"Their Majesties' Servants." Annals of the English Stage (Volume 3 of 3)Doran, Dr. (John)
History
"Their Majesties' Servants." Annals of the English Stage (Volume 3 of 3)
Doran, Dr. (John)
Actors -- Great Britain; Theater -- Great Britain -- History
A dozen more of ladies, all of desert, and some of extraordinary
merit, passed away from the stage during the latter portion of
the last century. Mrs. Green, Hippisley's daughter, and Governor
Hippisley's sister,--the original Mrs. Malaprop, and, but for Mrs.
Clive, the first of petulant Abigails, finished in 1779[19] a public
career which began in 1730.[20] In the same year,[21] but after a
brief service of about eight years, Mason's Elfrida and Evelina,
the voluptuous Mrs. Hartley, in her thirtieth year, went into a
retirement which she enjoyed till 1824. She was "the most perfect
beauty that was ever seen,"--more perfect than "the Carrara," who
was "the prettiest creature upon earth." Her beauty, however, was of
feature, lacking expression, and though an impassioned, she was not
an intelligent actress, unless her plunging her stage-wooers into mad
love for her be a proof of it. No wonder, had Smith only not been
married, that he grew temporarily insane about this young, graceful,
and fair creature.
Then, from the London stage, at least, fell Mrs. Baddeley, at the end
of the season, 1780-81. She was a pretty actress with a good voice,
and so little love for Mr. Baddeley and so much for George Garrick
that a duel came of it. The parties went out, to Hyde Park, on a
November morning of 1770. Baddeley was stirred up to fight Davy's
brother, by a Jewish friend, who, being an admirer of the lady,
wanted her husband to shoot her lover! The two pale combatants fired
anywhere but at each other, and then the lady rushed in, crying,
"Spare him!" without indicating the individual! Whereupon, husband
and friend took the fair one, each by a hand, and went to dinner; and
the married couple soon after played together in "It's well it's no
worse!"
But worse did come, and separation, and exposure, and _Memoirs_ to
brighten Mrs. Baddeley, which, like those of Mrs. Pilkington, only
blackened her the more. She passed to country engagements, charming
audiences for awhile with her Polly, Rosetta, Clarissa, and Imogen,
till laudanum, cognac, paralysis, and small sustenance, made an end
of her, when she had lost everything she could value, save her beauty.
The third departure was of as mad a creature as she, Miss Catley--the
Irish songstress, all smiles and dimples, and roguish beauty; who
loved, like Nell Gwyn, to loll about in the boxes, and call to
authors that she was glad their play was damned; and to ladies, to
stand up that she might look at them, and to display the fashion of
her dress, which those ladies eagerly copied. Her "Tyburn top," which
she wore in Macheath, set the mode for the hair for many a day; and
to be _Catley-fied_ was to be decked out becomingly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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