Their Majesties' Servants. Annals of the English Stage (Volume 1 of 3)

With the audience she was never for a moment out of favour after she had made her merit apparent. They acknowledged no greater actress, – with the single exception of Mrs. Betterton in the character of Lady Macbeth. Nevertheless, on and behind the stage Mrs. Barry's supremacy was sometimes questioned and her commands disobeyed. When she was about to play Roxana to the Statira of Mrs. Boutell, in Nat. Lee's "Rival Queens, or the Death of Alexander the Great," she selected from the wardrobe a certain veil which was claimed by Mrs. Boutell as of right belonging to her. The property-man thought so too, and handed the veil to the last-named lady. His award was reasonable, for she was the original Statira, having played the part to the matchless Alexander of Hart, and to the glowing Roxana of the fascinating Marshall. I fear, however, that the lady was not moderate in her victory, and that by flaunting the trophy too frequently before the eyes of the rival queen, the daughter of Darius exasperated too fiercely her Persian rival in the heart of Alexander. The rage and dissension set down for them in the play were, at all events, not simulated. The quarrel went on increasing in intensity from the first, and culminated in the gardens of Semiramis. When Roxana seized on her detested enemy there, and the supreme struggle took place, Mrs. Barry, with the exclamation of "Die, sorceress, die! and all my wrongs die with thee!" sent her polished dagger right through the stiff armour of Mrs. Boutell's stays. The consequences were a scratch and a shriek, but there was no great harm done. An investigation followed, and some mention was made of a real jealousy existing in Mrs. Barry's breast in reference to an admirer of lower rank than Alexander, lured from her feet by the little, flute-voiced Boutell. The deed itself was, however, mildly construed, and Mrs. Barry was believed when she declared that she had been carried away by the illusion and excitement of the scene. We shall see the same scene repeated, with similar stage effects, by Mrs. Woffington and Mrs. Bellamy.

If there were a lover to add bitterness to the quarrel engendered by the veil, Mrs. Barry might have well spared one of whom she possessed so many. Without being positively a transcendent beauty, her attractions were confessed by many an Antony from the country, who thought their world of acres well lost for the sake of a little sunshine from the eyes of this vanquishing, imperious, banquetting, heart and purse destroying Cleopatra. There were two classes of men who made epigrams, or caused others to make them against her, namely, the adorers on whom she ceased to smile, and those on whom she refused to smile at all. The coffee-house poetry which these perpetrated against her is the reverse of pleasant to read; but, under the protection of such a wit as Etherege, or such a fine gentleman as Rochester, Mrs. Barry cared little for her puny assailants.

Tom Brown taxed her with mercenary feelings; but against that and the humour of writers who affected intimate acquaintance with her affairs of the heart and purse, and as intimate a knowledge of the amount which Sir George Etherege and Lord Rochester bequeathed to their respective daughters, of whom Mrs. Barry was the mother, she was armed. Neither of these children survived the "famous actress." She herself hardly survived Betterton – at least on the stage. The day after the great tragedian's final appearance, Mrs. Barry trod the stage for the last time. The place was the old Haymarket, the play the "Spanish Friar," in which she enacted the Queen. And I can picture to myself the effect of the famous passage, when the Queen impetuously betrays her overwhelming love. "Haste, my Teresa, haste; and call him back!" "Prince Bertram?" asks the confidant; and then came the full burst, breaking through all restraint, and revealing a woman who seemed bathed in love. "Torrismond! There is no other HE!"

Mrs. Barry took no formal leave of the stage, but quietly withdrew from St. Mary-le-Savoy, in the Strand, to the pleasant village of Acton. Mrs. Porter, Mrs. Rogers, Mrs. Knight, and Mrs. Bradshaw, succeeded to her theatrical dominion, by partition of her characters.

If tragedy lost its queen, Acton gained a wealthy lady. Her professional salary had not been large, but her "benefits" were very productive; they who admired the actress or who loved the woman, alike pouring out gold and jewels in her lap. It was especially for her that performers' benefits were first devised. Authors alone had hitherto profited by such occasions, but, in recognition of her merit, King James commanded one to be given on her behalf, and what was commenced as a compliment soon passed into a custom.

In a little more than three years from the date when the curtain fell before her for the last time, Elizabeth Barry died. Brief resting season after such years of toil; but, perhaps, sufficient for better ends after a career, too, of unbridled pleasure! "This great actress," says Cibber, "dy'd of a fever, towards the latter years of Queen Anne; the year I have forgot, but perhaps you will recollect it, by an expression that fell from her in blank verse, in her last hours, when she was delirious, viz. —

"Ha! ha! and so they make us lords, by dozens!"

This, however, does not settle the year so easily as Colley thought. In December 1711, Queen Anne, by an unprecedented act, created twelve new peers, to enable the measures of her Tory ministers to be carried in the Upper House. Mrs. Barry died two years later, on the 7th of November 1713, and the utterance of the words quoted above only indicates that her wandering memory was then dealing with incidents full two years old.

They who would see how Mrs. Barry looked living, have only to consult Kneller's grand picture, in which she is represented with her fine hair drawn back from her forehead, the face full, fair, and rippling with intellect. The eyes are inexpressibly beautiful. Of all her living beauty, living frailty, and living intelligence, there remains but this presentment.

It was customary to compare Mrs. Barry with French actresses; but it seems to me that the only French actress with whom Mrs. Barry may be safely compared is Mademoiselle, or, as she was called with glorious distinction, "the Champmeslé." This French lady was the original Hermione, Berenice, Monimia, and Phædra. These were written expressly for her by Racine, who trained her exactly as Rochester did Elizabeth Barry, – to some glory on the stage, and to some infamy off it. La Champmeslé, however, was more tenderly treated by society at large than the less fortunate daughter of an old royalist colonel. The latter actress was satirised; the former was eulogised by the wits, and she was not even anathematised by French mothers. When La Champmeslé was ruining the young Marquis de Sevigné, his mother wrote proudly of the actress as her "daughter-in-law!" as if to have a son hurried to perdition by so resplendent and destructive a genius, was a matter of exultation!

Having sketched the outline of Mrs. Barry's career, I proceed to notice some of her able, though less illustrious, colleagues.

CHAPTER VIII

"THEIR FIRST APPEARANCE ON THIS STAGE."

On the 16th November 1682, the United Company, the flower of both houses, opened their season at the Theatre Royal, in Drury Lane. The theatre in Dorset Gardens was only occasionally used; and from 1682 to 1695 there was but one theatre in London.

Betterton and Mrs. Barry were, of course, at the head of this company, to which there came some accessions of note; among others Mrs. Percival, better known as Mrs. Mountfort, and finally as Mrs. Verbruggen. A greater accession was that of the charming Mrs. Bracegirdle. The third lady was Mrs. Jordan, a name to be made celebrated by a later and a greater actress, who had no legal claim to it.

Of the new actors, some only modestly laid the foundations of their glory in this company. Chief of these was Colley Cibber, who, in 1691, played Sir Gentle's Servant in Southerne's "Sir Anthony Love," had a part of nine lines in Chapman's "Bussy d'Amboise," and of seventeen, as Sigismond in Powell's "Alphonso." Bowen, too, began with coachmen, and similar small parts, while that prince of the droll fellows of his time, Pinkethman, commenced his career with a tailor's part, of six lines in length, in Shadwell's "Volunteers." Among the other new actors were Mountfort,40 Norris,41 and Doggett, with Verbruggen (or Alexander, as he sometimes called himself, from the character which he loved to play); Gillow, Carlisle, Hodgson, and Peer.

Amid these names, that of Mrs. Mountfort stands out the most brilliantly. Her portrait has been so exquisitely limned by Colley Cibber, that we see her as she lived, and moved, and spoke.

"Mrs. Mountfort was mistress of more variety of humour than I ever knew in any one actress. This variety, too, was attended with an equal vivacity, which made her excellent in characters extremely different. As she was naturally a pleasant mimic, she had the skill to make that talent useful on the stage. Where the elocution is round, distinct, voluble, and various, as Mrs. Mountfort's was, the mimic there is a great assistance to the actor. Nothing, though ever so barren, if within the bounds of nature, could be flat in her hands. She gave many heightening touches to characters but coldly written, and often made an author vain of his work, that, in itself, had but little merit. She was so fond of humour, in what low part soever to be found, that she would make no scruple of defacing her fair form to come heartily into it, for when she was eminent in several desirable characters of wit and humour, in higher life, she would be in as much fancy, when descending into the antiquated Abigail of Fletcher, as when triumphing in all the airs and vain graces of a fine lady; a merit that few actresses care for. In a play of Durfey's, now forgotten, called 'The Western Lass,' which part she acted, she transformed her whole being – body, shape, voice, language, look and features – into almost another animal, with a strong Devonshire dialect, a broad laughing voice, a poking head, round shoulders, an unconceiving eye, and the most bedizening, dowdy dress that ever covered the untrained limbs of a Joan Trot. To have seen her here, you would have thought it impossible that the same could ever have been recovered to, what was as easy to her, the gay, the lively, and the desirable. Nor was her humour limited to her sex, for while her shape permitted, she was a more adroit, pretty fellow than is usually seen upon the stage. Her easy air, action, mien, and gesture, quite changed from the coif to the cocked-hat and cavalier in fashion. People were so fond of seeing her a man that when the part of Bayes, in 'The Rehearsal,' had for some time lain dormant, she was desired to take it up, which I have seen her act with all the true coxcombly spirit and humour that the sufficiency of the character required.

"But what found most employment for her whole various excellence at once was the part of Melantha, in 'Mariage à la Mode.' Melantha is as finished an impertinent as ever fluttered in a drawing-room, and seems to contain the most complete system of female foppery that could possibly be crowded into the tortured form of a fine lady. Her language, dress, motion, manners, soul, and body, are in a continual hurry to be something more than is necessary or commendable. The first ridiculous airs that break from her are upon a gallant, never seen before, who delivers her a letter from her father, recommending him to her good graces as an honourable lover. Here, now, one would think that she might naturally show a little of the sex's decent reserve, though never so slightly covered. No, sir! not a tittle of it! Modesty is the virtue of a poor-souled country gentlewoman. She is too much a court-lady to be under so vulgar a confusion. She reads the letter, therefore, with a careless, dropping lip, and an erected brow, humming it hastily over, as if she were impatient to outgo her father's commands, by making a complete conquest of him at once; and that the letter might not embarrass her attack, crack! she crumbles it at once into her palm, and pours upon him her whole artillery of airs, eyes, and motion. Down goes her dainty, diving body to the ground, as if she were sinking under the conscious load of her own attractions; then launches into a flood of fine language and compliment, still playing her chest forward in fifty falls and risings, like a swan upon waving water; and, to complete her impertinence, she is so rapidly fond of her own wit that she will not give her lover leave to praise it. Silent assenting bows, and vain endeavours to speak, are all the share of the conversation he is admitted to, which at last he is relieved from, by her engagement to half a score visits, which she swims from him to make, with a promise to return in a twinkling."

Happy Mrs. Mountfort, whom, as actress and woman, Cibber has thus made live for ever! As Mrs. Percival, she was the original representative of Nell in the piece now known as "The Devil to Pay;" as Mrs. Mountfort, – Belinda, in the "Old Batchelor;" and as Mrs. Verbruggen, – Charlotte Welldon, in "Oroonoko;"42 Lady Lurewell, in the "Constant Couple;" and Bizarre, in the "Inconstant." She died in 1703.

In some respects, Mrs. Bracegirdle, who was on the stage from 1680 to 1707, and subsequently lived in easy retirement till 1748, was even superior to Mrs. Mountfort. Mrs. Barry saw her early promise, and encouraged her in her first essays. In her peculiar line she was supreme, till the younger and irresistible talent of Mrs. Oldfield brought about her resignation. Unlike either of these brilliant actresses, she was exposed to sarcasm only on account of her excellent private character. Platonic friendships she did cultivate; with those, slander dealt severely enough; and writers like Gildon were found to declare, that they believed no more in the innocency of such friendships than they believed in John Mandeville; while others, like Tom Brown, only gave her credit for a discreet decorum. Cibber, more generous, declares that her virtuous discretion rendered her the delight of the town; that whole audiences were in love with her, because of her youth, her cheerful gaiety, her musical voice, and her happy graces of manner. Her form was perfect. Cibber says, "she had no greater claims to beauty than what the most desirable brunette might pretend to." Other contemporaries notice her dark brown hair and eyebrows, her dark, sparkling eyes, the face from which the blush of emotion spread in a flood of rosy beauty over her neck, and the intelligence and expression which are superior to mere beauty. She so enthralled her audience that, it is quaintly said, she never made an exit without the audience feeling as if they had moulded their faces into an imitation of hers. Then she was as good, practically, as she was beautiful; and the poor of the neighbourhood in which she resided looked upon her as a beneficent divinity.

Her performance of Statira was considered a justification of the frantic love of such an Alexander as Lee's; and "when she acted Millamant, all the faults, follies, and affectation of that agreeable tyrant were venially melted down into so many charms and attractions of a conscious beauty." Young gentlemen of the town pronounced themselves in tender but unrequited love with her. Jack, Lord Lovelace, sought a return for his ardent homage, and obtained not what he sought. Authors wrote characters for her, and poured out their own passion through the medium of her adorers in the comedy. For her, Congreve composed his Araminta and his Cynthia, his Angelica, his Almeria, and the Millamant, in the "Way of the World," which Cibber praises so efficiently. That this dramatist was the only one whose homage was well-received and presence ever welcome to her, there is no dispute. When a report was abroad that they were about to marry, the minor poets hailed the promised union of wit and beauty; and even Congreve, not in the best taste, illustrated her superiority to himself, when he wrote of her —

"Pious Belinda goes to prayersWhene'er I ask the favour,Yet the tender fool's in tearsWhen she thinks I'd leave her.Would I were free from this restraint,Or else had power to win her;Would she could make of me a saint,Or I of her a sinner."

The most singular testimony ever rendered to this virtue occurred on the occasion when Dorset, Devonshire, Halifax, and other peers, were making of that virtue a subject of eulogy over a bottle. Halifax remarked, they might do something better than praise her; and thereon he put down two hundred guineas, which the contributions of the company raised to eight hundred, – and this sum was presented to the lady, as a homage to the rectitude of her private character.

Whether she accepted this tribute, I do not know; but I know that she declined another from Lord Burlington, who had long loved her in vain. "One day," says Walpole, "he sent her a present of some fine old china. She told the servant he had made a mistake; that it was true the letter was for her, but the china for his lady, to whom he must carry it. Lord! the countess was so full of gratitude, when her husband came home to dinner."

Mrs. Bracegirdle lived to pass the limit of fourscore, and to the last was visited by much of the wit, the worth, and some of the folly of the town. On one occasion, a group of her visitors were discussing the merits of Garrick, whom she had not seen, and Cibber spoke disparagingly of his Bayes, preferring in that part his own pert and vivacious son, Theophilus. The old actress tapped Colley with her fan; "Come, come, Cibber," she remarked; "tell me if there is not something like envy in your character of this young gentleman. The actor who pleases everybody must be a man of merit." Colley smiled, tapped his box, took a pinch, and, catching the generosity of the lady, replied: "Faith, Bracey, I believe you are right; the young fellow is clever!"

Between 1682 and 1695, few actors were of greater note than luckless Will Mountfort, of whose violent death the beauty of Mrs. Bracegirdle was the unintentional cause. Handsome Will was the efficient representative of fops who did not forget that they were gentlemen. So graceful, so ardent, so winning as a lover, actresses enjoyed the sight of him pleading at their feet. In the younger tragic characters he was equally effective. His powers of mimicry won for him the not too valuable patronage of Judge Jeffries, to gratify whom, and the lord mayor and minor city magnates, in 1685, Mountfort pleaded before them in a feigned cause, in which, says Jacobs, "he aped all the great lawyers of the age in their tone of voice, and in their action and gesture of body," to the delight of his hearers. On the stage, he was one of the most natural of actors; and even Queen Mary was constrained to allow, that disgusted as she was with Mrs. Behn's "Rover," she could not but admire the grace, ease, intelligence, and genius of Mountfort, who played the dissolute hero, sang as well as he spoke, and danced with stately dignity. But poor Will was only the hero of a brief hour; and the inimitable original of Sir Courtly Nice was murdered by two of the most consummate villains of the order of gentlemen then in town.

Charles, Lord Mohun, had, a few years previous to this occurrence, been tried with the Earl of Warwick for a murder, arising out of a coffee-house brawl;43 on being acquitted by the House of Lords, he solemnly promised never to get into such a difficulty again. But one Captain Richard Hill, being in "love" with Mrs. Bracegirdle, who heartily despised him, wanted a villain's assistance in carrying off the beautiful actress, and found the man and the aid he needed in Lord Mohun. In Buckingham Court, off the Strand, where the captain lodged, the conspirators laid their plans; and learning that Mrs. Bracegirdle, with her mother and brother, was to sup one evening at the house of a friend, Mr. Page, in Princes Street, Drury Lane, they hired six soldiers – emissaries always then to be had for such work – to assist in seizing her and carrying her off in a carriage, stationed near Mr. Page's house. About ten at night, of the 9th December 1692, the attempt was made; but what with the lady's screams, the resistance of the friend and brother, and the gathering of an excited mob, it failed; and a strange compromise was made, whereby Lord Mohun and Hill were allowed to unite in escorting her home to her house, in Howard Street, Strand. In that street lived also Will Mountfort, against whom the captain uttered such threats, in Mrs. Bracegirdle's hearing, that she, finding that my lord and the captain remained in the street – the latter with a drawn sword in his hand, and both of them occasionally drinking canary – sent to Mrs. Mountfort, to warn her husband, who was from home, to look to his safety. Warned, but not alarmed, honest Will, who loved his wife and respected Mrs. Bracegirdle, came round from Norfolk Street, saluted Lord Mohun (who embraced him, according to the then fashion with men), and said a word or two to his lordship, not complimentary to the character of Hill. Thence, from the latter – words, a blow, and a pass of his sword through Mountfort's body – which the poor actor, as he lay dying on the floor of his own dining-room, declared, was given by Hill before Mountfort could draw his sword. The captain fled from England, but my lord, surrendering to the watchmen of the Duchy of Lancaster, was tried by his peers, fourteen of whom pronounced him guilty of murder; but as above threescore gave a different verdict, Mohun lived on till he and the Duke of Hamilton hacked one another to death in that savage butchery – the famous duel in Hyde Park.44

Mountfort, at the age of thirty-three, and with some reputation as the author of half-a-dozen dramas, was carried to the burying-ground of St. Clement's Danes, where his remains rest with those of Lowen, one of the original actors of Shakspeare's plays, Tom Otway, and Nat. Lee. His fair and clever widow became soon the wife of Verbruggen – a rough diamond – a wild, untaught, yet not an unnatural actor. So natural, indeed, was he, that Lord Halifax took Oroonoko from Powell, who was originally cast for it, and gave it to Verbruggen. Such was the power of Lord Chamberlains! He could touch tenderly the finer feelings, as well as excite the wilder emotions of the heart. Powell, on the other hand, was a less impassioned player, who would appear to have felt more than he made his audience feel, for in the original Spectator, No. 290, February 1712, Powell begs the public to believe, that if he pauses long in Orestes, he has not forgotten his part, but is only overcome at the sentiment.

Verbruggen died in 1708. Among his many original characters were Oroonoko, Bajazet, Altamont, and Sullen. He survived his wife about five years. I think if she loved Will Mountfort, she stood in some awe of fiery Jack Verbruggen; who, in his turn, seems to have had more of a rough courtesy than a warm affection for her. "For he would often say," remarks Anthony Aston, "D – me! though I don't much value my wife, yet nobody shall affront her!" and his sword was drawn on the least occasion, which was much in fashion in the latter end of King William's reign. And let me add here, that an actor's sword was sometimes drawn for the king. James Carlisle, a respectable player, whose comedy, "The Fortune Hunters," was well received in 1689, was not so tempted by success as to prefer authorship to soldiership in behalf of a great cause. When the threatened destruction of the Irish Protestants was commenced with the siege of Londonderry, Carlisle entered King William's army, serving in Ireland. In 1691, he was in the terrible fray in the morass at Aghrim, under Ginkell, but immediately led by Talmash. In the twilight of that July day, the Jacobite general, St. Ruth, and the poor player from Drury Lane, were lying among the dead; and there James Carlisle was buried, with the remainder of the six hundred slain on the victor's side, before their surviving companions in arms marched westward.

Carlisle's fellow-actor, Bowen, was a "low comedian" of some talent, and more conceit. A curious paragraph in the Post-Boy, for November 16th, 1700, shows that he left the stage for a time, and under singular circumstances. The paragraph runs thus: —

"We hear that this day Mr. Bowen, the late famous comedian at the new Play-house, being convinced by Mr. Collier's book against the stage, and satisfied that a shopkeeper's life was the readiest way to heaven of the two, opens a cane shop, next door to the King's Head Tavern, in Middle Row, Holborn, where it is not questioned but all manner of canes, toys, and other curiosities, will be obtained at reasonable rates. This sudden change is admired at, as well as the reasons which induced him to leave such a profitable employ; but the most judicious conclude it is the effect of a certain person's good nature, who has more compassion for his soul than for his own."