For some time, however, the town refused to recognise any magic in the charmer; and managers despaired of the success of a young actress who could not decently thread the mazes of a country dance. Hamilton owned her beauty, but denied her talent. Nevertheless, she one night burst forth in all her grandeur, and Mustapha and Zanger were not more ardently in love with the brilliant queen than the audience were. At the head of the latter were Charles II. and the Duke and Duchess of York. Rochester had asked for their presence, and they came to add to the triumph of Colonel Barry's daughter.
Crabbed old Anthony Aston, the actor and prompter, spoke disparagingly of the young lady. According to him, she was no colonel's daughter, but "woman to Lady Shelton, my godmother." The two conditions were not incompatible. It was no unusual thing to find a lady in straitened circumstances fulfilling the office of "woman," or "maid," to the wives of peers and baronets. We have an instance in the Memoirs of Mrs. Delaney, and another in the person of Mrs. Siddons.
Successful as Elizabeth Barry was in parts which she had studied under her preceptor, Lord Rochester, she cannot be said to have established herself as the greatest actress of her time till the year 1680. Up to this period she appeared in few characters suited to her abilities. In tragedies, she enacted the confidants to the great theatrical queens, Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Betterton; in comedies, the rattling, reckless, and audacious women, at whose sallies the pit roared approbation, and the box ladies were not much startled. But, in the year just named, Otway produced his tragedy of "The Orphan, or the Unhappy Marriage," in which Mrs. Barry was the Monimia to the Castalio of Betterton. On the same night the part of the Page was charmingly played by a future great actress, Mrs. Bracegirdle, then not six years old. In Monimia, Mrs. Barry exercised some of those attributes which she possessed above all actresses Cibber had ever seen, and which those who had not seen her were unable to conceive. "In characters of greatness," says Cibber, in his Apology, "she had a presence of elevated dignity; her mien and motion superb, and gracefully majestic; her voice full, clear, and strong, so that no violence of passion could be too much for her; and when distress or tenderness possessed her, she subsided into the most affecting melody and softness."
From the position which she took by acting Monimia, Mrs. Barry was never shaken by any rival, however eminent. Her industry was as indefatigable as that of Betterton. During the thirty-seven years she was on the stage, beginning at Dorset Gardens, in 1673, and ending at the Haymarket, in 1710, she originated one hundred and twelve characters! Monimia was the nineteenth of the characters of which she was the original representative; the first of those which mark the "stations" of her glory. In 1682, she added another leaf to the chaplet of her own and Otway's renown, by her performance of Belvidera. In the softer passions of this part she manifested herself the "mistress of tears," and night after night the town flocked to weep at her bidding, and to enjoy the luxury of woe. The triumph endured for years. Her Monimia and Belvidera were not even put aside by her Cassandra, in the "Cleomenes" of Dryden, first acted at the Theatre Royal, in 1692. "Mrs. Barry," says the author, "always excellent, has, in this tragedy, excelled herself, and gained a reputation, beyond any woman whom I have ever seen on the theatre." The praise is not unduly applied; for Mrs. Barry could give expression to the rant of Dryden, and even to that of Lee, without ever verging towards bombast. "In scenes of anger, defiance, or resentment," writes Cibber, "while she was impetuous and terrible, she poured out the sentiment with an enchanting harmony." Anthony Aston describes her in tragedy as "solemn and august;" and she, perhaps, was never more so than in Isabella, the heroine of the tragic drama rather than tragedy, by Southerne, "The Fatal Marriage." Aston remarks, that "her face ever expressed the passions; it somewhat preceded her action, as her action did her words." Her versatility was marvellous, and it is not ill illustrated by the fact that in the same season she created two such opposite characters as Lady Brute, in Vanbrugh's "Provoked Wife," and Zara, in Congreve's "Mourning Bride." The last of her great tragic triumphs, in a part of which she was the original representative, occurred in 1703, when, in her forty-fifth year, she played Calista, in "The Fair Penitent," that wholesale felony of Rowe from Massinger! Though the piece did not answer the expectations of the public, Mrs. Barry did not fall short of them in the heroine; and she perhaps surpassed expectation, when, in 1705, she elicited the admiration of the town by her creation of the sparkling character of Clarissa, in "The Confederacy." By this time she was growing rich in wealth as well as in glory. In former days, when the play was over, the attendant boy used to call for "Mrs. Barry's clogs!" or "Mrs. Bracegirdle's pattens!" but now, "Mrs. Barry's chair" was as familiar a sound as "Mrs. Oldfield's." If she was not invariably wise in the stewardship of her money, some portions were expended in a judicious manner creditable to her taste. At the sale of Betterton's effects, she purchased the picture of Shakspeare which Betterton bought from Davenant, who had purchased it from some of the players after the theatres had been closed by authority. Subsequently, Mrs. Barry sold this relic, for forty guineas, to a Mr. Keck, whose daughter carried it with her as part of her dowry, when she married Mr. Nicoll, of Colney Hatch. Their daughter and heiress, in her turn, took the portrait and a large fortune with her to her husband, the third Duke of Chandos; and, finally, Mrs. Barry's effigy of Shakspeare passed with another bride into another house, Lady Anne Brydges, the daughter of the Duke and Duchess, carrying it with her to Stowe on her marriage with the Marquis of Buckingham, subsequently Duke of Buckingham and Chandos. The Chandos portrait of the great dramatist is thus descended.
Mrs. Barry, like many other eminent members of her profession, was famous for the way in which she uttered some single expression in the play. The "Look there!" of Spranger Barry, as he passed the body of Rutland, always moved the house to tears. So, the "Remember twelve!" of Mrs. Siddon's Belvidera; the "Well, as you guess!" of Edmund Kean's Richard; the "Qu'en dis-tu?" of Talma's Auguste; the "Je crois!" of Rachel's Pauline; the "Je vois!" of Mademoiselle Mars's Valerie, were "points" which never failed to excite an audience to enthusiasm. But there were two phrases with which Mrs. Barry could still more deeply move an audience. When, in "The Orphan," she pronounced the words, "Ah, poor Castalio!" not only did the audience weep, but the actress herself shed tears abundantly. The other phrase was in a scene of Banks's puling tragedy, "The Unhappy Favourite, or the Earl of Essex." In that play, Mrs. Barry represented Queen Elizabeth, and that with such effect that it was currently said, the people of her day knew more of Queen Elizabeth from her impersonation of the character than they did from history. The apparently commonplace remark, "What mean my grieving subjects?" was invested by her with such emphatic grace and dignity, as to call up murmurs of approbation which swelled into thunders of applause. Mary of Modena testified her admiration by bestowing on the mimic queen the wedding-dress Mary herself had worn when she was united to James II., and the mantle borne by her at her coronation. Thus attired, the queen of the hour represented the Elizabeth, with which enthusiastic crowds became so much more familiar than they were with the Elizabeth of history. But this "solemn and august" tragedian could also command laughter, and make a whole house joyous by the exercise of another branch of her vocation. "In free comedy," says Aston, "she was alert, easy, and genteel, pleasant in her face and action, filling the stage with variety of gesture." So entirely did she surrender herself to the influences of the characters she represented, that in stage dialogues she often turned pale or flushed red, as varying passions prompted.
With the audience she was never for a moment out of favour after she had made her merit apparent. They acknowledged no greater actress,—with the single exception of Mrs. Betterton in the character of Lady Macbeth. Nevertheless, on and behind the stage Mrs. Barry's supremacy was sometimes questioned and her commands disobeyed. When she was about to play Roxana to the Statira of Mrs. Boutell, in Nat. Lee's "Rival Queens, or the Death of Alexander the Great," she selected from the wardrobe a certain veil which was claimed by Mrs. Boutell as of right belonging to her. The property-man thought so too, and handed the veil to the last-named lady. His award was reasonable, for she was the original Statira, having played the part to the matchless Alexander of Hart, and to the glowing Roxana of the fascinating Marshall. I fear, however, that the lady was not moderate in her victory, and that by flaunting the trophy too frequently before the eyes of the rival queen, the daughter of Darius exasperated too fiercely her Persian rival in the heart of Alexander. The rage and dissension set down for them in the play were, at all events, not simulated. The quarrel went on increasing in intensity from the first, and culminated in the gardens of Semiramis. When Roxana seized on her detested enemy there, and the supreme struggle took place, Mrs. Barry, with the exclamation of "Die, sorceress, die! and all my wrongs die with thee!" sent her polished dagger right through the stiff armour of Mrs. Boutell's stays. The consequences were a scratch and a shriek, but there was no great harm done. An investigation followed, and some mention was made of a real jealousy existing in Mrs. Barry's breast in reference to an admirer of lower rank than Alexander, lured from her feet by the little, flute-voiced Boutell. The deed itself was, however, mildly construed, and Mrs. Barry was believed when she declared that she had been carried away by the illusion and excitement of the scene. We shall see the same scene repeated, with similar stage effects, by Mrs. Woffington and Mrs. Bellamy.
If there were a lover to add bitterness to the quarrel engendered by the veil, Mrs. Barry might have well spared one of whom she possessed so many. Without being positively a transcendent beauty, her attractions were confessed by many an Antony from the country, who thought their world of acres well lost for the sake of a little sunshine from the eyes of this vanquishing, imperious, banquetting, heart and purse destroying Cleopatra. There were two classes of men who made epigrams, or caused others to make them against her, namely, the adorers on whom she ceased to smile, and those on whom she refused to smile at all. The coffee-house poetry which these perpetrated against her is the reverse of pleasant to read; but, under the protection of such a wit as Etherege, or such a fine gentleman as Rochester, Mrs. Barry cared little for her puny assailants.
Tom Brown taxed her with mercenary feelings; but against that and the humour of writers who affected intimate acquaintance with her affairs of the heart and purse, and as intimate a knowledge of the amount which Sir George Etherege and Lord Rochester bequeathed to their respective daughters, of whom Mrs. Barry was the mother, she was armed. Neither of these children survived the "famous actress." She herself hardly survived Betterton—at least on the stage. The day after the great tragedian's final appearance, Mrs. Barry trod the stage for the last time. The place was the old Haymarket, the play the "Spanish Friar," in which she enacted the Queen. And I can picture to myself the effect of the famous passage, when the Queen impetuously betrays her overwhelming love. "Haste, my Teresa, haste; and call him back!" "Prince Bertram?" asks the confidant; and then came the full burst, breaking through all restraint, and revealing a woman who seemed bathed in love. "Torrismond! There is no other HE!"
Mrs. Barry took no formal leave of the stage, but quietly withdrew from St. Mary-le-Savoy, in the Strand, to the pleasant village of Acton. Mrs. Porter, Mrs. Rogers, Mrs. Knight, and Mrs. Bradshaw, succeeded to her theatrical dominion, by partition of her characters.