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

John Doran

Dr. Doran

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

CHAPTER I

MRS. OLDFIELD

Artists who have been wont to look into the Vicar of Wakefield, Gil Blas, and last century comedies, for picturesque subjects, would find account in referring to the lives of our actresses. Here is not a bad picture of its class. The time is at the close of the seventeenth century; the scene is at the Mitre Tavern in St. James's Market, kept by one Mrs. Voss. It is a quiet summer evening, and after the fatigues of the day are over, and before the later business of the night has commenced, that buxom lady is reclining in an easy chair, listening to a fair and bright young creature, her sister,[1 - Her niece.] who is reading aloud, and is enjoying what she reads. Her eyes, like Kathleen's in the song, are beaming with light, her face glowing with intelligence and feeling. Even an elderly lady, their mother, turns away from the picture of her husband, who had ridden in the Guards, and held a commission under James II. – she turns from this, and memories of old days, to gaze with tender admiration on her brilliant young daughter; who, be it said, at this present reading, is only an apprentice to a seamstress in King Street, Westminster.

But the soul of Thalia is under her bodice, into a neater than which, Anadyomene could not have laced herself. She is rapt in the reading, and with book held out, and face upraised, and figure displayed at its very best, she enthrals her audience, unconscious herself that this is more numerous than she might have supposed. On the threshold of the open door stand a couple of guests; one of them has, to us, no name; the other is a gay, rollicking young fellow, smartly dressed, a semi-military look about him, good humour rippling over his face, combined with an air of astonishment and delight. This is Captain Farquhar. His sight and hearing are wholly concentrated on that enchanted and enchanting girl, who, unmindful of aught but the "Scornful Lady," continues still reading aloud that rattling comedy of Beaumont and Fletcher. How the mother listened to it all is not to be told; but nearly a century later Queen Charlotte could listen to her daughters reading "Polly Honeycombe," and no harm done. We may fancy the young reader at the Mitre, whose name is Anne Oldfield, in that silvery voice for which she was famed, half in sadness and half in mirth, reading the lines in which the lady says: —

"All we that are call'd woman, know as well

As men, it were a far more noble thing

To grace where we are graced, and give respect

There where we are respected: yet we practise

A wilder course, and never bend our eyes

On men with pleasure, till they find the way

To give us a neglect. Then we too late

Perceive the loss of what we might have had,

And dote to death."

Captain Farquhar, at whatever passage in the play, betrayed his presence by his involuntary applause. The girl looked towards him more pleased than abashed; and when the captain pronounced that there was in her the stuff for an exquisite actress, the fluttered thing clasped her hands, glowed at the prophecy, and protested in her turn, that of all conditions it was the one she wished most ardently to fulfil. From that moment the glory and the mischief were commenced. The tall girl stood up, her large eyes dilating, the assured future Lady Betty Modish and Biddy Tipkin, Farquhar's own Sylvia and Mrs. Sullen, the Violante and the Lady Townley that were to set the playgoing world mad with delight; the Andromache, Marcia, and Jane Shore, that were to wring tears from them; the supreme lady in all, but chiefest in comedy; and that "genteel," for which she seemed expressly born.

Farquhar talked of her to Vanbrugh, and Vanbrugh introduced her to Rich, and Rich took her into his company, assigned her a beginner's salary, fifteen shillings a week, and gave her nothing to do. She had a better life of it at the seamstress's in King Street