closely. The gentleman to whom it belonged
finding himself recognized left his seat, and a minute later Sir Charles
Pomander entered Mr. Vane's box.
This Sir Charles Pomander was a gentleman of vice; pleasure he called
it. Mr. Vane had made his acquaintance two years ago in Shropshire. Sir
Charles, who husbanded everything except his soul, had turned himself
out to grass for a month. His object was, by roast mutton, bread with
some little flour in it, air, water, temperance, chastity and peace, to
be enabled to take a deeper plunge into impurities of food and morals.
A few nights ago, unseen by Mr. Vane, he had observed him in the
theater; an ordinary man would have gone at once and shaken hands with
him, but this was not an ordinary man, this was a diplomatist. First
of all, he said to himself: “What is this man doing here?” Then he soon
discovered this man must be in love with some actress; then it became
his business to know who she was; this, too, soon betrayed itself. Then
it became more than ever Sir Charles's business to know whether Mrs.
Woffington returned the sentiment; and here his penetration was at
fault, for the moment; he determined, however, to discover.
Mr. Vane then received his friend, all unsuspicious how that friend
had been skinning him with his eyes for some time past. After the usual
compliments had passed between two gentlemen who had been hand and glove
for a month and forgotten each other's existence for two years, Sir
Charles, still keeping in view his design, said:
“Let us go upon the stage.” The fourth act had just concluded.
“Go upon the stage!” said Mr. Vane; “what, where she--I mean among the
actors?”
“Yes; come into the green-room. There are one or two people of
reputation there; I will introduce you to them, if you please.”
“Go upon the stage!” why, if it had been proposed to him to go to heaven
he would not have been more astonished. He was too astonished at first
to realize the full beauty of the arrangement, by means of which he
might be within a yard of Mrs. Woffington, might feel her dress rustle
past him, might speak to her, might drink her voice fresh from her lips
almost before it mingled with meaner air. Silence gives consent, and Mr.
Vane, though he thought a great deal, said nothing; so Pomander rose,
and they left the boxes together. He led the way to the stage door,
which was opened obsequiously to him; they then passed through a dismal
passage, and suddenly emerged upon that scene of enchantment, the
stage--a dirty platform encumbered on all sides with piles of scenery in
flats. They threaded their way through rusty velvet actors and fustian
carpenters, and entered the green-room. At the door of this magic
chamber Vane trembled and half wished he could retire. They entered; his
apprehension gave way to disappointment, she was not there. Collecting
himself, he was presently introduced to a smart, jaunty, and, to do
him justice, _distingue_ old beau. This was Colley Cibber, Esq., poet
laureate, and retired actor and dramatist, a gentleman who is entitled
to a word or two.
This Cibber was the only actor since Shakespeare's time who had both
acted and written well. Pope's personal resentment misleads the reader
of English poetry as to Cibber's real place among the wits of the day.
The man's talent was dramatic, not didactic, or epic, or pastoral. Pope
was not so deep in the drama as in other matters, and Cibber was one of
its luminaries; he wrote some of the best comedies of his day. He also
succeeded where Dryden, for lack of true dramatic taste, failed. He
tampered successfully with Shakespeare. Colley Cibber's version of
“Richard the Third” is impudent and slightly larcenic, but it is
marvelously effective. It has stood a century, and probably will stand
forever; and the most admired passages in what literary humbugs who
pretend they know Shakespeare by the closet, not the stage, accept as
Shakespeare's “Richard,” are Cibber's.
Mr. Cibber was now in private life, a mild edition of his own
Lord Foppington; he had none of the snob-fop as represented on our
conventional stage; nobody ever had, and lived. He was in tolerably
good taste; but he went ever gold-laced, highly powdered, scented, and
diamonded, dispensing graceful bows, praises of whoever had the good
luck to be dead, and satire of all who were here to enjoy it.
Mr. Vane, to whom the drama had now become the golden branch of letters,
looked with some awe on this veteran, for he had seen many Woffingtons.
He fell soon upon the subject nearest his heart. He asked Mr. Cibber
what he thought of Mrs. Woffington. The old gentleman thought well of
the young lady's talent, especially her comedy; in tragedy, said he, she
imitates Mademoiselle Dumenil, of the Theatre Francais, and confounds
the stage rhetorician with the actress. The next question was not so
fortunate. “Did you ever see so great and true an actress upon the
whole?”
Mr. Cibber opened his eyes, a slight flush came into his wash-leather
face, and he replied: “I have not only seen many equal, many superior
to her, but I have seen some half dozen who would have eaten her up
and spit her out again, and not known they had done anything out of the
way.”
Here Pomander soothed the veteran's dudgeon by explaining in dulcet
tones that his friend was not long from Shropshire, and--The critic
interrupted him, and bade him not dilute the excuse.
Now Mr. Vane had as much to say as either of them, but he had not the
habit, which dramatic folks have, of carrying his whole bank in his
cheek-pocket, so they quenched him for two minutes.
But lovers are not silenced, he soon returned to the attack; he dwelt
on the grace, the ease, the freshness, the intelligence, the universal
beauty of Mrs. Woffington. Pomander sneered, to draw him out. Cibber
smiled, with good-natured superiority. This nettled the young gentleman,
he fired up, his handsome countenance glowed, he turned Demosthenes for
her he loved. One advantage he had over both Cibber and Pomander, a fair
stock of classical learning; on this he now drew.
“Other actors and actresses,” said he, “are monotonous in voice,
monotonous in action, but Mrs. Woffington's delivery has the compass and
variety of nature, and her movements are free from the stale uniformity
that distinguishes artifice from art. The others seem to me to have but
two dreams of grace, a sort of crawling on stilts is their motion,
and an angular stiffness their repose.” He then cited the most famous
statues of antiquity, and quoted situations in plays where, by her
fine dramatic instinct, Mrs. Woffington, he said, threw her person into
postures similar to these, and of equal beauty; not that she strikes
attitudes like the rest, but she melts from one beautiful statue into
another; and, if sculptors could gather from her immortal graces,
painters, too, might take from her face the beauties that belong of
right to passion and thought, and orators might revive their withered
art, and learn from those golden lips the music of old Athens, that
quelled tempestuous mobs, and princes drunk with victory.
Much as this was, he was going to say more, ever so much more, but he
became conscious of a singular sort of grin upon every face; this grin
made him turn rapidly round to look for its cause. It explained itself
at once; at his very elbow was a lady, whom his heart recognized, though
her back was turned to him. She was dressed in a rich silk gown, pearl
white, with flowers and sprigs embroidered; her beautiful white neck and
arms were bare. She was sweeping up the room with the epilogue in her
hand, learning it off by heart; at the other end of the room she turned,
and now she shone full upon him.
It certainly was a dazzling creature. She had a head of beautiful form,
perched like a bird upon a throat massive yet shapely and smooth as a
column of alabaster, a symmetrical brow, black eyes full of fire and
tenderness, a delicious mouth, with a hundred varying expressions, and
that marvelous faculty of giving beauty alike to love or scorn, a
sneer or a smile. But she had one feature more remarkable than all, her
eyebrows--the actor's feature; they were jet black, strongly marked,
and in repose were arched like a rainbow; but it was their extraordinary
flexibility which made other faces upon the stage look sleepy beside
Margaret Woffington's. In person she was considerably above the middle
height, and so finely formed that one could not determine the exact
character of her figure. At one time it seemed all stateliness, at
another time elegance personified, and flowing voluptuousness at
another. She was Juno, Psyche, Hebe, by turns, and for aught we know at
will.
It must be confessed that a sort of halo of personal grandeur surrounds
a great actress. A scene is set; half a dozen nobodies are there lost in
it, because they are and seem lumps of nothing. The great artist steps
upon that scene, and how she fills it in a moment! Mind and majesty wait
upon her in the air; her person is lost in the greatness of her personal
presence; she dilates with _thought,_ and a stupid giantess looks a
dwarf beside her.
No wonder then that Mr. Vane felt overpowered by this torch in a closet.
To vary the metaphor, it seemed to him, as she swept up and down, as if
the green-room was a shell, and this glorious creature must burst it
and be free. Meantime, the others saw a pretty actress studying her
business; and Cibber saw a dramatic school-girl learning what he
presumed to be a very silly set of words. Sir C. Pomander's eye had
been on her the moment she entered, and he watched keenly the effect of
Vane's eloquent eulogy; but apparently the actress was too deep in her
epilogue for anything else. She came in, saying, “Mum, mum, mum,” over
her task, and she went on doing so. The experienced Mr. Cibber, who had
divined Vane in an instant, drew him into a corner, and complimented him
on his well-timed eulogy.
“You acted that mighty well, sir,” said he. “Stop my vitals! if I did
not think you were in earnest, till I saw the jade had slipped in among
us. It told, sir--it told.”
Up fired Vane. “What do you mean, sir?” said he. “Do you suppose my
admiration of that lady is feigned?”
“No need to speak so loud, sir,” replied the old gentleman; “she hears
you. These hussies have ears like hawks.”
He then dispensed a private wink and a public bow; with which he
strolled away from Mr. Vane, and walked feebly and jauntily up the
room, whistling “Fair Hebe;” fixing his eye upon the past, and somewhat
ostentatiously overlooking the existence of the present company.
There is no great harm in an old gentleman whistling, but there are two
ways of doing it; and as this old beau did it, it seemed not unlike a
small cock-a-doodle-doo of general defiance; and the denizens of the
green-room, swelled now to a considerable number by the addition of all
the ladies and gentlemen who had been killed in the fourth act, or whom
the buttery-fingered author could not keep in hand until the fall of
the curtain, felt it as such; and so they were not sorry when Mrs.
Woffington, looking up from her epilogue, cast a glance upon the old
beau, waited for him, and walked parallel with him on the other side
of the room, giving an absurdly exact imitation of his carriage and
deportment. To make this more striking, she pulled out of her pocket,
after a mock search, a huge paste ring, gazed on it with a ludicrous
affectation of simple wonder, stuck it, like Cibber's diamond, on her
little finger, and, pursing up her mouth, proceeded to whistle a quick
movement,
“Which, by some devilish cantrip sleight,”
played round the old beau's slow movement, without being at variance
with it. As for the character of this ladylike performance, it was
clear, brilliant, and loud as blacksmith.
The folk laughed; Vane was shocked. “She profanes herself by whistling,”
thought he. Mr. Cibber was confounded. He appeared to have no idea
whence came this sparkling adagio. He looked round, placed his hands to
his ears, and left off whistling. So did his musical accomplice.
“Gentlemen,” said Cibber, with pathetic gravity, “the wind howls most
dismally this evening! I took it for a drunken shoemaker!”
At this there was a roar of laughter, except from Mr. Vane. Peg
Woffington laughed as merrily as the others, and showed a set of
teeth that were really dazzling; but all in one moment, without the
preliminaries an ordinary countenance requires, this laughing Venus
pulled a face gloomy beyond conception. Down came her black brows
straight as a line, and she cast a look of bitter reproach on all
present; resuming her study, as who should say, “Are ye not ashamed to
divert a poor girl from her epilogue?” And then she went on, “Mum! mum!
mum!” casting off ever and anon resentful glances; and this made the
fools laugh again.
The Laureate was now respectfully addressed by one of his admirers,
James Quin, the Falstaff of the day, and the rival at this time of
Garrick in tragic characters, though the general opinion was, that he
could not long maintain a standing against the younger genius and his
rising school of art.
Off the stage, James Quin was a character; his eccentricities were
three--a humorist, a glutton and an honest man; traits that often caused
astonishment and ridicule, especially the last.
“May we not hope for something from Mr. Cibber's pen after so long a
silence?”
“No,” was the considerate reply. “Who have ye got to play it?”
“Plenty,” said Quin; “there's your humble servant, there's--”
“Humility at the head of the list,” cried she of the epilogue. “Mum!
mum! mum!”
Vane thought this so sharp.
“Garrick, Barry, Macklin, Kitty Clive here at my side, Mrs. Cibber,
the best tragic actress I ever saw; and Woffington, who is as good a
comedian as you ever saw, sir;” and Quin turned as red as fire.
“Keep your temper, Jemmy,” said Mrs. Woffington with a severe accent.
“Mum! mum! mum!”
“You misunderstand my question,” replied Cibber, calmly; “I know your
_dramatis personae_ but where the devil are your actors?”
Here was a blow.
“The public,” said Quin, in some agitation, “would snore if we acted as
they did in your time.”
“How do you know that, sir?” was the supercilious rejoinder; _“you never
tried!”_
Mr. Quin was silenced. Peg Woffington looked off her epilogue.
“Bad as we are,” said she coolly, “we might be worse.”
Mr. Cibber turned round, slightly raised his eyebrows.
“Indeed!” said he. “Madam!” added he, with a courteous smile, “will you
be kind enough to explain to me how you could be worse!”
“If, like a crab, we could go backward!”
At this the auditors tittered; and Mr. Cibber had recourse to his
spy-glass.
This gentleman was satirical or insolent, as the case might demand,
in three degrees, of which the snuff-box was the comparative, and
the spy-glass the superlative. He had learned this on the stage; in
annihilating Quin he had just used the snuff weapon, and now he drew his
spy-glass upon poor Peggy.
“Whom have we here?” said he. Then he looked with his spy-glass to see.
“Oh, the little Irish orange-girl!”
“Whose basket outweighed Colley Cibber's salary for the first twenty
years of his dramatic career,” was the delicate reply to the above
delicate remark. It staggered him for a moment; however, he affected
a most puzzled air, then gradually allowed a light to steal into his
features.
“Eh! ah! oh! how stupid I am; I understand; you sold something besides
oranges!”
“Oh!” said Mr. Vane, and colored up to the temples, and cast a look on
Cibber, as much as to say, “If you were not seventy-three!”
His ejaculation was something so different from any tone any other
person there present could have uttered that the actress's eye dwelt
on him for a single moment, and in that moment he felt himself looked
through and through.
“I sold the young fops a bargain, you mean,” was her calm reply; “and
now I am come down to the old ones. A truce, Mr. Cibber, what do you
understand by an actor? Tell me; for I am foolish enough to respect your
opinion on these matters!”
“An actor, young lady,” said he, gravely, “is an artist who has gone
deep enough in his art to make dunces, critics and greenhorns take it
for nature; moreover, he really personates; which your mere _man of the
stage_ never does. He has learned the true art of self-multiplication.
He drops Betterton, Booth, Wilkes, or, ahem--”
“Cibber,” inserted Sir Charles Pomander. Cibber bowed.
“In his dressing-room, and comes out young or old, a fop, a valet, a
lover, or a hero, with voice, mien, and every gesture to match. A grain
less than this may be good speaking, fine preaching, deep grunting, high
ranting, eloquent reciting; but I'll be hanged if it is acting!”
“Then Colley Cibber never acted,” whispered Quin to Mrs. Clive.
“Then Margaret Woffington is an actress,” said M. W.; “the fine ladies
take my Lady Betty for their sister. In Mrs. Day, I pass for a woman of
seventy; and in Sir Harry Wildair I have been taken for a man. I would
have told you that before, but I didn't know it was to my credit,” said
she, slyly, “till Mr. Cibber laid down the law.”
“Proof!” said Cibber.
“A warm letter from one lady, diamond buckles from another, and an offer
of her hand and fortune from a third; _rien que cela.”_
Mr. Cibber conveyed behind her back a look of absolute incredulity; she
divined it.
“I will not show you the letters,” continued she, “because Sir Harry,
though a rake, was a gentleman; but here are the buckles;” and she
fished them out of her pocket, capacious of such things. The buckles
were gravely inspected, they made more than one eye water, they were
undeniable.
“Well, let us see what we can do for her,” said the Laureate. He tapped
his box and without a moment's hesitation produced the most execrable
distich in the language:
“Now who is like Peggy, with talent at will,
A maid loved her Harry, for want of a Bill?
“Well, child,” continued he, after the applause which follows
extemporary verses had subsided, “take _me_ in. Play something to make
me lose sight of saucy Peg Woffington, and I'll give the world five acts
more before the curtain falls on Colley Cibber.”
“If you could be deceived,” put in Mr. Vane, somewhat timidly; “I
think there is no disguise through which grace and beauty such as Mrs.
Woffington's would not shine, to my eyes.”
“That is to praise my person at the expense of my wit, sir, is it not?”
was her reply.
This was the first word she had ever addressed to him. The tones
appeared so sweet to him that he could not find anything to reply for
listening to them; and Cibber resumed:
“Meantime, I will show you a real actress; she is coming here to-night
to meet me. Did ever you children hear of Ann Bracegirdle?”
“Bracegirdle!” said Mrs. Clive; “why, she has been dead this thirty
years; at least I thought so.”
“Dead to the stage. There is more heat in her ashes than in your fire,
Kate Clive! Ah! here comes her messenger,” continued he, as an ancient
man appeared with a letter in his hand. This letter Mrs. Woffington
snatched and read, and at the same instant in bounced the call-boy.
“Epilogue called,” said this urchin, in the tone of command which these
small fry of Parnassus adopt; and, obedient to his high behest, Mrs.
Woffington moved to the door, with the Bracegirdle missive in her
hand, but not before she had delivered its general contents: “The great
actress will be here in a few minutes,” said she, and she glided swiftly
out of the room.