Their Majesties' Servants. Annals of the English Stage (Volume 2 of 3)

Garrick could yield, too, to the most exacting of his rivals. When Barry rather unjustly complained that Garrick only put him up to play on unlucky days – when operas, or concerts, or lady's drums, were a counter attraction, David kindly bade him select his own days; he himself would be content to play singly on the others. "Well, sir!" said Barry, "I certainly could not ask more than you grant!"

Vanity, it has been said, was one of Garrick's weak points; but he was not so proud of the Prince of Hesse talking with him at Ranelagh, as people were of Mr. Garrick telling them what the Prince had said. His courtesy, discretion, justice, and firmness are illustrated in a thousand ways, in his correspondence. His best actresses vexed him to the heart; but he never lost his temper or his politeness with the most vexing or capricious of them all. His counsel to young actors grasping at fame, was of the frank and useful nature which was likely to help them to seize it; and his reproof to foolish and impertinent players, – like the feather-brained Cautherley, – was delivered with a severity which must have been all the more stinging, as its application was as dignified as it was merciless. As for Garrick's professional jealousy, he seems to me to have had as little as was consonant with human nature. I know of no proprietor of a theatre, himself an actor, who collected around him such a brilliant brotherhood of actors as Garrick did; yet, when any one of these left him, or was dismissed by him, the partizans of the retiring player raised the cry of "jealousy!"

When Mallet was writing his Life of the Duke of Marlborough, he dexterously enough intimated to Roscius that he should find an opportunity of noticing in that work the great actor of the later day. The absurdity of this must have been evident to Garrick, who immediately replied, "My dear friend, have you quite left off writing for the stage?" As Mallet subsequently offered to Garrick his reconstruction of the masque of "Alfred," which he had originally written in conjunction with Thomson, and Garrick produced the piece, it has been inferred that the latter took the bait flung for him by the wily Scot. It seems to me that Garrick perceived the wile, but produced the play, notwithstanding.

There was, perhaps, weakness of character rather than frankness, in the way he would allude to his short stature, – in his obviating jokes on his marriage, by making them himself, or getting his friend, Edward Moore, to make them, not in the most refined fashion. Sensitive to criticism no doubt he was; but he was more long-suffering under censure than Quin, who pummelled poor Aaron Hill in the Court of Requests, because of adverse comments in the Prompter. Sensitive as Garrick was, he could reply to criticism merrily enough. Another Hill, the doctor and dramatist, had attacked his pronunciation, and accused him of pronouncing the i in mirth and birth as if it were an u. On which Garrick wrote: —

"If 'tis true, as you say, that I've injured a letter,I'll change my note soon, and I hope, for the better.May the just rights of letters as well as of men,Hereafter be fixed by the tongue and the pen;Most devoutly I wish that they both have their due,And that i may be never mistaken for u."

Again, if he were vain, he could put on a charming appearance of humility. Lord Lyttleton had suggested to him that, as a member of Parliament, he might turn his powers of eloquence to patriotic account. Such a suggestion would have fired many a man's ambition – it only stirred Garrick to write the following lines:

"More than content with what my labours gain;Of public favour tho' a little vain;Yet not so vain my mind, so madly bent,To wish to play the fool in Parliament;In each dramatic unity to err,Mistaking time, and place, and character!Were it my fate to quit the mimic art,I'd 'strut and fret' no more, in any part;No more in public scenes would I engage,Or wear the cap and mask, on any stage."

Burke said of Garrick, that he was the first of actors, because he was the most acute observer of nature that Burke ever knew. Garrick disliked characters in which there was a "lofty disregard of nature;" yet he resembled Mrs. Siddons in believing that if a part seemed at all within nature, it was not to be doubted but that a great actor could make something out of it.

Garrick's repertory extended to less than one hundred characters, of which he was the original representative of thirty-six. Compared with the half century of labour of Betterton, and the number of his original characters, Garrick's toil seems but mere pastime. In his first season, on that little but steep stage at Goodman's Fields, so steep, it is said, that a ghost in real armour, ascending on a trap, once lost his balance and rolled down to the orchestra, Garrick seems to have been uncertain whether his vocation lay more with tragedy or with comedy. In that season he repeated his comic characters eighty-four times; he appeared but fifty nights in a repetition of half-a-dozen tragic parts.113 In the sum of the years of his acting, the increase of number is slightly on the side of the latter, while, of his original characters, twenty belong to tragedy, and sixteen to comedy. After he had been two-and-twenty years on the stage, Garrick undertook no new study.

Of his original characters, the best remembered in stage traditions are, Sharp, in the "Lying Valet," Tancred, Fribble, Ranger, Beverley, Achmet ("Barbarossa"), Oroonoko (in the altered play), Lovemore ("Way to Keep Him"), and Oakley, in the "Jealous Wife." Of these, only Beverley and Oakley can be said to still survive.

Of Garrick and his labours I have now said enough; let us follow him thither where he found repose from the latter, in company with one whom many of us, who are not yet old, may remember to have seen in our early youth, the Mrs. Garrick who is said to have told Edmund Kean that he could not play Abel Drugger, and to have been answered by Edmund, "Dear madam, I know it!"

In June 1749, Lord Chesterfield, who, in his Irish viceroyalty, had neglected Garrick, just as in London he ignored Sheridan whom he had patronised in Dublin, wrote to his friend Dayrolles, "The parliament is to be prorogued next Tuesday, when the ministers will have six months leisure to quarrel, and patch up, and quarrel again. Garrick and the Violetti will likewise, and about the same time, have an opportunity of doing the same thing, for they are to be married next week. They are, at present, desperately in love with each other. Lady Burlington was, at first, outrageous; but, upon cooler reflection upon what the Violetti, if provoked, might say or rather invent, she consented to the match, and superintends the writings." Later in June, Walpole touches on the same subject to Mann, announcing the marriage itself "first at a Protestant, then at a Roman Catholic Chapel. The chapter of this history," he adds, "is a little obscure, and uncertain as to the consent of the protecting countess, and whether she gives a fortune or not."

This Eva Maria Violetti was a dancer, who, three years previously to this marriage, was enchanting the town with her "poetry of motion." The sister Countesses of Burlington and Talbot competed for her with "sullen partiality." The former carried her to Chiswick, wore her portrait,114 and introduced her to her friends. Lady Carlyle entertained her; and the Prince of Wales paid his usual compliment, by bidding her take lessons of Desnoyers, the dancing master, and Prince's companion, – which Eva Maria did not care to do.

The public were curious to know who this beautiful young German dancer was, in whom Lord and Lady Burlington took such especial interest. That she was nearly related to the former was a very popular conjecture. However this may have been, she was, in many respects, Garrick's good genius, presiding gracefully over his households in the Adelphi and at Hampton.

"Mr. Garrick," whose early residence was, according to the addresses of his letters, "at a perriwig maker's, corner of the Great Piazza, Covent Garden," saw good company at Hampton, where Walpole cultivated an intimacy with him, for Mrs. Clive's sake, as he pretended. Here is the actor at home, on August 15th, 1755. "I dined to-day at Garrick's," writes Walpole to Bentley; "there were the Duke of Grafton, Lord and Lady Rochford, Lady Holdernesse, the crooked Mostyn, and Dabreu, the Spanish minister; two regents, of which one is Lord Chamberlain, the other Groom of the Stole, and the wife of a Secretary of State. This being sur un assez bon ton, for a player. Don't you want to ask me how I liked him? Do want, and I will tell you. I like her exceedingly; her behaviour is all sense, and all sweetness too. I don't know how, he does not improve so fast upon me; there is a great deal of parts, and vivacity, and variety, but there is a great deal, too, of mimicry and burlesque. I am very ungrateful, for he flatters me abundantly; but, unluckily, I know it."

Fifteen years later, Mrs. Delaney describes a day at Garrick's house at Hampton, and speaks as eulogistically of the hostess. "Mr. Garrick did the honours of his house very respectfully, and, though in high spirits, seemed sensible of the honour done them. Nobody else there but Lady Weymouth and Mr. Bateman. As to Mrs. Garrick, the more one sees her, the better one must like her; she seems never to depart from a perfect propriety of behaviour, accompanied with good sense and gentleness of manners; and I cannot help looking on her as a wonderful creature, considering all circumstances relating to her." The above words referring to Garrick are held by Lady Llanover, the editor of Mrs. Delaney's correspondence, to be "high testimony to Garrick's tact and good-breeding, as few persons in his class of life know how to be 'respectful,' and yet in 'high spirits,' which is the greatest test of real refinement." This is severe, oh! gentlemen players; but the lady forgot that Mr. Garrick was the son of an officer and a gentleman.

Walpole warned people against supposing that he and Garrick were intimate. When the actor and his wife went to Italy: – "We are sending to you," wrote Horace to Mann, "the famous Garrick and his once famous wife. He will make you laugh as a mimic; and as he knows we are great friends, will affect great partiality to me; but be a little upon your guard, remember he is an actor." It is clear that Garrick, down at his villa, insisted on being treated as a gentleman. "This very day," writes Walpole to Mason, September 9,115 1772, "Garrick, who has dropped me these three years, has been here by his own request, and told Mr. Raftor how happy he was at the reconciliation. I did not know we had quarrelled, and so omitted being happy too."

Lord Ossory's intimacy with Garrick was one of the strictest friendship. Lord Ossory speaks of him, Gibbon, and Reynolds, who were then his guests, as all three delightful in society. "The vivacity of the great actor, the keen, sarcastic wit of the great historian, and the genuine pleasantry of the great painter, mixed up well together, and made a charming party. Garrick's mimicry of the mighty Johnson was excellent."

Garrick was the guest of Earl Spencer, Christmas 1778, when he was attacked by his last and fatal illness. He was carried to his town house, No. 5 Adelphi Terrace, where Dr. Cadogan asked him if he had any affairs to settle. Garrick met the intimation with the calm dignity of Quin: "I have nothing of that sort on my mind," he said, "and I am not afraid to die."

Physicians assembled around him out of pure affection and respect; Heberden, Warren, and Schomberg. As the last approached, Garrick, placidly smiling, took him by the hand, faintly murmuring, "though last, not least in our dear love." But as the crowd of charitable healers increased, the old player who – wrapped in a rich robe, himself all pale and feeble, looked like the stricken Lusignan, softly repeated the lines in the "Fair Penitent," beginning with,

"Another and another still succeeds."

On January 20th, 1779, Garrick expired. Young Bannister, the night before, had played his old part of Dorilas to the Merope of Miss Younge. The great actor was solemnly carried to Westminster Abbey by some of the noblest in the land, whether of intellect or of rank. Chatham had addressed him living, in verse, and peers sought for the honour of supporting the pall at his funeral. The players, whose charitable fund he had been mainly instrumental in raising to near £5000, stood near their master's grave, to which the statue of Shakspeare pointed, to do him honour. Amid these, and friends nearer and dearer still, the greatest of English actors, since Betterton, was left in his earthly sleep, not very far from his accomplished predecessor.

They who had accused him of extravagance were surprised to find that he had lived below his income. They who had challenged him with parsimony, now heard of large sums cheerfully given in charity, or lent on personal security; and the latter often forgiven to the debtor. "Dr. Johnson and I," says Boswell, "walked away together. We stopped a little while by the rails of the Adelphi, looking on the Thames, and I said to him with some emotion, that I was now thinking of two friends we had lost, who once lived in the buildings behind us – Topham Beauclerk and Garrick." "Ay, sir," said he tenderly, "and two such friends as cannot be supplied."116

And Mrs. Garrick? She wore her long widowhood till 1822, dying then in the same house on the Adelphi Terrace. She was the honoured guest of hosts whom all men honoured; and at the Bishop of London's table held her own against the clever men and women who held controversy under Porteus's roof. Eva Maria Garrick twice refused Lord Monboddo, who had written a book to show that humanity was merely apedom without the tail. The widow of Roscius was higher in the social scale than the wife of a canny Scotch Lord of Session, with an uncanny theory.

As I take leave of Garrick, I remember the touching scene which occurred on the last night but one of his public performances. His farewell to the stage was made in a comic character; but he and tragedy parted for ever the night before. On that occasion he played Lear to the Cordelia of Miss Younge. As the curtain descended, they lay on the stage hand in hand, and hand in hand they rose and went, Garrick silently leading, to his dressing-room; whither they were followed by many of the company. There stood Lear and Cordelia, still hand in hand, and mute. At last Garrick exclaimed, "Ah, Bessie, this is the last time I shall ever be your father; the last time!" and he dropped her hand. Miss Younge sighed too, and replied affectionately, with a hope that before they finally parted he would kindly give her a father's blessing. Garrick took it as it was meant, seriously; and as Miss Younge bowed her head, he raised his hands, and prayed that God would bless her! Then slowly looking round, he murmured, "May God bless you all!" and divesting himself of his Lear's dress, tragedy, and one of her most accomplished sons, were dissevered for ever!

In New Drury, such compliment was not paid to Garrick as was offered to Betterton in New Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre; on the ceiling of which house was painted a noble group of poets – Shakspeare, Rare Ben, Beaumont, Fletcher, and some of later date. These were on a raised terrace, and a little below them, looking up, stood Betterton, with whom they were holding conference. Worthier homage was never rendered to departed merit! From him to whom it was rendered, and from Garrick who deserved no less, let us now turn to one who, lingering somewhat longer on the stage, yet earlier passing from the scene of life, claims a parting word, – silver-toned Barry.

CHAPTER XX

SPRANGER AND ANNE BARRY

Outside the five-and-thirty years of Barry's professional life, little is known of him. As of Betterton, it may be said, he laboured, loved, suffered losses, and died. It is the sum of many a man's biography.

Spranger's professional career is traced in preceding pages; but I may add to it, that Dublin is to this day, and with reason, proud of Spranger Barry, and of Margaret Woffington; for mere human beauty they have never been surpassed; for talents and for genius, with respect to their profession, they have not often been equalled. Spranger of the silver tongue, was the only actor who ever shook Garrick on his throne; but lacking the fulness of the perfection of Garrick, Barry only shook him for an instant; he never dethroned him. He is remembered as the vanquished wrestler is remembered, who has wrestled his best, given a heavy fall or two, has succumbed in the last grapple, and is carried from the arena on loving arms, amid the acclamations of the spectators, and with the respect of his conqueror.

In the Irish silversmith's accomplished son, born in 1719, there was very good blood, with some of the disadvantages attached to that possession. Of fine personal appearance and bearing, an aristocratic expression, and a voice that might win a bird from the nest, Spranger Barry had expensive and too magnificent tastes. He was a gentleman; but he lived as though he were the lord of countless thousands, and with an income on which an earl might have existed becomingly, with moderate prudence, Spranger Barry died poor.

From the very first, Barry took foremost ground; and Mrs. Delaney may well expatiate on the delight of seeing Garrick, Barry, and Sheridan together in one piece. Such a triad as those three were, when young, in the very brightest of their powers, and achieving triumphs which made their hearts beat to accomplish something higher still, perhaps, never rendered a stage illustrious.

From 1747 to 1758, Barry was, in some few characters, the best actor on our stage. After the above period, came the brilliant but ruinous Irish speculation with Woodward. During the time of that disastrous Dublin management, Barry's powers were sometimes seriously affected. He has been depicted as reckless; but it is evident that anxieties were forced upon him, and a proud man liable to be seized by sheriffs' officers, ere he could rise from simulated death upon the stage, was not to be comforted by the readiness of his subordinates to murder the bailiffs. Mrs. Delaney had been enraptured with him in his earliest years; but she found a change in him even as early as 1759. The gossiping lady thus exhibits to us the interior of Crow Street, one night in February, of the year just named, when, despite the lady's opinion, the handsome and manly fellow was not to be equalled in the expression of grief, of pity, or of love.

"Now what do you think? Mrs. Delaney with ditto company went to the Mourning Bride to see the new playhouse; and Mrs. Fitzhenry performed the part of Zara, which I think she does incomparably. The house is very handsome, and well lighted; and there I saw Lady Kildare and her two blooming sisters, Lady Louisa Conolly (the bride) and Lady Sarah Lennox," – (the latter lady reckoned among the first loves of George III.), – "who I think the prettiest of the two. Lord Mornington" (afterwards father of the Duke of Wellington) "was at the play, and looked as solemn as one should suppose the young lady he is engaged to" (Miss Hill) "would have done!.. The play, on the whole, was tolerably acted, though I don't like their celebrated Mr. Barry; he is tall and ungainly, and does not speak sensibly nor look his part well; he was Osmyn. Almyra was acted by a very pretty woman, who, I think, might be made a very good actress. Her name is Dancer."

Barry did make her an excellent actress, and his wife to boot. Nevertheless, the Dublin speculation failed; and I find something characteristic of it among the properties enumerated in the inventory of articles made over by Barry to his successor, Ryder. For instance: – "Chambers, with holes in them;" "House, very bad;" "One stile, broke;" "Battlements, torn;" "Garden wall, very bad;" "Waterfall, in the Dargle, very bad." The same definition is applied to much more property; with "woods, greatly damaged;" "clouds, little worth;" "wings, with holes, in the canvas;" or, "in bad order." "Mill, torn;" "elephant, very bad;" and Barry's famous "Alexander's car," is catalogued as "some of it wanting." Indeed, the only property in good order, comprised eighty-three thunderbolts!

Of Barry's wardrobe, he seems to have parted only with the "bonnet, bow, and quiver, for Douglas;" but Mrs. Barry's was left in Crow Street. It consisted of a black velvet dress and train; nine silk and satin dresses, of various hues, all trained; numerous other dresses, of inferior material; and "a pair of shepherd's breeches," which Boaden thinks were designed "for the dear woman's own Rosalind, no doubt."

The only known portraits of Barry represent him as Timon and Macheath. They were taken before he entered upon his last ten years, in London; – years of gradual, noble, but irresistible decay. Like Betterton, Barry suffered excruciatingly from attacks of gout; but, like Betterton, and John Kemble in this respect resembled them both, – he performed in defiance of physical pain: mind triumphing over matter.

On the 8th of October 1776, he played Jaffier to the Pierre of Aikin, and the Belvidera of his wife. He was then only fifty-seven years of age; but there was a wreck of all his qualities, – save indomitable will. The noble vessel only existed in ruins, but it presented a majestic spectacle still. Barry, on the stage, was almost as effective as he had ever been; but, off the charmed ground, he succumbed to infirmity and lay insensible, or struggling, or waiting mournfully for renewal of strength between the acts. He continued ill for many weeks, during which his chief characters passed into the hands of Lewis, the great-grandson of Harley's secretary, Erasmus Lewis, but himself the son of a London linendraper. Lewis, who had now been three years on the London stage, played Hamlet, and Norval, Chamont, Mirabel, Young Bevil, and Lord Townley; but on the 28th of November, Barry roused himself, as if unwilling that the young actor, who had excelled Mossop in Dublin, should overcome, in London, the player who had competed, not always vainly, with Garrick. On that night, as I have already recorded, he played Evander to his wife's Euphrasia, in the "Grecian Daughter;" but he never played or spoke on the stage again. On January 10th, 1777, he died, to the great regret of a world of friends and admirers, and to the awakening of much poetry of various quality. One of the anonymous sons of the Muse, in a quarto poem, remarks: —

"Scarcely recovered from the stroke severe,When Garrick fled from our admiring eyes,Resolv'd no more the Drama's sons to cheer,To make that stroke more fatal, – Barry dies.He dies: and with him sense and taste retreat;For, who can now conceive the Poet's fire?Express the just? the natural? the great?The fervid transport? or the soft desire?"

The poet then fancies gathering around the player's tomb, led thither by the Tragic Muse, – the Moor, "with unrivall'd grace;" ill-fated Antony; injured Theseus; feeble Lusignan; woe-stricken Evander; heart-bleeding Jaffier; and, chief of all, Romeo, with "melting tears," "voice of love and soothing eloquence." Thalia, too, brings in Bevil and Townley; —

"And oh! farewell, she cries, my graceful son!!"

Graceful, but pathetic as he was graceful. This was especially the case when, in his younger days, he played with Mrs. Cibber, – Castalio to Monimia, – at which a comic actor, once looking on, burst into tears, and was foolish enough to be ashamed of it. No two (so critics thought) played lover and mistress, wife and husband, as they did. Mrs. Cibber, said these critics, who forgot her Beatrice to Garrick's Benedick, could, with equal, though different effect, be only the daughter or sister to Garrick; – Cordelia to Garrick's Lear, but a Juliet to Barry's Borneo, a Belvidera to his Jaffier. When Mrs. Bellamy acted with him, the effect was less complete. Colley Cibber was in the house on the night of his first appearance as Othello – did what he was not accustomed to do, – applaud loudly; and is said to have preferred Barry, in this character, to either Betterton or Booth. In Orestes, Barry was so incomparable, that Garrick never attempted the part in London. His Alexander lost all its bombast, in his hands, and gained a healthy vigour; while, says Davies, "he charmed the ladies repeatedly, by the soft melody of his love complaints, and the noble ardour of his courtship." The grace of his exit and entrance was all his own; though he took lessons in dancing, from Desnoyers, to please the Prince of Wales.