'Whose wires were golden and its heavenly airMore tunable than lark to shepherd's ear,When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear.'”
He paused, and his eye looked back over many years. Then, with a very different tone, he added:
“And that Jack Falstaff there must have seen her, now I think on't.”
“Only once, sir,” said Quin, “and I was but ten years old.”
“He saw her once, and he was ten years old; yet he calls Woffington a great comedian, and my son The's wife, with her hatchet face, the greatest tragedian he ever saw! Jemmy, what an ass you must be!”
“Mrs. Cibber always makes me cry, and t'other always makes me laugh,” said Quin, stoutly, “that's why.”
Ce beau raisonnementmet no answer, but a look of sovereign contempt.
A very trifling incident saved the ladies of the British stage from further criticism. There were two candles in this room, one on each side; the call-boy had entered, and, poking about for something, knocked down and broke one of these.
“Awkward imp!” cried a velvet page.
“I'll goto the Treasuryfor another, ma'am,” said the boy pertly, and vanished with the fractured wax.
I take advantage of the interruption to open Mr. Vane's mind to the reader. First he had been astonished at the freedom of sarcasm these people indulged in without quarreling; next at the non-respect of sex.
“So sex is not recognized in this community,” thought he. Then the glibness and merit of some of their answers surprised and amused him. He, like me, had seldom met an imaginative repartee, except in a play or a book. “Society's” repartees were then, as they are now, the good old tree in various dresses and veils:Tu quoque, tu mentiris, vos damnemini;but he was sick and dispirited on the whole; such very bright illusions had been dimmed in these few minutes.
She was brilliant; but her manners, if not masculine, were very daring; and yet when she spoke to him, a stranger, how sweet and gentle her voice was! Then it was clear nothing but his ignorance could have placed her at the summit of her art.
Still he clung to his enthusiasm for her. He drew Pomander aside. “What a simplicity there is in Mrs. Woffington!” said he; “the rest, male and female, are all so affected; she is so fresh and natural. They are all hot-house plants; she is a cowslip with the May dew on it.”
“What you take for simplicity is her refined art,” replied Sir Charles.
“No!” said Vane, “I never saw a more innocent creature!”
Pomander laughed in his face; this laugh disconcerted him more than words; he spoke no more—he sat pensive. He was sorry he had come to this place, where everybody knew his goddess; yet nobody admired, nobody loved, and, alas! nobody respected her.
He was roused from his reverie by a noise; the noise was caused by Cibber falling on Garrick, whom Pomander had maliciously quoted against all the tragedians of Colley Cibber's day.
“I tell you,” cried the veteran, “that this Garrick has banished dignity from the stage and given us in exchange what you and he take for fire; but it is smoke and vapor. His manner is little, like his person, it is all fuss and bustle. This is his idea of a tragic scene: A little fellow comes bustling in, goes bustling about, and runs bustling out.” Here Mr. Cibber left the room, to give greater effect to his description, but presently returned in a mighty pother, saying: “'Give me another horse!' Well, where's the horse? don't you see I'm waiting for him? 'Bind up my wounds!' Look sharp now with these wounds. 'Have mercy, Heaven!' but be quick about it, for the pit can't wait for Heaven. Bustle! bustle! bustle!”
The old dog was so irresistibly funny that the whole company were obliged to laugh; but in the midst of their merriment Mrs. Woffington's voice was heard at the door.
“This way, madam.”
A clear and somewhat shrill voice replied: “I know the way better than you, child;” and a stately old lady appeared on the threshold.
“Bracegirdle,” said Mr. Cibber.
It may well be supposed that every eye was turned on this newcomer—that Roxana for whom Mr. Cibber's story had prepared a peculiar interest. She was dressed in a rich green velvet gown with gold fringe. Cibber remembered it; she had played the “Eastern Queen” in it. Heaven forgive all concerned! It was fearfully pinched in at the waist and ribs, so as to give the idea of wood inside, not woman.
Her hair and eyebrows were iron-gray, and she had lost a front tooth, or she would still have been eminently handsome. She was tall and straight as a dart, and her noble port betrayed none of the weakness of age, only it was to be seen that her hands were a little weak, and the gold-headed crutch struck the ground rather sharply, as if it did a little limbs'-duty.
Such was the lady who marched into the middle of the room, with a “How do, Colley?” and, looking over the company's heads as if she did not see them, regarded the four walls with some interest. Like a cat, she seemed to think more of places than of folk. The page obsequiously offered her a chair.
“Not so clean as it used to be,” said Mrs. Bracegirdle.
Unfortunately, in making this remark, the old lady graciously patted the page's head for offering her the chair; and this action gave, with some of the ill-constituted minds that are ever on the titter, a ridiculous direction to a remark intended, I believe, for the paint and wanscots, etc.
“Nothing is as it used to be,” remarked Mr. Cibber.
“All the better for everything,” said Mrs. Clive.
“We were laughing at this mighty little David, first actor of this mighty little age.”
Now if Mr. Cibber thought to find in the newcomer an ally of the past in its indiscriminate attack upon the present, he was much mistaken; for the old actress made onslaught on this nonsense at once.
“Ay, ay,” said she, “and not the first time by many hundreds. 'Tis a disease you have. Cure yourself, Colley. Davy Garrick pleases the public; and in trifles like acting, that take nobody to heaven, to please all the world, is to be great. Some pretend to higher aims, but none have 'em. You may hide this from young fools, mayhap, but not from an old 'oman like me. He! he! he! No, no, no—not from an old 'oman like me.”
She then turned round in her chair, and with that sudden, unaccountable snappishness of tone to which the brisk old are subject, she snarled: “Gie me a pinch of snuff, some of ye, do!”
Tobacco dust was instantly at her disposal. She took it with the points of her fingers delicately, and divested the crime of half its uncleanness and vulgarity—more an angel couldn't.
“Monstrous sensible woman, though!” whispered Quin to Clive.
“Hey, sir! what do you say, sir? for I'm a little deaf.” (Not very to praise, it seems.)
“That your judgment, madam, is equal to the reputation of your talent.”
The words were hardly spoken before the old lady rose upright as a tower. She then made an oblique preliminary sweep, and came down with such a courtesy as the young had never seen.
James Quin, not to disgrace his generation, attempted a corresponding bow, for which his figure and apoplectic tendency rendered him unfit; and while he was transacting it, the graceful Cibber stepped gravely up, and looked down and up the process with his glass, like a naturalist inspecting some strange capriccio of an orang-outang. The gymnastics of courtesy ended without back-falls—Cibber lowered his tone.
“You are right, Bracy. It is nonsense denying the young fellow's talent; but his Othello, now, Bracy! be just—his Othello!”
“Oh, dear! oh, dear!” cried she; “I thought it was Desdemona's little black boy come in without the tea-kettle.”
Quin laughed uproariously.
“It made me laugh a deal more than Mr. Quin's Falstaff. Oh, dear! oh, dear!”
“Falstaff, indeed! Snuff!” In the tone of a trumpet.
Quin secretly revoked his good opinion of this woman's sense.
“Madam,” said the page, timidly, “if you would but favor us with a specimen of the old style—”
“Well, child, why not? Only what makes you mumble like that? but they all do it now, I see. Bless my soul! our words used to come out like brandy-cherries; but now a sentence is like raspberry-jam, on the stage and off.”
Cibber chuckled.
“And why don't you men carry yourself like Cibber here?”
“Don't press that question,” said Colley dryly.
“A monstrous poor actor, though,” said the merciless old woman, in a mock aside to the others; “only twenty shillings a week for half his life;” and her shoulders went up to her ears—then she fell into a half reverie. “Yes, we were distinct,” said she; “but I must own, children, we were slow. Once, in the midst of a beautiful tirade, my lover went to sleep, and fell against me. A mighty pretty epigram, twenty lines, was writ on't by one of my gallants. Have ye as many of them as we used?”
“In that respect,” said the page, “we are not behind our great-grandmothers.”
“I call that pert,” said Mrs. Bracegirdle, with the air of one drawing scientific distinctions. “Now, is that a boy or a lady that spoke to me last?”
“By its dress, I should say a boy,” said Cibber, with his glass; “by its assurance, a lady!”
“There's one clever woman among ye; Peg something, plays Lothario, Lady Betty Modish, and what not?”
“What! admire Woffington?” screamed Mrs. Clive; “why, she is the greatest gabbler on the stage.”
“I don't care,” was the reply, “there's nature about the jade. Don't contradict me,” added she, with sudden fury; “a parcel of children.”
“No, madam,” said Clive humbly. “Mr. Cibber, will you try and prevail on Mrs. Bracegirdle to favor us with a recitation?”
Cibber handed his cane with pomp to a small actor. Bracegirdle did the same; and, striking the attitudes that had passed for heroic in their day, they declaimed out of the “Rival Queens” two or three tirades, which I graciously spare the reader of this tale. Their elocution was neat and silvery; but not one bit like the way people speak in streets, palaces, fields, roads and rooms. They had not made the grand discovery, which Mr. A. Wigan on the stage, and every man of sense off it, has made in our day and nation; namely, that the stage is a representation, not of stage, but of life; and that an actor ought to speak and act in imitation of human beings, not of speaking machines that have run and creaked in a stage groove, with their eyes shut upon the world at large, upon nature, upon truth, upon man, upon woman and upon child.
“This is slow,” cried Cibber; “let us show these young people how ladies and gentlemen moved fifty years ago,dansons.”
A fiddler was caught, a beautiful slow minuet played, and a bit of “solemn dancing” done. Certainly it was not gay, but it must be owned it was beautiful; it was the dance of kings, the poetry of the courtly saloon.
The retired actress, however, had frisker notions left in her. “This is slow,” cried she, and bade the fiddler play, “The wind that shakes the barley,” an ancient jig tune; this she danced to in a style that utterly astounded the spectators.
She showed them what fun was; her feet and her stick were all echoes to the mad strain; out went her heel behind, and, returning, drove her four yards forward. She made unaccountable slants, and cut them all over in turn if they did not jump for it. Roars of inextinguishable laughter arose, it would have made an oyster merry. Suddenly she stopped, and put her hands to her sides, and soon after she gave a vehement cry of pain.
The laughter ceased.
She gave another cry of such agony that they were all round her in a moment.
“Oh, help me, ladies,” screamed the poor woman, in tones as feminine as they were heart-rending and piteous. “Oh, my back! my loins! I suffer, gentlemen,” said the poor thing, faintly.
What was to be done? Mr. Vane offered his penknife to cut her laces.
“You shall cut my head off sooner,” cried she, with sudden energy. “Don't pity me,” said she, sadly, “I don't deserve it;” then, lifting her eyes, she exclaimed, with a sad air of self-reproach: “O vanity! do you never leave a woman?”
“Nay, madam!” whimpered the page, who was a good-hearted girl; “'twas your great complaisance for us, not vanity. Oh! oh! oh!” and she began to blubber, to make matters better.
“No, my children,” said the old lady, “'twas vanity. I wanted to show you what an old 'oman could do; and I have humiliated myself, trying to outshine younger folk. I am justly humiliated, as you see;” and she began to cry a little.
“This is very painful,” said Cibber.
Mrs. Bracegirdle now raised her eyes (they had set her in a chair), and looking sweetly, tenderly and earnestly on her old companion, she said to him, slowly, gently, but impressively “Colley, at threescore years and ten this was ill done of us! You and I are here now—for what? to cheer the young up the hill we mounted years ago. And, old friend, if we detract from them we discourage them. A great sin in the old!”
“Every dog his day.”
“We have had ours.” Here she smiled, then, laying her hand tenderly in the old man's, she added, with calm solemnity: “And now we must go quietly toward our rest, and strut and fret no more the few last minutes of life's fleeting hour.”
How tame my cacotype of these words compared with what they were. I am ashamed of them and myself, and the human craft of writing, which, though commoner far, is so miserably behind the godlike art of speech:“Si ipsam audivisses!”
These ink scratches, which, in the imperfection of language, we have called words, till the unthinking actually dream they are words, but which are the shadows of the corpses of words; these word-shadows then were living powers on her lips, and subdued, as eloquence always does, every heart within reach of the imperial tongue.
The young loved her, and the old man, softened and vanquished, and mindful of his failing life, was silent, and pressed his handkerchief to his eyes a moment; then he said:
“No, Bracy, no. Be composed, I pray you. She is right. Young people, forgive me that I love the dead too well, and the days when I was what you are now. Drat the woman,” continued he, half ashamed of his emotion; “she makes us laugh, and makes us cry, just as she used.”
“What does he say, young woman?” said the old lady, dryly, to Mrs. Clive.
“He says you make us laugh, and make us cry, madam; and so you do me, I'm sure.”
“And that's Peg Woffington's notion of an actress! Better it, Cibber and Bracegirdle, if you can,” said the other, rising up like lightning.
She then threw Colley Cibber a note, and walked coolly and rapidly out of the room, without looking once behind her.
The rest stood transfixed, looking at one another, and at the empty chair. Then Cibber opened and read the note aloud. It was from Mrs. Bracegirdle: “Playing at tric-trac; so can't play the fool in your green-room to-night. B.”
On this, a musical ringing laugh was heard from outside the door, where the pseudo Bracegirdle was washing the gray from her hair, and the wrinkles from her face—ah! I wish I could do it as easily!—and the little bit of sticking-plaster from her front tooth.
“Why, it is the Irish jade!” roared Cibber.
“Divil a less!” rang back a rich brogue; “and it's not the furst time we put the comether upon ye, England, my jewal!”
One more mutual glance, and then the mortal cleverness of all this began to dawn on their minds; and they broke forth into clapping of hands, and gave this accomplishedmimethree rounds of applause; Mr. Vane and Sir Charles Pomander leading with, “Bravo, Woffington!”
Its effect on Mr. Vane may be imagined. Who but she could have done this? This was as if a painter should so paint a man as to deceive his species. This was acting, but not like the acting of the stage. He was in transports, and self-satisfaction at his own judgment mingled pleasantly with his admiration.
In this cheerful exhibition, one joined not—Mr. Cibber. His theories had received a shock (and we all love our theories). He himself had received a rap—and we don't hate ourselves.
Great is the syllogism! But there is a class of arguments less vulnerable.
If A says to B, “You can't hit me, as I prove by this syllogism” (here followeth the syllogism), “and B,pour toute reponse,knocks A down such a whack that he rebounds into a sitting posture; and to him the man, the tree, the lamp-post and the fire-escape become not clearly distinguishable; this barbarous logic prevails against the logic in Barbara, and the syllogism is in the predicament of Humpty Dumpty. In this predicament was the Poet Laureate. The miscreant Proteus (could not) escape these chains!” So the miscreant Proteus—no bad name for an old actor—took his little cocked hat and marched, a smaller, if not a wiser man. Some disjointed words fell from him: “Mimicry is not acting,” etc.; and with one bitter, mowing glance at the applauders,circumferens acriter oculos,he vanished in the largest pinch of snuff on record. The rest dispersed more slowly.
Mr. Vane waited eagerly, and watched the door for Mrs. Woffington; but she did not come. He then made acquaintance with good-natured Mr. Quin, who took him upon the stage and showed him by what vulgar appliances that majestic rise of the curtain he so admired was effected. Returning to the green-room for his friend, he found him in animated conversation with Mrs. Woffington. This made Vane uneasy.
Sir Charles, up to the present moment of the evening, had been unwontedly silent, and now he was talking nineteen to the dozen, and Mrs. Woffington was listening with an appearance of interest that sent a pang to poor Vane's heart; he begged Mr. Quin to introduce him.
Mr. Quin introduced him.
The lady received his advances with polite composure. Mr. Vane stammered his admiration of her Bracegirdle; but all he could find words to say was mere general praise, and somewhat coldly received. Sir Charles, on the contrary, spoke more like a critic. “Had you given us the stage cackle, or any of those traditionary symptoms of old age, we should have instantly detected you,” said he; “but this was art copying nature, and it may be years before such a triumph of illusion is again effected under so many adverse circumstances.”
“You are very good, Sir Charles,” was the reply. “You flatter me. It was one of those things which look greater than they are. Nobody here knew Bracegirdle but Mr. Cibber; Mr. Cibber cannot see well without his glasses, and I got rid of one of the candles; I sent one of the imps of the theater to knock it down. I know Mrs. Bracegirdle by heart. I drink tea with her every Sunday. I had her dress on, and I gave the old boy her words and her way of thinking; it was mere mimicry; it was nothing compared with what I once did; but, a-hem!”
“Pray tell us!”
“I am afraid I shall shock your friend. I see he is not a wicked man like you, and perhaps does not know what good-for-nothing creatures actresses are.”
“He is not so ignorant as he looks,” replied Sir Charles.
“That is not quite the answer I expected, Sir Charles,” replied this lively lady; “but it serves me right for fishing on dry land. Well, then, you must know a young gentleman courted me. I forget whether I liked him or not; but you will fancy I hated him, for I promised to marry him. You must understand, gentlemen, that I was sent into the world, not to act, which I abominate, but to chronicle small beer and teach an army of little brats their letters; so this word 'wife,' and that word 'chimney-corner,' took possession of my mind, and a vision of darning stockings for a large party, all my own, filled my heart, and really I felt quite grateful to the little brute that was to give me all this, and he would have had such a wife as men never do have, still less deserve. But one fine day that the theater left me time to examine his manner toward me, I instantly discovered he was deceiving me. So I had him watched, and the little brute was going to marry another woman, and break it to me by degrees afterward, etc. You know, Sir Charles? Ah! I see you do.
“I found her out; got an introduction to her father; went down to his house three days before the marriage, with a little coalblack mustache, regimentals, and what not; made up, in short, with the art of my sex, gentlemen—and the impudence of yours.
“The first day I flirted and danced with the bride. The second I made love to her, and at night I let her know that her intended was a villain. I showed her letters of his; protestations, oaths of eternal fidelity to one Peg Woffington, 'who will die,' drawled I,' if he betrays her.'
“And here, gentlemen, mark the justice of Heaven. I received a backhanded slap: 'Peg Woffington! an actress! Oh, the villain!' cried she; 'let him marry the little vagabond. How dare he insult me with his hand that had been offered in such a quarter?'
“So, in a fit of virtuous indignation, the little hypocrite dismissed the little brute; in other words, she had fallen in love with me.
“I have not had many happy hours, but I remember it was delicious to look out of my window, and at the same moment smell the honeysuckles and see myperfidedismissed under a heap of scorn and a pile of luggage he had brought down for his wedding tour.
“I scampered up to London, laughing all the way; and when I got home, if I remember right, I cried for two hours. How do you account for that?”
“I hope, madam,” said Vane, gravely, “it was remorse for having trifled with that poor young lady's heart; she had never injured you.”
“But, sir, the husband I robbed her of was a brute and a villain in his little way, and wicked and good-for-nothing, etc. He would have deceived that poor little hypocrite, as he had this one,” pointing to herself.
“That is not what I mean; you inspired her with an attachment, never to be forgotten. Poor lady, how many sleepless nights has she passed since then, how many times has she strained her eyes to see her angel lover returning to her! She will not forget in two years the love it cost you but two days to inspire. The powerful should be merciful. Ah! I fear you have no heart.”
These words had no sooner burst from Mr. Vane, than he was conscious of the strange liberty he had taken, and, indeed, the bad taste he had been guilty of; and this feeling was not lessened when he saw Mrs. Woffington color up to the temples. Her eyes, too, glittered like basilisks; but she said nothing, which was remarkable in her, whose tongue was the sword of amaitre d'armes.
Sir Charles eyed his friend in a sly, satirical manner; he then said, laughingly: “In two monthsshe married a third!don't waste your sympathy,” and turned the talk into another channel; and soon after, Mrs. Woffington's maid appearing at the door, she courtesied to both gentlemen and left the theater. Sir Charles Pomander accompanied Mr. Vane a little way.
“What becomes of her innocence?” was his first word.
“One loses sight of it in her immense talent,” said the lover.
“She certainly is clever in all that bears upon her business,” was the reply; “but I noticed you were a little shocked with her indelicacy in telling us that story, and still more in having it to tell.”
“Indelicacy? No!” said Vane; “the little brute deserved it. Good Heavens! to think that 'a little brute' might have married that angel, and actually broke faith to lose her; it is incredible, the crime is diluted by the absurdity.”
“Have you heard him tell the story? No? Then take my word for it, you have not heard the facts of the case.”
“Ah! you are prejudiced against her?”
“On the contrary, I like her. But I know that with all women the present lover is an angel and the past a demon, and so on in turn. And I know that if Satan were to enter the women of the stage, with the wild idea of impairing their veracity, he would come out of their minds a greater liar than he went in, and the innocent darlings would never know their spiritual father had been at them.”
Doubtful whether this sentiment and period could be improved, Sir Charles parted with his friend, leaving his sting in him like a friend; the other's reflections as he sauntered home were not strictly those of a wise, well-balanced mind; they ran in this style:
“When she said, 'Is not that to praise my person at the expense of my wit?' I ought to have said, 'Nay, madam; could your wit disguise your person, it would betray itself, so you would still shine confessed;' and instead of that I said nothing!”
He then ran over in his mind all the opportunities he had had for putting in something smart, and bitterly regretted those lost opportunities; and made the smart things, and beat the air with them. Then his cheeks tingled when he remembered that he had almost scolded her; and he concocted a very different speech, and straightway repeated it in imagination.
This is lovers' pastime; I own it funny; but it is open to one objection, this single practice of sitting upon eggs no longer chickenable, carried to a habit, is capable of turning a solid intellect into a liquid one, and ruining a mind's career.
We leave Mr. Vane, therefore, with a hope that he will not do it every night; and we follow his friend to the close of our chapter.
Hey for a definition!
What is diplomacy? Is it folly in a coat that looks like sagacity? Had Sir Charles Pomander, instead of watching Mr. Vane and Mrs. Woffington, asked the former whether he admired the latter, and whether the latter responded, straightforward Vane would have told him the whole truth in a minute. Diplomacy therefore was, as it often is, a waste of time.
But diplomacy did more in this case, itsapienter descendebat in fossam;it fell on its nose with gymnastic dexterity, as it generally does, upon my word.
To watch Mrs. Woffington's facevis-a-visMr. Vane, Pomander introduced Vane to the green-room of the Theater Royal, Covent Garden. By this Pomander learned nothing, because Mrs. Woffington had, with a wonderful appearance of openness, the closest face in Europe when she chose.
On the other hand, by introducing this country gentleman to this green-room, he gave a mighty impulse and opportunity to Vane's love; an opportunity which he forgot the timid, inexperienced Damon might otherwise never have found.
Here diplomacy was not policy, for, as my sagacious reader has perhaps divined, Sir Charles Pomanderwas after her himself.
YES, Sir Charles wasafterMrs. Woffington. I use that phrase because it is a fine generic one, suitable to different kinds of love-making.
Mr. Vane's sentiments were an inexplicable compound; but respect, enthusiasm, and deep admiration were the uppermost.
The good Sir Charles was no enigma. He had a vacancy in his establishment—a very high situation, too, for those who like that sort of thing—the head of his table, his left hand when he drove in the Park, etc. To this he proposed to promote Mrs. Woffington. She was handsome and witty, and he liked her. But that was not what caused him to pursue her; slow, sagacious, inevitable as a beagle.
She was celebrated, and would confer greateclaton him. The scandal of possessing her was a burning temptation. Women admire celebrity in a man; but men adore it in a woman.
“The world,” says Philip, “is a famous man; What will not women love so taught?”
I will try to answer this question.
The women will more readily forgive disgusting physical deformity for Fame's sake than we. They would embrace with more rapture a famous orang-outang than we an illustrious chimpanzee; but when it comes to moral deformity the tables are turned.
Had the queen pardoned Mr. Greenacre and Mrs. Manning, would the great rush have been on the hero, or the heroine? Why, on Mrs. Macbeth! To her would the blackguards have brought honorable proposals, and the gentry liberal ones.
Greenacre would have found more female admirers than I ever shall; but the grand stream of sexual admiration would have set Mariaward. This fact is as dark as night; but it is as sure as the sun.
The next day “the friends” (most laughable of human substantives!) met in the theater, and again visited the green-room; and this time Vane determined to do himself more justice. He was again disappointed; the actress's manner was ceremoniously polite. She was almost constantly on the stage, and in a hurry when off it; and, when there was a word to be got with her the ready, glib Sir Charles was sure to get it. Vane could not help thinking it hard that a man who professed no respect for her should thus keep the light from him; and he could hardly conceal his satisfaction when Pomander, at night, bade him farewell for a fortnight. Pressing business took Sir Charles into the country.
The good Sir Charles, however, could not go without leaving his sting behind as a companion to his friend. He called on Mr. Vane and after a short preface, containing the words “our friendship,” “old kindness,” “my greater experience,” he gravely warned him against Mrs. Woffington.
“Not that I would say this if you could take her for what she is, and amuse yourself with her as she will with you, if she thinks it worth her while. But I see you have a heart, and she will make a football of it, and torment you beyond all you have ever conceived of human anguish.”
Mr. Vane colored high, and was about to interrupt the speaker; but he continued:
“There, I am in a hurry. But ask Quin, or anybody who knows her history, you will find she has had scores of lovers, and no one remains her friend after they part.”
“Men are such villains!”
“Very likely,” was the reply; “but twenty men don't ill-use one good woman; those are not the proportions. Adieu!”
This last hit frightened Mr. Vane, he began to look into himself; he could not but feel that he was a mere child in this woman's hands; and, more than that, his conscience told him that if his heart should be made a football of it would be only a just and probable punishment. For there were particular reasons why he, of all men, had no business to look twice at any woman whose name was Woffington.
That night he avoided the green-room, though he could not forego the play; but the next night he determined to stay at home altogether. Accordingly, at five o'clock, the astounded box-keeper wore a visage of dismay—there was no shilling for him! and Mr. Vane's nightly shilling had assumed the sanctity of salary in his mind.
Mr. Vane strolled disconsolate; he strolled by the Thames, he strolled up and down the Strand; and, finally, having often admired the wisdom of moths in their gradual approach to what is not good for them, he strolled into the green-room, Covent Garden, and sat down. When there he did not feel happy. Besides, she had always been cold to him, and had given no sign of desiring his acquaintance, still less of recognition.
Mr. Vane had often seen a weathercock at work, and he had heard a woman compared to it; but he had never realized the simplicity, beauty and justice of the simile. He was therefore surprised, as well as thrilled, when Mrs. Woffington, so cool, ceremonious and distant hitherto, walked up to him in the green-room with a face quite wreathed in smiles, and, without preliminary, thanked him for all the beautiful flowers he had sent her.
“What, Mrs. Woffington—what, you recognize me?”
“Of course, and have been foolish enough to feel quite supported by the thought I had at least one friend in the house. But,” said she, looking down, “now you must not be angry; here are some stones that have fallen somehow among the flowers. I am going to give you them back, because I value flowers, so I cannot have them mixed with anything else; but don't ask me for a flower back,” added she, seeing the color mount on his face, “for I would not give one of them to you, or anybody.”
Imagine the effect of this on a romantic disposition like Mr. Vane's.
He told her how glad he was that she could distinguish his features amid the crowd of her admirers; he confessed he had been mortified when he found himself, as he thought, entirely a stranger to her.
She interrupted him.
“Do you know your friend Sir Charles Pomander? No! I am almost sure you do; well, he is a man I do not like. He is deceitful, besides he is a wicked man. There, to be plain with you, he was watching me all that night, the first time you came here, and, because I saw he was watching me I would not know who you were, nor anything about you.”
“But you looked as if you had never seen me before.”
“Of course I did, when I had made up my mind to,” said the actress, naively.
“Sir Charles has left London for a fortnight, so, if he is the only obstacle, I hope you will know me every night.”
“Why, you sent me no flowers yesterday or to-day.”
“But I will to-morrow.”
“Then I am sure I shall know your face again; good-by. Won't you see me in the last act, and tell me how ill I do it?”
“Oh, yes!” and he hurried to his box, and so the actress secured one pair of hands for her last act.
He returned to the green-room, but she did not revisit that verdant bower. The next night, after the usual compliments, she said to him, looking down with a sweet, engaging air:
“I sent a messenger into the country to know about that lady.”
“What lady?” said Vane, scarcely believing his senses.
“That you were so unkind to me about.”
“I, unkind to you? what a brute I must be!”
“My meaning is, you justly rebuked me, only you should not tell an actress she has no heart—that is always understood. Well, Sir Charles Pomander said she married a third in two months!”
“And did she?”
“No, it was in six weeks; that man never tells the truth; and since then she has married a fourth.”
“I am glad of it!”
“So am I, since you awakened my conscience.”
Delicious flattery! and of all flattery the sweetest, when a sweet creature does flattery, not merely utters it.
After this, Vane made no more struggles; he surrendered himself to the charming seduction, and as his advances were respectful, but ardent and incessant, he found himself at the end of a fortnight Mrs. Woffington's professed lover.
They wrote letters to each other every day. On Sunday they went to church together in the morning, and spent the afternoon in the suburbs wherever grass was and dust was not.
In the next fortnight, poor Vane thought he had pretty well fathomed this extraordinary woman's character. Plumb the Atlantic with an eighty-fathom line, sir!
“She is religious,” said he, “she loves a church much better than a playhouse, and she never laughs nor goes to sleep in church as I do. And she is breaking me of swearing—by degrees. She says that no fashion can justify what is profane, and that it must be vulgar as well as wicked. And she is frankness and simplicity itself.”
Another thing that charmed him was her disinterestedness. She ordered him to buy her a present every day, but it was never to cost above a shilling. If an article could be found that cost exactly tenpence (a favorite sum of hers), she was particularly pleased, and these shilling presents were received with a flush of pleasure and brightening eyes. But when one day he appeared with a diamond necklace, it was taken very coldly, he was not even thanked for it, and he was made to feel, once for all, that the tenpenny ones were the best investments toward her favor.
Then he found out that she was very prudent and rather stingy; of Spartan simplicity in her diet, and a scorner of dress off the stage. To redeem this she was charitable, and her charity and her economy sometimes had a sore fight, during which she was peevish, poor little soul.
One day she made him a request.
“I can't bear you should think me worse than I am, and I don't want you to think me better than I am.”
Vane trembled.
“But don't speak to others about me; promise, and I will promise to tell you my whole story, whenever you are entitled to such a confidence.
“When shall I be entitled to it?”
“When I am sure you love me.”
“Do you doubt that now?”
“Yes! I think you love me, but I am not sure.
“Margaret, remember I have known you much longer than you have known me.
“No!”
“Yes! Two months before we ever spoke I lived upon your face and voice.
“That is to say you looked from your box at me upon the stage, and did not I look from the stage at you?”
“Never! you always looked at the pit, and my heart used to sink.”
“On the 17th of May you first came into that box. I noticed you a little, the next day I noticed you a little more; I saw you fancied you liked me, after a while I could not have played without you.”
Here was delicious flattery again, and poor Vane believed every word of it.
As for her request and her promise, she showed her wisdom in both these. As Sir Charles observed, it is a wonderful point gained if you allow a woman to tell her story her own way.
How the few facts that are allowed to remain get molded and twisted out of ugly forms into pretty shapes by those supple, dexterous fingers!
This present story cannot give the life of Mrs. Woffington, but only one great passage therein, as do the epic and dramatic writers; but since there was often great point in any sentences spoken on important occasions by this lady, I will just quote her defense of herself. The reader may be sure she did not play her weakest card; let us give her the benefit.
One day she and Kitty Clive were at it ding-dong; the green-room was full of actors, male and female, but there were no strangers, and the ladies were saying things which the men of this generation only think; at last Mrs. Woffington finding herself roughly, and, as she thought, unjustly handled, turned upon the assembly and said: “What man did ever I ruin in all my life? Speak who can!”
And there was a dead silence.
“What woman is there here at as much as three pounds per week even, that hasn't ruined two at the very least?”
Report says there was a dead silence again, until Mrs. Clive perked up, and said she had only ruined one, and that was his own fault!
Mrs. Woffington declined to attach weight to this example. “Kitty Clive is the hook without the bait,” said she; and the laugh turned, as it always did, against Peggy's antagonist.
Thus much was speedily shown to Mr. Vane, that, whatever were Mrs. Woffington's intentions toward him, interest had at present nothing to do with them; indeed it was made clear that even were she to surrender her liberty to him, it would only be as a princess, forging golden chains for herself with her own royal hand.
Another fortnight passed to the mutual satisfaction of the lovers. To Vane it was a dream of rapture to be near this great creature, whom thousands admired at such a distance; to watch over her, to take her to the theater in a warm shawl, to stand at the wing and receive her as she came radiant from her dressing-room, to watch her from her rear as she stood like some power about to descend on the stage, to see her falcon-like stoop upon the said stage, and hear the burst of applause that followed, as the report does the flash; to compare this with the spiritless crawl with which common artists went on, tame from their first note to their last; to take her hand when she came off, feel how her nerves were strung like a greyhound's after a race, and her whole frame in a high even glow, with the great Pythoness excitement of art.
And to have the same great creature leaning her head on his shoulder, and listening with a charming complacency, while he purred to her of love and calm delights, alternate with still greater triumphs; for he was to turn dramatic writer, for her sake, was to write plays, a woman the hero, and love was to inspire him, and passion supply the want of pencraft. (You make me laugh, Mr. Vane!)
All this was heavenly.
And then with all her dash, and fire, and bravado, she was a thorough woman.
“Margaret!”
“Ernest!”
“I want to ask you a question. Did you really cry because that Miss Bellamy had dresses from Paris?”
“It does not seem very likely.”
“No, but tell me; did you?”
“Who said I did?”
“Mr. Cibber.”
“Old fool!”
“Yes, but did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Cry!”
“Ernest, the minx's dresses were beautiful.”
“No doubt. But did you cry?”
“And mine were dirty; I don't care about gilt rags, but dirty dresses, ugh!”
“Tell me, then.”
“Tell you what?”
“Did you cry or not?”
“Ah! he wants to find out whether I am a fool, and despise me.”
“No, I think I should love you better. For hitherto I have seen no weakness in you, and it makes me uncomfortable.”
“Be comforted! Is it not a weakness to like you!”
“You are free from that weakness, or you would gratify my curiosity.”
“Be pleased to state, in plain, intelligible English, what you require of me.”
“I want to know, in one word, did you cry or not?”
“Promise to tease me no more then, and I'll tell you.”
“I promise.”
“You won't despise me?”
“Despise you! of course not.”
“Well, then—I don't remember!”
On another occasion they were seated in the dusk, by the side of the canal in the Park, when a little animal began to potter about on an adjacent bank.
Mrs. Woffington contemplated it with curiosity and delight.
“Oh, you pretty creature!” said she. “Now you are a rabbit; at least, I think so.”
“No,” said Vane, innocently; “that is a rat.”
“Ah! ah! ah!” screamed Mrs. Woffington, and pinched his arm. This frightened the rat, who disappeared. She burst out laughing: “There's a fool! The thing did not frighten me, and the name did. Depend upon it, it's true what they say—that off the stage, I am the greatest fool there is. I'll never be so absurd again. Ah! ah! ah! here it is again” (scream and pinch, as before). “Do take me from this horrid place, where monsters come from the great deep.”
And she flounced away, looking daggers askant at the place the rat had vacated in equal terror.
All this was silly, but it pleases us men, and contrast is so charming! This same fool was brimful of talent—and cunning, too, for that matter.
She played late that night, and Mr. Vane saw the same creature, who dared not stay where she was liable to a distant rat, spring upon the stage as a gay rake, and flash out her rapier, and act valor's king to the life, and seem ready to eat up everybody, King Fear included; and then, after her brilliant sally upon the public, Sir Harry Wildair came and stood beside Mr. Vane. Her bright skin, contrasted with her powdered periwig, became dazzling. She used little rouge, but that little made her eyes two balls of black lightning. From her high instep to her polished forehead, all was symmetry. Her leg would have been a sculptor's glory; and the curve from her waist to her knee was Hogarth's line itself.
She stood like Mercury new lighted on a heaven-kissing hill. She placed her foot upon the ground, as she might put a hand upon her lover's shoulder. We indent it with our eleven undisguised stone.
Such was Sir Harry Wildair, who stood by Mr. Vane, glittering with diamond buckles, gorgeous with rich satin breeches, velvet coat, ruffles,pictcae vestis et auri;and as she bent her long eye-fringes down on him (he was seated), all her fiery charms gradually softened and quivered down to womanhood.
“The first time I was here,” said Vane, “my admiration of you broke out to Mr. Cibber; and what do you think he said?”
“That you praised me, for me to hear you. Did you?”
“Acquit me of such meanness.”
“Forgive me. It is just what I should have done, had I been courting an actress.”
“I think you have not met many ingenuous spirits, dear friend.”
“Not one, my child.”
This was a phrase she often applied to him now.
“The old fellow pretended to hear what I said, too; and I am sure you did not—did you?”
“Guess.”
“I guess not.”
“I am afraid I must plead guilty. An actress's ears are so quick to hear praise, to tell you the truth, I did catch a word or two, and, 'It told, sir—it told.'”
“You alarm me! At this rate, I shall never know what you see, hear or think, by your face.”
“When you want to know anything, ask me, and I will tell you; but nobody else shall learn anything, nor even you, any other way.”
“Did you hear the feeble tribute of praise I was paying you, when you came in?” inquired Vane.
“No. You did not say that my voice had the compass and variety of nature, and my movements were free and beautiful, while the others when in motion were stilts, and coffee-pots when in repose, did you?”
“Something of the sort, I believe,” cried Vane, laughing.
“I melted from one fine statue into another, I restored the Antinous to his true sex.—Goose!—Painters might learn their art from me (in my dressing-room, no doubt), and orators revive at my lips the music of Athens, that quelled mad mobs and princes drunk with victory.—Silly fellow!—Praise was never so sweet to me,” murmured she, inclining like a goddess of love toward him; and he fastened on two velvet lips, that did not shun the sweet attack, but gently parted with a heavenly sigh; while her heaving bosom and yielding frame and swimming eyes confessed her conqueror.
That morning Mr. Vane had been dispirited, and apparently self-discontented; but at night he went home in a state of mental intoxication. His poetic enthusiasm, his love, his vanity, were all gratified at once. And all these, singly, have conquered Prudence and Virtue a million times.
She had confessed to him that she was disposed to risk her happiness on him; she had begged him to submit to a short probation; and she had promised, if her confidence and esteem remained unimpaired at the close of that period—which was not to be an unhappy one—to take advantage of the summer holidays, and cross the water with him, and forget everything in the world with him, but love.
How was it that the very next morning clouds chased one another across his face? Was it that men are happy but while the chase is doubtful? Was it the letter from Pomander announcing his return, and sneeringly inquiring whether he was still the dupe of Peg Woffington? or was it that same mysterious disquiet which attacked him periodically, and then gave way for a while to pleasure and her golden dreams?
The next day was to be a day of delight. He was to entertain her at his own house; and, to do her honor, he had asked Mr. Cibber, Mr. Quin and other actors, critics, etc.
Our friend, Sir Charles Pomander, had been guilty of two ingenuities: first, he had written three or four letters, full of respectful admiration, to Mrs. Woffington, of whom he spoke slightingly to Vane; second, he had made a disingenuous purchase.
This purchase was Pompey, Mrs. Woffington's little black slave. It is a horrid fact, but Pompey did not love his mistress. He was a little enamored of her, as small boys are apt to be, but, on the whole, a sentiment of hatred slightly predominated in his little black bosom.
It was not without excuse.
This lady was subject to two unpleasant companions—sorrow and bitterness. About twice a week she would cry for two hours; and after this class of fit she generally went abroad, and made a round of certain poor or sickprotegesshe had, and returned smiling and cheerful.
But other twice a week she might be seen to sit upon her chair, contracted into half her size, and looking daggers at the universe in general, the world in particular; and on these occasions, it must be owned, she stayed at home, and sometimes whipped Pompey.
Pompey had not the sense to reflect that he ought to have been whipped every day, or theesprit de corpsto be consoled by observing that this sort of thing did his mistress good. What he felt was, that his mistress, who did everything well, whipped him with energy and skill; it did not take ten seconds, but still, in that brief period, Pompey found himself dusted and polished off.
The sacred principle of justice was as strong in Mrs. Woffington as in the rest of her sex; she had not one grain of it. When she was not in her tantrums, the mischievous imp was as sacred from check or remonstrance as a monkey or a lap-dog; and several female servants left the house on his account.
But Nemesis overtook him in the way we have hinted, and it put his little black pipe out.
The lady had taken him out of great humanity; he was fed like a game-cock, and dressed like a Barbaric prince; and once when he was ill his mistress watched him, and nursed him, and tended him with the same white hand that plied the obnoxious whip; and when he died, she alone withheld her consent from his burial, and this gave him a chance black boys never get, and he came to again; but still these tarnation lickings “stuck in him gizzard.” So when Sir Charles's agent proposed to him certain silver coins, cheap at a little treachery, the ebony ape grinned till he turned half ivory, and became a spy in the house of his mistress.
The reader will have gathered that the good Sir Charles had been quietly in London some hours before he announced himself aspaulo post futurum.
Diamond cut diamond; a diplomat stole this march upon an actress, and took her black pawn. One for Pomander! (Gun.)