"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
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?
[Illustration: (Mrs. Abington)]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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