I'd 'strut and fret' no more, in any part;
No more in public scenes would I engage,
Or wear the cap and mask, on any stage."
Burke said of Garrick, that he was the first of actors, because he was the most acute observer of nature that Burke ever knew. Garrick disliked characters in which there was a "lofty disregard of nature;" yet he resembled Mrs. Siddons in believing that if a part seemed at all within nature, it was not to be doubted but that a great actor could make something out of it.
Garrick's repertory extended to less than one hundred characters, of which he was the original representative of thirty-six. Compared with the half century of labour of Betterton, and the number of his original characters, Garrick's toil seems but mere pastime. In his first season, on that little but steep stage at Goodman's Fields, so steep, it is said, that a ghost in real armour, ascending on a trap, once lost his balance and rolled down to the orchestra, Garrick seems to have been uncertain whether his vocation lay more with tragedy or with comedy. In that season he repeated his comic characters eighty-four times; he appeared but fifty nights in a repetition of half-a-dozen tragic parts.[113] In the sum of the years of his acting, the increase of number is slightly on the side of the latter, while, of his original characters, twenty belong to tragedy, and sixteen to comedy. After he had been two-and-twenty years on the stage, Garrick undertook no new study.
Of his original characters, the best remembered in stage traditions are, Sharp, in the "Lying Valet," Tancred, Fribble, Ranger, Beverley, Achmet ("Barbarossa"), Oroonoko (in the altered play), Lovemore ("Way to Keep Him"), and Oakley, in the "Jealous Wife." Of these, only Beverley and Oakley can be said to still survive.
Of Garrick and his labours I have now said enough; let us follow him thither where he found repose from the latter, in company with one whom many of us, who are not yet old, may remember to have seen in our early youth, the Mrs. Garrick who is said to have told Edmund Kean that he could not play Abel Drugger, and to have been answered by Edmund, "Dear madam, I know it!"
In June 1749, Lord Chesterfield, who, in his Irish viceroyalty, had neglected Garrick, just as in London he ignored Sheridan whom he had patronised in Dublin, wrote to his friend Dayrolles, "The parliament is to be prorogued next Tuesday, when the ministers will have six months leisure to quarrel, and patch up, and quarrel again. Garrick and the Violetti will likewise, and about the same time, have an opportunity of doing the same thing, for they are to be married next week. They are, at present, desperately in love with each other. Lady Burlington was, at first, outrageous; but, upon cooler reflection upon what the Violetti, if provoked, might say or rather invent, she consented to the match, and superintends the writings." Later in June, Walpole touches on the same subject to Mann, announcing the marriage itself "first at a Protestant, then at a Roman Catholic Chapel. The chapter of this history," he adds, "is a little obscure, and uncertain as to the consent of the protecting countess, and whether she gives a fortune or not."
This Eva Maria Violetti was a dancer, who, three years previously to this marriage, was enchanting the town with her "poetry of motion." The sister Countesses of Burlington and Talbot competed for her with "sullen partiality." The former carried her to Chiswick, wore her portrait,[114] and introduced her to her friends. Lady Carlyle entertained her; and the Prince of Wales paid his usual compliment, by bidding her take lessons of Desnoyers, the dancing master, and Prince's companion,—which Eva Maria did not care to do.
The public were curious to know who this beautiful young German dancer was, in whom Lord and Lady Burlington took such especial interest. That she was nearly related to the former was a very popular conjecture. However this may have been, she was, in many respects, Garrick's good genius, presiding gracefully over his households in the Adelphi and at Hampton.