Would I were free from this restraint,
Or else had power to win her;
Would she could make of me a saint,
Or I of her a sinner."
The most singular testimony ever rendered to this virtue occurred on the occasion when Dorset, Devonshire, Halifax, and other peers, were making of that virtue a subject of eulogy over a bottle. Halifax remarked, they might do something better than praise her; and thereon he put down two hundred guineas, which the contributions of the company raised to eight hundred,—and this sum was presented to the lady, as a homage to the rectitude of her private character.
Whether she accepted this tribute, I do not know; but I know that she declined another from Lord Burlington, who had long loved her in vain. "One day," says Walpole, "he sent her a present of some fine old china. She told the servant he had made a mistake; that it was true the letter was for her, but the china for his lady, to whom he must carry it. Lord! the countess was so full of gratitude, when her husband came home to dinner."
Mrs. Bracegirdle lived to pass the limit of fourscore, and to the last was visited by much of the wit, the worth, and some of the folly of the town. On one occasion, a group of her visitors were discussing the merits of Garrick, whom she had not seen, and Cibber spoke disparagingly of his Bayes, preferring in that part his own pert and vivacious son, Theophilus. The old actress tapped Colley with her fan; "Come, come, Cibber," she remarked; "tell me if there is not something like envy in your character of this young gentleman. The actor who pleases everybody must be a man of merit." Colley smiled, tapped his box, took a pinch, and, catching the generosity of the lady, replied: "Faith, Bracey, I believe you are right; the young fellow is clever!"
Between 1682 and 1695, few actors were of greater note than luckless Will Mountfort, of whose violent death the beauty of Mrs. Bracegirdle was the unintentional cause. Handsome Will was the efficient representative of fops who did not forget that they were gentlemen. So graceful, so ardent, so winning as a lover, actresses enjoyed the sight of him pleading at their feet. In the younger tragic characters he was equally effective. His powers of mimicry won for him the not too valuable patronage of Judge Jeffries, to gratify whom, and the lord mayor and minor city magnates, in 1685, Mountfort pleaded before them in a feigned cause, in which, says Jacobs, "he aped all the great lawyers of the age in their tone of voice, and in their action and gesture of body," to the delight of his hearers. On the stage, he was one of the most natural of actors; and even Queen Mary was constrained to allow, that disgusted as she was with Mrs. Behn's "Rover," she could not but admire the grace, ease, intelligence, and genius of Mountfort, who played the dissolute hero, sang as well as he spoke, and danced with stately dignity. But poor Will was only the hero of a brief hour; and the inimitable original of Sir Courtly Nice was murdered by two of the most consummate villains of the order of gentlemen then in town.
Charles, Lord Mohun, had, a few years previous to this occurrence, been tried with the Earl of Warwick for a murder, arising out of a coffee-house brawl;[43] on being acquitted by the House of Lords, he solemnly promised never to get into such a difficulty again. But one Captain Richard Hill, being in "love" with Mrs. Bracegirdle, who heartily despised him, wanted a villain's assistance in carrying off the beautiful actress, and found the man and the aid he needed in Lord Mohun. In Buckingham Court, off the Strand, where the captain lodged, the conspirators laid their plans; and learning that Mrs. Bracegirdle, with her mother and brother, was to sup one evening at the house of a friend, Mr. Page, in Princes Street, Drury Lane, they hired six soldiers—emissaries always then to be had for such work—to assist in seizing her and carrying her off in a carriage, stationed near Mr. Page's house. About ten at night, of the 9th December 1692, the attempt was made; but what with the lady's screams, the resistance of the friend and brother, and the gathering of an excited mob, it failed; and a strange compromise was made, whereby Lord Mohun and Hill were allowed to unite in escorting her home to her house, in Howard Street, Strand. In that street lived also Will Mountfort, against whom the captain uttered such threats, in Mrs. Bracegirdle's hearing, that she, finding that my lord and the captain remained in the street—the latter with a drawn sword in his hand, and both of them occasionally drinking canary—sent to Mrs. Mountfort, to warn her husband, who was from home, to look to his safety. Warned, but not alarmed, honest Will, who loved his wife and respected Mrs. Bracegirdle, came round from Norfolk Street, saluted Lord Mohun (who embraced him, according to the then fashion with men), and said a word or two to his lordship, not complimentary to the character of Hill. Thence, from the latter—words, a blow, and a pass of his sword through Mountfort's body—which the poor actor, as he lay dying on the floor of his own dining-room, declared, was given by Hill before Mountfort could draw his sword. The captain fled from England, but my lord, surrendering to the watchmen of the Duchy of Lancaster, was tried by his peers, fourteen of whom pronounced him guilty of murder; but as above threescore gave a different verdict, Mohun lived on till he and the Duke of Hamilton hacked one another to death in that savage butchery—the famous duel in Hyde Park.[44]
Mountfort, at the age of thirty-three, and with some reputation as the author of half-a-dozen dramas, was carried to the burying-ground of St. Clement's Danes, where his remains rest with those of Lowen, one of the original actors of Shakspeare's plays, Tom Otway, and Nat. Lee. His fair and clever widow became soon the wife of Verbruggen—a rough diamond—a wild, untaught, yet not an unnatural actor. So natural, indeed, was he, that Lord Halifax took Oroonoko from Powell, who was originally cast for it, and gave it to Verbruggen. Such was the power of Lord Chamberlains! He could touch tenderly the finer feelings, as well as excite the wilder emotions of the heart. Powell, on the other hand, was a less impassioned player, who would appear to have felt more than he made his audience feel, for in the original Spectator, No. 290, February 1712, Powell begs the public to believe, that if he pauses long in Orestes, he has not forgotten his part, but is only overcome at the sentiment.