Dorothy was the most self-reliant of the family, for at an early age she made her way to Dublin, and under the name of Miss Francis, played everything, from sprightly girls to tragedy queens. As she produced little or no effect, she crossed the Channel to Tate Wilkinson, who inquired what she played,--tragedy, comedy, high or low, opera or farce? "I play them all," said the young lady,--and accordingly she came out as Calista, in the "Fair Penitent;" and Lucy, in the "Virgin Unmasked."[92] Previously to this, Wilkinson, addressing her as Miss Francis, was interrupted by her,--"My name," she said, "is Mrs. Jordan,"--her Irish manager had called her flight over the Channel "crossing _Jordan_," and she took the name with the matronly prefix. Wilkinson looked at her, and saw no reason why she should not.[93] Three years after, she was acting some solemn part, at York, when Gentleman Smith saw her, and forthwith recommended her to the managers of Drury, as a good _second_ to Mrs. Siddons; and in that character she was engaged. But Dorothy Jordan was not going to play second to anybody; she resolved to be first in comedy, and came out in 1785, as the heroine of the "Country Girl." Her success raised her from four to eight, and then twelve pounds a week. Her next character was among her best; namely, Viola; in which the buoyant spirit oppressed by love and grief was finally rendered. Equal to it was her Hypolita. Rosalind, also one of her great achievements, she did not play till the next season; and Lady Contest ("Wedding Day"), which was born with, and which died with her, she did not create till the season of 1795-96.[94] When she first appeared in London, she was in her twenty-fourth year. Just previous to the commencement of the Drury Lane season of 1789-90, the season in which she added Polly Honeycombe, Laetitia Hardy, and Lydia Languish, to her parts; and created Little Pickle, in the "Spoiled Child," I find indications of another condition which she had reached. On the 4th of September 1789, Walpole writes from Strawberry Hill to the Miss Berrys:--"The Duke of Clarence has taken Mr. Henry Hobart's house (Richmond), point blank over against Mr. Cambridge's, which will make the good woman of that mansion cross herself piteously, and stretch the throat of the blatant beast at Sudbrook (Lady Greenwich) and of all the other pious matrons _à la ronde_; for his royal highness, to divert lonesomeness, has brought with him ----, who being still more averse to solitude, declares that any tempter would make even Paradise more agreeable than a constant _tête à tête_." The Duke's companion is not named; but Mrs. Jordan is supposed to be alluded to. But in September 1791 Walpole writes to the same ladies: "Do you know that Mrs. Jordan is acknowledged to be Mrs. Ford?" They could not know it, for Ford (the magistrate) never married her, though he kept household with her, where all the signs of matrimony at least were abundant.