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

"Well, sir, Mr. Fleetwood ordered me a good supper, and some wine, and made me sleep at his house all night, to prevent any meeting. Well, sir, in the morning he told me, that I must, for his sake , make a little apology to him for what I had done. And so, sir, I, to oblige Mr. Fleetwood (for I loved the man), did, sir, make some apology to him; and the matter dropped."

Macklin's character has been described in exactly opposite colours, according to the bias of the friend or foe who affords the description. He is angel or fiend, rough or tender, monster, honest man or knave, – and so forth; but he was, of course, neither so bad as his foes nor so bright as his friends made him out to be. One thing is certain, that his judgment and his execution were excellent. In a very few tragic parts, he acted well; in comedy and farce, where villainy and humour were combined, he was admirable and original. Of characters which he played originally (and those were few), he rendered none celebrated, except Sir Archy, Sir Pertinax, and Murrough O'Doherty, in pieces of which he was the author. His other principal characters were Iago, Sir Francis Wronghead, Trappanti, Lovegold, Scrub, Peachum, Polonius, and some others in pieces now not familiar to us.

That Macklin was a "hard actor" there is no doubt; Churchill, who allows him no excellence, says he was affected, constrained, "dealt in half-formed sounds," violated nature, and that his features, which seemed to disdain each other, —

But "Cits and grave divines his praise proclaimed," and Macklin had a large number of admiring friends. In his private life, he had to bear many sorrows, and he bore them generally well, but one, in particular, with the silent anguish of a father who sees his son sinking fast to destruction, and glorying in the way which he is going.

Ten years before Macklin died, he lost his daughter. Miss Macklin was a pretty and modest person; respectable alike on and off the stage; artificially trained, but yet highly accomplished. Macklin had every reason to be proud of her, for everybody loved her for her gentleness and goodness. As a child, in 1742, she had played childish parts, and since 1750, those of the highest walk in tragedy and comedy, but against competition which was too strong for her. She was the original Irene, in "Barbarossa," and Clarissa, in "Lionel and Clarissa," and was very fond of acting parts in which the lady had to assume male attire. This fondness was the cause, in some measure, of her death; it led to her buckling her garter so tightly that a dangerous tumour formed in the inner part of the leg, near the knee. I do not fancy that Miss Macklin had ever heard of Mary of Burgundy, who suffered from a similar infirmity, but the actress was like the Duchess in this, – from motives of delicacy she would not allow a leg which she had liberally exhibited on the stage, to be examined by her own doctor. Ultimately, a severe operation became necessary. Miss Macklin bore it with courage, but it compelled her to leave the stage, and her strength gradually failing, she died in 1787, 17 17 Should be 1781. at the age of forty-eight, and I wish she had left some portion of her fortune to her celebrated but impoverished father.

Miss Macklin reminds me of Miss Barsanti, the original Lydia Languish, whose course on the London stage dates from 1777. 18 18 Her English playing ended in 1777, after which year she acted only in Ireland. The peculiarity of Miss Barsanti, – a clever imitator of English and Italian singers, – was the opposite of that which distinguished Miss Macklin. She had registered a vow that she would never assume male attire; nevertheless, she was once cast for Signor Arionelli, in the "Son-in-Law," a part originally played by Bannister. This was after her retirement from London, and when she was Mrs. Lisley, – playing in Dublin. The time of the play is 1779, but the actress, who might have worn a great coat, if she had been so minded, assumed – for a music-master of that period, in London – the oriental costume of a pre-Christian, or of no period, worn by Arbaces, in Artaxerxes !

Miss Barsanti was an honest woman who, on becoming Mrs. Lisley, wished to assume her husband's name, but that gentleman's family forbade what they had no right to prohibit. Her second husband's family was less particular, and in theatrical biographies, she is the Mrs. Daly, the wife of the active Irish manager, of that name; who is for ever memorable as being the only Irish manager who ever realised a fortune, and took it with him into retirement.

There remain to be noticed, before we pass to the Siddons period, several actresses, of higher importance than the above ladies, as well as actors, whose claims are only second to those of Macklin.

A dozen more of ladies, all of desert, and some of extraordinary merit, passed away from the stage during the latter portion of the last century. Mrs. Green, Hippisley's daughter, and Governor Hippisley's sister, – the original Mrs. Malaprop, and, but for Mrs. Clive, the first of petulant Abigails, finished in 1779 19 19 Her last appearance was 26th May 1780. a public career which began in 1730. 20 20 I cannot find any mention of her earlier than 1735. In the same year, 21 21 1780. but after a brief service of about eight years, Mason's Elfrida and Evelina, the voluptuous Mrs. Hartley, in her thirtieth year, went into a retirement which she enjoyed till 1824. She was "the most perfect beauty that was ever seen," – more perfect than "the Carrara," who was "the prettiest creature upon earth." Her beauty, however, was of feature, lacking expression, and though an impassioned, she was not an intelligent actress, unless her plunging her stage-wooers into mad love for her be a proof of it. No wonder, had Smith only not been married, that he grew temporarily insane about this young, graceful, and fair creature.

Then, from the London stage, at least, fell Mrs. Baddeley, at the end of the season, 1780-81. She was a pretty actress with a good voice, and so little love for Mr. Baddeley and so much for George Garrick that a duel came of it. The parties went out, to Hyde Park, on a November morning of 1770. Baddeley was stirred up to fight Davy's brother, by a Jewish friend, who, being an admirer of the lady, wanted her husband to shoot her lover! The two pale combatants fired anywhere but at each other, and then the lady rushed in, crying, "Spare him!" without indicating the individual! Whereupon, husband and friend took the fair one, each by a hand, and went to dinner; and the married couple soon after played together in "It's well it's no worse!"

But worse did come, and separation, and exposure, and Memoirs to brighten Mrs. Baddeley, which, like those of Mrs. Pilkington, only blackened her the more. She passed to country engagements, charming audiences for awhile with her Polly, Rosetta, Clarissa, and Imogen, till laudanum, cognac, paralysis, and small sustenance, made an end of her, when she had lost everything she could value, save her beauty.

The third departure was of as mad a creature as she, Miss Catley – the Irish songstress, all smiles and dimples, and roguish beauty; who loved, like Nell Gwyn, to loll about in the boxes, and call to authors that she was glad their play was damned; and to ladies, to stand up that she might look at them, and to display the fashion of her dress, which those ladies eagerly copied. Her "Tyburn top," which she wore in Macheath, set the mode for the hair for many a day; and to be Catley-fied was to be decked out becomingly.