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

Barry was a well-informed man, had great conversational powers, and told an Irish story with an effect which was only equalled by that with which he acted Sir Callaghan O'Brallaghan. In that accomplishment and this character, Garrick owned that Barry was not to be approached; but, said the former, "I can beat Barry's head off in telling all stories, but Irish ones."

It was in pathos on the stage, not in humour off it, that Barry excelled. "All exquisitely tender or touching writing," says an anonymous contemporary, "came mended from his mouth. There was a pathos, a sweetness, a delicacy, in his utterance, which stole upon the mind, and forced conviction on the memory. Every sentiment of honour and virtue, recommended to the ear by the language of the author, were rivetted to the heart by the utterance of Barry." Excessive sensibility conquered his powers. His heart overcame his head; but Garrick never forgot himself in his character. Barry felt all he uttered, before he made his audience feel; but Garrick made his audience feel, and was not overcome by his own emotions.

Churchill describes the lofty and admired Barry as possessing a voice too sweet and soft for rage, and as going wrong through too much pains to err. The malignant bard alludes to the "well-applauded tenderness" of his Lear; to the march of his speeches, line by line; to his preventing surprise by preparatory efforts; and to his artificial style, manifest alike in his passions as in his utterance. This dark portrait was limned with the idea that it would please Garrick, whom it could not please. The two actors respected each other. "You have already," writes Barry, in 1746, to Garrick, "made me happy by your friendship. It shall be the business and pleasure of my life to endeavour to deserve it; and I would willingly make it the basis of my future fortune." This feeling never waned. Above a score of years later, Barry writes: "I hear you are displeased with me, which I beg leave to assure you, I shall feel much more than all the distresses and disappointments that have happened to me."

Previous to the earlier date Lord Chesterfield had said of Barry, "He is so handsome, he will not be long on the stage; some rich widow will carry him off." At the later date, Barry was in London, with the widow, but not a rich widow, he had brought from Dublin. The only good result of his otherwise unlucky sojourn there as theatrical manager, was in his second marriage, with Mrs. Dancer. The lady was admirably trained by him; and when Garrick saw Mrs. Barry play the Irish Widow, in his own farce, after superbly enacting a tragic part, he could not help exclaiming, sincerely as he admired Mrs. Cibber, Pritchard, and Yates – "She is the heroine of heroines!"

In his later days, when infirmity pressed him painfully, Barry occasionally lost his temper for a moment. Once this occurred when Miss Pope's benefit interfered with that of Mrs. Barry, and he wrote an angry letter to Garrick, the ill-temper in which is indicated by Garrick's indorsement: " – from Barry; he calls Miss Pope 'trumpery!'"

Lacy told Davies that the Barrys' salary was £1500 a year (but the cost of their dresses fell heavily on them). "Mr. Barry is only paid when he plays," said Garrick to Miss Pope; and this explains Barry's own remark, "I have lost £48 by the death of the Princess Louisa."

In costume and in stage diet, Barry was the reverse of Mossop. Near ninety years ago, the former played Othello in a gold-laced scarlet suit, small cocked hat, and knee-breeches, with silk stockings, which then displayed his gouty legs. His wife, as Desdemona, wore, more correctly, a fascinating Italian costume, and looked as captivating as the decaying actor looked grotesque. Barry did not vary his diet according to the part he had to play. It was his invariable custom, after acting, to sup on boiled fowl. His house, first in Broad Street, then in Norfolk, and lastly in Cecil Street, was visited by the good among the great. Such was Henry Pelham, himself an inelegant but frank speaker in Parliament, who had a great admiration for Barry's graceful elocution. The actor was in possession of all his powers, and his voice was at its sweetest, when he had this honest statesman for friend. Henry Pelham died in 1754, when Barry and Miss Nossiter were playing Romeo and Juliet, with the relish of real lovers. Long before that, however, player and minister had been friends, but it was the player, the Mark Antony, of the stage, whose vain-glory made wreck of their friendship. Pelham invited himself to sup with Barry, and the actor treated his guest as one prince might another. He invariably did the honours of his table with great elegance; but on this occasion there was a magnificent ostentation which offended Pelham. "I could not have given a more splendid supper myself," he remarked; and he would never consent to be Barry's guest again.

Of the nineteen characters, of which he was the original actor, there stands out, more celebrated than the rest, Mahomet, in Johnson's "Irene;" Young Norval, in London (in the white puckered satin suit); and Evander, in the "Grecian Daughter." The last was a masterpiece of impersonation, and Barry drew tears as copiously in this part as ever his great rival did in King Lear, in which, by the way, Garrick's too frequent use of his white pocket-handkerchief was looked upon by the critics as bathos, with respect to the act; and an anachronism, with regard to the article!

"Were interred, in a private manner, in the cloysters, Westminster, the remains of Spranger Barry, late of Covent Garden Theatre." Such is the simple farewell, a week after his death, of the public papers, to young Douglas, old Evander, the silver-toned actor. Macklin was one of the funeral procession from Cecil Street to the cloisters. Looking into the grave, he murmured, "Poor Spranger!" and when some one would fain have led the old man away, he said mournfully, "Sir, I am at my rehearsal. Do not disturb my reverie!"117

Mrs. Barry survived her great husband nearly a quarter of a century. Although that great husband did not found a school of acting, he had his imitators. A Barry school required a manly beauty, and an exquisitely-toned voice, such as fall to the lot of few actors. Nevertheless, in 1788, a successor was announced in the person of an Irish player, Middleton, whose real name was Magann. He had abandoned the medical profession for the stage, some obstacles to his reaching which had actually rendered him partially and temporarily insane. He had fine powers of elocution, and in Romeo and Othello reminded the old friends of Barry – perhaps painfully – of their lost favourite. The imitation was, no doubt, strong; but it was stronger off the stage than on; for, with 30s. a week, Middleton strove to live in Barry's sumptuous style. Thereby, he soon ceased to live at all, ending a brief career in abject misery, and leaving his body to be buried by the charity of his fellow-players.

Mrs. Barry was sufficiently recovered from the grief of losing her husband, to be able to play Viola, for her benefit, two months after his decease. When she resumed her great part of Lady Randolph, she spoke a few lines, written by Garrick, in memory of the first and the most elegant and perfect of young Norvals. In those lines Barry is thus alluded to: —

"Of the lov'd pilot of my life bereft,Save your protection, not a hope is left.Without that peace your kindness can impart,Nothing can calm this sorrow-beaten heart.Urged by my duty, I have ventur'd here;But how for Douglas can I shed the tear?When real griefs the burden'd bosom press,Can it raise sighs feign'd sorrows to express?In vain will art, from nature, help implore,When nature for herself exhausts her store.The tree cut down on which she clung and grew,Behold, the propless woodbine bends to you;Your soft'ning pow'r will spread protection round;And, though she droops, may raise her from the ground."

I will not divide the sketch of the story of Mrs. Spranger Barry from that of the greatest and most worthy of her three husbands. Her father was a gay, well-to-do, but extravagant apothecary in Bath, whose daughter, Miss Street, was one of the belles there, celebrated for her graceful figure, expressive beauty, and rich auburn hair. The handsome and clever girl was jilted by a lover, whose affection for the apothecary's daughter cooled, on a sudden accession of fortune occurring to himself. Poor Ariadne went for solace to the North, where, after some while, she found a Bacchus in a hot-headed, jealous, but seductive actor, named Dancer, who married her, and placed her, nothing loath, upon the stage.

Her friends were scandalised, and her widowed mother bequeathed her a trifling annuity, only on condition of her ceasing to be an actress. Mrs. Dancer declined; and the honest man to whom the annuity was thereby forfeited, surrendered the whole to her, and bade her prosper!

Prosperity, however, only came after long study and severe labour, and many trials and vexations. When Barry assumed the management of the Dublin Theatre, he found Mrs. Dancer a most promising actress, and her lord the most jealous husband in Ireland. Youth, beauty, genius, were the endowments she had brought to that husband; and he, on his death, left her in full possession of all she had brought with her, and nothing more. But these and a liberal salary were charms that attracted many admirers. An Irish earl was not ashamed, indeed, to woo the young, fair, and accomplished creature, with too free a gallantry; but all the earls in the peerage had no chance against the manly beauty and the silver tone of Spranger Barry.

Hand-in-hand with her new husband, she came to London. Garrick sat in the pit, at Foote's theatre, to witness her début. He approved; and forthwith she took a place at the head of her profession, – equal almost with her great namesake of the previous century, not inferior to Mrs. Pritchard or Mrs. Cibber, superior to Mrs. Yates, and not to be excelled till, in the evening of her days, Sarah Siddons came, to wish her gone, and to speed the going.

Mrs. Barry was otherwise remarkable, she had "a modest gaiety in her manners and address;" and though in Belvidera, Lady Randolph, Rutland, Euphrasia, Monimia, and Desdemona, she defied rivalry, she really preferred to act Lady Townley, Beatrice, the Widow Brady, Rosalind, and Biddy Tipkin. She acted tragedy, to gratify the house; comedy, to please herself; and she had a supreme indifference for the patronage of Ladies of Quality if she could only win the plaudits of the public at large. In the "Jubilee," however, she represented the Tragic muse.

Two years after Barry's death, his widow met with and married a scampish young Irish barrister, named Crawford, who spent her money, broke her heart, and was the cause of her theatrical wardrobe being seized by a Welsh landlord, for debt. The General who married the widow of Napoleon treated her with respect, but young Crawford only regarded the middle-aged but handsome and accomplished widow of Spranger Barry as a means whereby he might live. There is something supremely melancholy in the story of Mrs. Barry, after this time. She raised her young husband to such efficiency that in London, he played Pierre, to her Belvidera; and the bad fellow might have respected a woman who did this, and could also earn £1100 in sixteen nights of acting, in Ireland. In the latter country, whither Mrs. Crawford, as I regret to call her, went, after playing Zara, in 1781, thereby leaving a long-desired opening to Mrs. Siddons, – Mr. Crawford acquired a reputation for shabbiness. On his benefit night, in a supper scene, he provided no refreshments on the table, for the actors seated round it, and this omission produced a scene of unrehearsed effects, – of exposure of Crawford's meanness, on the part of the players, and indignation against him on the part of the audience. When he became lessee, after Ryder, his own unhappy wife could not trust him, and often refused to go on, till Crawford had collected the amount of her salary from the doorkeepers, – if they had taken as much. He was reduced to such straits that one night, on the desertion of his unpaid band, he himself, and alone, played the violin in the orchestra, dressed as he was for Othello, which he acted on the stage. The Irish audience enjoyed the fun, and even Mrs. Crawford was so attached to him, that when Jephson's "Count of Narbonne" was first produced, in which, from her age, she should have played the Countess, she chose to act Adelaide, that her husband might still make love to her, as Theodore!

All that she earned, Crawford squandered. Fortunately, the small annuity left by her mother was secured to her, and this Crawford could not touch. What became of this unworthy Irishman I cannot say; but he helped to spoil Mrs. Crawford, as an actress. Her health and spirits failed, and her acting grew comparatively languid. The appearance of Mrs. Siddons, in the best of her years, strength, beauty, and ability, quickened the jealous pulses of the older actress's heart, and she once more played Lady Randolph, with such effect, that the Morning Chronicle asserted, no competitor could achieve a like triumph. The younger actress at last outshone Mrs. Crawford, whose very benefits became unprofitable. Her last appearance on the stage was at Covent Garden, on the 16th of April 1798, in Lady Randolph, a character which Mrs. Siddons did not play that season, – her Mrs. Haller being the peculiar triumph of that glorious year.

Mrs. Barry, the original Euphrasia, died in 1801, having reaped honour enough to enable her to be free from envy of others, and having means sufficient to render her closing days void of anxiety. The Grecian Daughter, the Widow Brady, and Edwina, in Hannah More's "Percy," were the best of her original characters; of her other characters, Lady Randolph is the most intimately connected with her name. As between her and Mrs. Siddons, the judgment seems well-founded which declares that Mrs. Crawford was inferior to Mrs. Siddons in the terrific, but superior in the pathetic. At Mrs. Crawford's "Is he alive?" in Lady Randolph, Bannister had seen half the pit start to their feet. Mrs. Siddons was but a "demi-goddess," as Walpole has it, in comedy, where Mrs. Barry was often inimitable. Walpole saw both actresses in "Percy," and he most admired Mrs. Siddon's passionate scenes. When, years before, he saw Mrs. Barry in the same play, his mind was pre-occupied with politics, and he thought less of the actress than of passing events, of which he was reminded by passages in the play.

Mrs. Crawford, to take leave of her in her last name, was no admirer of the great actress by whom she was displaced; and albeit somewhat smartly, the old lady did not ill distinguish between the school to which she belonged and that founded by her comparatively young rival. "The Garrick school," she said, "was all rapidity and passion; while the Kemble school is so full of paw and pause that, at first, the performers, thinking their new competitors had either lost their cues, or forgotten their parts, used frequently to prompt them."

As we associate the name of Barry with that of Garrick, so do we that of Mossop with Spranger Barry. Mossop, whose career on the stage commenced in 1749, with Zanga, – type of characters in which alone he excelled, – died in 1773, at the age of forty-five. He was the ill-fated son of an Irish clergyman, and he was always on the point of becoming a great actor, but never accomplishing that end. His syllables fell from him like minute-guns, even in or-din-a-ry con-ver-sa-tion, and the nickname of the "tea-pot actor," referred to his favourite attitude with one arm on his hip and the other extended. In London, an evanescent success in Richard and similar characters, almost made of him a rival of Garrick. In Dublin, he ruined Barry by his opposing management, which also brought down ruin on himself. Of this "monster of perfection," or the "pragmatical puppy," as he was variously called, we learn something from the Dublin Journal of May 8th, 1772, which says, "A few days ago, the celebrated tragedian, Mossop, moved to his new apartments in the Rules of the Fleet." When Mossop repaired to London his powers had failed. He could not obtain "first business," declined to accept "second," and proudly died in poverty, at Chelsea, leaving for all fortune one poor penny.118

Garrick offered to bury him, but a kinsman who would have nothing to say to the actor, claimed the satisfaction of consigning him to the grave, whither, after all, his brother actors carried him. So ended the promising player who combined gastronomy with his study of the drama, and ordered his dinner according to the part he had to act; sausages and Zanga; rump-steaks and Richard; pork-chops and Pierre; veal-cutlets and Barbarossa; and so forth! The antagonism of the two Irish actors seems to have wearied the Dublin people, who, at last,

"Did not care a toss-up,If Mossop beat Barry, or Barry beat Mossop."

Of some other actors who left the stage about the same period I will speak in the next chapter.

CHAPTER XXI

KITTY CLIVE, WOODWARD, AND SHUTER

As Mr. Wilks passes along, to or from rehearsal, there are two young girls of about sixteen years of age who gaze at him admiringly. Day after day the graceful actor remarks this more graceful couple, the name of the brighter of whom is Raftor. If not Irish, she is of Irish parentage, and of good family. Her father, a native of Kilkenny, had served King James, and got ruin for his wages. When Catherine Raftor was born, in 1711, she was born into a poor household, and received as poor an education as many countesses, her contemporaries; and here we come upon her, some sixteen years afterwards, watching Sir Harry Wildair entering or issuing from that gate of Elysium, the stage-door of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. If she knew but the "Sesame!" that would give admission to her she would be as happy as a houri!

She had the potent magic in her voice which won access for her to the elder Cibber, who awarded the young thing fifteen shillings a week,119 and then intrusted to her the little part of Ismenes in "Mithridates." In such solemn guise commenced the career of the very queen of hoydens and chambermaids. As for her companion in the occupation of gazing at Wilks, in the street, – a Miss Johnson, she was appropriated to himself by Theophilus Cibber, who made of her his first wife; but she failed to attain the celebrity of Miss Raftor, who charmed audiences by the magic of her voice, and authors by the earnestness with which she strove to realise their ideas. She had achieved a great reputation as a comic actress, when, in 1732,120 Miss Raftor married Mr. Clive, the brother of Mr. Baron Clive. In the following year121 Fielding thus writes a paragraph of her biography, in his manly dedication to her of the "Intriguing Chambermaid," in which she played Lettice: "As great a favourite as you are at present with the audience, you would be much more so were they acquainted with your private character, could they see you laying out great part of the profits which arise to you from entertaining them so well, in the support of an aged father; did they see you, who can charm them on the stage with personating the foolish and vicious characters of your sex, acting in real life the part of the best wife, the best daughter, the best sister, and the best friend."

"Kitty Clive," however, and her not very courteous husband, could not keep household together, and they separated. The lady was a little vivacious, and stood undauntedly persistent for her rights, whether at home or on the stage – against her husband, or against Mrs. Cibber, or Edward Shuter, or Garrick himself, who stood in more awe of her than she of him. She alone dared take a liberty with him, and, by a witty word well applied, to so incline him to irrepressible laughter as to render speaking impossible. None other dared so interfere with Roscius. But it was all done out of good nature, in which Mrs. Clive was steeped to the lips, and of which she was lavish even to young actresses who came, in her later days, to dispute the succession to her parts. To the most formidable and triumphant of these, good Miss Pope, she gave excellent counsel, warning, and encouragement, for which "Pope" never ceased to be grateful.

Mrs. Cibber and Mrs. Clive, as Polly and Lucy, in the "Beggar's Opera," must have exhibited a matchless combination of singing and acting. Mrs. Clive was as ambitious as Mrs. Cibber, and would fain have played, like her, leading parts with Garrick. Her most successful attempt in this way was her Bizarre to his Duretete, in the "Inconstant." One effect of her careful, earnest, but perfectly natural and apparently spontaneous acting was to put every other player on his mettle. That done, Mrs. Clive took care the victory should not be lost to her for want of pains to gaily secure it. She was a capital mimic, particularly of the Italian signoras, whom she did not call by nice names. For a town languishing for the return of Cuzzoni, she had the most unqualified contempt. She herself was inimitable; she wrung from Johnson the rarest and most unqualified praise; and over her audiences she ruled supremely; they felt with her, smiled with her, sneered with her, giggled, tossed their heads, and laughed aloud with her. She was the one true Comic Genius, and none could withstand her.

She had that power of identification which belongs only to the great intellectual players. She was a born buxom, roguish chambermaid, fierce virago, chuckling hoyden, brazen romp, stolid country girl, affected fine lady, and thoroughly natural old woman of whatever condition in life. From Phillida, in "Love in a Riddle," her first original character, to Mrs. Winnifred, in the "School for Rakes," her last, with forty years of toil and pleasure between them, she identified herself with all. But, in parts like Portia and Zara, which Mrs. Clive essayed, she fell below their requirements, though I do not know how the most beautifully expressive voice in the world could have been "awkwardly dissonant" in the latter part. Her Portia was too flippant, and in the trial scene it was her custom to mimic the most celebrated lawyer of the day. The laughter raised thereby was uncontrollable, but it was as illegitimately awakened as Dogget's when he played Shylock as a low comedy part.

After forty years' service Mrs. Clive took leave of the stage, April 24, 1769, in Flora, in the "Wonder," and the Fine Lady in "Lethe." Garrick played Don Felix; King, Lissardo; and Mrs. Barry, Violante; a grand cast in which, we are told, Mrs. Clive made Flora, in the estimation of the audience, equal to Felix and Violante. Drury Lane, had it been capacious enough, would have held twice the number that gained admittance. From these she took leave, in an epilogue, weak and in bad taste, written by her friend Walpole, who affected to despise the writers of such addresses, and, in this case, did not equal those whom he despised.

Mrs. Clive has the reputation of being the authoress of two or three insignificant farces, produced at her benefits, to exhibit some peculiar talent of her own. They had no other merit. Such was her theatrical, let us now accompany her to her private, career. The last editor of Walpole's Letters states, that to a youth of folly succeeded an old age of cards. This statement is mostly gratuitous. Isaac Reed says: "Notwithstanding the temptations to which a theatre is sometimes apt to expose young persons of the female sex, and the too great readiness of the public to give way to unkind suppositions in regard to them, calumny itself has never seemed to aim the slightest arrow at her fame."

She was quick of temper, especially if David attempted to fine her for absence from rehearsals; and no wonder, since for one hundred and eighty nights' performance this charming actress received but £300! but, as she said, "I have always had good health, and have ever been above subterfuge." When about to retire she wrote to Garrick, with some obliviousness as to dates: – "What signifies 52? They had rather see the Garrick and the Clive at 104 than any of the moderns. The ancients, you know, have always been admired. I do assure you I am at present in such health and spirits that, when I recollect I am an old woman, I am astonished."

In her retirement Mrs. Clive passed many happy years in the house which Walpole gave up as a home for herself and brother, next to his own at Strawberry, and which he playfully called "Clive-den." A green lane, which he cut for her use between the house and the common, he proposed to call Drury Lane. Here, at Cliveden, the ex-actress gave exquisite little suppers after pleasant little card parties, at which, in Walpole's phrase, she made miraculous draughts of fishes. Men and women of "quality" and good character, married and unmarried – actors, authors, artists, and clergymen – met here; where the brother of the hostess, a poor ex-actor, ill-favoured and awkward, told capital stories, and found the company in laughter and Walpole in flattery.