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

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 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."

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      1

      Vol. ii., pp. 398-406.

      2

      "One of the most capital poems in the English language" is what Gray is reported to have said.

      3

      Produced 8th May 1777.

      4

      Should be 1755. The "Chinese Festival" was produced 8th November 1755.

      5

      Probably a misprint for "Ten nights later," October 1 and October 11 being the dates in question.

1

Vol. ii., pp. 398-406.

2

"One of the most capital poems in the English language" is what Gray is reported to have said.

3

Produced 8th May 1777.

4

Should be 1755. The "Chinese Festival" was produced 8th November 1755.

5

Probably a misprint for "Ten nights later," October 1 and October 11 being the dates in question.

6

Should be 15th May.

7

See the London Chronicle, 9th October 1783, for the account of this visit.

8

Dr. Doran omits "this raised a prodigious and continued hiss, Harlequin all the while suspended in the air."

9

It is quite apocryphal that Macklin was two months old when his father was killed at the Battle of the Boyne. When he was in full possession of his faculties he said he was born in November 1699. As he died in 1797 he had accomplished ninety-seven years, the age stated on his coffin-lid, and was in his ninety-eighth year. —Doran MS.

Dr. Doran no doubt means that Macklin's father was not killed at the Battle of the Boyne.

10

14th of February (2d edition).

11

Macklin does not seem to have been at Covent Garden in 1754. He had a farewell benefit at Drury Lane, 20th December 1753, after which he opened his tavern.

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