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

Meanwhile, she kept a position on the stage, in the very front rank, disputing pre-eminence with the best there, and achieving it in some things; for this perilous charmer was unequalled in her day for the expression of unbounded and rapturous love. Her looks glowing with the passion to which she gave expression, doubled the effect; and whether she gazed at a lover or rested her head on the bosom of her lord, nothing more tender or subduing was ever seen, save in Mrs. Cibber. She was so beautiful, had eyes of such soft and loving blue, was so extraordinarily fair, and was altogether so irresistible a sorceress, that Mrs. Bellamy was universally loved as a charming creature, and admired as an excellent actress; and when she played some poor lady distraught through affection, the stoutest hearts under embroidered or broad-cloth waistcoats, crumbled away, often into inconceivable mountains of gold-dust.

She laughed, and scattered as fast as they piled it, and in the gorgeous extravagance of her life began to lose her powers as an actress. She had once almost shared the throne assumed by Mrs. Cibber, but she wanted the sustained zeal and anxious study of that lady, and cared not, as Mrs. Cibber did, for one quiet abiding home, by whomsoever shared, but sighed for change, had it, and suffered for it. When her powers began to decay, her admirers of all schools deplored the fact. In tragedy, natural as she was in feeling, she belonged to the old days of intoned cadences; and the old and the rising school mourned over her, yet both were compelled to avow that only in the ecstasy of love was Mrs. Bellamy equal to the Cibber, and in that Mrs. Cibber, when acting with Barry, in the younger days of both, was often George Anne's superior.

From reigning it like a queen on and off the stage, – imperious and lovely, and betraying everywhere, – to the figure of a poor, bailiff-persecuted, famishing wretch, stealing down the muddy steps of old Westminster Bridge to drown herself in the Thames, how wide are the extremes! But in both positions we find the original Volumnia of Thomson, the Erixine of Dr. Young, and the Cleone, to whom Dodsley owed the success of his heart-rending tragedy. To the last, she was as unfortunate as she had been reckless. Two old lovers, one of whom was Woodward, bequeathed legacies to her, which she never received. Those sums seemed as life to her; but, in the days of her pride and her power, and wicked but transcendent beauty, she would have scorned them as mere pin-money; and so she grew acquainted with gaunt misery, till some friends weary, perhaps, of sustaining the burthen she imposed upon them, induced the managers to give her a farewell benefit, in 1784, 24 24 The benefit took place on 24th May 1785. on which occasion Mrs. Yates returned to the stage to play for her the Duchess, in "Braganza." More than forty years before, the brilliant little sylph, Miss Bellamy, had floated on to the same Covent Garden stage, confident in both intellectual and material charms. Now, the middle-aged woman, still older through fierce impatience at her fall, through want, misery, hopelessness, everything but remorse, had not nerve enough to go on and utter a few words of farewell. These were spoken for her by Miss Farren, before the curtain, which ascended at the words, —

and discovered the once beautiful and happy syren, a terrified, old-looking woman, lying, powerless to rise, in an arm-chair. But the whole house – some out of respect for the erst charmer, others out of curiosity to behold a woman of such fame on and off the stage – rose to greet her. George Anne, urged by Miss Catley, bent forward, murmured a few indistinct words, and, falling back again, the curtain descended, for the last time, between the public and the Fallen Angel of the stage.

Half-a-dozen minor lights are extinguished before we come to a name, a desert, and a fortune, more brilliant and lasting than that of George Anne Bellamy, – the name, merit, and fortune of Miss Farren. Mrs. Wilson, the original Betty Hint, in the "Man of the World," is not now remembered either for her genius or her errors. Mrs. Belfille made but one appearance on the London stage, as Belinda, in "All in the Wrong." She wanted animation and humour, but was distinguished for the splendour of her stage wardrobe, which was all her own. She joined Whitlock and Austin's company in the north. Whitlock married Mrs. Siddons' sister Elizabeth, and took her to America, where her acting drew rather the admiration than the tears of the Indians. Mrs. Belfille and Mrs. Whitlock were together in the company named above. On the back of one of their bills I find a MS. note made by Austin, in which he says that Mrs. Belfille was an elegant actress, very fashionable, and genteel in dress and manner; and, he adds, "Mrs. Whitlock could not keep her temper while Mrs. Belfille was with me, in Newcastle, Chester, &c."

A year later, in 1789, the charming Bacchante, Mrs. Beresford, Goldsmith's Miss Richland and Miss Hardcastle, and Sheridan's Julia, in the "Rivals," left the London stage for Edinburgh, where, says Jackson, "her Lady Racket will be remembered as long as one of her audience remains alive."

Pretty Mrs. Wells, famous for her imitations, now disappears. She was O'Keefe's Cowslip. She was the Jewish gentleman, Mr. Sumbell's, wife, which he denied; and she so far rivalled Mrs. Siddons, that, in "Isabella," as it was the fashion for the house to shriek when the actress shrieked, so, when Mrs. Wells shrieked, her friends shrieked louder than those of Mrs. Siddons', and, therefore , thought Cowslip was the greater tragedian of the two. Then, the first of the Miss Bruntons, the Louisa Courtney of Reynold's "Dramatist," finished her seventh and last season, in London, in 1792, as the wife of Della Cruscan Merry. She began as an expected rival of Mrs. Siddons, but London did not confirm the testimony of Bath. Three other actresses passed away before Miss Farren: mad Hannah Brand, who was a sort of female Mossop; Mrs. Esten (who tried to disturb Mrs. Siddons, Mrs. Jordan, and Miss Farren, but who, failing, settled in the north, and very much disturbed the heart and the purse of the Duke of Hamilton), and Mrs. Webb, the original Mrs. Cheshire to the above Cowslip; than whom actress of more weight never made the boards groan, and who turned her corpulence to account by playing Falstaff.

The first glimpse to be caught of Miss Farren is as picturesque as can well be imagined. Her father, once a Cork surgeon but now manager of a strolling company, is in the lock-up of the town of Salisbury; he fell into durance through an unconscious infringement of the borough law. The story is told, at length, in my Knights and their Days . On a wintry morning, a little girl carries him a bowl of hot milk, for breakfast, and she is helped over the ice to the lock-up window by a sympathising lad. The nymph is Miss Farren, afterwards Countess of Derby; the boy is the very happy beginning of Chief Justice Burroughs.

The incident occurred in 1769. Three years later, Elizabeth was playing Columbine at Wakefield. She could sing as well as she could dance, gracefully; and, out of very love for the beautiful girl, Younger brought her out, at Liverpool, where her maternal grandfather had been a brewer of repute and good fortune, and where his grand-daughter proved such a Rosetta, that more than half the young fellows were more deeply in love with her than the paternal Younger himself.

After five years' training, the now radiant girl, glowing with beauty and intelligence, first charmed a London audience, on June the 9th, 1777, by appearing at the Haymarket, as Miss Hardcastle; Edwin making his appearance on the same night, as Old Hardcastle. In that first year of London probation, her Miss Hardcastle was a great success; the town was ecstatic at that and her Maria, in the "Citizen," was rapt at her Rosetta, rendered hilarious by her Miss Tittup, and rarely charmed by her playfulness and dignity, as Rosara (Rosina), in the "Barber of Seville." Of this character she was the original representative. Colman omitted the scene in which the Count was disguised as a tipsy dragoon, on the ground of its being injurious to morality! The same Colman thought the Fool, in "Lear," too gross for a London audience.