* * * * *

"At last Winny, the wife (that is, Winnifrede), put on a compos'd countenance (but, alas! with a troubled heart); stepp'd to a neighbouring tavern, and bespoke a very hot negus, to comfort Johnny in the great part he was to perform that night, begging to have the silver tankard with the lid, because, as she said, 'a covering, and the vehicle silver, would retain heat longer than any other metal,' The request was comply'd with, the negus carry'd to the playhouse piping hot, popp'd into a vile earthen mug—the tankard l'argent travelled incog. under her apron (like the Persian ladies veil'd), popp'd into the pawnbroker's hands, in exchange for the suit—put on and play'd its part, with the rest of the wardrobe; when its duty was over, carried back to remain in its old depository; the tankard return'd the right road; and, when the tide flowed with its lunar influence, the stranded suit was wafted into safe harbour again, after paying a little for 'dry docking,' which was all the damage received."

* * * * *

And Mr. Chetwood adds:

"Thus woman's wit (tho' some account it evil) With artful wiles can overreach the Devil."

Among such as these, good, bad and indifferent, moral and otherwise, did Mistress Oldfield pass what hours she consecrated to the theatre. In the early years, when merely a poor, struggling postulant before the altar of fame, the girl must have been more or less intimate with her dramatic associates, but as time went on and Nance blazed into a star of the first magnitude, the old feeling of fellowship may have become weakened. Not that the actress was in any sense snobbish; rather let it be said that the circumstances of her celebrity proved quite enough, in the course of human affairs, to separate her from the other players. Indeed, one of her biographers relates that Oldfield always went in state to Drury Lane, accompanied by two footmen, and that she seldom spoke to any one of the actors.[A]

[Footnote A: She always went to the house (i.e., the theatre) in the same dress she had worn at dinner in her visits to the houses of great people; for she was much caressed on account of her general merit, and her connection with Mr. Churchill. She used to go to the playhouse in a chair, attended by two footmen; she seldom spoke to any one of the actors, and was allowed a sum of money to buy her own clothes.—"General Biographical Dictionary."]

Nance may have made her entry into the green-room amid royal auspices, but who can for a second believe that "she seldom spoke to any one of the actors"? There was in her composition too much of sunshine to warrant any such belief, and then we know that behind the scenes she was ever affable and friendly. If she did not brook familiarity which comes of contempt, and if she moved about among her companions with dignity, then so much the better.

Of Nance's sweetness of temper and sterling common-sense, Cibber has left us an attractive memory. It seems that when the Drury Lane management determined to revive "The Provoked Wife" of Sir John Vanbrugh (January 1726), Colley suggested that Wilks should take a rest during the run of the piece, and allow Barton Booth to play the lover, Constant. The idea did not meet with Wilks' approval; "down dropt his brow, and fur'd were his features"; and the green-room became the scene of a violent spat between Cibber and himself, with Mrs. Oldfield and other members of the company as excited listeners. Finally the author of the "Apology" said: "Are you not every day complaining of your being over-labour'd? And now, upon the first offering to ease you, you fly into a passion, and pretend to make that a greater grievance than t'other: But, Sir, if your being in or out of the play is a hardship, you shall impose it upon yourself: The part is in your hand, and to us it is a matter of indifference now whether you take it or leave it."



Upon this Mr. Wilks "threw down the part upon the table, crossed his arms, and sate knocking his heel upon the floor, as seeming to threaten most when he said least." Hereupon Booth generously yielded up the much disputed Constant to his rival with the remark that "for his part, he saw no such great matter in acting every day; for he believed it the wholsomest exercise in the world; it kept the spirits in motion, and always gave him a good stomach"—and the elegant Barton, be it remembered, was a great eater.

* * * * *

"Here," says Cibber, "I observed Mrs. Oldfield began to titter behind her fan. But Wilks being more intent upon what Booth had said, reply'd, every one could best feel for himself, but he did not pretend to the strength of a pack-horse; therefore if Mrs. Oldfield would chuse anybody else to play with her, he should be very glad to be excus'd. This throwing the negative upon Mrs. Oldfield was, indeed, a sure way to save himself; which I could not help taking notice of, by saying it was making but an ill compliment to the company to suppose there was but one man in it fit to play an ordinary part with her.

"Here Mrs. Oldfield got up, and turning me half round to come forward, said with her usual frankness, 'Pooh! you are all a parcel of fools, to make such a rout about nothing!' Rightly judging that the person most out of humour would not be more displeased at her calling us all by the same name. As she knew, too, the best way of ending the debate would be to help the weak, she said, she hop'd Mr. Wilks would not so far mind what had past as to refuse his acting the part with her; for tho' it might not be so good as he had been us'd to, yet she believed those who had bespoke the play would expect to have it done to the best advantage, and it would make but an odd story abroad if it were known there had been any difficulty in that point among ourselves. To conclude, Wilks had the part."

Verily, Oldfield was a gentlewoman.



CHAPTER IX

"GRIEF A LA MODE"

"UNDERTAKER [To his men]. Well, come you that are to be mourners in this house, put on your sad looks, and walk by me that I may sort you. Ha, you! a little more upon the dismal; [forming their countenances] this fellow has a good mortal look—place him near the corpse: that wainscot face must be o' top of the stairs; that fellow's almost in a fright (that looks as if he were full of some strange misery) at the entrance to the hall. So—but I'll fix you all myself. Let's have no laughing now on any provocation. [Makes faces.] Look yonder, that hale, well-looking puppy! You ungrateful scoundrel, did not I pity you, take you out of a great man's service, and shew you the pleasure of receiving wages? Did not I give you ten, then fifteen, now twenty shillings a week, to be sorrowful? and the more I give you, I think, the gladder you are.

"Enter a BOY.

"BOY. Sir, the grave-digger of St. Timothy's in the Fields would speak with you.

"UNDERTAKER. Let him come in.

"Enter GRAVE-DIGGER.

"GRAVE-DIGGER. I carried home to your house the shroud the gentleman was buried in last night; I could not get his ring off very easilly, therefore I brought you the finger and all; and, sir, the sexton gives his service to you, and desires to know whether you'd have any bodies removed or not: if not, he'll let them be in their graves a week longer.

"UNDERTAKER. Give him my service; I can't tell readilly: but our friend, Dr. Passeport, with the powder, has promised me six or seven funerals this week."

* * * * *

These extracts are not from the manuscript of a modern farce-comedy,[A] but belong to Steele's play of "The Funeral, or Grief a la Mode." If they have about them all the air of fin-de-siecle wit, so much the more eloquently do they testify to the freshness of Dick's satire. Freshness, satire, and death! Surely the three ingredients seem unmixable; yet when poured into the crucible of Steele's genius they resulted in a crystal that sparkled delightfully amid the lights of a theatre—a crystal which might still shed brilliancy if some enterprising manager would exhibit it to a jaded public.

[Footnote A: In "A Milk White Flag," a good specimen of "up-to-date" farce, Mr. Hoyt dallies entertainingly and discreetly with the blithesome topics of undertakers, corpses, and widows.]

In "The Funeral" the author impaled, with many a merciless slash of the pen, the hypocrisy and vulgar flummery that characterised the whole gruesome ceremony of conducting to its earthly resting-place the body of a well-to-do sinner. For the average Englishman loved a funeral and all its ghastly accompaniments as passionately as though he had Irish blood in his veins, and often insisted upon investing the burial of his friends with the mockery, rather than the sincerity, of woe.

Grief thus became a pleasure, and it was a pleasure, be it added, which was not taken too sadly. (Pardon the paradox.) The spirits of the deceased's many admirers had to be raised, and the enlivening process was set in motion by means of numerous libations, not of tea, but of lusty wine. When the wife of mine host of the "Crown and Sceptre" left this world of cooking and drinking, the women who crowded to the good lady's funeral had to drown their sorrows in a tun of red port,[A] and it is evident that at the burial of men the grief of the mourners required an equal amount of quenching. Indeed, the most absurd expenditures and preparations were made for what should be the simplest of ceremonies, and the result oftentimes proved garish in the extreme. As an example of the display in this direction, John Ashton quotes from the Daily Courant a report of the obsequies of Sir William Pritchard, sometime Lord Mayor of London. After a vast deal of pomp wasted in St. Albans and other places upon the unappreciative and inanimate Pritchard, the remains reached the country seat of the deceased, in the county of Buckingham. "Where, after the body had been set out, with all ceremony befitting his degree, for near two hours, 'twas carried to the church adjacent in this order, viz., 2 conductors with long staves, 6 men in long cloaks two and two, the standard, 18 men in cloaks as before, servants to the deceas'd two and two, divines, the minister of the parish and the preacher, the helm and crest, sword and target, gauntlets and spurs, born by an officer of Arms, both in their rich coats of Her Majesty's Arms enbroider'd; the body, between 6 persons of the Arms of Christ's Hospital, St. Bartholomew's, Merchant Taylors Company, City of London, empaled coat and single coat; the chief mourner and his four assistants, followed by the relations of the defunct, &c."[B] In this aggregation of grandeur the mere bagatelle in the shape of a corpse seems almost completely overshadowed, and it is thus comforting to reflect that the latter finally had interment in a "handsome large vault, in the isle on the north side of the church, betwixt 7 and 8 of the clock that evening." The dear departed, or grief for his memory, frequently played but too small a role in all these trappings of despondency, and the insignificance of the deceased might only be likened to the secondary position of a man at his own wedding. It was all fuss and mortuary feathers, mourning rings and mulled wine in the one case, just as in the other it is entirely a show of bride and blushes, flounces and femininity. [Footnote A: In writing of the customs connected with old-time English funerals, Misson says: "The relations and chief mourners are in a chamber apart, with their more intimate friends; and the rest of the guests are dispersed in several rooms about the house. When they are ready to set out, they nail up the coffin, and a servant presents the company with sprigs of rosemary: Every one takes a sprig and carries it in his hand till the body is put into the grave, at which time they all throw their sprigs in after it. Before they set out, and after they return, it is usual to present the guests with something to drink, either red or white wine, boil'd with sugar and cinnamon, or some such liquor. Butler, the keeper of a tavern, told me there was a tun of red port drank at his wife's burial, besides mull'd white wine. Note, no men ever go to women's burials, nor the women to the men's; so that there were none but women at the drinking of Butler's wine. Such women in England will hold it out with the men, when they have a bottle before them, as well as upon t'other occasion, and tattle infinitely better than they."]

[Footnote B: The will of Benjamin Dod, a Roman Catholic citizen of London (died 1714) runs in part as follows: "I desire four and twenty persons to be at my burial ... to every of which four and twenty persons ... I give a pair of white gloves, a ring of ten shillings value, a bottle of wine at my funeral, and half a crown to be spent at their return that night; to drink my soul's health, then on her Journey for Purification in order to Eternal Rest. I appoint the room, where my corpse shall lie, to be hung with black, and four and twenty wax candles to be burning; on my coffin to be affixed a cross and this inscription, Jesus Hominum Salvator. I also appoint my corpse to be carried in a herse drawn with six white horses, with white feathers, and followed by six coaches, with six horses to each coach, to carry the four and twenty persons.... Item, I give to forty of my particular acquaintance, not at my funeral, to every one of them a gold ring of ten shillings value.... As for mourning, I leave that to my executors hereafter nam'd; and I do not desire them to give any to whom I shall leave a legacy.... I will have no Presbyterian, Moderate Low Churchmen, or Occasional Conformists, to be at or have anything to do with my funeral. I die in the Faith of the True Catholic Church. I desire to have a tomb stone over me, with a Latin inscription, and a lamp, or six wax candles, to burn seven days and nights thereon."—Vide ASHTON.]

Was it any wonder that when Dick Steele, aetat twenty-six, an officer of Fusiliers, and a merry vagabond, wanted to redeem his reputation by writing a rollicking comedy, his thoughts turned to the satirising of the British undertaker? For the young man must prove to the town that he was not the hypocrite several of his kind friends had dubbed him. The fact was, that he had been virtuous enough to write a pious work entitled, "The Christian Hero," which he afterwards published, but as he had not grown sufficiently master of himself to live up to its golden precepts (nay, rather did he continue to spend his evenings in the taverns), the author came in for many a taunt and sneer. Why did he not practice what he preached? was the sarcastic query of his intimates.

Yet there was no thought of cant in what the soldier had done. His design in issuing the "Christian Hero" was, as he explained in after years, "principally to fix upon his own mind a strong impression of virtue and religion, in opposition to a stronger propensity towards unwarrantable pleasures." This secret admiration was too weak; he therefore printed the book with his name, in hopes that a standing testimony against himself, and the eyes of the world (that is to say, of his acquaintances) upon him in a new light, would make him ashamed of understanding and seeming to feel what was virtuous, and living so contrary to life.

But the man was weak where the author was willing, and thus gay Richard went on "living so contrary a life" with true Celtic perversity, and made of himself anything but a Christian Hero. Rather was he a jolly Pagan, with a passion for his wine and his coffee-house, and a kindly, merry word even for those who twitted him upon his inconsistency. It was plain, therefore, that he must be some other sort of hero, and so he evolved the brilliant satire of "The Funeral," to "enliven his character, and repel the sarcasms of those who abused him for his declarations relative to religion."



In the twinkling of an eye Steele became the spoiled darling of the day. The comedy, which was produced at Drury Lane in 1702, was the talk of the enthusiastic town, and the playwright arose from his beer-mugs, his wine-flagons, and his contemplation of ideal Christianity, to find himself famous. He had opened a new vein of satire, and a vein moreover which upheld virtue and laughed to scorn hypocrisy and vice. That was a moral which the dramatists of his epoch seldom taught.[A] And so the people crowded to the theatre, applauded the sentiment of the play, guffawed at the keen wit of the dialogue, and swore that this young rascal Steele was the prince of bright fellows. Then they went home—and revelled, as before, in the funerals of their friends.

[Footnote A: The "Funeral" is the merriest and most perfect of Steele's comedies. The characters are strongly marked, the wit genial, and not indecent. Steele was among the first who set about reforming the licentiousness of the old comedy. His satire in the "Funeral" is not against virtue, but vice and silliness.—DR. DORAN.]

What of this remarkable comedy? Its story turned upon the marriage of the elderly Lord Brumpton to a designing young minx who estranges the nobleman from his son, Lord Hardy, the gentlemanly, poverty-stricken leading man of the piece. When Brumpton has a cataleptic fit, and is apparently dead as a doornail, the spouse confides his body to the undertaker with feelings of serene pleasure. But let the lines of the play, or a portion thereof, unfold the situation.

The scene is at Lord Brumpton's house; the nobleman has just been pronounced defunct, and Sable, the undertaker, has arrived. The latter, who is being bantered by two of the characters, Mr. Campley and Cabinet, is evidently a bit of a philosopher, albeit an uncanny one, for he says:

* * * * *

"There are very few in the whole world that live to themselves, but sacrifice their bosom-bliss to enjoy a vain show and appearance of prosperity in the eyes of others; and there is often nothing more inwardly distressed than a young bride in her glittering retinue, or deeply joyful than a young widow in her weeds and black train; of both which the lady of this house may be an instance, for she has been the one, and is, I'll be sworn, the other.

"CABINET. You talk, Mr. Sable, most learnedly.

"SABLE. I have the deepest learning, sir, experience; remember your widow cousin, that married last month.

"CABINET. Ay, but how you'd you imagine she was in all that grief an hypocrite! Could all those shrieks, those swoonings, that rising falling bosom, be constrained? You're uncharitable, Sable, to believe it. What colour, what reason had you for it?

"SABLE. First, Sir, her carriage in her concerns with me, for I never yet could meet with a sorrowful relict but was herself enough to make a hard bargain with me. Yet I must confess they have frequent interruptions of grief and sorrow when they read my bill; but as for her, nothing she resolv'd, that look'd bright or joyous, should after her love's death approach her. All her servants that were not coal-black must turn out; a fair complexion made her eyes and heart ake, she'd none but downright jet, and to exceed all example, she hir'd my mourning furniture by the year, and in case of my mortality, ty'd my son to the same article; so in six weeks time ran away with a young fellow."

* * * * *

And so on (with a cynicism of which, of course, no modern "funeral director" would be guilty—out loud), until the undertaker's men come on the scene.

* * * * *

"Where in the name of goodness have you all been?" asks SABLE. "Have you brought the sawdust and tar for embalming? Have you the hangings and the sixpenny nails, and my lord's coat of arms?"

"SERVANT. Yes, sir, and had come sooner, but I went to the herald's for a coat for Alderman Gathergrease that died last night—he has promised to invent one against to-morrow."

"SABLE. Ah! pox take some of our cits, the first thing after their death is to take care of their birth—let him bear a pair of stockings, he is the first of his family that ever wore one.... And you, Mr. Blockhead, I warrant you have not call'd at Mr. Pestle's the apothecary: will that fellow never pay me? I stand bound for all the poison in that starving murderer's shop: he serves me just as Dr. Quibus did, who promised to write a treatise against water-gruel, a healthy slop that has done me more injury than all the Faculty: look you now, you are all upon the sneer, let me have none but downright stupid countenances. I've a good mind to turn you all off, and take people out of the playhouse; but hang them, they are as ignorant of their parts as you are of yours.... Ye stupid rogues, whom I have picked out of the rubbish of mankind, and fed for your eminent worthlessness, attend, and know that I speak you this moment stiff and immutable to all sense of noise, mirth or laughter. [Makes mouths at them as they pass by him to bring them to a constant countenance.] So, they are pretty well—pretty well."

[Exit.

* * * * *

When the stage is clear Lord Brumpton and his servant Trusty enter. The former has wakened from his cataleptic trance, as the faithful Trusty watched beside him, and is horrified to learn of Lady Brumpton's lack of grief. But hush; he will conceal himself, for here comes my lady, accompanied by her woman and confidant, Mistress Tattleaid.

* * * * *

"Enter WIDOW and TATTLEAID, meeting and running to each other.

"WIDOW. Oh, Tattleaid, his and our hour has come!

"TAT. I always said by his church yard cough, you'd bury him, and still you were impatient.

"WIDOW. Nay, thou hast ever been my comfort, my confident, my friend, and my servant; and now I'll reward thy pains; for tho' I scorn the whole sex of fellows I'll give them hopes for thy sake; every smile, every frown, every gesture, humour, caprice and whimsy of mine shall be gold to thee, girl; thou shalt feel all the sweets and wealth of being a fine rich widow's woman. Oh! how my head runs my first year out, and jumps to all the joys of widowhood! If thirteen months hence a friend should haul one to a play one has a mind to see,[A] what pleasure t'will be when my Lady Brumpton's footman called (who kept a place for that very purpose) to make a sudden insurrection of fine wigs in the pit and side-boxes. Then, with a pretty sorrow in one's face, and a willing blush for being stared at, one ventures to look round, and bow to one of one's own quality. Thus [very directly] to a snug pretending fellow of no fortune. Thus [as scarce seeing him] to one that writes lampoons. Thus [fearfully] to one who really loves. Thus [looking down] to one woman-acquaintance, from box to box, thus [with looks differently familiar], and when one has done one's part, observe the actors do theirs, but with my mind fixed not on those I look at, but those that look at me. Then the serenades—the lovers! [A query—if the theatres were patronised only by those who looked solely at the stage, what would be the size of the audiences?]

[Footnote A: A well-regulated widow kept herself at home for six weeks after the death of her husband, and denied herself the theatre and other public amusements for a twelvemonth.]

"TAT. Oh, madam, you make my heart bound within me: I'll warrant you, madam, I'll manage them all; and indeed, madam, the men are really very silly creatures, 'tis no such hard matter—they rulers! they governors! I warrant you indeed.

"WIDOW. Ay, Tattleaid, they imagine themselves mighty things, but government founded on force only, is a brutal power—we rule them by their affections, which blinds them into belief that they rule us, or at least are in the government with us. But in this nation our power is absolute; thus, thus, we sway—[playing her fan]. A fan is both the standard and the flag of England. I laugh to see men go on our errands, strut in great offices, live in cares, hazards and scandals, to come home and be fools to us in brags of their dispatches, negotiations, and their wisdoms—as my good dear deceas'd use to entertain me; which I, to relieve myself from, would lisp some silly request, pat him on the face. He shakes his head at my pretty folly, calls me simpleton; gives me a jewel, then goes to bed so wise, so satisfied, and so deceived."

* * * * *

This pleasant conversation Lord Brumpton overhears, as he does also the inmost secrets of his lawyer, Puzzle. The latter gentleman, who has studied hard to cheat his good-natured employer, and succeeded, is a daringly drawn satire on the pettifogging attorney of the period.[A] Note the following words of wisdom, apropos to the drawing of wills, which Mr. Puzzle addresses to his nephew.

[Footnote A: Of the attorney of Queen Anne's day Ward wrote: "He's an Amphibious Monster, that partakes of two Natures, and those contrary; He's a great Lover both of Peace and Enmity; and has no sooner set People together by the Ears, but is Soliciting the Law to make an end of the Difference. His Learning is commonly as little as his Honesty; and his Conscience much larger than his Green Bag. Catch him in what Company soever, you will always hear him stating of Cases, or telling what notice my Lord Chancellor took of him, when he beg'd leave to supply the deficiency of his Counsel. He always talks with as great assurance as if he understood what he only pretends to know: And always wears a Band, and in that lies his Gravity and Wisdom. He concerns himself with no Justice but the Justice of a Cause: and for making an unconscionable Bill he outdoes a Taylor."]

"PUZZLE. As for legacies, they are good or not, as I please; for let me tell you, a man must take pen, ink and paper, sit down by an old fellow, and pretend to take directions, but a true lawyer never makes any man's will but his own; and as the priest of old among us got near the dying man, and gave all to the Church, so now the lawyer gives all to the law.

"CLERK. Ay, sir, but priests then cheated the nation by doing their offices in an unknown language.

"PUZZLE. True, but ours is a way much surer; for we cheat in no language at all, but loll in our own coaches, eloquent in gibberish, and learned in jingle. Pull out the parchment [referring to the will of LORD BRUMPTON], there's the deed; I made it as long as I could. Well, I hope to see the day when the indenture shall be the exact measure of the land that passes by it; for 'tis a discouragement to the gown, that every ignorant rogue of an heir should in a word or two understand his father's meaning, and hold ten acres of land by half-an-acre of parchment. Nay, I hope to see the time when that there is indeed some progress made in, shall be wholly affected; and by the improvement of the noble art of tautology, every Inn in Holborn an Inn of Court. Let others think of logic, rhetoric, and I know not what impertinence, but mind thou tautology. What's the first excellence in a lawyer? Tautology. What's the second? Tautology. What's the third? Tautology; as an old pleader said of action."

* * * * *

Who shall say that the tautological sentiments of Mr. Puzzle are not still inculcated? Nay, the whole play furnishes a capital instance of the truism that the world changes but little, and, furthermore, that the mould of nigh two centuries cannot spoil the wit of sparkling Steele. Ah, Dick! Dick! you may have been a sorry dog, with your toasts and your taverns, yet 'tis a thousand pities that a few dramatists of to-day cannot drink inspiration from the same cups.

To continue our cheerful journey with this unusual "Funeral," we soon find ourselves introduced to Lord Hardy, the unjustly discarded son of Brumpton. Hardy is a high-spirited, honest man of quality, a trifle out at elbows just now, owing to the stoppage of financial supplies from the paternal mansion. His straits are oft severe, and it is fortunate that he has in Trim a faithful servant who knows so well how to keep the duns at bay. "Why, friend, says I [Trim is describing to Hardy his method of dealing with his lordship's creditors], how often must I tell you my lord is not stirring. His lordship has not slept well, you must come some other time; your lordship will send for him when you are at leisure to look upon money affairs; or if they are so saucy, so impertinent as to press a man of your quality for their own, there are canes, there's Bridewel, there's the stocks for your ordinary tradesmen; but to an haughty, thriving Covent Garden mercer, silk or laceman, your lordship gives your most humble service to him, hopes his wife is well; you have letters to write, or you would see him yourself, but you desire he would be with you punctually on such a day, that is to say, the day after you are gone out of town, Which shows very plainly that Trim could have earned large wages had he lived in the nineteenth century. These 'Palmy Days' are not long enough, however, to permit the introduction of all the characters, nor the outlining of the entire story, with its brisk love-interest. But this bit of dialogue, which occurs after Sable has discovered the much-alive Lord Brumpton, is too good to be ignored:

"SABLE. Why, my lord, you can't in conscience put me off so; I must do according to my orders, cut you up, and embalm you, except you'll come down a little deeper than you talk of; you don't consider the charges I have been at already.

"LORD BRUMPTON. Charges! for what?

"SABLE. First, twenty guineas to my lady's woman for notice of your death (a fee I've before now known the widow herself go halves in), but no matter for that—in the next place, ten pounds for watching you all your long fit of sickness last winter—

"LORD BRUMPTON. Watching me? Why I had none but my own servants by turns!

"SABLE. I mean attending to give notice of your death. I had all your long fit of sickness, last winter, at half a crown a day, a fellow waiting at your gate to bring me intelligence, but you unfortunately recovered, and I lost all my obliging pains for your service.

"LORD BRUMPTON. Ha! ha! ha! Sable, thou'rt a very impudent fellow. Half a crown a day to attend my decease, and dost thou reckon it to me?"

"SABLE.... I have a book at home, which I call my doomsday-book, where I have every man of quality's age and distemper in town, and know when you should drop. Nay, my lord, if you had reflected upon your mortality half so much as poor I have for you, you would not desire to return to life thus—in short, I cannot keep this a secret, under the whole money I am to have for burying you."

* * * * *

Of course Lady Brumpton is discomfited and disgraced at the end of the play, and, of course, Lord Brumpton is reconciled to his son—for Steele took care that virtue should be rewarded and the moral code otherwise preserved. As to her ladyship, who has proved a very entertaining sort of villain, we shall take leave of her in one of the best scenes of the comedy:

"WIDOW. [Reading the names of the visitors who have called to leave their condolences] Mrs. Frances and Mrs. Winnifred Glebe, who are they?"

"TATTLEAID. They are the country great fortunes, have been out of town this whole year; they are those whom your ladyship said upon being very well-born took upon them to be very ill-bred."

"WIDOW. Did I say so? Really I think it was apt enough; now I remember them. Lady Wrinkle—oh, that smug old woman! there is no enduring her affectation of youth; but I plague her; I always ask whether her daughter in Wiltshire has a grandchild yet or not. Lady Worth—I can't bear her company; [aside] she has so much of that virtue in her heart which I have in mouth only. Mrs. After-day—Oh, that's she that was the great beauty, the mighty toast about town, that's just come out of the small-pox; she is horribly pitted they say; I long to see her, and plague her with my condolence.... But you are sure these other ladies suspect not in the least that I know of their coming?

"TAT. No, dear madam, they are to ask for me.

"WIDOW. I hear a coach. [Exit TATTLEAID.] I have now an exquisite pleasure in the thought of surpassing my Lady Sly, who pretends to have out-grieved the whole town for her husband. They are certainly coming. Oh, no! here let me—thus let me sit and think. [Widow on her couch; while she is raving, as to herself, TATTLEAID softly introduces the ladies.] Wretched, disconsolate, as I am!... Alas! alas! Oh! oh! I swoon! I expire! [Faints.

"SECOND LADY. Pray, Mrs. Tattleaid, bring something that is cordial to her. [Exit TATTLEAID.

"THIRD LADY. Indeed, madam, you should have patience; his lordship was old. To die is but going before in a journey we must all take.

Enter TATTLEAID, loaded with bottles; THIRD LADY takes a bottle from her and drinks.

"FOURTH LADY. Lord, how my Lady Fleer drinks! I have heard, indeed, but never could believe it of her. [Drinks also.

"FIRST LADY. [Whispers.] But, madam, don't you hear what the town says of the jilt, Flirt, the men liked so much in the Park? Hark ye—was seen with him in a hackney coach.

"SECOND LADY. Impudent flirt, to be found out!

"THIRD LADY. But I speak it only to you.

"FOURTH LADY. [Whispers next woman.] Nor I, but to no one.

"FIFTH LADY. [Whispers the WIDOW.] I can't believe it; nay, I always thought it, madam.

"WIDOW. Sure, 'tis impossible the demure, prim thing. Sure all the world is hypocrisy Well, I thank my stars, whatsoever sufferings I have, I have none in reputation. I wonder at the men; I could never think her handsome. She has really a good shape and complexion but no mein; and no woman has the use of her beauty without mein. Her charms are dumb, they want utterance. But whither does distraction lead me to talk of charms?

"FIRST LADY. Charms, a chit's, a girl's charms! Come, let us widows be true to ourselves, keep our countenances and our characters, and a fig for the maids.

"SECOND LADY. Ay, since they will set up for our knowledge, why should not we for their ignorance?

"THIRD LADY. But, madam, o' Sunday morning at church, I curtsied to you and looked at a great fuss in a glaring light dress, next pew. That strong, masculine thing is a knight's wife, pretends to all the tenderness in the world, and would fain put the unwieldly upon us for the soft, the languid. She has of a sudden left her dairy, and sets up for a fine town lady; calls her maid Cisly, her woman speaks to her by her surname of Mrs. Cherryfist, and her great foot-boy of nineteen, big enough for a trooper, is stripped into a laced coat, now Mr. Page forsooth.

"FOURTH LADY. Oh, I have seen her. Well, I heartily pity some people for their wealth; they might have been unknown else—you would die, madam, to see her and her equipage: I thought her horses were ashamed of their finery; they dragged on, as if they were all at plough, and a great bashful-look'd booby behind grasp'd the coach, as if he had never held one.

"FIFTH LADY. Alas! some people think there is nothing but being fine to be genteel; but the high prance of the horses, and the brisk insolence of the servants in an equipage of quality are inimitable.

"FIRST LADY. Now you talk of an equipage, I envy this lady the beauty she will appear in a mourning coach, it will so become her complexion; I confess I myself mourned for two years for no other reason. Take up that hood there. Oh, that fair face with a veil! [They take up her hood.

"WIDOW. Fie, fie, ladies. But I have been told, indeed, black does become—

"SECOND LADY. Well, I'll take the liberty to speak it, there is young Nutbrain has long had (I'll be sworn) a passion for this lady; but I'll tell you one thing I fear she'll dislike, that is, he is younger than she is.

"THIRD LADY. No, that's no exception; but I'll tell you one, he is younger than his brother.

"WIDOW. Talk not of such affairs. Who could love such an unhappy relict as I am? But, dear madam, what grounds have you for that idle story?

"FOURTH LADY. Why he toasts you and trembles where you are spoke of. It must be a match.

"WIDOW. Nay, nay, you rally, you rally; but I know you mean it kindly.

"FIRST LADY. I swear we do.

[TATTLEAID whispers the WIDOW.

"WIDOW. But I must beseech you, ladies, since you have been so compassionate as to visit and accompany my sorrow, to give me the only comfort I can now know, to see my friends cheerful, and to honour an entertainment Tattleaid has prepared within for you. If I can find strength enough I'll attend you; but I wish you would excuse me, for I have no relish of food or joy, but will try to get a bit down in my own chamber.

"FIRST LADY. There is no pleasure without you.

"WIDOW. But, madam, I must beg of your ladyship not to be so importune to my fresh calamity as to mention Nutbrain any more. I am sure there is nothing in it. In love with me, quotha!"

[WIDOW is led away. Exeunt LADIES.

Thus runs the comedy, trippingly as the tongue of a gay raconteur. Sometimes the scenes are exaggerated, sometimes the characters may be overdrawn, but the satire is true, and the wit is of the best. Take, for instance, the picture reproduced above. Are not its colours—albeit bold and merciless—tinged with the redeeming hue of naturalness? And of you, fair daughters of Eve (if any of you condescend to read these pages), let the author ask one impertinent little question: Is there not something in the conversation of Dick Steele's First Lady, or his Second Lady, or all the other Ladies, which suggests the charity and intellectuality that doth hedge in an afternoon tea?



CHAPTER X

THE BARTON BOOTHS

"Sweet are the charms of her I love, More fragrant than the damask rose; Soft as the down of turtle-dove, Gentle as winds when zephyr blows; Refreshing as descending rains, On sun-burnt climes, and thirsty plains."

Thus rhapsodised the great Barton Booth, who could write harmless poetry when the cares of acting did not press too hard upon him. In this case the verses were addressed to the object of his passion, a lady who seems to have been, at first, a trifle parsimonious in her smiles; for, in another song intended for the same siren, the lover asks:

"Can then a look create a thought Which time can ne'er remove? Yes, foolish heart, again thou'rt caught, Again thou bleed'st for Love.

"She sees the conquest of her eyes, Nor heals the wounds she gave; She smiles when'er my blushes rise, And, sighing, shuns her Slave.

"Then, Swain, be bold! and still adore her Still the flying fair pursue: Love, and friendship, still implore her, Pleading night and day for you."



Who was this "flying fair" that the swain pursued with such despairing fervour? Nance Oldfield? Nay, there was no romance there, for while Booth could make the most exquisite stage love to the actress, he never carried that love beyond the mimic world. Rather was it the lovely Mistress Santlow, that dancing bit of sunshine, who turned the heads of many an amorous spectator, and had enough of the temptress about her to lead a mighty warrior from the path of domestic constancy, and bring a Secretary of State almost to the verge of matrimony.[A] She seemed the apotheosis of grace, did this merry, moving Hester, and when she forsook the art she so delightfully adorned, and took to the "legitimate," there were not a few among her admirers who regretted the change. "They mourned," says Dr. Doran, "as if Terpsichore herself had been on earth to charm mankind, and had gone never to return. They remembered, longed for, and now longed in vain for that sight which used to set a whole audience half distraught with delight, when in the very ecstacy of her dance, Santlow contrived to loosen her clustering auburn hair, and letting it fall about such a neck and shoulders as Praxiteles could more readily imagine than imitate, danced on, the locks flying in the air, and half-a-dozen hearts at the end of every one of them."

[Footnote A: The Duke of Marlborough and Secretary Craggs respectively.]

At the end of one of those locks was the throbbing heart of Barton Booth, which he had completely lost in watching the auburn hair and the poetic movements of the coryphee:

"But now the flying fingers strike the lyre, The sprightly notes the nymph inspire. She whirls around! she bounds! she springs! As if Jove's messenger had lent her wings.

"Such were her lovely limbs, so flushed her charming face So round her neck! her eyes so fair! So rose her swelling chest! so flow'd her amber hair! While her swift feet outstript the wind, And left the enamor'd God of Day behind."

Certes, Booth was in love when he wrote this eulogy.

But however sprightly and deftly did this charmer pirouette, she could not deny herself the luxury of appearing as a regular actress. Her first venture in this direction was as the Eunuch of "Valentinian," wherein she donned boy's attire, and was much more successful in masculine garb than have been not a few better artists. From this part to that of Dorcas Zeal in Shadwell's play, "The Fair Quaker of Deal,"[A] was but a step, and a step, be it said, which for the moment consoled the public for her desertion from the ballet. According to Cibber, Santlow was the happiest incident in the fortune of the play, and the Laureate tells us that she was "then in the full bloom of what beauty she might pretend to."[B] He adds that "before this she had only been admired as the most excellent dancer, which perhaps might not a little contribute to the favourable reception she now met with as an actress in this character which so happily suited her figure and capacity: the gentle softness of her voice, the composed innocence of her aspect, the modesty of her dress, the reserv'd deceny of her gesture, and the simplicity of the sentiments that naturally fell from her, made her seem the amiable maid she represented. In a word, not the enthusiastick Maid of Orleans was more serviceable of old to the French army when the English had distressed them, than this fair Quaker was at the head of that dramatick attempt upon which the support of their weak society depended."

[Footnote A: Produced at Drury Lane in February, 1710.]

[Footnote B: It might appear from this remark of Colley's that the Santlow was not over handsome. Yet if a picture taken from life does not belie her the dancer was most fair to look upon.]

This "weak society" was the new company recruited by William Collier for Drury Lane Theatre, and wherein could be found, in addition to the light-limbed Hester, such players as her adoring swain, Barton Booth, Theophilus Keen, George Powell, Francis Leigh, Mrs. Bradshaw and Mrs. Knight. Colley was at that time (1710) in opposition to Drury, his interest lying with the Hay market management, and it is very evident that the success of the "Fair Quaker"—a success made in face of the counter attraction furnished by the long trial of Dr. Sacheverel—went sorely against the grain with him.[A] The fact was that things at the Hay market were not flourishing, and the prosperity enjoyed by the Drury Lane comedy—and the Sacheverel show—seemed tantalising to bear.

[Footnote A: Shadwell evidently had Cibber in mind when he wrote in the preface to the "Fair Quaker of Deal": "This play was written about three years since, and put into the hands of a famous comedian belonging to the Haymarket Playhouse, who took care to beat down the value of it so much as to offer the author to alter it fit to appear on the stage, on condition he might have half the profits of the third day; that is as much as to say, that it may pass for one of his, according to custom. The author not agreeing to this reasonable proposal, it lay in his hands till the beginning of this winter, when Mr. Booth read it, and liked it, and persuaded the author that, with a little alteration, it would please the town."]

Even in after years Colley grew bitter in thinking of the "Fair Quaker," and could not help indulging in a dig at its expense when he came to write the "Apology." He likewise paid his satirical compliments to the new-fangled Italian opera which was given at the Haymarket during the season of 1709-10, on the days when the regular dramatic company did not appear. The opera had already proved a drawing attraction, but at the time here mentioned the popular interest in the performances had fallen off, and the dear and ever fickle public, of high and low degree, prefered either Drury Lane or the trial of Sacheverel to the artistic delights of music and the drama at the rival house. And so Cibber plaintively sighs.

"The truth is, that this kind of entertainment [opera] being so entirely sensual, it had no possibility of getting the better of our reason but by its novelty; and that novelty could never be supported but by an annual change of the best voices, which, like the finest flowers, bloom but for a season, and when that is over are only dead nosegays. From this natural cause we have seen within these two years even Farinelli singing to an audience of five and thirty pounds, and yet, if common fame may be credited, the same voice, so neglected in one country, has in another had charms sufficient to make that crown sit easy on the head of a Monarch, which the jealousy of politicians (who had their views in his keeping it) fear'd, without some such extraordinary amusement, his Satiety of Empire might tempt him a second time to resign."[A]

[Footnote A: The monarch alluded to was evidently Victor Amadeus, King of Sardinia. The tenor Farinelli (whose real name was Carlo Broschi) was born in the dukedom of Modena in 1705, and died 1782.]

That Cibber knew something of the wrangles which inevitably follow in the wake of an operatic troupe may be seen from the next paragraph:

"There is, too, in the very species of an Italian singer such an innate, fantastical pride and caprice, that the government of them (here at least) is almost impracticable. This distemper, as we were not sufficiently warn'd or apprized of, threw our musical affairs into perplexities we knew not easily how to get out of. There is scarce a sensible auditor in the Kingdom that has not since that time had occasion to laugh at the several instances of it. But what is still more ridiculous, these costly canary birds have sometimes infested the whole body of our dignified lovers of musick with the same childish animosities."

It was merely an illustration of the melancholy fact that the heavenly maid of music is too often attended by the handmaiden of discord. But to continue:

"Ladies have been known," says Colley, "to decline their visits upon account of their being of a different musical party. Caesar and Pompey made not a warmer division in the Roman Republick than those heroines, their country women, the Faustina and Cuzzoni, blew up in our commonwealth of academical musick by their implacable pretentions to superiority.[A] And while this greatness of soul is their unalterable virtue, it will never be practicable to make two capital singers of the same sex do as they should do in one opera at the same time! No, tho' England were to double the sums it has already thrown after them. For even in their own country, where an extraordinary occasion has called a greater number of their best to sing together, the mischief they have made has been proportionable; an instance of which, if I am rightly informed, happen'd at Parma, where upon the celebration of the marriage of that Duke, a collection was made of the most eminent voices that expence or interest could purchase, to give as complete an opera as the whole vocal power of Italy could form.

[Footnote A: Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni Hasse, whose famous rivalry in 1726 and 1727 is here referred to, were singers of remarkable powers. Cuzzoni's voice was a soprano, her rival's a mezzo-soprana, and while the latter excelled in brilliant execution, the former was supreme in pathetic expression. Dr. Burney("History of Music," iv. 319) quotes from M. Quanta the statement that so keen was their supporter's party spirit, that when one party began to applaude their favourite, the other party hissed!—R.W. LOWE, "Notes to the Apology."]

"But when it came to the proof of this musical project, behold! what woful work they made of it! every performer would be a Caesar or Nothing; their several pretentions to preference were not to be limited within the laws of harmony; they would all choose their own songs, but not more to set off themselves than to oppose or deprive another of an occasion to shine. Yet any one would sing a bad song, provided nobody else had a good one, till at last they were thrown together like so many feather'd warriors, for a battle-royal in a cock-pit, where every one was oblig'd to kill another to save himself! What pity it was these froward misses and masters of musick had not been engag'd to entertain the court of some King of Morocco, that could have known a good opera from a bad one! With how much ease would such a director have brought them to better order? But alas! as it has been said of greater things,

"'Suis et ipsa Roma viribus ruit.'

"Imperial Rome fell by the too great strength of its own citizens! So fell this mighty opera, ruin'd by the too great excellency of its singers! For, upon the whole, it proved to be as barbarously bad as if Malice itself had composed it."

It was a pity, no doubt, that the light of opera shone but dimly at the Haymarket, yet the ill wind which almost extinguished that light blew a blessing towards the nimble Santlow. For the dear creature prospered exceeding well as Dorcas Zeal; the heart of the public waxed warm toward the ex-dancer, and so did the cardiac organ of Barton Booth. A few years later Booth married the charmer, and she, having become virtuous and prim, made the remainder of his life a bed of domestic roses.

And now for the brief story of Booth's dignified career. Barton came of good English stock, and his father, with a true British desire to rule the destinies of his family, mapped out a clerical life for the boy. But the latter had no thought of the pulpit, and from the time that he acted in the "Andria" of Terence, at Westminster School, his hope was all for the stage. 'Tis very easy to applaud that hope now; perhaps his relations looked upon it as a temptation offered by the Evil One. When he reached the mature age of seventeen, and had orders to begin his university training, what does the youth do but run away from home, and, taking the theatrical bull by the horns, appear on the Dublin boards.

"He first apply'd to Mr. Betterton, then to Mr. Smith, two celebrated actors," says Chetwood, "but they decently refused him for fear of the resentment of his family. But this did not prevent his pursuing the point in view; therefore he resolv'd for Ireland, and safely arrived in June 1698. His first rudiments Mr. Ashbury[A] taught him, and his first appearance was in the part of Oroonoko, where he acquitted himself so well to a crowded audience, that Mr. Ashbury rewarded him with a present of five guineas, which was the more acceptable as his last shilling was reduced to brass (as he inform'd me). But an odd accident fell out upon this occasion. It being very warm weather, in his last scene of the play, as he waited to go on, he inadvertently wiped his face, that, when he enter'd, he had the appearance of a chimney-sweeper (his own words). At his entrance he was surprised at the variety of noises he heard in the audience (for he knew not what he had done), that a little confounded him, till he received an extraordinary clap of applause, which settled his mind. The play was desir'd for the next night of acting, when an actress fitted a crape to his face, with an opening proper for the mouth, and shap'd in form for the nose; but, in the first scene, one part of the crape slip'd off. 'And zounds!' said he (he was a little apt to swear), 'I look'd like a magpie. When I came off, they lamp-black'd me for the rest of the night, that I was flayed before it could be got off again.'"[B]

[Footnote A: Joseph Ashbury, Master of the Revels, in Ireland, actor, and manager of the theatre in Dublin.]

[Footnote B: Chetwood adds in a footnote: "The composition for blackening the face are ivory-black and pomatum, which is, with some pains, clean'd with fresh butter." "Oroonoko" was what we would now call a "black face" part.]

But Booth was too much in earnest to be daunted by anything so trifling as the misplacing of a mask. He studied hard, despite a youthful liking for the jolly joys of Bacchus, and soon made for himself an enviable position upon the Dublin stage. For the youth had all the qualities that went toward the formation of a fine actor; he possessed keen dramatic instinct, poetic sensibility, a beautiful voice, a handsome person, and, above all, a dogged ambition. In after years, when his health began to fail and the sweets of success had, perhaps, become a trifle cloying, the tragedian often went through a part in a perfunctory manner.[A] But those early days in Ireland marked the sunrise of his genius—a time no less noble, in its freshness and promise, than the later glory of the noontide—and there was in his performance nothing but youthful ardour and devotion.

[Footnote A: He (Booth) would play his best to a single man in the pit whom he recognised as a playgoer, and a judge of acting; but to an unappreciating audience he could exhibit an almost contemptuous disinclination to exert himself. On one occasion of this sort he was made painfully sensible of his mistake and a note was addressed to him from the stage-box, the purport of which was to know whether he was acting for his own diversion or in the service and for the entertainment of the public? On another occasion, with a thin house and a cold audience, he was languidly going through one of his usually grandest impersonations, namely, Pyrrhus. At his very dullest scene he started into the utmost brilliancy and effectiveness. His eye had just previously detected in the pit a gentleman, named Stanyan, the friend of Addison and Steele, and the correspondent of the Earl of Manchester. Stanyan was an accomplished man and a judicious critic. Booth played to him, with the utmost care and corresponding success. "No, no!" he exclaimed, as he passed behind the scenes, "I will not have it said at Button's that Barton Booth is losing his powers!"—DR. DORAN.]

With that ardour, only whetted by his popularity in Dublin, Barton travelled to London (1701), and there offered respectful incense at the shrine of Betterton. 'Twas a shrine at which the public still worshipped; and when Roscius extended a helping hand to the kneeling postulant, and brought him before the patrons of Lincoln's Inn Fields, the success of Booth seemed assured. The latter never forgot the generosity and kindly interest of his idol, and he spoke with all the sincerity of gratitude when he once said: "When I acted the Ghost with Betterton (as Hamlet), instead of my awing him, he terrified me. But divinity hung round that man." Had he been of an egotistic mould Barton might have added, that his Ghost was considered hardly less effective than the Hamlet of the mighty Betterton.

For a decade, or longer, Booth went on this prosperous way, gaining in favour with the theatre-goers, and increasing his artistic resources. During this period he married the daughter of a baronet, and she lived for six years, but not long enough to witness his triumphs in the "Distressed Mother" and the classic "Cato." As Chetwood well said, "Pyrrhus in the 'Distressed Mother' placed him in the seat of Tragedy, and Cato fixed him there." We have already read something of the "Distressed Mother," and of the production of Addison's tragedy, and so there is no need to linger over the episodes which caused Booth to be acclaimed Betterton's logical successor.

We remember, likewise, that the original Cato was admitted to a share in the management of Drury Lane, as a result of the increased fame accruing from his impersonation of the grand old Roman. It was an incident, into which politics entered not a little; there were wires to pull, and Lord Bolingbroke had his hand in the theatrical pie. "To reward his merit," chronicles Chetwood, "he (Booth) was joined in the patent, tho' great interest was made against him by the other patentees, who, to prevent his soliciting his patrons at Court, then at Windsor, gave out plays every night, where Mr. Booth had a principal part. Notwithstanding this step, he had a chariot and six of a nobleman's waiting for him at the end of every play, that whipt him the twenty miles in three hours, and brought him back to the business of the theatre the next night."

"He told me," adds the writer, "not one nobleman in the Kingdom had so many sets of horses at command as he had at that time, having no less than eight; the first set carrying him to Hounslow from London, ten miles; and the next set, ready waiting with another chariot to carry him to Windsor." Evidently the inspired Barton, with all his high-flown talent, had an eye for the main chance. In this respect he resembled one greater than he—David Garrick.

Like Garrick, too, the enterprising Booth had his Peg Woffington, in the pretty person of Susan Mountford, a daughter of the great Mistress Verbruggen. He never placed a wedding-ring upon a finger of this young woman, but he gave her his protection after the death of the baronet's daughter, and continued to do so until the fragile creature ran off with a craven fellow named Minshull. This Minshull made away with over L3000, the sum of Susan's savings,[A] and the erring woman, alike false to her virtue and the destroyer of that virtue, ended her darkening days amid the clouds of insanity.

[Footnote A: In the year 1714, they (Booth and Susan) bought several tickets in the State Lottery, and agreed to share equally whatever fortune might ensue. Booth gained nothing; the lady won a prize of 5000 pounds, and kept it. His friends counselled him to claim half the sum, but he laughingly remarked that there had never been any but a verbal agreement on the matter; and since the result had been fortunate for his friend, she should enjoy it all.—Dr. DORAN.]

The picture is far prettier with Hester Santlow leaping into the affections of the actor, and finally marrying him according to the law of the land. She loved the great man tenderly, ministered to his wants with a wifely devotion which would hardly suit the "New Woman," and when he was wont to eat too much (for he had given up the flowing bowl[A] and must cultivate some other species of gluttony), the ex-dancer would have the dinner-table removed.

[Footnote A: Booth told Cibber that he "had been for sometime too frank a lover of the bottle; but having had the happiness to observe into what contempt and distress Powel had plung'd himself by the same vice, he was so struck with the terror of his example, that he fix'd a resolution (which from that time to the end of his days he strictly observed) of utterly reforming it." And Colley adds; "An uncommon act of philosophy in a young man!"]

Strange, is it not, that the wife who could be so full of constancy, and all the other virtues, previously lived a notoriously loose existence? For it had been the fate of Santlow to stand continually in the glare of that fierce light which beats upon the stage, and never, perhaps, did she give the town more to talk about than by her celebrated rencontre with Captain Montague. The story affords a glimpse of the free-and-easy manners which sometimes prevailed in theatres, and will bear the telling, ere we bid farewell to its fair heroine.

"About the year 1717," writes Cibber, "a young actress of a desirable person (Santlow), sitting in an upper box at the Opera, a military gentleman (Montague) thought this a proper opportunity to secure a little conversation with her, the particulars of which were probably no more worth repeating than it seems the Damoiselle then thought them worth listening to; for, notwithstanding the fine things he said to her, she rather chose to give the Musick the preference of her attention. This indifference was so offensive to his high heart, that he began to change the Tender into the Terrible, and, in short, proceeded at last to treat her in a style too grossly insulting for the meanest female ear to endur unresented. Upon which, being beaten too far out of her discretion, she turn'd hastily upon him with an angry look and a reply which seem'd to set his merit in so low a regard, that he thought himself oblig'd in honour to take his time to resent it.

"This was the full extent of her crime, which his glory delay'd no longer to punish than 'till the next time she was to appear upon the stage. There, in one of her best parts, wherein she drew a favourable regard and approbation from the audience, he, dispensing with the respect which some people think due to a polite assembly, began to interrupt her performance with such loud and various notes of mockery, as other young men of honour in the same place had sometimes made themselves undauntedly merry with. Thus, deaf to all murmurs or entreaties of those about him, he pursued his point, even to throwing near her such trash as no person can be suppos'd to carry about him unless to use on so particular an occasion.

"A gentlemen then behind the scenes,[A] being shock'd at his unmanly behaviour, was warm enough to say, that no man but a fool or a bully could be capable of insulting an audience or a woman in so monstrous a manner. The former valiant gentleman, to whose ear the words were soon brought by his spies, whom he had plac'd behind the scenes to observe how the action was taken there, came immediately from the pit in a heat, and demanded to know of the author of those words if he was the person that spoke them? to which he calmly reply'd, that though he had never seen him before, yet since he seem'd so earnest to be satisfy'd, he would do him the favour to own, that indeed the words were his, and that they would be the last words he should chuse to deny whoever they might fall upon.

[Footnote A: Secretary Craggs.]

"To conclude, their dispute was ended the next morning in Hyde Park, where the determin'd combatant who first ask'd for satisfaction was obliged afterwards to ask his life too; whether he mended it or not, I have not yet heard; but his antagonist in a few years afterwards died in one of the principal posts of the Government."

There were no more such scenes after Santlow became Mrs. Barton Booth. Everything was respectability, and the voice of the turtle-dove appears to have been heard in the home of the happy couple. Yea, the husband waxed ecstatic after several years of married bliss, once more tuned his lyre, and burst forth into verses, wherein he set forth, among other things:

"Happy the hour when first our souls were joined! The social virtues and the cheerful mind Have ever crowned our days, beguiled our pain; Strangers to discord and her clamorous train," &c.

The lines suggest placidity of existence, and placid, indeed, was the married life of Booth, barring his moments of ill-health. When his career is compared to that of certain other players, it stands out in rather pleasant relief, by virtue of its even tenor and prosperity. It was free from the vicissitudes which have waylaid the paths of equally great artists, and the current of his genius ran on without a ripple, save that of sickness. There was one direction, however, wherein Booth found variety and excitement, and that was in the wondrous diversity of parts which he assumed. In tragedy, his work took a wide range, going all the way from Laertes to Othello, while he sallied forth now and again into the field of comedy, and emerged therefrom with honour. He did not, to be sure, distinguish himself so brilliantly as a comedian as he did in tragic garb, yet he wooed Thalia in a genteel way which seldom failed to please. Nay, it is chronicled that he impersonated capon-lined Falstaff in a fashion that amused even phlegmatic Queen Anne. But the actor of long ago thought nothing of such catholicity in art. He often worked like a horse, that he might later play like a god.[A]

[Footnote A: To show the versatility of Booth it need only be mentioned that his parts (among many not herein named) included the Ghost, Laertes, Horatio and the Prince in "Hamlet," Dick in "The Confederacy," Captain Worthy in the "Fair Quaker of Deal," Pyrrhus, Cato, Young Bevil in the "Conscious Lovers," Tamerlane, Oronooko, Jaffier, Othello, King Lear, Hotspur, Wildair, Sir Charles Easy, Falstaff, Cassio, Macbeth, Banquo, Lennox, Henry VIII. and Cinna. Few living players can match such a repertoire.]

Perhaps the most annoying disturbance which ever came into Booth's theatrical life, and not a great disturbance at that, was the jealousy which existed between Wilks and himself. Wilks was impetuous, bad tempered and crotchety, and it is possible that the envy was, originally, rather of his own making. But be that as it may, Booth suffered many a pang from the successes of the more dashing Wilks, and the latter never lost an opportunity of thwarting his associate. We remember how the commonplace Mills was pushed forward, with the idea of hiding the genius of Barton, and Cibber refers more than once to this short-sighted policy of Wilks. "And yet, again," he writes, "Booth himself, when he came to be a manager, would sometimes suffer his judgment to be blinded by his inclination to actors whom the town seem'd to have but an indifferent opinion of." And thereupon Colley asks "another of his old questions"—viz., "Have we never seen the same passions govern a Court! How many white staffs and great places do we find, in our histories, have been laid at the feet of a monarch, because they chose not to give way to a rival in power, or hold a second place in his favour? How many Whigs and Tories have changed their parties, when their good or bad pretentions have met with a check to their higher preferment?"

The fact is that there was never any artistic sympathy between the two distinguished actors. Booth could play comedy, and play it quite well, but his soul was all for tragedy. On the other hand, while Wilks knew how to tread the sombre paths of high drama (he even made a creditable Hamlet), the comedian looked with more regard upon his own peculiar vein of work, the impersonation of the graceful, the genteel, and the elegantly picturesque. In one way the latter proved more generous than his rival. "It might be imagin'd," runs on Cibber, "from the difference of their natural tempers, that Wilks should have been more blind to the excellencies of Booth than Booth was to those of Wilks; but it was not so. Wilks would sometimes commend Booth to me; but when Wilks excell'd the other was silent."[A]

[Footnote A: During Booth's inability to act ...Wilks was called upon to play two of his parts: Jaffier and Lord Hastings in "Jane Shore." Booth was, at times, in all other respects except his power to go on the stage, in good health, and went among the players for his amusement. His curiosity drew him to the playhouse on the nights when Wilks acted these characters, in which himself had appeared with uncommon lustre. All the world admired Wilks except his brother manager: amidst the repeated bursts of applause which he extorted, Booth alone continued silent.—DAVIES.]

But all these petty heartburnings and jealousies were buried in the grave of Wilks. That incomparable player, whose sprightliness seemed to defy the grim tyrant, and who could act the lithesome youth upon the stage even though he had to hobble to his hackney-coach when the piece was ended, made his last exit in the autumn of 1732. Booth followed on the same long journey in the May of 1733, after an illness during which the great patient was dosed with crude mercury, bled, plastered, blistered, and otherwise helped onward to his death. Verily, it is a wonder that the physicians of old did not extinguish the whole human race.

The still attractive Santlow (or rather Mrs. Booth) survived the tragedian, and her sorrow may have been assuaged by the remembrance that she was left the sole heir of her husband. "I have considered my circumstances," wrote Booth in his will, "and finding upon a strict examination that all I am now possessed of does not amount to two-thirds of the fortune my wife brought me on the day of our marriage, together with the yearly additions and advantages since arising from her laborious employment on the stage during twelve years past, I thought myself bound by honesty, honour, and gratitude due to her constant affection, not to give away any part of the remainder of her fortune at my death"; and with that eloquent stroke of the pen the testator cut off with nothing a sister and a brother whom he had sufficiently helped during his lifetime.

Surely so noble an actor deserves an epitaph. Perhaps none could be more worthy than this estimate of the man, made by Aaron Hill: "He had learning to understand perfectly whatever it was his part to speak, and judgment to know how far it agreed or disagreed with his character. Hence arose a peculiar grace which was visible to every spectator, tho' few were at the pains of examining into the cause of their pleasure. He could soften, or slide over, with a kind of elegant negligence, the improprieties in a part he acted; while, on the contrary, he would dwell with energy upon the beauties, as if he exerted a latent spirit which had been kept back for such an occasion, that he might alarm, waken, and transport, to those places only, where the dignity of his own good sense could be supported with that of his author."

If some players of to-day will take a lesson by this description, the judicious Booth need not have lived in vain. His soul, like that of the late lamented John Brown, will go marching on.



CHAPTER XI

THE FADING OF A STAR

The life of Mistress Oldfield, like that of Barton Booth, was cast in pleasant places. Yet the lady had her little agitations, and found them, no doubt, rather an incentive to existence than otherwise. Take, for instance, the excitement surrounding the production, during the Drury Lane season of 1711-12, of Mrs. Centlivre's play, "The Perplexed Lovers." To the lovely Nance was entrusted the duty of speaking the epilogue thereto, wherein Prince Eugene (at that time on a visit to England) and the Duke of Marlborough were lauded in the true spirit of ancient flunkeyism. But the animosity which politics doth breed ran high, and the first night of the performance went by without the introduction of the eulogy. Some patriots objected to the sentiments which it contained, and the managers were cautious. As for Oldfield, she might have been cautious, too, and with reason, for she had received letters threatening her with dire pains and penalties if she spoke the offending words, but Anne stood ready to deliver them at whatsoever time the patentees might name. So when the second night of "The Perplexed Lovers" arrived, and a special licence from the Lord Chamberlain had been secured, the actress came valiantly forward and spoke the epilogue with success. Perhaps Eugene of Savoy thanked Mrs. Oldfield—let us hope that he did—and it is at least certain that after the withdrawal of the play his Highness sent Mrs. Centlivre an elaborate gold snuff-box.[A]

[Footnote A: Speaking of the beau's outfit in the reign of Queen Anne, Ashton says: "His snuff-box, too, was an object of his solicitude, though, as the habit of taking snuff had but just come into vogue, there were no collections of them, and no beau had ever dreamed of criticizing a box, as did Lord Petersham, as, 'a nice Summer box.' ... Those of the middle classes were chiefly of silver, or tortoise-shell, or mother-of-pearl; sometimes of 'aggat' or with a 'Moco Stone' in the lid. A beau would sometimes either have a looking-glass, or the portrait of a lady inside the lid."]

And who was the gratified Centlivre? A masculine looking female with a talent for play-writing, a tendency to appear in men's parts, and last, but far from least, a nice little wen adorning her left eyelid. She possessed other characteristics too, but those herein mentioned are the only ones which stand out clearly after the lapse of nearly two centuries. This doughty woman had been married twice before she went to Windsor, where she once more entered into the matrimonial noose, or rather, again inveigled an unfortunate into that treacherous device. The visit to the seat of Royalty was signalised by her acting of Alexander the Great, but from the atmosphere of Kings and Queens she passed without a murmur to the humbler air of a kitchen. In other words, she married a Mr. Centlivre, chief cook to her well-fed Majesty Queen Anne; and the mean-livered Pope would refer to her, later on, as "the cook's wife in Buckingham Court." She might, indeed, be a cook's wife, but she knew how to write with vivacity, and produced many an entertaining play. Among them were "A Bold Stroke for a Wife" and "The Wonder," that comedy which Garrick would so relish in after years.

The nature of the aforesaid "Wonder" was explained in the satirical reflection of the secondary title, "A Woman Keeps a Secret!" And Mrs. Centlivre had this to say in her epilogue, upon the mooted question of feminine loquacity:

"Keep a secret, says a beau, And sneers at some ill-natured wit below; But faith, if we should tell but half we know, There's many a spruce young fellow in this place, Wou'd never presume to show his face; Women are not so weak, what e'er men prate; How many tip-top beaux have had the fate, T'enjoy from mama's secrets their estate! Who, if her early folly had made known, Had rid behind the coach that's now their own."

Mrs. Oldfield received fresh cause for nervousness, had she been of a timid temperament, when, some years later, during the season of 1717-18, Cibber's political play of "The Non-Juror" was brought out. The comedy was a blow aimed at the Jacobites and the Pretender, who had met with such disastrous treatment in the rebellion of 1715, and was a skilfully-wrought laudation of the Hanoverian dynasty.[A]

[Footnote A: The piece was published and dedicated to George I., who acknowledged his sense of the honour by paying to Cibber the sum of two hundred guineas. That the good old prejudice against the stage was still in full force, despite the march of liberal ideas, is clearly shown in the author's address to the King: "Your comedians, Sir, are an unhappy society, whom some severe heads think wholly useless, and others, dangerous to the young and innocent. This comedy is, therefore, an attempt to remove that prejudice, and to show what honest and laudable uses may be made of the theatre, when its performances keep close to the true purposes of its institution." Cibber also referred to himself as "the lowest of your subjects from the theatre," and thus mirrored the servility of the golden Georgian era.]

"About this time," writes Cibber, telling of the play's presentation, "Jacobitism had lately exerted itself by the most unprovoked rebellion that our histories have handed down to us since the Norman Conquest; I therefore thought that to set the authors and principles of that desperate folly in a fair light, by allowing the mistaken consciences of some their best excuse, and by making the artful Pretenders to Conscience as ridiculous as they were ungratefully wicked, was a subject fit for the honest satire of comedy, and what might, if it succeeded, do honour to the stage by showing the valuable use of it. And considering what numbers at that time might come to it as prejudiced spectators, it may be allow'd that the undertaking was not less hazardous than laudable."

And hazardous the project certainly seemed; for, while the uprising in the interests of the Pretender had been ostensibly crushed, the spirit of "divine right" was as strong as ever; there were many worthy gentlemen who drank secret bumpers to the King—"over the water"—and the Hanoverian throne had as yet a precarious lodgment on English soil. It was expected, therefore, that these malcontents would have anything but an appetite for the theatrical feast set before them in the shape of the "Non-Juror," and would prove none the less disgusted because the play happened to be an adaptation of Moliere's "Tartuffe." As the latter comedy depicts a self-indulgent, crawling hypocrite of the worst type, and is an eloquent sermon against sham, it may be imagined that the Jacobites were not over enthusiastic when they learned that the moral of "Tartuffe" was to be applied to them.[A]

[Footnote A: Tartuffe, according to French tradition, is a caricature of the famous Pere la Chaise (Confessor to Louis Quatorze), who had a weakness for the pleasures of the table, including truffles (tartuffes). After Cibber's day, Moliere's play was again adapted into English, under the title of "The Hypocrite."]

"Upon the hypocrisy of the French character," explains Cibber (who probably looked upon France, Papacy, and the Pretender as a threefold combination of sin), "I engrafted a stronger wickedness, that of an English Popish priest lurking under the doctrine of our own Church to raise his fortune upon the ruin of a worthy gentleman, whom his dissembled sanctity had seduc'd into the treasonable cause of a Roman Catholick outlaw. How this design, in the play, was executed, I refer to the readers of it; it cannot be mended by any critical remarks I can make in its favour. Let it speak for itself."

The "Non-juror" did speak for itself, too, and that in decided terms.[A] The production entailed the scorn of the disaffected, and made for Cibber some lasting enemies, but the friends of government were strong, Cibber was lauded for his loyalty, and the comedy achieved a triumph. The vivacity of Oldfield's acting, as Maria, delighted all beholders, and it was further agreed that the performance was well given throughout. In the cast were Booth, Mills, Wilks, Cibber, Mrs. Porter, Mrs. Oldfield, and Walker. The Walker here mentioned was at that time a very young man, not over seventeen or eighteen years of age, and made his first hit in the "Non-juror." When the "Beggars' Opera" was subsequently brought out, the mighty Quin refused to play the highwayman, Macheath, and Walker willingly took the part and made therein the reputation of his life. But success turned his unsteady head. "He follow'd Bacchus too ardently, insomuch that his credit was often drown'd upon the stage, and, by degrees, almost render'd him useless." Ungrammatical, but to the point, Mr. Chetwood.

[Footnote A: The success surpassed even expectation. It raised against Cibber a phalanx of implacable foes—foes who howled at everything of which he was afterwards the author; but it gained for him his advancement to the poet-laureateship, and an estimation which caused some people to place him, for usefulness to the cause of true religion, on an equality with the author of "The Whole Duty of Man."—DR. DORAN.]

This Walker was a genius in a small fashion. He possessed an expressive face and manly figure, with a native buoyancy and humour which stood him in good stead in the character of Macheath, while he had the further gift of dominating a tragic scene with an assumption of tyrannic fire which must have been greatly admired by the theatre-goers of his time. He could not sing, to be sure, when he graced the "Beggars' Opera," but the audiences took the will for the deed, applauded his gaiety of action, and quickly pardoned his lyric short-comings. We are equally lenient nowadays to many a comic-opera comedian, so called. Chetwood tells us that Walker was the supposed author of two pieces, "The Quakers' Opera," and a tragedy styled "The Fate of Villainy." The latter, it appears, "he brought to Ireland in the year 1744, and prevailed on the proprietors (of the Dublin theatre) to act it, under the title of 'Love and Loyalty.' The second night was given out for his benefit; but not being able to pay in half the charge of the common expences, the doors were order'd to be kept shut."

"But, I remember," laconically adds Chetwood, "few people came to ask the reason. However, I fear this disappointment hasten'd his death; for he survived it but three days; dying in the 44th year of his age, a martyr to what often stole from him a good understanding."

"He who delights in drinking out of season, Takes wond'rous pains to drown his manly reason."

Poor Walker! He is not the only actor who has perished from a mixture of wine and injured vanity.

To return to the success of the "Non-juror," Cibber writes: "All the reason I had to think it no bad performance was, that it was acted eighteen days running, and that the party that were hurt by it (as I have been told) have not been the smallest number of my back friends ever since. But happy was it for this play that the very subject was its protection; a few smiles of silent contempt were the utmost disgrace that on the first day of its appearance it was thought safe to throw upon it; as the satire was chiefly employ'd on the enemies of the Government, they were not so hardy as to own themselves such by any higher disapprobation or resentment."[A]

[Footnote A: The production of the "Non-juror" added Pope to the list of Cibber's enemies, the great poet's father having been a Non-juror.]

Yet Cibber's enemies never failed to make things unpleasant for him if they could do so without running too great a risk. There was Nathaniel Mist, for instance, who published a Jacobite paper called Mist's Weekly Journal. This vindictive gentleman, whose political heresies once brought him to the pillory and a prison, began a systematic attack upon the actor-manager, and kept up the warfare for fifteen years. Once, when Colley was ill of a fever, Mist made up his journalistic mind that his enemy must have the good taste to depart the pleasures of this life. So he inserted the following paragraph in his paper:

"Yesterday died Mr. Colley Cibber, late Comedian of the Theatre Royal, notorious for writing the 'Non-juror.'"

The very day that this obituary appeared Cibber crawled out of the house, sick-faced but convalescent, and read the notice with keen interest. Whether he was amused thereat, or dubbed the joke a poor one, is a matter which he does not record, but he tells us that he "saw no use in being thought to be thoroughly dead before his time," and "therefore had a mind to see whether the town cared to have him alive again."

"So the play of the 'Orphan' being to be acted that day, I quietly stole myself into the part of the Chaplain, which I had not been seen in for many years before. The surprise of the audience at my unexpected appearance on the very day I had been dead in the news, and the paleness of my looks, seem'd to make it a doubt whether I was not the ghost of my real self departed. But when I spoke, their wonder eas'd itself by an applause; which convinc'd me they were then satisfied that my friend Mist had told a fib of me. Now, if simply to have shown myself in broad life, and about my business, after he had notoriously reported me dead, can be called a reply, it was the only one which his paper while alive ever drew from me."

The Jacobites could not interfere with the triumph of the "Non-juror," but they were shrewd enough to bide their time. That time came, as they thought, in 1728, when there was unfolded at Drury Lane a comedy which became famous under the title of "The Provoked Husband." The rough draft of the play was the work of Vanbrugh, now dead, but the dialogue and situations had been elaborated by Cibber. Here was a chance, therefore, to damn the latter writer, and accordingly the malcontents repaired to the theatre, hissed the performance roundly, and then went home with the comfortable reflection that they had gotten their revenge. Their revenge, however, was shortlived, for the general public liked the comedy, and soon flocked to its rescue.

"On the first day of 'The Provok'd Husband,'" says the Poet Laureate, "ten years after the 'Non-juror' had appear'd, a powerful party, not having the fear of publick offence or private injury before their eyes, appeared most impetuously concerned for the demolition of it; in which they so far succeeded that for some time I gave it up for lost; and to follow their blows, in the publick papers of the next day it was attack'd and triumph'd over as a dead and damn'd piece: a swinging criticism was made upon it in general invective terms, for they disdain'd to trouble the world with particulars; their sentence, it seems, was proof enough of its deserving the fate it had met with. But this damn'd play was, notwithstanding, acted twenty-eight nights together, and left off at a receipt of upwards of a hundred and forty pounds; which happened to be more than in fifty years before could be then said of any one play whatsoever."

The play was saved, and no one contributed more importantly to that result than did Mistress Oldfield. Her acting as the heroine, Lady Townley, was pronounced superb, and though she had now drifted into middle-age—was she not over forty?—Nance still seemed, on the stage at least, the incarnation of youth and grace. Is there not a certain English actress, now living (one, by-the-way, who plays Nance Oldfield and suggests her as well) who defies the inroads of time with equal carelessness.[A]

[Footnote A: In the wearing of her person she (Oldfield) was particularly fortunate; her figure was always improving to her thirty-sixth year, but her excellence in acting was never at a stand. And Lady Townley, one of her last new parts, was a proof that she was still able to do more, if more could have been done for her.—GENEST.]

Lady Townley is nothing more or less than a glorified, matured edition of Lady Betty Modish, and, therefore, a very charming woman. Charming, at least, on the boards of a theatre, if not upon the floor of a real drawing-room. For she has a love of pleasure which can hardly be called domestic, and her unfortunate husband, who would see more of her, is tempted to ask, in the very first scene of the play: "Why did I marry?" "While she admits no lover," Lord Townley soliloquises [for my lady is at least virtuous] "she thinks it a greater merit still, in her chastity, not to care for her husband; and while she herself is solacing in one continual round of cards and good company, he, poor wretch, is left at large to take care of his own contentment. 'Tis time, indeed, some care were taken, and speedily there shall be. Yet let me not be rash. Perhaps this disappointment of my heart may make me too impatient; and some tempers, when reproach'd, grow more untractable."

And when Lady Townley, all graces and ribbons and laces, enters on the scene my lord meekly asks:

* * * * *

"Going out so soon after dinner, madam?"

"Lady T. Lord, my Lord, what can I possibly do at home?

"Lord T. What does my sister, Lady Grace, do at home?

"Lady T. Why, that is to me amazing! Have you ever any pleasure at home?

"Lord T. It might be in your power, madam, I confess, to make it a little more comfortable to me.

"Lady T. Comfortable! and so, my good lord, you would really have a woman of my rank and spirit, stay at home to comfort her husband! Lord! what notions of life some men have!

"Lord T. Don't you think, madam, some ladies notions are full as extravagant?"

"Lady T. Yes, my lord, when tame doves live cooped within the pen of your precepts, I do think 'em prodigious indeed!

"Lord T. And when they fly wild about this town, madam, pray what must the world think of 'em then?

"Lady T. Oh! this world is not so ill bred as to quarrel with any woman for liking it.

"Lord T. Nor am I, madam, a husband so well bred as to bear my wife's being so fond of it; in short, the life you lead, madam—

"Lady T. Is, to me, the pleasantest life in the world.

"Lord T. I should not dispute your taste, madam, if a woman had a right to please nobody but herself.

"Lady T. Why, whom would you have her please?

"Lord T. Sometimes her husband.

"Lady T. And don't you think a husband under the same obligation?

"Lord T. Certainly.

"Lady T. Why then we are agreed, my lord. For if I never go abroad till I am weary of being at home—which you know is the case—is it not equally reasonable, not to come home till one's a weary of being abroad?

"Lord T. If this be your rule of life, madam, 'tis time to ask you one serious question.

"Lady T. Don't let it be long acoming then, for I am in haste.

"Lord T. Madam, when I am serious, I expect a serious answer.

"Lady T. Before I know the question? [Here we can imagine Wilks, who played Lord Townley, waxing exceeding wroth at my lady.]

"Lord T. Pshah—have I power, madam, to make you serious by intreaty?

"Lady T. You have.

"Lord T. And you promise to answer me sincerely.

"Lady T. Sincerely.

"Lord T. Now then recollect your thoughts, and tell me seriously why you married me?

"Lady T. You insist upon truth, you say?

"Lord T. I think I have a right to it.

"Lady T. Why then, my lord, to give you at once a proof of my obedience and sincerity—I think—I married—to take off that restraint that lay upon my pleasures, while I was a single woman.

"Lord T. How, madam, is any woman under less restraint after marriage than before it?

"Lady T. O my lord! my lord! they are quite different creatures! Wives have infinite liberties in life that would be terrible in an unmarried woman to take.

"Lord T. Name one.

"Lady T. Fifty, if you please. To begin then, in the morning—a married women may have men at her toilet, invite them to dinner, appoint them a party in a stage box at the play; engross the conversation there, call 'em by their Christian names; talk louder than the players;—from thence jaunt into the city—take a frolicksome supper at an India house—perhaps, in her gaiete de coeur, toast a pretty fellow—then clatter again to this end of the town, break with the morning into an assembly, crowd to the hazard table, throw a familiar levant upon some sharp lurching man of quality, and if he demands his money, turn it off with a loud laugh, and cry—you'll owe it to him, to vex him! ha! ha!

"Lord T. [Aside]. Prodigious!"

It is related that so magnificently did Oldfield describe the pleasures of a woman of fashion that the audience echoed, with a different meaning, Lord Townley's comment, and showered her with plaudits. "Prodigious," indeed, must have been her acting.

Nance was even more captivating, as the comedy progressed, and nowhere did she shine more brilliantly, it may be supposed, than in the following scene:

"Lady Townley. Well! look you, my lord; I can bear it no longer! Nothing still but about my faults, my faults! An agreeable subject truly!

"Lord T. Why, madam, if you won't hear of them, how can I ever hope to see you mend them?

"Lady T. Why, I don't intend to mend them—I can't mend them—you know I have try'd to do it an hundred times, and—it hurts me so—I can't bear it!

"Lord T. And I, madam, can't bear this daily licentious abuse of your time and character.

"Lady T. Abuse! astonishing! when the universe knows, I am never better company than when I am doing what I have a mind to! But to see this world! that men can never get over that silly spirit of contradiction—why, but last Thursday, now—there you wisely amended one of my faults, as you call them—you insisted upon my not going to the masquerade—and pray, what was the consequence? Was not I as cross as the Devil, all the night after? Was not I forc'd to get company at home? And was it not almost three o'clock in the morning before I was able to come to myself again? And then the fault is not mended neither—for next time I shall only have twice the inclination to go: so that all this mending and mending, you see, is but darning an old ruffle, to make it worse than it was before.

"Lord T. Well, the manner of women's living, of late, is insupportable, and one way or other—

"Lady T. It's to be mended, I suppose! Why, so it may, but then, my dear lord, you must give one time—and when things are at worst, you know, they may mend themselves! Ha! ha!

"Lord T. Madam, I am not in a humour, now, to trifle.

"Lady T. Why, then, my lord, one word of fair argument—to talk with you, your own way now—you complain of my late hours, and I of your early ones—so far we are even, you'll allow—but pray which gives us the best figure, in the eye of the polite world, my active, spirited three in the morning, or your dull, drowsy, eleven at night? Now, I think, one has the air of a woman of quality, and t'other of a plodding mechanic, that goes to bed betimes, that he may rise early, to open his shop—faugh!

"LORD T. Fy, fy, madam! is this your way of reasoning? 'Tis time to wake you then. 'Tis not your ill hours alone that disturb me, but as often the ill company that occasion those ill hours.

"LADY T. Sure I don't understand you now, my lord; what ill company do I keep?

"LORD T. Why, at best, women that lose their money, and men that win it! or, perhaps, men that are voluntary bubbles at one game, in hopes a lady will give them fair play at another.[A] Then that unavoidable mixture with known rakes, conceal'd thieves, and sharpers in embroidery—or what, to me, is still more shocking, that herd of familiar chattering, crop-ear'd coxcombs, who are so often like monkeys, there would be no knowing them asunder, but that their tails hang from their head, and the monkey's grows where it should do.