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

In this there is some injustice against Mrs. Centlivre, for whose name should be supplied that of Aphra Behn. Walpole judges more correctly of the comic writers of the seventeenth century, when he places Molière "Senor Moleiro," as Downes absurdly calls him, at the head of them all. "Who upon earth," he says, "has written such perfect comedies? for the 'Careless Husband' is but one; the 'Non-juror' was built on the 'Tartuffe,' and if the Man of Mode (Etherege) and Vanbrugh are excellent, they are too indelicate; and Congreve, who beat all for wit, is not always natural, still less, simple."

It has been said of Mrs. Oldfield, that she never troubled the peace of any lady at the head of a household; but I think she may have marred the expectations of some who desired to reach that eminence. She early captivated the heart of Mr. Maynwaring. He was a bachelor, rich, connected with the government, and a hard drinker, according to the prevailing fashion. He was Cymon subdued by Iphigenia. He loved the lady's refinement, and she kept his household as carefully as if she had been his wife, and presided at his table with a grace that charmed him. There was something of Beauty and the Beast in this connection, but the end of the fable was wanting; the animal was never converted to an Azor, and a marriage with Zemira was the one thing wanting.

When Maynwaring died, society almost looked upon her as an honest widow. Indeed, it had never rejected her. The standard of morals was low, and when the quasi widow accepted the proposal of General Churchill to place her at the head of his establishment, as she had been in that of Mr. Maynwaring, no one blamed her. Marriage, indeed, seems to have been thought of, and Queen Caroline, who did not at all disdain to stoop to little matters of gossip, one day remarked to Mrs. Oldfield, who had, I suppose, been reading to a court circle, "I hear, Mrs. Oldfield, that you and the General are married?" "Madam," said the actress, playing her very best, "the General keeps his own secrets!"

The two love passages in the life of Anne Oldfield were, in short, founded on sentiment and not on interest. The Duke of Bedford offered her more brilliant advantages than the General or the Squire; but the disinterested actress spurned them, and kept sisterhood with duchesses. She was to be seen on the terrace at Windsor, walking with the consorts of dukes, and with countesses, and wives of English barons, and the whole gay group might be heard calling one another by their Christian names. In later days, Kitty Clive called such fine folk "damaged quality;" and later still, the second Mrs. Barry did not value such companionship at a "pin's fee;" but Anne Oldfield drew from it many an illustration, which she transported to the stage.

During her last season, her sufferings were often so acute that when the applause was loudest, the poor actress turned aside to hide the tears forced from her by pain. She never gave up till the agony was too great to be endured, and then she refused to receive a salary which, according to her articles, was not to be discontinued in illness. She lingered a few months in her house in Lower Grosvenor Street; the details of her last moments, as given by Pope, mingle a little truth with much error and exaggeration: —

Betty was the ex-actress, Mrs. Saunders, who resided with Narcissa. She had quitted the stage in 1720, and, says Mr. Urban, "attended Mrs. Oldfield constantly, and did the office of priest to the last." Poor Narcissa, after death, was attired in a Holland night-dress, with tucker and double ruffles of Brussels lace, of which latter material she also wore a head-dress, and a pair of "new kid gloves." This, another writer calls being "buried in full dress ." The report seems to have been founded on Mrs. Oldfield's natural good taste in costume. Flavia, such is her name in the Tatler , "is ever well drest, and always the genteelest woman you meet; her clothes are so exactly fitted that they appear part of her person."

It was in the above described dress that the deceased actress received such honour as actress never received before, nor has ever received since. The lady lay in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, a distinction not unfrequently, indeed, conceded to persons of high rank and small merit, but which, nevertheless, seemed out of place in the case of Anne Oldfield; but had she been really a queen, the public could not have thronged more eagerly to the spectacle.

The solemn lying in state of an English actress in the Jerusalem Chamber, the sorrow of the public over their lost favourite, and the regret of friends in noble, or humble, but virtuous homes, where Mrs. Oldfield had been ever welcome, contrast strongly with the French sentiment towards French players. It has been already said, that as long as Clairon exercised the power, when she advanced to the footlights, to make the (then standing) pit recoil several feet, by the mere magic of her eyes, the pit, who enjoyed the terror as a luxury, flung crowns to her, and wept at the thought of losing her; but Clairon infirm was Clairon forgotten, and to a decaying actor or actress a French audience is the most merciless in the world. The brightest and best of them, as with us, died in the service of the public. Monfleury, Mondory, and Bricourt, died of apoplexy, brought on by excess of zeal. Molière, who fell in harness, was buried with less ceremony than some favourite dog. The charming Lecouvreur, that Oldfield of the French stage, whose beauty and intellect were the double charm which rendered theatrical France ecstatic, was hurriedly interred within a saw-pit. Bishops might be exceedingly interested in, and unepiscopally generous to, living actresses of wit and beauty, but the prelates smote them with a "Maranatha!" and an "Avaunt ye!" when dead. Even Bossuet would attend the theatre to learn grace and elocution from them and their brethren: but when he had profited by the instruction, he denounced them all as "children of the devil!" Louis XVIII., however, put an effectual check on the unseemly practice of treating as dead dogs the geniuses who had been idolised when living. When the priests of the Church of St. Roch closed its doors against the body of Rancourt, brought there for a prayer and a blessing, Paris rose against the insulters; and the King, moved by Christian charity, or dread of a Paris riot, sent his own chaplain to recite the prayer, give the benediction, and to show that an honest player was not a something less than a fellow-creature.

After the lying in state of Mrs. Oldfield, there was a funeral of as much ceremony as has been observed at the obsequies of many a queen. Among the supporters of the pall were Lord Hervey, Lord Delawarr, and Bubb Dodington, afterwards Lord Melcombe. The first used to ride abroad with Mrs. Oldfield, as Mrs. Delaney has recorded. Lord Delawarr was a soldier who became a great "beau," and went a philandering. His wife and the Countess of Burlington headed the Faustina party at the opera against the faction which supported Cuzzoni. There were anthems, and prayers, and sermon; and Dr. Parker, who officiated, remarked, when all was over, to a few particular friends, and with some equivocation, as it seems to me, that he "buried her very willingly, and with much satisfaction." Her sons Maynwaring and Churchill were present, and the contemporary notices say that she had no other children. Her friends were apt to express a different opinion; and Mrs. Delaney, in one of the very first passages in her Autobiography says: – "At six years old I was placed under the care of Mdlle. Puelle, a refugee of a very respectable character, and well qualified for her business. She undertook but twenty scholars at a time, among whom were Lady Catherine Knollys, daughter to the" (self-styled) "Earl of Banbury, and great aunt to the present Lord; Miss Halsey, daughter to a very considerable brewer, and afterwards married to Lord Temple, Earl of Cobham; Lady Jane Douglas, daughter of the Duke of Douglas, and Miss Dye Bertie, a daughter of Mrs. Oldfield the actress, who, after leaving school, was the pink of fashion in the beau monde , and married a nobleman." Whom did this mysterious Diana marry? 2 2 She married J. Cator. — Doran MS.