Kindly arms bore her from the stage she was never more to tread. Next day, all London knew that Mistress Peg Woffington had been stricken with paralysis and that from the neck down she was dead. Only the keen-witted brain lived, to realize the wreck of the beautiful body.
Sorrowing crowds blocked the street in front of her house for days, momentarily expecting news of her death. But Peg did not die. She did not die until three tedious years had passed.
Little by little she partly regained the use of her body. But she was feeble. Her rich beauty was wiped out as an acid-soaked sponge might efface a portrait.
Out of the gay life that had been the breath of her nostrils, feeble as an old woman, plain of face and halting of speech—she nevertheless retained enough of the wondrous ancient charm to enslave another adorer.
The newest—and last—wooer was Colonel Cæsar, of the Guards. On learning that Peg in her stricken state had infatuated the gallant colonel, a coffeehouse wit sized up the situation by cruelly quoting:
"Aut Cæsar, aut nullus."
It was a vile thing to say. And Cæsar hunted up the humorist, so runs the story, and thrashed him within an inch of his life.
Some time later, Tate Wilkinson, an "impersonator" of that era—yes, there were pests on the earth, even in those days—was scheduled to give a series of humorous impersonations of famous actors and actresses at the Drury Lane; then managed and partly owned by David Garrick.
Peg feared she might be held up to ridicule by the mimicry. The fear preyed on her mind, to a pathetic extent. Colonel Cæsar went to the theater and there informed Garrick that if he permitted Wilkinson to impersonate Mistress Woffington, the colonel would first give him a public caning and would then call him out.
The impersonation of Peg had been mysteriously lost from the imitator's repertoire when the performance was given.