Peg Woffington Part 4

"Monstrous sensible woman, though!" whispered Quin to Clive.

"Hey, sir! what do you say, sir? for I'm a little deaf." (Not very to praise, it seems.)

"That your judgment, madam, is equal to the reputation of your talent."

The words were hardly spoken before the old lady rose upright as a tower. She then made an oblique preliminary sweep, and came down with such a courtesy as the young had never seen.

James Quin, not to disgrace his generation, attempted a corresponding bow, for which his figure and apoplectic tendency rendered him unfit; and while he was transacting it, the graceful Cibber stepped gravely up, and looked down and up the process with his gla.s.s, like a naturalist inspecting some strange capriccio of an orang-outang. The gymnastics of courtesy ended without back-falls--Cibber lowered his tone.

"You are right, Bracy. It is nonsense denying the young fellow's talent; but his Oth.e.l.lo, now, Bracy! be just--his Oth.e.l.lo!"

"Oh, dear! oh, dear!" cried she; "I thought it was Desdemona's little black boy come in without the tea-kettle."

Quin laughed uproariously.

"It made me laugh a deal more than Mr. Quin's Falstaff. Oh, dear! oh, dear!"

"Falstaff, indeed! Snuff!" In the tone of a trumpet.

Quin secretly revoked his good opinion of this woman's sense.

"Madam," said the page, timidly, "if you would but favor us with a specimen of the old style--"

"Well, child, why not? Only what makes you mumble like that? but they all do it now, I see. Bless my soul! our words used to come out like brandy-cherries; but now a sentence is like raspberry-jam, on the stage and off."

Cibber chuckled.

"And why don't you men carry yourself like Cibber here?"

"Don't press that question," said Colley dryly.

"A monstrous poor actor, though," said the merciless old woman, in a mock aside to the others; "only twenty s.h.i.+llings a week for half his life;" and her shoulders went up to her ears--then she fell into a half reverie. "Yes, we were distinct," said she; "but I must own, children, we were slow. Once, in the midst of a beautiful tirade, my lover went to sleep, and fell against me. A mighty pretty epigram, twenty lines, was writ on't by one of my gallants. Have ye as many of them as we used?"

"In that respect," said the page, "we are not behind our great-grandmothers."

"I call that pert," said Mrs. Bracegirdle, with the air of one drawing scientific distinctions. "Now, is that a boy or a lady that spoke to me last?"

"By its dress, I should say a boy," said Cibber, with his gla.s.s; "by its a.s.surance, a lady!"

"There's one clever woman among ye; Peg something, plays Lothario, Lady Betty Modish, and what not?"

"What! admire Woffington?" screamed Mrs. Clive; "why, she is the greatest gabbler on the stage."

"I don't care," was the reply, "there's nature about the jade. Don't contradict me," added she, with sudden fury; "a parcel of children."

"No, madam," said Clive humbly. "Mr. Cibber, will you try and prevail on Mrs. Bracegirdle to favor us with a recitation?"

Cibber handed his cane with pomp to a small actor. Bracegirdle did the same; and, striking the att.i.tudes that had pa.s.sed for heroic in their day, they declaimed out of the "Rival Queens" two or three tirades, which I graciously spare the reader of this tale. Their elocution was neat and silvery; but not one bit like the way people speak in streets, palaces, fields, roads and rooms. They had not made the grand discovery, which Mr. A. Wigan on the stage, and every man of sense off it, has made in our day and nation; namely, that the stage is a representation, not of stage, but of life; and that an actor ought to speak and act in imitation of human beings, not of speaking machines that have run and creaked in a stage groove, with their eyes shut upon the world at large, upon nature, upon truth, upon man, upon woman and upon child.

"This is slow," cried Cibber; "let us show these young people how ladies and gentlemen moved fifty years ago, _dansons."_

A fiddler was caught, a beautiful slow minuet played, and a bit of "solemn dancing" done. Certainly it was not gay, but it must be owned it was beautiful; it was the dance of kings, the poetry of the courtly saloon.

The retired actress, however, had frisker notions left in her. "This is slow," cried she, and bade the fiddler play, "The wind that shakes the barley," an ancient jig tune; this she danced to in a style that utterly astounded the spectators.

She showed them what fun was; her feet and her stick were all echoes to the mad strain; out went her heel behind, and, returning, drove her four yards forward. She made unaccountable slants, and cut them all over in turn if they did not jump for it. Roars of inextinguishable laughter arose, it would have made an oyster merry. Suddenly she stopped, and put her hands to her sides, and soon after she gave a vehement cry of pain.

The laughter ceased.

She gave another cry of such agony that they were all round her in a moment.

"Oh, help me, ladies," screamed the poor woman, in tones as feminine as they were heart-rending and piteous. "Oh, my back! my loins! I suffer, gentlemen," said the poor thing, faintly.

What was to be done? Mr. Vane offered his penknife to cut her laces.

"You shall cut my head off sooner," cried she, with sudden energy.

"Don't pity me," said she, sadly, "I don't deserve it;" then, lifting her eyes, she exclaimed, with a sad air of self-reproach: "O vanity! do you never leave a woman?"

"Nay, madam!" whimpered the page, who was a good-hearted girl; "'twas your great complaisance for us, not vanity. Oh! oh! oh!" and she began to blubber, to make matters better.

"No, my children," said the old lady, "'twas vanity. I wanted to show you what an old 'oman could do; and I have humiliated myself, trying to outs.h.i.+ne younger folk. I am justly humiliated, as you see;" and she began to cry a little.

"This is very painful," said Cibber.

Mrs. Bracegirdle now raised her eyes (they had set her in a chair), and looking sweetly, tenderly and earnestly on her old companion, she said to him, slowly, gently, but impressively "Colley, at threescore years and ten this was ill done of us! You and I are here now--for what? to cheer the young up the hill we mounted years ago. And, old friend, if we detract from them we discourage them. A great sin in the old!"

"Every dog his day."

"We have had ours." Here she smiled, then, laying her hand tenderly in the old man's, she added, with calm solemnity: "And now we must go quietly toward our rest, and strut and fret no more the few last minutes of life's fleeting hour."

How tame my cacotype of these words compared with what they were. I am ashamed of them and myself, and the human craft of writing, which, though commoner far, is so miserably behind the G.o.dlike art of speech: _"Si ipsam audivisses!"_

These ink scratches, which, in the imperfection of language, we have called words, till the unthinking actually dream they are words, but which are the shadows of the corpses of words; these word-shadows then were living powers on her lips, and subdued, as eloquence always does, every heart within reach of the imperial tongue.

The young loved her, and the old man, softened and vanquished, and mindful of his failing life, was silent, and pressed his handkerchief to his eyes a moment; then he said:

"No, Bracy, no. Be composed, I pray you. She is right. Young people, forgive me that I love the dead too well, and the days when I was what you are now. Drat the woman," continued he, half ashamed of his emotion; "she makes us laugh, and makes us cry, just as she used."

"What does he say, young woman?" said the old lady, dryly, to Mrs.

Clive.

"He says you make us laugh, and make us cry, madam; and so you do me, I'm sure."

"And that's Peg Woffington's notion of an actress! Better it, Cibber and Bracegirdle, if you can," said the other, rising up like lightning.

She then threw Colley Cibber a note, and walked coolly and rapidly out of the room, without looking once behind her.

The rest stood transfixed, looking at one another, and at the empty chair. Then Cibber opened and read the note aloud. It was from Mrs.

Bracegirdle: "Playing at tric-trac; so can't play the fool in your green-room to-night. B."