"Mr. Garrick," whose early residence was, according to the addresses of his letters, "at a perriwig maker's, corner of the Great Piazza, Covent Garden," saw good company at Hampton, where Walpole cultivated an intimacy with him, for Mrs. Clive's sake, as he pretended. Here is the actor at home, on August 15th, 1755. "I dined to-day at Garrick's," writes Walpole to Bentley; "there were the Duke of Grafton, Lord and Lady Rochford, Lady Holdernesse, the crooked Mostyn, and Dabreu, the Spanish minister; two regents, of which one is Lord Chamberlain, the other Groom of the Stole, and the wife of a Secretary of State. This being sur un assez bon ton, for a player. Don't you want to ask me how I liked him? Do want, and I will tell you. I like her exceedingly; her behaviour is all sense, and all sweetness too. I don't know how, he does not improve so fast upon me; there is a great deal of parts, and vivacity, and variety, but there is a great deal, too, of mimicry and burlesque. I am very ungrateful, for he flatters me abundantly; but, unluckily, I know it."
Fifteen years later, Mrs. Delaney describes a day at Garrick's house at Hampton, and speaks as eulogistically of the hostess. "Mr. Garrick did the honours of his house very respectfully, and, though in high spirits, seemed sensible of the honour done them. Nobody else there but Lady Weymouth and Mr. Bateman. As to Mrs. Garrick, the more one sees her, the better one must like her; she seems never to depart from a perfect propriety of behaviour, accompanied with good sense and gentleness of manners; and I cannot help looking on her as a wonderful creature, considering all circumstances relating to her." The above words referring to Garrick are held by Lady Llanover, the editor of Mrs. Delaney's correspondence, to be "high testimony to Garrick's tact and good-breeding, as few persons in his class of life know how to be 'respectful,' and yet in 'high spirits,' which is the greatest test of real refinement." This is severe, oh! gentlemen players; but the lady forgot that Mr. Garrick was the son of an officer and a gentleman.
Walpole warned people against supposing that he and Garrick were intimate. When the actor and his wife went to Italy:—"We are sending to you," wrote Horace to Mann, "the famous Garrick and his once famous wife. He will make you laugh as a mimic; and as he knows we are great friends, will affect great partiality to me; but be a little upon your guard, remember he is an actor." It is clear that Garrick, down at his villa, insisted on being treated as a gentleman. "This very day," writes Walpole to Mason, September 9,[115] 1772, "Garrick, who has dropped me these three years, has been here by his own request, and told Mr. Raftor how happy he was at the reconciliation. I did not know we had quarrelled, and so omitted being happy too."
Lord Ossory's intimacy with Garrick was one of the strictest friendship. Lord Ossory speaks of him, Gibbon, and Reynolds, who were then his guests, as all three delightful in society. "The vivacity of the great actor, the keen, sarcastic wit of the great historian, and the genuine pleasantry of the great painter, mixed up well together, and made a charming party. Garrick's mimicry of the mighty Johnson was excellent."
Garrick was the guest of Earl Spencer, Christmas 1778, when he was attacked by his last and fatal illness. He was carried to his town house, No. 5 Adelphi Terrace, where Dr. Cadogan asked him if he had any affairs to settle. Garrick met the intimation with the calm dignity of Quin: "I have nothing of that sort on my mind," he said, "and I am not afraid to die."
Physicians assembled around him out of pure affection and respect; Heberden, Warren, and Schomberg. As the last approached, Garrick, placidly smiling, took him by the hand, faintly murmuring, "though last, not least in our dear love." But as the crowd of charitable healers increased, the old player who—wrapped in a rich robe, himself all pale and feeble, looked like the stricken Lusignan, softly repeated the lines in the "Fair Penitent," beginning with,
"Another and another still succeeds."
On January 20th, 1779, Garrick expired. Young Bannister, the night before, had played his old part of Dorilas to the Merope of Miss Younge. The great actor was solemnly carried to Westminster Abbey by some of the noblest in the land, whether of intellect or of rank. Chatham had addressed him living, in verse, and peers sought for the honour of supporting the pall at his funeral. The players, whose charitable fund he had been mainly instrumental in raising to near £5000, stood near their master's grave, to which the statue of Shakspeare pointed, to do him honour. Amid these, and friends nearer and dearer still, the greatest of English actors, since Betterton, was left in his earthly sleep, not very far from his accomplished predecessor.
They who had accused him of extravagance were surprised to find that he had lived below his income. They who had challenged him with parsimony, now heard of large sums cheerfully given in charity, or lent on personal security; and the latter often forgiven to the debtor. "Dr. Johnson and I," says Boswell, "walked away together. We stopped a little while by the rails of the Adelphi, looking on the Thames, and I said to him with some emotion, that I was now thinking of two friends we had lost, who once lived in the buildings behind us—Topham Beauclerk and Garrick." "Ay, sir," said he tenderly, "and two such friends as cannot be supplied."[116]
And Mrs. Garrick? She wore her long widowhood till 1822, dying then in the same house on the Adelphi Terrace. She was the honoured guest of hosts whom all men honoured; and at the Bishop of London's table held her own against the clever men and women who held controversy under Porteus's roof. Eva Maria Garrick twice refused Lord Monboddo, who had written a book to show that humanity was merely apedom without the tail. The widow of Roscius was higher in the social scale than the wife of a canny Scotch Lord of Session, with an uncanny theory.