“Lizzy!” cried the horseman, “you shall have such a house at Chester, as the old town has not seen since the night Garrick was here, and played Richard and Lord Chalkstone.”
The equestrian was Mr. Burroughs, then in training for the bar, and as willing to help Miss Farren now as he was to aid her and her bowl of milk across the market-place at Salisbury. The incipient barrister kept his word. The Chester theatre was crammed to the ceiling; and, as Lizzy said, Mr. Burroughs was her Christmas angel, the thought of whom was always associated in her mind with plumbs, currants, holly——
“And mistletoe,” said the budding counsellor, with a look at which both laughed merrily and honestly.
On the Christmas eve of 1776, Miss Farren was seated in Colman’s parlor in London, looking at him while he read two letters of introduction; one from Burroughs, the other from Younger; and both in high praise of the young bearer, for whom they were especially written. My limits will only allow me to say that Lizzy was engaged for the next summer-season at the Haymarket, where she appeared on June 9, 1777, in “She Stoops to Conquer.” She was Miss Hardcastle, and Edwin made his first appearance in London with her, in the same piece. Colman would have brought out Henderson too, if he could have managed it. That dignified gentleman, however, insisted on reserving his début for Shylock, on the 11th of the same month. And what a joyous season did Lizzy make of it for our then youthful grandfathers. How they admired her double talent in Miss Hardcastle! How ecstatic were they with her Maria, in the “Citizen!” How ravishedly did they listen to her Rosetta! How they laughed at her Miss Tittup, in “Bon Ton!” and how they extolled her playfulness and dignity as Rosina, of which she was the original representative, in the “Barber of Seville!” It may be remarked that Colman omitted the most comic scene in the piece, that wherein the Count is disguised as a drunken trooper—as injurious to morality!
When, in the following year, she played Lady Townley, she was declared the first, and she was then almost the youngest of living actresses. And when she joined the Drury Lane company in the succeeding season, the principal parts were divided between herself, Miss Walpole, Miss P. Hopkins, and Perdita Robinson. Not one of this body was then quite twenty years of age! Is not this a case wherein to exclaim—
“O mihi præteritos referat si Jupiter annos?”
Just twenty years did she adorn our stage; ultimately taking leave of it at Drury Lane, in April, 1797, in the character of Lady Teazle. Before that time, however, she had been prominent in the Christmas private plays at the Duke of Richmond’s, in which the Earl of Derby, Lord Henry Fitzgerald, and the Honorable Mrs. Dormer acted with her; and that rising barrister, Mr. Burroughs, looking constantly at the judicial bench as his own proper stage, was among the most admiring of the audience. It was there that was formed that attachment which ultimately made of her, a month after she had retired from the stage, Countess of Derby, and subsequently mother of a future countess, who still wears her coronet.
Not long after this period, and following on her presentation at Court, where she was received with marked kindly condescension by Queen Charlotte, the countess was walking in the marriage procession of the Princess Royal and the Duke of Wurtemberg; her foot caught in the carpeting, and she would have fallen to the ground, but for the ready arms, once more extended to support her, of Mr. Burroughs, now an eminent man indeed.
Many years had been added to the roll of time, when a carriage, containing a lady was on its way to Windsor. It suddenly came to a stop, by the breaking of an axle-tree. In the midst of the distress which ensued to the occupier, a second carriage approached, bearing a goodnatured-looking gentleman, who at once offered his services. The lady, recognising an old friend, accepted the offer with alacrity. As the two drove off together in the gentleman’s carriage toward Windsor, the owner of it remarked that he had almost expected to find her in distress on the road; for it was Christmas Eve, and he had been thinking of old times.
“How many years is it, my lady countess,” said he, “since I stood at my father’s shop-door in Salisbury, watching your perilous passage over the market-place, with a bowl of milk?”