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

This daughter is not mentioned in Mrs. Oldfield's will; but to the two sons Mrs. Oldfield bequeathed the bulk of a fortune which she had amassed more by her exertions than by the generosity of their respective fathers. She was liberal, too, in leaving memorials to numerous friends; less so in her bequests to old relations of her sempstress and coffee-house days. A very small annuity was Narcissa's parting gift to her mother, who long survived her.

In such wise went her money; but whither has the blood of Oldfield gone? When Winnifred, the dairymaid, married into the family of the Bickerstaffes, she is said to have spoilt their blood, while she mended their constitutions. The great actress herself was at least an honest man's daughter, a man of fair descent. Her son, Colonel Churchill, once, unconsciously, saved Sir Robert Walpole from assassination, through the latter riding home, from the House, in the Colonel's chariot instead of alone in his own. Unstable Churchill married a natural daughter of Sir Robert, and their daughter Mary married, in 1777, Charles Sloane, first Earl of Cadogan. The son of this Mary is the present Earl, the great grandson of charming Anne Oldfield. When Churchill and his wife were travelling in France, a Frenchman, knowing he was connected with poets or players, asked him if he was Churchill the famous poet. "I am not," said Mrs. Oldfield's son. "Ma foi!" rejoined the polite Frenchman, "so much the worse for you!"

I have seen many epitaphs to her memory, but there is not one which is so complete and beautiful as the following, which tells the reader that she lies amid great poets, not less worthy of praise than they, whose works she has illustrated and ennobled. It records the apt universality of her talent, which made her seem not made , but born for whatever she undertook. In tragedy, the glory of her form, the dignity of her countenance, the majesty of her walk, touched the rudest spectator. In comedy, her power, her graceful hilarity, her singular felicity, were so irresistible, that the eyes never wearied of gazing at her, nor the hands of applauding her.

I have said that her last original part was Sophonisba. Among the last words she uttered in it, when mortal illness was upon her, were these: —

These words were first spoken by her, on the last day of February 1730. On the 23rd of the following October she died, in her forty-seventh year. A week later, Dr. Parker "buried her very willingly, and with much satisfaction!"

Between the season of 1729-30, and that of 1733-34, great changes took place. It is correct to say, that the stage "declined;" but if we lose Mrs. Oldfield in the former period, we find some compensation at the beginning of the latter, by first meeting, in Fielding and Hippisley's booth, at Bartholomew and Southwark fairs, with one who was destined to enthral the town, – modest Mrs. Pritchard, playing Loveit, in a "Cure for Covetousness."

Meanwhile, Mrs. Porter reigned supreme; but the stage was deprived, for more than a year, of the presence of her whom Mrs. Oldfield loved to address as "mother," by an accident which dislocated her thigh. Even after her recovery, the tragedy queen was forced to walk the stage with a crutched stick, which, like a true artist, she turned to account in her action.

Of actors of eminence, the greatest whom the stage lost was Wilks, airy and graceful down to the last; – of him, who died in 1732, I will speak more fully presently. Death also carried off quaint, squeaking, little Norris, the excellent comic actor, popularly known as "Jubilee Dicky." After Norris went Boheme, the pillar of the Lincoln's Inn Fields, a dignified and accomplished tragedian, whose Lear was full of antique grandeur and pathos; – it was, perhaps, the only character in which the former young sailor's quarter-deck walk was not discernible. Colley Cibber, too, must be reckoned among the departed, since he retired from the stage, at the end of the season 1732-33, but occasionally returned to it. He was disheartened by the break-up in the old partnership, and the manifest close of a period of prosperity. Booth had sold half of his share in the patent to a rich and silly amateur actor – Highmore. Wilks's widow, who inherited her husband's share, was represented by attorney; Colley was uneasy at having to encounter new partners, and he ultimately sold his share to Highmore, for three thousand guineas.

While the stage failed in players, it was not upheld by the poets. The gentlemen of the inns of court hissed Charles Johnson's "Medea," and did not even applaud the satirical allusion contained in it to Pope. The town was weary of classical pieces. The "Eurydice" of Mallet – who had been gate-keeper at the Edinburgh High School, and had picked up learning enough to enable him to efficiently exercise the office of tutor in the Duke of Montrose's family – fared no better, 3 3 "Eurydice" was played about thirteen times, and was thought worthy of revival in 1759. despite Mrs. Porter. The piece was as hard and as dry as granite; but the author thought it had as much pathos as his ballad of "William and Margaret."

In the prologue, tragedy was especially recommended to the patronage of ladies, because therein the character of women is exalted; while in the comedies of the day it was debased. But the epilogue, spoken by Miss Robinson, in boy's clothes – "born for this dapper age – pert, short, and clever" – showed that the poet did not much care for the female character.

Jeffreys' "Merope" had no better success. His cousins of the Chandos family may have laughed at the young collegian's bathos; but on the second night there was not audience enough to make a laugh comfortable; and the curtain did not rise. 4 4 This is the story told in the Biographia Dramatica , but Genest says "Merope" was acted three times. Critics complained that all tragic action on our stage turned on love; and Jeffreys contrived to make three couple of nymphs and swains sigh or swear in this story of mother and son! "Who could believe," says Voltaire, "that love could have been introduced into such a story? But, since the times of Charles II., love has taken possession of the English stage; and one must acknowledge that no nation in the world has painted that passion so badly." But Voltaire, you will remember, also said that Shakspeare was "a savage!"

A Gloucestershire squire, named Tracy, tried his hand on "Periander," and failed, though he was guiltless of a false quantity; unlike Addison's learned friend, Frowde, who tripped in his penultimates, with the alacrity of Hughes!