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

To the Duchess of Leinster, who knew something of Miss Farren's family in Ireland, the actress was indebted for introductions to Lady Ailesbury, Mrs. Damer, and others, through whom Miss Farren became acquainted with the Earl of Derby, who was himself a clever actor, in private theatricals. A Platonic affection, at least, was soon established. Walpole writing, in 1791, to the Miss Berrys, says: "I have had no letter from you these ten days, though the east wind has been as constant as Lord Derby," not to his wife, whom he had married in 1774, but to Miss Farren, who first came to London three years later.

On the 14th of March 1797, the long-tarrying Countess departed this life; on the 8th of April following, Miss Farren took final leave of the stage, in Lady Teazle. After the play, Wroughton led her forward, and spoke a few farewell words for her, at the end of which she gracefully curtseyed to all parts of the house; and that once little girl who carried milk to her father in the Round House, went home, and was married to the Earl, on the May Day of the year in which he had lost his first wife! Six weeks 'twixt death and bridal! and yet we hear that Miss Farren's greatest charm consisted in her "delicate, genuine, impressive sensibility, which reached the heart by a process no less certain than that by which her other powers effected their impression on their fancy and judgment."

At all events, Miss Farren never acted so hastily, nor Stanley so uncourteously to the memory of a dead lady, as on this occasion, and it was not one for which youthful widowers might find an apology, for the erst strolling actress was considerably past thirty, and her swain within five years of the age at which Sir Peter Teazle married "my lady."

Of the three children of this union, only one survived, Mary, born in 1801, and married, twenty years afterwards, to the Earl of Wilton. Through her, the blood of an actress once more mingles with that of the peerage; with the same result, perhaps, as followed the match of Winnifred, the dairymaid, with the head of the Bickerstaffes.

No marriage of an English actress with a man of title ever had such results as that which followed the union of Fleury's beautiful sister with the gallant Viscount Clairval de Passy. When the match was proposed, the parents of the lady were in a fever of delight that their daughter should be a viscountess. Doubtless she became so in law and fact; but instead of taking place as such with the Viscount, he laid by his title, and out of love for his wife and her profession, turned actor himself! The happy pair played together with success, and when you meet with the names of Monsieur and Madame Sainville in the annals of the French stage, you are reading of that very romantic pair – the happy Viscount and Viscountess Clairval de Passy.

In 1796,[25 - Mrs. Pope's name is in the bills for the last time on 26th January 1797.] after more than a quarter of a century of service, Mrs. Pope, once Garrick's favourite, Miss Younge, withdrew to die, and leave her younger husband to take a less accomplished actress for his second wife. But the loss which the stage felt as severely as it did that of Miss Farren was, in 1798, in the person of a lady, with whom we first become acquainted as a vivacious and intelligent little girl selling flowers in St. James's Park. She is known as "Nosegay Fan." Her father, a soldier in the Guards, mends shoes, when off duty, in Windmill Street, Haymarket, and her brother waters the horses of the Hampstead stage, at the corner of Hanway Yard. Who would suppose that this little Fanny Barton, who sells moss-roses, would one day set the fashions to all the fine ladies in the three kingdoms; that Horace Walpole would welcome her more warmly to Strawberry Hill than an ordinary princess, and that "Nosegay Fan" would be the original and never-equalled Lady Teazle?

Humble, however, as the position of the flower-girl is, there is good blood in her very blue veins. She comes of the Bartons of Derbyshire, and not longer ago than the accession of King William, sons of that family held honourable office in the Church, the army, and in government offices. Fanny Barton ran on errands for a French milliner, and occasionally encountered Baddeley, when the latter was apprenticed to a confectioner, and was not dreaming of the Twelfth Cake he was to bequeath to the actors of Drury Lane. Then ensued some passages in her life that remind one of the training and experience of Nell Gwyn. The fascinating Fanny, in one way or another, made her way in the world, and, for the sake of a smile, lovers courted ruin. This excessively brilliant, though not edifying, career did not last long. Among the many friends she had acquired was that prince of scamps and Bardolphs, Theophilus Cibber, who had just procured a licence to open the theatre in the Haymarket. He had marked the capabilities of the "vivacious" Fanny, and he tempted her to appear under his management, as Miranda, in the "Busy Body," to his Marplot. This was on the 21st of August 1755, when the débutante was only seventeen years of age. She immediately excited attention as an actress of extraordinary promise; and, in the short summer season, she exhibited her versatility by playing Miss Jenny, in the "Provoked Husband;" Desdemona, Sylvia, in the "Recruiting Officer," and finally enchanted her audience as Prince Prettyman, in the "Rehearsal."

From the Haymarket this clever girl went to Bath and fascinated King, the manager; thence to Richmond, where Lacey, the manager there, fell equally in love with her, and engaged her for Drury Lane (1756-57), where, however, the presence, success, and claims of Miss Pritchard, Miss Macklin, and Mrs. Clive, kept her out of the line of characters for which she was specially qualified. She was, moreover, ill-educated, and she forthwith placed herself under tuition. Fanny took for music-master Mr. Abington, who, of course, became desperately in love with her, and married his pupil. The young couple established a splendid home in the then fashionable quarter, St. Martin's Lane; but soon after, the convenient Apollo disappears, and even the musical dictionaries fail to tell us of the being and whereabout of a man whose wife made his name famous.

After four seasons at Drury, she went on a triumphant career to Dublin. There she acquired all she had hitherto lacked, and when, in the season of 1765-66, she reappeared at Drury Lane, as Cherry,[26 - Mrs. Abington played the Widow Belmour, in "The Way to Keep Him," at Drury Lane, on 27th November 1765, being "her first appearance there for five years."] upon terms granted by Garrick, which were no longer considered extravagant, so conspicuous was her talent, the playgoing world was in a fever of delight. Her career, from 1755 to 1798, lasted forty-three years, and, though like Betterton, Time touched her person, it never weakened her talent. Critics praise her elegant form, her graceful address, the animation and expression of her looks, her quick intelligence, her perfect taste. Expression served her more than beauty, and her voice, once hardly better than Peg Woffington's, became perfectly musical by her power of modulation. Every word was pronounced with a clearness that made her audible in the remotest parts of the theatre, and this was a charm of itself in such parts as Beatrice, and Lady Teazle, where "every word stabbed," as King was wont to remark. In short, she was one of the most natural, easy, impressive, and enchanting actresses that ever appeared on the stage. Reynolds took her for his Comic Muse, and it is worth a pilgrimage to Knowle Park to look on that wonderful impersonation, and realise something of the grace and perfection of Mrs. Abington. In 1771, Walpole wrote to her, "I do impartial justice to your merit, and fairly allow it not only equal to that of any actress I have seen, but believe the present age will not be in the wrong if they hereafter prefer it to those they may live to see." On one occasion, he describes her, in Lady Teazle, as "equal to the first of her profession." She "seemed the very person," an "admiration of Mrs. Abington's genius made him long desire the honour of her acquaintance." He goes to sup with her, hoping "that Mrs. Clive will not hear of it;" and he throws Strawberry open to her, and as many friends as she chooses to bring with her. When the fever of his enthusiasm had somewhat abated, and he remembered the "Nosegay Fan" of early days, his admiration was more discriminating. Mrs. Abington, then, "can never go beyond Lady Teazle, which is a second-rate character, and that rank of women are always aping women of fashion without arriving at the style." Out of the line of the affected fine lady, says Lady G. Spencer, "Mrs. Abington should never go. In that she succeeds, because it is not unnatural to her." This criticism is just, for Lady Teazle is a parvenu. The country-bred girl apes successfully enough the woman of fashion, but in her early home, as we are told, she wore a plain linen gown, a bunch of keys at her side, her hair combed smooth over a roll; and her apartment was hung round with fruits in worsted, of her own working. Her girlish occupation was to inspect the dairy, superintend the poultry, make extracts from the family receipt-book, comb her aunt Deborah's lap-dog, draw patterns for ruffles, play Pope Joan with the curate, read a sermon aloud, and strum her fox-hunting father to sleep at the spinnet. This "fine lady," by accident and not by birth, Mrs. Abington could play admirably; better than she could Lady Modish, who was a lady by birth and education. But even in the latter character she is described as having been the accomplished and well-bred woman of fashion. Her intercourse with ladies of rank, an intimacy which made her somewhat vain, was of use to her in such impersonations; but she was not received so unreservedly as Mrs. Oldfield, for many remembered her early wild course, and saw no compensation for it in the later and better regulated life. She turned such schooling as she could obtain in drawing-rooms to the best account; but Mrs. Oldfield, in the University of Fashion, took first-class honours.

Coquettes, chambermaids, hoydens, country girls, and the women of the Lady Teazle, Lady Fancyful, and Lady Racket cast, she played without fear of a rival. Her chambermaids seem to have been over-dressed, and this superfluity attended some of her other characters, in which she was as much beplumed as the helmet in the Castle of Otranto. For more than a quarter of a century, her Widow Belmour, in the "Way to Keep Him," was a never-failing delight to the public. Murphy says that her graces of action gave to this part brilliancy, and even novelty, every time she repeated it. She was the original representative of thirty characters, among which we find, – Lady Bab, in "High Life Below Stairs;" Betty, in the "Clandestine Marriage;" Charlotte, in the "Hypocrite;" Charlotte Rusport, in the "West Indian;" Roxalana, in the "Sultan;" Miss Hoyden, in the "Trip to Scarborough;" and her crowning triumph, Lady Teazle.

Like other clever players, she committed a fault, – hers was in acting Scrub, for a wager, – at her benefit, in 1786. Genest says, "In point of profit, it no doubt answered; but she is said to have disgraced herself in Scrub, and to have acted the part with her hair dressed for Lady Racket," which she played in the after-piece! Her portrait, as Scrub, with her hair thus dressed, gives her an absurd appearance. She figured in the private theatricals, at Brandenburgh House, of the Margravine of Anspach. In one of the plays represented – the "Provoked Wife" – the piece was cut down, in order that no female character should have equal prominence with that of Lady Brute, played by the Margravine herself; but Mrs. Abington asserted her professional right, and played her once famous scene of Lady Fancyful, straight through, to the united delight of herself and audience.

In her later years she lost her old grace and fine figure; and she, who had snatched the mantle from Kitty Clive, found it taken from her, in her turn, by the gentle yet all-conquering Miss Farren, whom, however, she survived on the stage. From 1798 to 1815, Mrs. Abington lived in retirement, active only in works of charity; and when she died in the latter year, few remembered in the deceased wealthy lady, the vivacious "Nosegay Fan" of three-quarters of a century before.

There remains to be noticed one who, in the annals of the stage, appears like a brief but charming episode, – a fair promise, hastily made, and not realised; an actress of whom Garrick augured well, and whom he gave to the stage, from which she was snatched by a prince. Miss Darby was a native of Bristol, and a pupil of Hannah More. She was the heiress of a fair fortune, which her philanthropic father dissipated in attempts to civilise the Esquimaux Indians. Having thereby beggared his wife and child, the man, with a heart for all mankind, but not for his home, left the latter; and the mother then was supported by what Miss Darby could earn as a governess. What she could then spare, she devoted to acquiring "the usual accomplishments." Among the latter was dancing; and her master (a Covent Garden ballet-master) introduced her to Garrick. After some training, she recited Cordelia, like a pretty and clever child, as she was; and then disappeared.

She was not sixteen when she married Mr. Robinson, – a young man of good fortune, apprenticed to the law. The happy couple ran through their fortune in splendid haste; and Mrs. Robinson spent more than a year with him in prison. Misery drove her again to Garrick, who, though now withdrawn from the stage, rehearsed Romeo to her Juliet; and sat in the orchestra on the night of the 10th of December 1776, when she played the latter part to the Romeo of Brereton. She was then only eighteen; and her success was all that could be expected from her talent and beauty, and a voice which reminded Garrick of his darling, Mrs. Cibber. Thus commenced the brief stage career which ended in May 1780 with the "Winter's Tale," and her own farce, the "Miniature Picture,"[27 - "The Miniature Picture" is not by Mrs. Robinson, but by the Margravine of Anspach.] on which occasion she played Perdita and Eliza Camply.[28 - Her last appearance was no doubt on 31st May 1780, when "Rule a Wife," and the "Miniature Picture" were played.]

In the interval, she had played the tender or proudly loving ladies in tragedy, and the refined and sprightly nymphs in comedy; and she was the original Amanda, in the "Trip to Scarborough." Since Mrs. Woffington and the first blush of Mrs. Bellamy, such peculiar grace and charms had not been seen on the stage. The critics extolled both, the fine gentlemen besieged her with billets-doux, and the artists protested that they had never beheld better taste than hers in costume.

On the 3d of December 1779 their Majesties' servants played, by command, at Drury Lane, the "Winter's Tale," for the sixth time. Gentleman Smith was Leontes; Bensley, Polixenes; Brereton, Florizel; Miss Farren, Hermione; and Mrs. Robinson, Perdita.

The King, Queen, and royal family were in their box, when Perdita entered the green-room, dressed more exquisitely and looking more bewitching than ever. "You will make a conquest of the Prince, to-night," said Smith laughingly; "I never saw you look so handsome as you do now!" He was a true prophet. The Prince was subdued by her beauty, and subsequently wrote letters to her, which were signed "Florizel," and were carried by no less noble a go-between than William Anne Capel, Earl of Essex; but others ascribe this messengership of love to his son Viscount Malden, who subsequently married Miss Stephens, the vocalist, and present dowager-countess.[29 - Miss Stephens died February 22, 1882.]

The messenger of love wooed her for the Prince, while he adored her himself, – at least he said so. He gave her the Prince's portrait, and a heart, – not in precious metal, but in paper, – a symbol of the worth and tenacity of the Prince's. On this token was a double motto, in French, for the air of the thing: "Je ne change qu'en mourant;" and in English, for the emphasis of it: "Unalterable to my Perdita through life."

This young creature's husband was living in profligacy on her salary, which he received at the treasury, and she was wooed by a young Prince, with a magic of wooing which, she said, she should never forget. The first step she made towards the latter was, by meeting him in a boat, moored off Kew. The second, was by meeting him by moonlight, in Kew Gardens. But then, the "Bishop of Osnaburgh" was present! And the lady herself was a furbelowed Egeria to a powdered Numa. "During many months of confidential correspondence," she says, "I always offered his royal highness the best advice in my power."

Deathless was to be the young Prince's love, and his munificence was to be equal to his truth. In proof of the latter, he gave her a bond for £20,000, to be paid to her on his coming of age. In a few months he attained his majority, refused to pay the money, and made no secret to the lady of his deathless love having altogether died out. He passed her in the park, affecting not to know her; and the spirited young woman, who had given up a lucrative profession for his sake, flung a remark at him, in her indignation, that ought to have made him blush, had he been to that manner born. However, she was not altogether abandoned. The patriotic Whig statesman, Charles Fox, obtained for the Prince's cast-off favourite an annuity of £300, – out of the pockets of a tax-paying people!

Perdita would fain have returned to the stage, but her friends dissuaded her. No one could tell how a moral people would receive the abandoned of "Florizel!" So, restless, she dwelt, now here, now there; now in France, where Marie Antoinette gave a purse, knitted by her luckless fingers, to "la belle Anglaise;" now in Brighton, where also resided, in the brightest of her beauty and the highest of her splendour, Mrs. Fitzherbert; – the married Polly and the royal Macheath's neglected Lucy?

Perdita was not idle; she wrote poems and novels; the former, tender in sentiment and expression; the latter, not without power and good sense. She had undertaken to supply the Morning Post with poetry, when she died, after cruel suffering, in the last year of the last century (1800); and she herself the last of the pupils of David Garrick.

There was good in this hapless creature. Throughout life she was the loving and helping child of her mother; the loving and helping mother of her child, for both of whom she laboured ungrudgingly to the last. Hannah More, herself, would not harshly construe the conduct of her pupil. "I make the greatest allowance for inexperience and novel passions," was the comment of Horace Walpole. "Poor Perdita!" said Mrs. Siddons, "I pity her from my very heart!"

She fell into bad hands – beginning with those of her father. In her husband's she was still less cared for, though she spent nearly a year with him in a sponging-house, to leave which she was importuned by worthless peers and equally worthless commoners – from ancient dukes down to young city merchants. There was a public admiration for her which scarcely any other actress so practically experienced. Thus, on the night in 1776, when the "Trip to Scarborough" was undergoing temporary but loud condemnation, Mrs. Yates, yielding to the storm, suddenly withdrew, and left Mrs. Robinson, as Amanda, standing alone on the stage, where she was so bewildered by the continued hissing, that the Duke of Cumberland stood up in his box, requested her not to be alarmed, and cheered her by calling out, "It is not you, but the piece, they are hissing."

She gave rather the promise than the actuality of a fine actress; she had good taste, and manifested it in an attention to costume, when propriety therein was not much cared for. She describes the outward presentment of her Statira ("Alexander the Great"), by saying, "My dress was white and blue, made after the Persian costume; and, though it was then singular on the stage, I wore neither a hoop nor powder. My feet were bound with sandals, richly ornamented; and the whole dress was picturesque and characteristic."

Between this period and the time when she lay stricken by paralysis, the interval was not long; and then the forsaken creature, if vanity abided with her, was obliged to content herself with reminiscences of the past – when she was the Laura Maria of Della Crusca, and when Merry declared that future poets and ages would join "to pour in Laura's praise their melodies divine." During that same time Peter Pindar called her, "The nymph of my heart;" Burgoyne pronounced her "perfect as woman and artist;" Tickle proclaimed her "the British Sappho;" John Taylor hailed her, "Pensive Songstress;" Boaden recorded her, "mentally perfect;" the Hon. John St. John asserted that "Nature had formed her queen of song;" Kerr Porter saluted her in thundering heroics; and two theatrical parsons, Will Tasker and Paul Columbine, flung heaps of flowers at her feet, with the zeal of heathen priests before an incarnation of Flora.

And so passes by this vision of fair last-century women to make way for a group of actors of the Garrick school – standing a little apart from whom is John Henderson, whom the town was willing to take for David's successor.

CHAPTER V

A GROUP OF GENTLEMEN

The players of the Garrick period and the years immediately succeeding it, followed in due time their great master. Of these, Samuel Reddish was a player of that great epoch, who, for some especial parts, stood in the foremost rank. We first hear of him in the season of 1761-62, strengthening Mossop's company in Smock Alley, Dublin, by his performance of Etan, in the "Orphan of China." Of his origin, no one knows more than what he published of himself in the Irish papers, – that he was "a gentleman of easy fortune." This description was turned against him by his old enemy, Macklin, on one occasion, when Reddish in a part he was acting, threw away an elegantly-bound book, which he was supposed to have been reading. Macklin's comment was that, however unnatural in the character he was representing, it was quite consistent in Mr. Reddish himself, who, "you know, has advertised himself as a gentleman of easy fortune."

In September 1767, Reddish first appeared in London, at Drury Lane, as Lord Townly, to Mrs. Abington's "My Lady." A few nights after, he played Posthumus to the Imogen of Mrs. Baddeley. It was in this last character that he took his melancholy leave of the stage at Covent Garden, shaken in mind and memory, on the 3d of May[30 - Should be 5th of May.] 1779; Mrs. Bulkley was then the Imogen. His career in London was but of twelve years, and it might have been longer and more brilliant but for that fast life which consumed him, – and for one illustration of which, when he was rendered incapable of acting, he made humble apology on the succeeding evening.

Within those dozen years, Sam Reddish played an infinite variety of characters, from tragedy to farce. Among those he originated were Darnley ("Hypocrite,") Young Fashion ("Trip to Scarborough"), and Philotas ("Grecian Daughter"). As an actor, his voice and figure were highly esteemed in Dublin, but the latter was not considered so striking in London. I gather from his critics, that Reddish was easy and spirited; that he spoke well in mere declamatory parts, but, for want of feeling and variety in the play of his features, failed in parts of passion. His most attractive character was Edgar, in "King Lear;" Posthumus stood next; he thought Romeo was one of his happiest impersonations, but the public preferred his Macduff and Shylock. As Alonzo ("Revenge") he made a favourable impression; his Castalio, Lothario, and Orlando were indifferent, and his Alexander bad. Reddish was, however, an impulsive actor, often feeling more than the immobility of his features would permit him to show; and he endeavoured to make up for it by violence and impetuosity of action. He was once acting Castalio, when the part of his brother Polydore was played by Smith. In the last act of the "Orphan," Polydore gives his brother the lie, calls him "coward!" adds "villain!" and at length so exasperates Castalio that the latter, drawing his sword, exclaims, "This to thy heart, then, though my mother bore thee!" and before Smith was well ready for the fight, Reddish thrust his sword into him and stretched him bleeding on the stage. The next words Castalio should have uttered were, "What have I done? My sword is in thy breast!" but the poor fellow could only exclaim, "My sword was in thy breast!" and the play came to an end. Smith, however, did not die (as in the play) with a "How my head swims! 'tis very dark! good night!" He recovered of his wounds, and lived to die again.

When Churchill said, "With transient gleam of grace Hart sweeps along," he was praising the lady whom Reddish married soon after he came to London, and who lost the "transient gleam" in ungracefully growing fat. His second wife was a woman of very different quality, – a respectable, but impoverished, widow in Mary-le-bone, named Canning, whose first husband had, in 1767, published a translation of the first book of Cardinal Polignac's Anti-Lucretius. The widow Canning's son, George, subsequently became Prime Minister of England, "for giving birth to whom," says Genest, "she was in due time rewarded with a handsome pension," which she enjoyed as Mrs. Hunn, down to 1827. Reddish, I suppose, met with her on the stage of Drury Lane, where the lady made her first public appearance (6th of November 1773) in "Jane Shore," Reddish playing her husband; while Garrick acted Hastings, at the request of several ladies of rank who patronised Mrs. Canning. She repeated Jane Shore, and subsequently played Perdita to the Florizel of "gentle" Cautherley, – who was said to be a natural son, certainly a well-trained pupil of Garrick. Her next part was Mrs. Beverley to Garrick's Beverley; her fourth, Octavia (in "All for Love") to the Antony of Reddish, whose wife she became, or at least is said to have become, at an unlucky season. As early as the year 1773, Reddish exhibited one symptom of the malady which compelled him ultimately to retire, namely the want of memory, which indicates weakness of the brain. In March of that year, he played Alonzo, in Home's tragedy so called; he was the original representative of the part. Although Alonzo is the hero, he does not appear till the play is half over, and when the piece came to nearly that point on the particular night, Reddish was missing; a riot ensued, and his part was read by one of the Aikins. Just before the curtain fell, the truant appeared, declaring that he had only just remembered that it was not an oratorio night. His comrades believed him, and for fear the public should be less credulous he ran from the theatre to Bow Street Office, and there, in presence of Sir Sampson Wright, made oath to that effect. The affidavit was published the next day, and he thereto adds, "that this unhappy mistake may not be misconstrued into a wilful neglect of his duty, he most humbly begs pardon of the public for the disappointment." The public forgave him, and received him kindly on his next appearance. His wife, who was a favourite in the provinces, was ultimately hissed from the stage of Old Drury.

Gradually, his memory grew more disturbed, till it could no longer be at all relied on. During the season 1777-78, he was incapable of acting, and was supported by the fund. In the following season, he essayed Hamlet, but it was almost as painful as the Ophelia of poor, mad Susan Mountfort. Later in the season, in May 1779, the managers gave him a benefit, when "Cymbeline" was acted, and Reddish was announced for Posthumus. An hour or two before the play began, he called at a friend's house, vacant, restless, and wandering. Some one congratulated him on being well enough to play. "Aye, sir! and I shall astonish you in the garden scene!" He thought he was to act Romeo. He could neither be persuaded nor convinced to the contrary, for a long time, and then only to fall into the old delusion. "Am I to play Posthumus? I'm sorry for it, but what must be, must be!" and then he walked to the theatre, his friend accompanying him, and pitying the poor fellow, who went on rehearsing Romeo, by the way. He was so impressed by his false idea, that his colleagues of the green-room, who had vainly striven to keep him to Posthumus, saw him go to the wing, with the expectation on their part that he would look for Benvolio's cue, "Good morrow, cousin!" and would be prepared to answer, "Is the day so young?" With that expectation, they pushed him on the stage, – where the old situation wrought a temporary cure in him. To the welcoming applause he returned a bow of modest respect, and by the time the Queen had uttered the words —

"'twere good
You leaned unto his sentence with what patience
Your wisdom may inform you, – "

his eye had lighted up, and he answered with calm dignity —

"Please your highness,
I will from hence to-day,"

and went through the scene with more than his usual ability. But he had no sooner passed the wing than the old delusion returned; he was all Romeo, waiting for and longing to begin the garden scene with —

"Soft! what light from yonder window breaks?
It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!"

And many were the fears that at his second going on, he would be disturbed. He stood dreamingly waiting at the side, but when Philotas had exclaimed, "Here comes the Briton! Let him be so entertained amongst you as suits with gentlemen of your knowing, to strangers of his quality," – Reddish was Posthumus again, and to the remark of the Frenchman, – "Sir, we have known together in Orleans," he replied in the clear, level tone which distinguished him, – "Since when I have been debtor to you for courtesies, which I will be ever to pay and yet pay still." Thenceforward, his mind became healthy, and he played to the close with a burst of inspiration and talent, such as he had not shown, even in his best days.

His mind, however, was healthy only for the night; fitful seasons there were in which he tried to act in the country; but he soon became diseased again, and, shut up in a madhouse, poor Reddish might be seen on visitors' days at St. Luke's, a sad and humiliating spectacle, herding among the lunatics in that once popular place of cruel exhibition. Two old feelings survived the otherwise complete wreck – his love of good living, and his dislike of inferior company. He drank greedily his draught of milk, out of a wooden bowl, but the "gentleman of easy fortune" complained bitterly of his forced association with the low people who thronged the gallery. Poor Reddish! he was moved to better air, improved diet, and less plebeian society, – in the Asylum at York. The outside world had been by him long forgotten, and he forgotten by the world, when he happily died there, not one hour too soon, in the last month of the year 1785. Little more than eight years later his stepson, George Canning, made his maiden-speech in the Commons, as Tory member for Newport, and failed; but like noble actors in another house, he gained ultimate success, by turning his experience to advantage.

About the same time disappeared from the London stage, Ross, who, like Barton Booth, was a Westminister boy, and the son of a gentleman. Less fortunate than Booth, his father discarded him, for going on the stage. Ross, the actor, had for school-fellow Churchill, the poet – John Nicoll then being master; and Booth had for condiscipulus the poet Rowe, under the famous mastership of Busby. Like Booth, Ross first tried his fortune on the Dublin stage in 1749, when he came to London to be of the school of Garrick, as Booth came to be a follower of Betterton. Both men had pleasing and powerful voices and fine figures, but Ross's countenance lacked expression. Ross, like Booth, played Young Bevil with great ability, and, as the Ghost of Banquo, produced almost as much effect as Booth in the Ghost of Hamlet's father. Here, however, all parallel ends. Wanting Booth's industry, Ross never raised himself to Booth's level; he originated very few characters, wasted his powers, grew fat and indolent, and lost what Barry kept to the last, —

"A voice as musically clear
As ever pour'd, perhaps, upon the ear."

With a passion for the stage, and every qualification but industry, he marred his prospects by letting "mere chance conduct him every night," till the town wearied of him. He had been at Drury Lane, from 1751, when he first appeared as Young Bevil, to 1757; and at Covent Garden, where he commenced with Hamlet,[31 - He commenced with Essex – "Earl of Essex" – 3d October 1757. He played Hamlet on the 8th.] from that year to 1768, when he became manager of the new theatre in the Canongate, Edinburgh.[32 - Ross left Covent Garden at the end of 1766-67. He appeared at the Edinburgh Theatre, in the Canongate, on 9th December 1767.]

In Edinburgh, Ross is remembered, however, as the founder of the legal stage. That is, he was the patentee of the first theatre that had the sanction of the law. When the new town of Edinburgh was projected, in 1767, care was taken for the lawful establishment of the Scottish stage, and Ross built that pleasant house which, till 1859, occupied the site where now stands the New Post Office. It says something for Ross's prudence, despite his defects, that he had saved £7000, which he expended on the construction and completion of this house.[33 - The money was partly subscribed by shareholders, and Ross seems to have owed most of the balance.] It was opened in December 1769. "Strange," says Mr. Robert Chambers, "to recall the circumstances of its opening. No Princes Street then, for the belles and beaux – no new town whatever, only one or two houses building at wide intervals. The North Bridge unfinished and broken down; ladies and gentlemen obliged to come to these mimic scenes through Leith Wynd, and other and still narrower alleys." Thence came failure; and Ross let the house to Foote, and subsequently to Digges, "a spendthrift gentleman of good connexions," for £500 a year.

At the end of four years, Ross was back at Covent Garden; but he had ceased to attract, and he ultimately fell into distress (the Edinburgh Theatre failing to be profitable to him), from which he was relieved by receiving annually from an anonymous donor the sum of £60. It was by mere accident that Ross discovered the gallant seaman, Barrington, to be his munificent friend; but what connection existed between the two men, I am not aware.

Such is the record of a player who entirely threw his chance away by his neglect. Possessing power, he wanted will, and was always looking to others for help; and, indeed, he often got it. He played George Barnwell with such effect that dissipated and felonious apprentices were turned from their evil ways; and young men given to philandering with Milwoods and to thoughts of killing their uncles, were frightened into a better state of things. One who was thus rescued used to send, anonymously, ten guineas yearly to Ross, with a suitable acknowledgment on his benefit night. "You have done more good by your acting," said Dr. Barrowby to him, "than many a parson by his preaching." The fact is, that Ross's Barnwell was a sermon which went home to the bosoms of the Athenians.[34 - Ross died suddenly in 1790 (2d edition).]