To manager after manager she trudged. Not one would find work for her. In all, she made nineteen applications. And she scored just precisely nineteen rank failures.
Finally, half starved and wholly discouraged, she succeeded in interesting the manager of the Covent Garden Theater. And he gave her, or sold her, the chance she sought—the chance to appear before a London audience.
Her first appearance on the metropolitan stage was all that was needed to prove her worth. At once she caught the public fancy. Soon she found herself the most popular actress in England.
An air of mingled sadness and gayety in her stage work, an audacity and fresh youthfulness—and the mystic charm—carried her straight to the front. At this period she touched nothing but comedy—at which she had no peer—and preferably played male roles. Masculine attire set forth her stunning figure, and she played devil-may-care, boyish parts as could no other woman.
One night, after the first act of "The Constant Couple," wherein, clad in small-clothes and hose, she was playing Sir Harry Wildair, Peg ran laughing and triumphant into the greenroom. There she chanced to find her bitterest friend and rival, Mistress Kitty Clive, a clever but somewhat homely actress. Said Peg in delight:
"They applauded me to the echoes! Faith, I believe half the men in the house thought I was really a boy."
"Perhaps," sneered envious Kitty. "But it is certain that at least half of them knew you weren't."
Peg stopped short in her gay laugh and eyed Kitty's plain visage quizzically.
"Mistress Clive," observed Peg, in irrelevant reflection, "did you ever stop to consider how much utterly useless modesty an ugly woman is responsible for unloading upon this poor world of ours?"
Kitty did not again cross swords with Peg. Indeed, after the first encounter, few people did.