The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield Part 20

"Lord T. Name one.

"Lady T. Fifty, if you please. To begin then, in the morning--a married women may have men at her toilet, invite them to dinner, appoint them a party in a stage box at the play; engross the conversation there, call 'em by their Christian names; talk louder than the players;--from thence jaunt into the city--take a frolicksome supper at an India house--perhaps, in her _gaiete de coeur_, toast a pretty fellow--then clatter again to this end of the town, break with the morning into an a.s.sembly, crowd to the hazard table, throw a familiar levant upon some sharp lurching man of quality, and if he demands his money, turn it off with a loud laugh, and cry--you'll owe it to him, to vex him! ha! ha!

"Lord T. [_Aside_]. Prodigious!"

It is related that so magnificently did Oldfield describe the pleasures of a woman of fashion that the audience echoed, with a different meaning, Lord Townley's comment, and showered her with plaudits. "Prodigious," indeed, must have been her acting.

Nance was even more captivating, as the comedy progressed, and nowhere did she shine more brilliantly, it may be supposed, than in the following scene:

"Lady Townley. Well! look you, my lord; I can bear it no longer!

Nothing still but about my faults, my faults! An agreeable subject truly!

"Lord T. Why, madam, if you won't hear of them, how can I ever hope to see you mend them?

"Lady T. Why, I don't intend to mend them--I can't mend them--you know I have try'd to do it an hundred times, and--it hurts me so--I can't bear it!

"Lord T. And I, madam, can't bear this daily licentious abuse of your time and character.

"Lady T. Abuse! astonishing! when the universe knows, I am never better company than when I am doing what I have a mind to! But to see this world! that men can never get over that silly spirit of contradiction--why, but last Thursday, now--there you wisely amended one of my faults, as you call them--you insisted upon my not going to the masquerade--and pray, what was the consequence? Was not I as cross as the Devil, all the night after? Was not I forc'd to get company at home? And was it not almost three o'clock in the morning before I was able to come to myself again? And then the fault is not mended neither--for next time I shall only have twice the inclination to go: so that all this mending and mending, you see, is but darning an old ruffle, to make it worse than it was before.

"Lord T. Well, the manner of women's living, of late, is insupportable, and one way or other--

"Lady T. It's to be mended, I suppose! Why, so it may, but then, my dear lord, you must give one time--and when things are at worst, you know, they may mend themselves! Ha! ha!

"Lord T. Madam, I am not in a humour, now, to trifle.

"Lady T. Why, then, my lord, one word of fair argument--to talk with you, your own way now--you complain of my late hours, and I of your early ones--so far we are even, you'll allow--but pray which gives us the best figure, in the eye of the polite world, my active, spirited three in the morning, or your dull, drowsy, eleven at night? Now, I think, one has the air of a woman of quality, and t'other of a plodding mechanic, that goes to bed betimes, that he may rise early, to open his shop--faugh!

"LORD T. Fy, fy, madam! is this your way of reasoning? 'Tis time to wake you then. 'Tis not your ill hours alone that disturb me, but as often the ill company that occasion those ill hours.

"LADY T. Sure I don't understand you now, my lord; what ill company do I keep?

"LORD T. Why, at best, women that lose their money, and men that win it! or, perhaps, men that are voluntary bubbles at one game, in hopes a lady will give them fair play at another.[A] Then that unavoidable mixture with known rakes, conceal'd thieves, and sharpers in embroidery--or what, to me, is still more shocking, that herd of familiar chattering, crop-ear'd c.o.xcombs, who are so often like monkeys, there would be no knowing them asunder, but that their tails hang from their head, and the monkey's grows where it should do.

[Footnote A: Women gambled as pa.s.sionately as did the men in the early part of the eighteenth century. Ashton quotes the following from the "Gaming Lady": "She's a profuse lady, tho' of a miserly temper, whose covetous disposition is the very cause of her extravagancy; for the desire of success wheedles her ladyship to play, and the incident charges and disappointments that attend it make her as expensive to her husband as his coach and six horses. When an unfortunate night has happen'd to empty her cabinet, she has many shifts to replenish her pockets. Her jewels are carry'd privately into Lombard street, and fortune is to be tempted the next night with another sum, borrowed of my lady's goldsmith at the extortion of a p.a.w.nbroker; and if that fails, then she sells off her wardrobe, to the great grief of her maids; stretches her credit amongst those she deals with, or makes her waiting woman dive into the bottom of her trunk, and lug out her green net purse full of old Jacobuses, in hopes to recover her losses by a turn of fortune, that she may conceal her bad luck from the knowledge of her husband."]

"Lady T. And a husband must give eminent proof of his sense that thinks their powder puffs dangerous!

"Lord T. Their being fools, madam, is not always the husband's security; or, if it were, fortune sometimes gives them advantages might make a thinking woman tremble.

"Lady T. What do you mean?

"Lord T. That women sometimes lose more than they are able to pay; and, if a creditor be a little pressing, the lady may be reduced to try if, instead of gold, the gentleman will accept of a trinket.

"Lady T. My lord, you grow scurrilous; you'll make me hate you. I'll have you to know I keep company with the politest people in town, and the a.s.semblies I frequent are full of such.

"Lord T. So are the churches--now and then.

"Lady T. My friends frequent them, too, as well as the a.s.semblies.

"Lord T. Yes; and would do it oftener if a groom of the chambers there were allowed to furnish cards to the company.

"Lady T. I see what you drive at all this while. You would lay an imputation on my fame to cover your own avarice! I might take any pleasures, I find, that were not expensive.

"Lord T. Have a care, madam; don't let me think you only value your chast.i.ty to make me reproachable for not indulging you in everything else that's vicious. I, madam, have a reputation, too, to guard that's dear to me as yours. The follies of an ungoverned wife may make the wisest man uneasy; but 'tis his own fault if ever they make him contemptible.

"Lady T. My lord, you make a woman mad!

"Lord T. You'd make a man a fool.

"Lady T. If heaven has made you otherwise, that won't be in my power.

"Lord T. Whatever may be in your inclination, madam, I'll prevent you making me a beggar, at least.

"Lady T. A beggar! Croesus, I'm out of patience. I won't come home till four to-morrow morning.

"Lord T. That may be, madam; but I'll order the doors to be locked at twelve.

"Lady T. Then I won't come home till to-morrow night.

"Lord T. Then, madam, you shall never come home again." [_Exit_ Lord Townley.

In the end, of course, Lady Townley is converted to the pleasures of domesticity, and ends the comedy by saying:

"So visible the bliss, so plain the way, How was it possible my sense could stray?

But now, a convert to this truth I come, That married happiness is never found from home."

Perhaps when Oldfield delivered these virtuous lines, she thought to herself that happiness, even of the unmarried kind, was never very far away from home. But she forgot sentiment when she came back to give the breezy epilogue:

"Methinks I hear some powder'd critics say d.a.m.n it, this wife reform'd has spoil'd the play!

The c.o.xcombs should have drawn her more in fashion, Have gratify'd her softer inclination, Have tipt her a gallant, and clinch'd the provocation.

But there our bard stops short: for 'twere uncivil T'have made a modern belle all o'er a devil!

He hop'd in honor of the s.e.x, the age Would bear one mended woman--on the stage."

Continuing, after diverse moral reflections, Nance made this appeal to her hearers:

"You, you then, ladies, whose unquestion'd lives Give you the foremost fame of happy wives, Protect, for its attempt, this helpless play; Nor leave it to the vulgar taste a prey; Appear the frequent champion of its cause, Direct the crowd, and give yourselves applause."

"Zounds, madam," cries a beau who is ogling a woman of quality in a stage box, "they say Anne Oldfield will never see forty-two again, but I'll warrant you, madam, she looks not a day older than yourself." And the woman of quality, who is over forty, bows at the compliment, as well she may. Bellchambers records that Lady Townley was universally regarded as Oldfield's _ne plus ultra_ in acting. "She slided so gracefully into the foibles, and displayed so humorously the excesses, of a fine woman too sensible of her charms, too confident in her strength, and led away by her pleasures, that no succeeding Lady Townley arrived at her many distinguished excellencies in the character."[A] And the writer goes on to say that "by being a welcome and constant visitor to families of distinction, Mrs. Oldfield acquired a graceful carriage in representing women of high rank, and expressed their sentiments in a manner so easy, natural, and flowing, that they appeared to be of her own genuine utterance." Pray, sir, what is there so remarkable about that? Had not Anne as gentle blood as that which coursed through the veins of many a lady of rank?

[Footnote A: The Lady Townleys of later years included Mrs. Spranger Barry and the imposing Mistress Yates.]

But the triumphs of the first Lady Townley were fast drawing to a close; the curtain would soon be rung down for ever upon that radiant face, with its angelic smile and dancing eyes, and the stage, whether Drury Lane or mother earth would see her no more. Ill health began to follow in her once careless path, and there were times when the duties of acting seemed almost unbearable. Yet she was a brave woman, and kept a merry front to the audience, although she was obliged, on occasions, to turn away from the house, that it might not see the tears of pain flowing down her cheek. Here was a combination of comedy and tragedy, with a vengeance!

Still Nance went on, delighting the town as of yore, and putting into her last original role, that of Sophonisba, a fire which breathed not of sickness nor failing powers. At last there came a day when she played her final part, and left Drury Lane only to be driven tenderly home to her death-bed. Think of the pathos of this last performance, this giving up of all that was most alluring in life, and let none of us poor moderns presume to a.n.a.lyse the heart-broken woman's feelings as she said good-bye to the dear old theatre. Anne worshipped art, and the public, in turn, worshipped her; she had acted her many parts, laughed, cried, sinned, and waxed exceeding happy--and now she was to be cast out into the darkness. Must she not have shivered when she entered her house in Lower Grosvenor Street for the last time? Poor lovable creature! There could be for her now neither lights, nor laughter, nor applause; all would be gloom and weariness to the end.

During the weeks which followed, the invalid received the untiring attentions of Mistress Saunders, who once upon a time played bouncing chambermaids, but who had, for ten years past, acted as a feminine _valet de chambre_ and general factotum for Mrs. Oldfield. And if ever she played well, 'twas in thus ministering to the dying wants of one who in health had been ever helpful and generous. Pope, who hated the great comedienne in his petty, spiteful way, has immortalised the intimacy of mistress and handmaiden in these lines: