A BEVY OF LADIES;--BUT CHIEFLY, MRS. BELLAMY, MISS FARREN, MRS.
ABINGTON, AND "PERDITA."
A dozen more of ladies, all of desert, and some of extraordinary
merit, passed away from the stage during the latter portion of
the last century. Mrs. Green, Hippisley's daughter, and Governor
Hippisley's sister,--the original Mrs. Malaprop, and, but for Mrs.
Clive, the first of petulant Abigails, finished in 1779[19] a public
career which began in 1730.[20] In the same year,[21] but after a
brief service of about eight years, Mason's Elfrida and Evelina,
the voluptuous Mrs. Hartley, in her thirtieth year, went into a
retirement which she enjoyed till 1824. She was "the most perfect
beauty that was ever seen,"--more perfect than "the Carrara," who
was "the prettiest creature upon earth." Her beauty, however, was of
feature, lacking expression, and though an impassioned, she was not
an intelligent actress, unless her plunging her stage-wooers into mad
love for her be a proof of it. No wonder, had Smith only not been
married, that he grew temporarily insane about this young, graceful,
and fair creature.
Then, from the London stage, at least, fell Mrs. Baddeley, at the end
of the season, 1780-81. She was a pretty actress with a good voice,
and so little love for Mr. Baddeley and so much for George Garrick
that a duel came of it. The parties went out, to Hyde Park, on a
November morning of 1770. Baddeley was stirred up to fight Davy's
brother, by a Jewish friend, who, being an admirer of the lady,
wanted her husband to shoot her lover! The two pale combatants fired
anywhere but at each other, and then the lady rushed in, crying,
"Spare him!" without indicating the individual! Whereupon, husband
and friend took the fair one, each by a hand, and went to dinner; and
the married couple soon after played together in "It's well it's no
worse!"
But worse did come, and separation, and exposure, and _Memoirs_ to
brighten Mrs. Baddeley, which, like those of Mrs. Pilkington, only
blackened her the more. She passed to country engagements, charming
audiences for awhile with her Polly, Rosetta, Clarissa, and Imogen,
till laudanum, cognac, paralysis, and small sustenance, made an end
of her, when she had lost everything she could value, save her beauty.
The third departure was of as mad a creature as she, Miss Catley--the
Irish songstress, all smiles and dimples, and roguish beauty; who
loved, like Nell Gwyn, to loll about in the boxes, and call to
authors that she was glad their play was damned; and to ladies, to
stand up that she might look at them, and to display the fashion of
her dress, which those ladies eagerly copied. Her "Tyburn top," which
she wore in Macheath, set the mode for the hair for many a day; and
to be _Catley-fied_ was to be decked out becomingly.
A more illustrious pair next left the stage more free to Mrs.
Siddons, or her coming rendered it less tenable to them; namely, Mrs.
Yates and George Anne Bellamy--the former appearing for the last
time for the benefit of the latter. More than thirty years before,
as Mrs. Graham, young, fat, and weak-voiced, she failed in Dublin.
In 1753-54, she made almost as unsatisfactory a _début_ at Drury
Lane in a new part, Marcia, in "Virginia," in which she only showed
promise. Richard Yates then married and instructed her, and she
rapidly improved, but could not compete with Mrs. Cibber, till that
lady's illness caused Mandane ("Orphan of China") to be given to
Mrs. Yates, who, by her careful acting, at once acquired a first-rate
reputation. In the classical heroines of the dull old classical
tragedies of the last century, she was wonderfully effective, and
her Medea was so peculiarly her own, that Mrs. Siddons herself never
disturbed the public memory of it by acting the part.
When Mrs. Cibber died in 1765,[22] Mrs. Yates succeeded to the whole
of her inheritance, some of which was a burthen too much for her; but
she kept her position, with Mrs. Barry (Crawford) for a rival, till
Mrs. Siddons promised at Bath to come and dispossess both. Mrs. Yates
recited beautifully, was always dignified, but seems to have wanted
variety of expression. With a haughty mien, and a powerful voice,
she was well suited to the strong-minded heroines of tragedy; but
the more tender ladies, Desdemona or Monimia, she could not compass.
To the pride and violence of Calista she was equal, but in pathos
she was wanting. Her comedy was as poor as that of Mrs. Siddons; her
Jane Shore as good; her Medea so sublime as to be unapproachable. I
suspect she was a little haughty; for impudent Weston says in his
will: "To Mrs. Yates I leave all my humility!"
In one character of comedy she is said, indeed, to have
excelled--Violante, in the "Wonder," to the playfulness, loving,
bickering, pouting, and reconciliations, in which her "queen-like
majesty" does not seem to have been exactly suitable. Her _scorn_
was never equalled but by Mrs. Siddons, and it would be difficult
to determine which lady had the more lofty majesty. In passion Mrs.
Yates swept the stage as with a tempest; yet she was always under
control. For instance, in Lady Constance, after wildly screaming,
"I will not keep this form upon my head,
When there is much disorder in my wit,"
she did not cast to the ground the thin white cap which surmounted
her headdress, but quietly took it from her head, and placed it on
the right side of the circumference of her hoop! Mrs. Yates died in
1787.
George Anne Bellamy is unfortunate in having a story, which honest
women seldom have. That pleasant place, Mount Sion, at Tunbridge
Wells, was the property of her mother, a Quaker farmer's daughter,
named Seal, who, on _her_ mother falling into distress, was taken
by Mrs. Gregory,[23] the sister of the Duke of Marlborough, to be
educated.
Miss Seal was placed in an academy in Queen's Square, Westminster, so
dull a locality, that the rascally Lord Tyrawley had no difficulty
in persuading her to run away from it, in his company, and to his
apartments, in Somerset House. When my lord wanted a little change,
he left Miss Seal with her infant son, and crossed to Ireland to make
an offer to the daughter of the Earl of Blessington. She was ugly,
he said, but had money; and when he got possession of both, he would
leave the first, and bring the latter with renewed love, to share
with Miss Seal.
The lady was so particularly touched by this letter, that she sent
it, with others, to the earl, who, rendered angry thereat, forbade
his daughter to marry my lord, but found they were married already.
Tyrawley hoped thus to secure Lady Mary Stewart's fortune; but
discovering she had none at her disposal, he naturally felt he had
been deceived, and turned his wife off to her relations. Having gone
through this amount of villainy, King George thought he was qualified
to represent him at Lisbon, and thither Lord Tyrawley proceeded
accordingly.
He would have taken Miss Seal with him, but she preferred to go on
the stage. Ultimately she _did_ consent to go; and was received with
open arms; but she was so annoyed by the discovery of a swarthy
rival, that she listened to the wooing of a Captain Bellamy, married
him, and presented him with a daughter with such promptitude, that
the modest captain ran away from so clever a woman, and never saw her
afterwards.
Lord Tyrawley, proud of the implied compliment, acknowledged the
little George Anne Bellamy, born on St. George's day, 1733, as his
daughter. He exhibited the greatest care in her education. He kept
her at a Boulogne convent from her fifth to her eighth year, and
then brought her up at his house at Bexley, amid noble young scamps,
whose society was quite as useful to her as if she had been at a
"finishing" school.
Lord Tyrawley having perfected himself in the further study of
demi-rippism, went as the representative of England to Russia,
leaving an allowance for his daughter, which so warmed up her
mother's affections for her, that George Anne was induced to live
with her, and George Anne's mother hoped that her annuity would do so
too, but my lord, having different ideas, stopped the annuity, and
did not care to recover his daughter.
The two women were destitute; but the younger one was very youthful,
was rarely beautiful, had certain gifts, and, of course, the managers
heard of her. She had played Miss Prue for Bridgewater's benefit, in
1742, and gave promise. In 1744, Rich heard her recite, and announced
her for Monimia. Quin was angry at having to play Chamont to "such a
child;" but the little thing manifested such tenderness and ability,
that he confessed she was charming. Lord Byron thought so too, and
carried her off in his coach to a house at the corner of North Audley
Street, which looked over the dull Oxford Road to the desolate fields
beyond. Much scandal ensued; amid which Miss Bellamy's half-brother
appeared, shook his sister as a pert baggage, and sorely mauled my
lord; but Lord Byron lived to murder Mr. Chaworth in a duel, to be
found guilty of slaughtering the poor man, and consequently, being a
peer, to be discharged on paying his fees!
Then Miss Bellamy went among some Quaker relations who had never
previously seen her, and charmed them so by her soft, and winning,
and simple Quakerish ways, that they would have made an idol of her,
if Friends ever made an idol of anything, but lucre and themselves.
A discovery that she was an actress brought this phase of her life
to an end, and it was followed by a triumphant season on the Dublin
stage, from 1745 to 1747, where she made such a sensation, reigned so
like a queen, and was altogether so irresistible and rich, that Lord
Tyrawley's family acknowledged her. My lord himself became reconciled
to her, through old Quin, and would have spent her income for her
after she was re-engaged at Covent Garden, in 1748, if she would only
have married his friend, Mr. Crump. Rather than do that, she let a
Mr. Metham carry her off from Covent Garden, dressed as she was to
play Lady Fanciful, to live with, quarrel with, and refuse to wed
with him.
What with the loves, caprices, charms, extravagances, and sufferings
of Mrs. Bellamy, she excited the wonder, admiration, pity, and
contempt of the town for thirty years. The Mr. Metham she might have
married she would not,--Calcraft and Digges, whom she would have, and
the last of whom she thought she _had_ married, she could not; for
both had wives living. To say that she was a syren who lured men to
destruction, is to say little, for she went down to ruin with each
victim; but she rose from the wreck more exquisitely seductive and
terribly fascinating than ever, to find a new prey whom she might
ensnare and betray.
Meanwhile, she kept a position on the stage, in the very front rank,
disputing pre-eminence with the best there, and achieving it in some
things; for this perilous charmer was unequalled in her day for the
expression of unbounded and rapturous love. Her looks glowing with
the passion to which she gave expression, doubled the effect; and
whether she gazed at a lover or rested her head on the bosom of her
lord, nothing more tender or subduing was ever seen, save in Mrs.
Cibber. She was so beautiful, had eyes of such soft and loving blue,
was so extraordinarily fair, and was altogether so irresistible a
sorceress, that Mrs. Bellamy was universally loved as a charming
creature, and admired as an excellent actress; and when she played
some poor lady distraught through affection, the stoutest hearts
under embroidered or broad-cloth waistcoats, crumbled away, often
into inconceivable mountains of gold-dust.
She laughed, and scattered as fast as they piled it, and in the
gorgeous extravagance of her life began to lose her powers as an
actress. She had once almost shared the throne assumed by Mrs.
Cibber, but she wanted the sustained zeal and anxious study of that
lady, and cared not, as Mrs. Cibber did, for one quiet abiding home,
by whomsoever shared, but sighed for change, had it, and suffered
for it. When her powers began to decay, her admirers of all schools
deplored the fact. In tragedy, natural as she was in feeling, she
belonged to the old days of intoned cadences; and the old and the
rising school mourned over her, yet both were compelled to avow that
only in the ecstasy of love was Mrs. Bellamy equal to the Cibber,
and in that Mrs. Cibber, when acting with Barry, in the younger days
of both, was often George Anne's superior.
From reigning it like a queen on and off the stage,--imperious
and lovely, and betraying everywhere,--to the figure of a poor,
bailiff-persecuted, famishing wretch, stealing down the muddy steps
of old Westminster Bridge to drown herself in the Thames, how wide
are the extremes! But in both positions we find the original Volumnia
of Thomson, the Erixine of Dr. Young, and the Cleone, to whom Dodsley
owed the success of his heart-rending tragedy. To the last, she was
as unfortunate as she had been reckless. Two old lovers, one of whom
was Woodward, bequeathed legacies to her, which she never received.
Those sums seemed as life to her; but, in the days of her pride
and her power, and wicked but transcendent beauty, she would have
scorned them as mere pin-money; and so she grew acquainted with gaunt
misery, till some friends weary, perhaps, of sustaining the burthen
she imposed upon them, induced the managers to give her a farewell
benefit, in 1784,[24] on which occasion Mrs. Yates returned to the
stage to play for her the Duchess, in "Braganza." More than forty
years before, the brilliant little sylph, Miss Bellamy, had floated
on to the same Covent Garden stage, confident in both intellectual
and material charms. Now, the middle-aged woman, still older through
fierce impatience at her fall, through want, misery, hopelessness,
everything but remorse, had not nerve enough to go on and utter a
few words of farewell. These were spoken for her by Miss Farren,
before the curtain, which ascended at the words,--
"But see, oppress'd with gratitude and tears,
To pay her duteous tribute she appears;"
and discovered the once beautiful and happy syren, a terrified,
old-looking woman, lying, powerless to rise, in an arm-chair. But the
whole house--some out of respect for the erst charmer, others out of
curiosity to behold a woman of such fame on and off the stage--rose
to greet her. George Anne, urged by Miss Catley, bent forward,
murmured a few indistinct words, and, falling back again, the curtain
descended, for the last time, between the public and the Fallen Angel
of the stage.
Half-a-dozen minor lights are extinguished before we come to a name,
a desert, and a fortune, more brilliant and lasting than that of
George Anne Bellamy,--the name, merit, and fortune of Miss Farren.
Mrs. Wilson, the original Betty Hint, in the "Man of the World," is
not now remembered either for her genius or her errors. Mrs. Belfille
made but one appearance on the London stage, as Belinda, in "All in
the Wrong." She wanted animation and humour, but was distinguished
for the splendour of her stage wardrobe, which was all her own. She
joined Whitlock and Austin's company in the north. Whitlock married
Mrs. Siddons' sister Elizabeth, and took her to America, where her
acting drew rather the admiration than the tears of the Indians.
Mrs. Belfille and Mrs. Whitlock were together in the company named
above. On the back of one of their bills I find a MS. note made by
Austin, in which he says that Mrs. Belfille was an elegant actress,
very fashionable, and genteel in dress and manner; and, he adds,
"Mrs. Whitlock could not keep her temper while Mrs. Belfille was with
me, in Newcastle, Chester, &c."
A year later, in 1789, the charming Bacchante, Mrs. Beresford,
Goldsmith's Miss Richland and Miss Hardcastle, and Sheridan's Julia,
in the "Rivals," left the London stage for Edinburgh, where, says
Jackson, "her Lady Racket will be remembered as long as one of her
audience remains alive."
Pretty Mrs. Wells, famous for her imitations, now disappears. She
was O'Keefe's Cowslip. She was the Jewish gentleman, Mr. Sumbell's,
wife, which he denied; and she so far rivalled Mrs. Siddons, that, in
"Isabella," as it was the fashion for the house to shriek when the
actress shrieked, so, when Mrs. Wells shrieked, her friends shrieked
louder than those of Mrs. Siddons', and, _therefore_, thought Cowslip
was the greater tragedian of the two. Then, the first of the Miss
Bruntons, the Louisa Courtney of Reynold's "Dramatist," finished her
seventh and last season, in London, in 1792, as the wife of Della
Cruscan Merry. She began as an expected rival of Mrs. Siddons, but
London did not confirm the testimony of Bath. Three other actresses
passed away before Miss Farren: mad Hannah Brand, who was a sort of
female Mossop; Mrs. Esten (who tried to disturb Mrs. Siddons, Mrs.
Jordan, and Miss Farren, but who, failing, settled in the north, and
very much disturbed the heart and the purse of the Duke of Hamilton),
and Mrs. Webb, the original Mrs. Cheshire to the above Cowslip; than
whom actress of more weight never made the boards groan, and who
turned her corpulence to account by playing Falstaff.
The first glimpse to be caught of Miss Farren is as picturesque as
can well be imagined. Her father, once a Cork surgeon but now manager
of a strolling company, is in the lock-up of the town of Salisbury;
he fell into durance through an unconscious infringement of the
borough law. The story is told, at length, in my _Knights and their
Days_. On a wintry morning, a little girl carries him a bowl of hot
milk, for breakfast, and she is helped over the ice to the lock-up
window by a sympathising lad. The nymph is Miss Farren, afterwards
Countess of Derby; the boy is the very happy beginning of Chief
Justice Burroughs.
The incident occurred in 1769. Three years later, Elizabeth was
playing Columbine at Wakefield. She could sing as well as she could
dance, gracefully; and, out of very love for the beautiful girl,
Younger brought her out, at Liverpool, where her maternal grandfather
had been a brewer of repute and good fortune, and where his
grand-daughter proved such a Rosetta, that more than half the young
fellows were more deeply in love with her than the paternal Younger
himself.
[Illustration: (Miss Farren, Countess of Derby)]
After five years' training, the now radiant girl, glowing with beauty
and intelligence, first charmed a London audience, on June the 9th,
1777, by appearing at the Haymarket, as Miss Hardcastle; Edwin making
his appearance on the same night, as Old Hardcastle. In that first
year of London probation, her Miss Hardcastle was a great success;
the town was ecstatic at that and her Maria, in the "Citizen," was
rapt at her Rosetta, rendered hilarious by her Miss Tittup, and
rarely charmed by her playfulness and dignity, as Rosara (Rosina),
in the "Barber of Seville." Of this character she was the original
representative. Colman omitted the scene in which the Count was
disguised as a tipsy dragoon, on the ground of its being injurious to
morality! The same Colman thought the Fool, in "Lear," too gross for
a London audience.
In the following year, the success of her Lady Townly transferred
her to Drury Lane, where she divided the principal parts with Miss
Walpole, Miss P. Hopkins (Mrs. Kemble, subsequently), and Perdita
Robinson; and not one of the four was twenty years of age.
Her Lady Townly was no new triumph. She had produced such an effect
in it at Liverpool, where, after her father's death, Younger had
engaged the whole family, that, on the strength of the promise of
fortune to come, tradesmen offered them unlimited credit.
For about a score of years she maintained a pre-eminence which she
did not, however, attain all at once, or without a struggle; her
most powerful and graceful opponent being Mrs. Abington. Her early
days had been of such stern and humble aspect, such a strolling and
starving with her stage-mad and improvident father, that an anonymous
biographer says of her: "The early parts of the history of many
eminent ladies on the stage must be extremely disagreeable to them
in the recital; and to none, we apprehend, more than to Miss Farren,
who, from the lowest histrionic sphere, has raised herself to the
most elevated."
During the years above-named, she played principally at Drury
Lane and the Haymarket, and chiefly the parts of fine ladies, for
which she seemed born; though she attempted tragedy, now and then;
and assumed low comedy characters, occasionally; but her natural
elegance, her tall and delicate figure, her beautiful expression, her
superbly modulated voice, her clear and refined pronunciation, made
of her fine lady a perfect charm; not merely the Lady Betty Modish,
and similar personages, but the sentimental Indianas and Cecilias.
Walpole says emphatically of Miss Farren, that, in his estimation,
she was the most perfect actress he had ever seen. Adolphus praises
"the irresistible graces of her address and manner, the polished
beauties of her action and gait, and all the indescribable little
charms which give fascination to the woman of birth and fashion,"
as among the excellences which secured a triumph for Burgoyne's
"Heiress." In that play she acted Lady Emily Gayville.
Among her original characters were Rosara (Rosina), in the "Barber
of Seville;" Cecilia, in "Chapter of Accidents;" Sophia, in "Lord of
the Manor;" Lady Emily Gayville, in the "Heiress;" Eliza Ratcliffe,
in the "Jew;" and Emily Tempest, in the "Wheel of Fortune." In
the "Heiress" Adolphus again says of her:--"Whether high and
honourable sentiments, burning and virtuous sensibility, sincere and
uncontrollable affection; animated, though sportive reprehension;
elegant persiflage, or arch and pointed satire were the aim of
the author, Miss Farren amply filled out his thought, and, by her
exquisite representation, made it, even when faint and feeble in
itself, striking and forcible." In fewer words, she had feeling,
judgment, grace, and discretion.
It was when playing Rosara that her life became in danger, by her
long gauze mantilla taking fire from the side-lights. She was not
aware of her peril, till Bannister (Almaviva) had quietly thrown his
Spanish cloak around her, and had put out the flames with his hands.
During her stage career she was the manageress of the private
theatricals at the Duke of Richmond's,--those most exclusive of
dramatic entertainments. She moved, as it is called, in the best
society, where she was Queen "amang them a'." Charles James Fox is
said to have been more or less seriously attached to her; but long
before she withdrew from the stage it was said, and was printed, that
when "_one_ certain event should happen, a Countess's coronet would
fall on her brow."
And thereby hangs a tale that has something in it extremely
unpleasant; for this one event, waited for during a score of years,
was the death of the Countess of Derby, the only daughter of the Duke
of Hamilton.
To the Duchess of Leinster, who knew something of Miss Farren's
family in Ireland, the actress was indebted for introductions to Lady
Ailesbury, Mrs. Damer, and others, through whom Miss Farren became
acquainted with the Earl of Derby, who was himself a clever actor,
in private theatricals. A Platonic affection, at least, was soon
established. Walpole writing, in 1791, to the Miss Berrys, says: "I
have had no letter from you these ten days, though the east wind has
been as constant as Lord Derby," not to his wife, whom he had married
in 1774, but to Miss Farren, who first came to London three years
later.
On the 14th of March 1797, the long-tarrying Countess departed this
life; on the 8th of April following, Miss Farren took final leave of
the stage, in Lady Teazle. After the play, Wroughton led her forward,
and spoke a few farewell words for her, at the end of which she
gracefully curtseyed to all parts of the house; and that once little
girl who carried milk to her father in the Round House, went home,
and was married to the Earl, on the May Day of the year in which he
had lost his first wife! Six weeks 'twixt death and bridal! and yet
we hear that Miss Farren's greatest charm consisted in her "delicate,
genuine, impressive sensibility, which reached the heart by a process
no less certain than that by which her other powers effected their
impression on their fancy and judgment."
At all events, Miss Farren never acted so hastily, nor Stanley so
uncourteously to the memory of a dead lady, as on this occasion, and
it was not one for which youthful widowers might find an apology,
for the erst strolling actress was considerably past thirty, and her
swain within five years of the age at which Sir Peter Teazle married
"my lady."
Of the three children of this union, only one survived, Mary, born in
1801, and married, twenty years afterwards, to the Earl of Wilton.
Through her, the blood of an actress once more mingles with that of
the peerage; with the same result, perhaps, as followed the match of
Winnifred, the dairymaid, with the head of the Bickerstaffes.
No marriage of an English actress with a man of title ever had such
results as that which followed the union of Fleury's beautiful
sister with the gallant Viscount Clairval de Passy. When the match
was proposed, the parents of the lady were in a fever of delight
that their daughter should be a viscountess. Doubtless she became
so in law and fact; but instead of taking place as such with the
Viscount, _he_ laid by his title, and out of love for his wife and
her profession, turned actor himself! The happy pair played together
with success, and when you meet with the names of Monsieur and Madame
Sainville in the annals of the French stage, you are reading of that
very romantic pair--the happy Viscount and Viscountess Clairval de
Passy.
In 1796,[25] after more than a quarter of a century of service, Mrs.
Pope, once Garrick's favourite, Miss Younge, withdrew to die, and
leave her younger husband to take a less accomplished actress for his
second wife. But the loss which the stage felt as severely as it did
that of Miss Farren was, in 1798, in the person of a lady, with whom
we first become acquainted as a vivacious and intelligent little girl
selling flowers in St. James's Park. She is known as "Nosegay Fan."
Her father, a soldier in the Guards, mends shoes, when off duty, in
Windmill Street, Haymarket, and her brother waters the horses of the
Hampstead stage, at the corner of Hanway Yard. Who would suppose that
this little Fanny Barton, who sells moss-roses, would one day set the
fashions to all the fine ladies in the three kingdoms; that Horace
Walpole would welcome her more warmly to Strawberry Hill than an
ordinary princess, and that "Nosegay Fan" would be the original and
never-equalled Lady Teazle?
[Illustration: (Mrs. Abington)]
Humble, however, as the position of the flower-girl is, there is
good blood in her very blue veins. She comes of the Bartons of
Derbyshire, and not longer ago than the accession of King William,
sons of that family held honourable office in the Church, the army,
and in government offices. Fanny Barton ran on errands for a French
milliner, and occasionally encountered Baddeley, when the latter
was apprenticed to a confectioner, and was not dreaming of the
Twelfth Cake he was to bequeath to the actors of Drury Lane. Then
ensued some passages in her life that remind one of the training
and experience of Nell Gwyn. The fascinating Fanny, in one way or
another, made her way in the world, and, for the sake of a smile,
lovers courted ruin. This excessively brilliant, though not edifying,
career did not last long. Among the many friends she had acquired
was that prince of scamps and Bardolphs, Theophilus Cibber, who had
just procured a licence to open the theatre in the Haymarket. He had
marked the capabilities of the "vivacious" Fanny, and he tempted
her to appear under his management, as _Miranda_, in the "Busy
Body," to his Marplot. This was on the 21st of August 1755, when the
_débutante_ was only seventeen years of age. She immediately excited
attention as an actress of extraordinary promise; and, in the short
summer season, she exhibited her versatility by playing Miss Jenny,
in the "Provoked Husband;" Desdemona, Sylvia, in the "Recruiting
Officer," and finally enchanted her audience as Prince Prettyman, in
the "Rehearsal."
From the Haymarket this clever girl went to Bath and fascinated
King, the manager; thence to Richmond, where Lacey, the manager
there, fell equally in love with her, and engaged her for Drury
Lane (1756-57), where, however, the presence, success, and claims
of Miss Pritchard, Miss Macklin, and Mrs. Clive, kept her out of
the line of characters for which she was specially qualified. She
was, moreover, ill-educated, and she forthwith placed herself under
tuition. Fanny took for music-master Mr. Abington, who, of course,
became desperately in love with her, and married his pupil. The young
couple established a splendid home in the then fashionable quarter,
St. Martin's Lane; but soon after, the convenient Apollo disappears,
and even the musical dictionaries fail to tell us of the being and
whereabout of a man whose wife made his name famous.
After four seasons at Drury, she went on a triumphant career to
Dublin. There she acquired all she had hitherto lacked, and when, in
the season of 1765-66, she reappeared at Drury Lane, as Cherry,[26]
upon terms granted by Garrick, which were no longer considered
extravagant, so conspicuous was her talent, the playgoing world
was in a fever of delight. Her career, from 1755 to 1798, lasted
forty-three years, and, though like Betterton, Time touched her
person, it never weakened her talent. Critics praise her elegant
form, her graceful address, the animation and expression of her
looks, her quick intelligence, her perfect taste. Expression served
her more than beauty, and her voice, once hardly better than Peg
Woffington's, became perfectly musical by her power of modulation.
Every word was pronounced with a clearness that made her audible in
the remotest parts of the theatre, and this was a charm of itself
in such parts as Beatrice, and Lady Teazle, where "every word
stabbed," as King was wont to remark. In short, she was one of the
most natural, easy, impressive, and enchanting actresses that ever
appeared on the stage. Reynolds took her for his Comic Muse, and
it is worth a pilgrimage to Knowle Park to look on that wonderful
impersonation, and realise something of the grace and perfection
of Mrs. Abington. In 1771, Walpole wrote to her, "I do impartial
justice to your merit, and fairly allow it not only equal to that
of any actress I have seen, but believe the present age will not be
in the wrong if they hereafter prefer it to those they may live to
see." On one occasion, he describes her, in Lady Teazle, as "equal
to the first of her profession." She "seemed the very person," an
"admiration of Mrs. Abington's genius made him long desire the
honour of her acquaintance." He goes to sup with her, hoping "that
Mrs. Clive will not hear of it;" and he throws Strawberry open to
her, and as many friends as she chooses to bring with her. When the
fever of his enthusiasm had somewhat abated, and he remembered the
"Nosegay Fan" of early days, his admiration was more discriminating.
Mrs. Abington, then, "can never go beyond Lady Teazle, which is a
second-rate character, and that rank of women are always aping women
of fashion without arriving at the style." Out of the line of the
affected fine lady, says Lady G. Spencer, "Mrs. Abington should never
go. In that she succeeds, because it is not unnatural to her." This
criticism is just, for Lady Teazle is a _parvenu_. The country-bred
girl apes successfully enough the woman of fashion, but in her early
home, as we are told, she wore a plain linen gown, a bunch of keys
at her side, her hair combed smooth over a roll; and her apartment
was hung round with fruits in worsted, of her own working. Her
girlish occupation was to inspect the dairy, superintend the poultry,
make extracts from the family receipt-book, comb her aunt Deborah's
lap-dog, draw patterns for ruffles, play Pope Joan with the curate,
read a sermon aloud, and strum her fox-hunting father to sleep at
the spinnet. This "fine lady," by accident and not by birth, Mrs.
Abington could play admirably; better than she could Lady Modish, who
was a lady by birth and education. But even in the latter character
she is described as having been the accomplished and well-bred woman
of fashion. Her intercourse with ladies of rank, an intimacy which
made her somewhat vain, was of use to her in such impersonations;
but she was not received so unreservedly as Mrs. Oldfield, for many
remembered her early wild course, and saw no compensation for it in
the later and better regulated life. She turned such schooling as she
could obtain in drawing-rooms to the best account; but Mrs. Oldfield,
in the University of Fashion, took first-class honours.
Coquettes, chambermaids, hoydens, country girls, and the women of the
Lady Teazle, Lady Fancyful, and Lady Racket cast, she played without
fear of a rival. Her chambermaids seem to have been over-dressed,
and this superfluity attended some of her other characters, in which
she was as much beplumed as the helmet in the _Castle of Otranto_.
For more than a quarter of a century, her Widow Belmour, in the
"Way to Keep Him," was a never-failing delight to the public. Murphy
says that her graces of action gave to this part brilliancy, and
even novelty, every time she repeated it. She was the original
representative of thirty characters, among which we find,--Lady Bab,
in "High Life Below Stairs;" Betty, in the "Clandestine Marriage;"
Charlotte, in the "Hypocrite;" Charlotte Rusport, in the "West
Indian;" Roxalana, in the "Sultan;" Miss Hoyden, in the "Trip to
Scarborough;" and her crowning triumph, Lady Teazle.
Like other clever players, she committed a fault,--hers was in acting
Scrub, for a wager,--at her benefit, in 1786. Genest says, "In point
of profit, it no doubt answered; but she is said to have disgraced
herself in Scrub, and to have acted the part with her hair dressed
for Lady Racket," which she played in the after-piece! Her portrait,
as Scrub, with her hair thus dressed, gives her an absurd appearance.
She figured in the private theatricals, at Brandenburgh House, of the
Margravine of Anspach. In one of the plays represented--the "Provoked
Wife"--the piece was cut down, in order that no female character
should have equal prominence with that of Lady Brute, played by the
Margravine herself; but Mrs. Abington asserted her professional
right, and played her once famous scene of Lady Fancyful, straight
through, to the united delight of herself and audience.
In her later years she lost her old grace and fine figure; and she,
who had snatched the mantle from Kitty Clive, found it taken from
her, in her turn, by the gentle yet all-conquering Miss Farren, whom,
however, she survived on the stage. From 1798 to 1815, Mrs. Abington
lived in retirement, active only in works of charity; and when she
died in the latter year, few remembered in the deceased wealthy lady,
the vivacious "Nosegay Fan" of three-quarters of a century before.
There remains to be noticed one who, in the annals of the stage,
appears like a brief but charming episode,--a fair promise, hastily
made, and not realised; an actress of whom Garrick augured well, and
whom he gave to the stage, from which she was snatched by a prince.
Miss Darby was a native of Bristol, and a pupil of Hannah More. She
was the heiress of a fair fortune, which her philanthropic father
dissipated in attempts to civilise the Esquimaux Indians. Having
thereby beggared his wife and child, the man, with a heart for all
mankind, but not for his home, left the latter; and the mother
then was supported by what Miss Darby could earn as a governess.
What she could then spare, she devoted to acquiring "the usual
accomplishments." Among the latter was dancing; and her master (a
Covent Garden ballet-master) introduced her to Garrick. After some
training, she recited Cordelia, like a pretty and clever child, as
she was; and then disappeared.
She was not sixteen when she married Mr. Robinson,--a young man of
good fortune, apprenticed to the law. The happy couple ran through
their fortune in splendid haste; and Mrs. Robinson spent more than
a year with him in prison. Misery drove her again to Garrick, who,
though now withdrawn from the stage, rehearsed Romeo to her Juliet;
and sat in the orchestra on the night of the 10th of December 1776,
when she played the latter part to the Romeo of Brereton. She was
then only eighteen; and her success was all that could be expected
from her talent and beauty, and a voice which reminded Garrick of his
darling, Mrs. Cibber. Thus commenced the brief stage career which
ended in May 1780 with the "Winter's Tale," and her own farce, the
"Miniature Picture,"[27] on which occasion she played Perdita and
Eliza Camply.[28]
In the interval, she had played the tender or proudly loving ladies
in tragedy, and the refined and sprightly nymphs in comedy; and she
was the original Amanda, in the "Trip to Scarborough." Since Mrs.
Woffington and the first blush of Mrs. Bellamy, such peculiar grace
and charms had not been seen on the stage. The critics extolled both,
the fine gentlemen besieged her with billets-doux, and the artists
protested that they had never beheld better taste than hers in
costume.
On the 3d of December 1779 their Majesties' servants played, by
command, at Drury Lane, the "Winter's Tale," for the sixth time.
Gentleman Smith was Leontes; Bensley, Polixenes; Brereton, Florizel;
Miss Farren, Hermione; and Mrs. Robinson, Perdita.
The King, Queen, and royal family were in their box, when Perdita
entered the green-room, dressed more exquisitely and looking more
bewitching than ever. "You will make a conquest of the Prince,
to-night," said Smith laughingly; "I never saw you look so handsome
as you do now!" He was a true prophet. The Prince was subdued by
her beauty, and subsequently wrote letters to her, which were
signed "Florizel," and were carried by no less noble a go-between
than William Anne Capel, Earl of Essex; but others ascribe this
messengership of love to his son Viscount Malden, who subsequently
married Miss Stephens, the vocalist, and present dowager-countess.[29]
The messenger of love wooed her for the Prince, while he adored her
himself,--at least he said so. He gave her the Prince's portrait,
and a heart,--not in precious metal, but in paper,--a symbol of the
worth and tenacity of the Prince's. On this token was a double motto,
in French, for the air of the thing: "Je ne change qu'en mourant;"
and in English, for the emphasis of it: "Unalterable to my Perdita
through life."
This young creature's husband was living in profligacy on her salary,
which he received at the treasury, and she was wooed by a young
Prince, with a magic of wooing which, she said, she should never
forget. The first step she made towards the latter was, by meeting
him in a boat, moored off Kew. The second, was by meeting him by
moonlight, in Kew Gardens. But then, the "Bishop of Osnaburgh" was
present! And the lady herself was a furbelowed Egeria to a powdered
Numa. "During many months of confidential correspondence," she says,
"I always offered his royal highness the best advice in my power."
Deathless was to be the young Prince's love, and his munificence
was to be equal to his truth. In proof of the latter, he gave her a
bond for £20,000, to be paid to her on his coming of age. In a few
months he attained his majority, refused to pay the money, and made
no secret to the lady of his deathless love having altogether died
out. He passed her in the park, affecting not to know her; and the
spirited young woman, who had given up a lucrative profession for his
sake, flung a remark at him, in her indignation, that ought to have
made him blush, had he been to that manner born. However, she was
not altogether abandoned. The patriotic Whig statesman, Charles Fox,
obtained for the Prince's cast-off favourite an annuity of £300,--out
of the pockets of a tax-paying people!
Perdita would fain have returned to the stage, but her friends
dissuaded her. No one could tell how a moral people would receive
the abandoned of "Florizel!" So, restless, she dwelt, now here, now
there; now in France, where Marie Antoinette gave a purse, knitted
by her luckless fingers, to "la belle Anglaise;" now in Brighton,
where also resided, in the brightest of her beauty and the highest
of her splendour, Mrs. Fitzherbert;--the married Polly and the royal
Macheath's neglected Lucy?
Perdita was not idle; she wrote poems and novels; the former, tender
in sentiment and expression; the latter, not without power and good
sense. She had undertaken to supply the _Morning Post_ with poetry,
when she died, after cruel suffering, in the last year of the last
century (1800); and she herself the last of the pupils of David
Garrick.
There was good in this hapless creature. Throughout life she was the
loving and helping child of her mother; the loving and helping mother
of her child, for both of whom she laboured ungrudgingly to the last.
Hannah More, herself, would not harshly construe the conduct of her
pupil. "I make the greatest allowance for inexperience and novel
passions," was the comment of Horace Walpole. "Poor Perdita!" said
Mrs. Siddons, "I pity her from my very heart!"
She fell into bad hands--beginning with those of her father. In her
husband's she was still less cared for, though she spent nearly a
year with him in a sponging-house, to leave which she was importuned
by worthless peers and equally worthless commoners--from ancient
dukes down to young city merchants. There was a public admiration
for her which scarcely any other actress so practically experienced.
Thus, on the night in 1776, when the "Trip to Scarborough" was
undergoing temporary but loud condemnation, Mrs. Yates, yielding to
the storm, suddenly withdrew, and left Mrs. Robinson, as Amanda,
standing alone on the stage, where she was so bewildered by the
continued hissing, that the Duke of Cumberland stood up in his box,
requested her not to be alarmed, and cheered her by calling out, "It
is not you, but the piece, they are hissing."
She gave rather the promise than the actuality of a fine actress; she
had good taste, and manifested it in an attention to costume, when
propriety therein was not much cared for. She describes the outward
presentment of her Statira ("Alexander the Great"), by saying, "My
dress was white and blue, made after the Persian costume; and, though
it was then singular on the stage, I wore neither a hoop nor powder.
My feet were bound with sandals, richly ornamented; and the whole
dress was picturesque and characteristic."
Between this period and the time when she lay stricken by paralysis,
the interval was not long; and then the forsaken creature, if vanity
abided with her, was obliged to content herself with reminiscences
of the past--when she was the Laura Maria of Della Crusca, and when
Merry declared that future poets and ages would join "to pour in
Laura's praise their melodies divine." During that same time Peter
Pindar called her, "_The_ nymph of my heart;" Burgoyne pronounced her
"perfect as woman and artist;" Tickle proclaimed her "the British
Sappho;" John Taylor hailed her, "Pensive Songstress;" Boaden
recorded her, "mentally perfect;" the Hon. John St. John asserted
that "Nature had formed her queen of song;" Kerr Porter saluted her
in thundering heroics; and two theatrical parsons, Will Tasker and
Paul Columbine, flung heaps of flowers at her feet, with the zeal of
heathen priests before an incarnation of Flora.
And so passes by this vision of fair last-century women to make way
for a group of actors of the Garrick school--standing a little apart
from whom is John Henderson, whom the town was willing to take for
David's successor.
[Illustration: Mr. Beard as Hawthorn.]
FOOTNOTES:
[19] Her last appearance was 26th May 1780.
[20] I cannot find any mention of her earlier than 1735.
[21] 1780.
[22] Mrs. Cibber died on 30th January 1766.
[23] Mrs. Bellamy calls this lady Godfrey.
[24] The benefit took place on 24th May 1785.
[25] Mrs. Pope's name is in the bills for the last time on 26th
January 1797.
[26] Mrs. Abington played the Widow Belmour, in "The Way to Keep
Him," at Drury Lane, on 27th November 1765, being "her first
appearance there for five years."
[27] "The Miniature Picture" is not by Mrs. Robinson, but by the
Margravine of Anspach.
[28] Her last appearance was no doubt on 31st May 1780, when "Rule a
Wife," and the "Miniature Picture" were played.
[29] Miss Stephens died February 22, 1882.
[Illustration: MR. PALMER AS TAG.]