MR. AND MRS. BARRY IN "TAMERLANE."
[CHAPTER XX.]
SPRANGER AND ANNE BARRY.
Outside the five-and-thirty years of Barry's professional life, little is known of him. As of Betterton, it may be said, he laboured, loved, suffered losses, and died. It is the sum of many a man's biography.
Spranger's professional career is traced in preceding pages; but I may add to it, that Dublin is to this day, and with reason, proud of Spranger Barry, and of Margaret Woffington; for mere human beauty they have never been surpassed; for talents and for genius, with respect to their profession, they have not often been equalled. Spranger of the silver tongue, was the only actor who ever shook Garrick on his throne; but lacking the fulness of the perfection of Garrick, Barry only shook him for an instant; he never dethroned him. He is remembered as the vanquished wrestler is remembered, who has wrestled his best, given a heavy fall or two, has succumbed in the last grapple, and is carried from the arena on loving arms, amid the acclamations of the spectators, and with the respect of his conqueror.
In the Irish silversmith's accomplished son, born in 1719, there was very good blood, with some of the disadvantages attached to that possession. Of fine personal appearance and bearing, an aristocratic expression, and a voice that might win a bird from the nest, Spranger Barry had expensive and too magnificent tastes. He was a gentleman; but he lived as though he were the lord of countless thousands, and with an income on which an earl might have existed becomingly, with moderate prudence, Spranger Barry died poor.
From the very first, Barry took foremost ground; and Mrs. Delaney may well expatiate on the delight of seeing Garrick, Barry, and Sheridan together in one piece. Such a triad as those three were, when young, in the very brightest of their powers, and achieving triumphs which made their hearts beat to accomplish something higher still, perhaps, never rendered a stage illustrious.
From 1747 to 1758, Barry was, in some few characters, the best actor on our stage. After the above period, came the brilliant but ruinous Irish speculation with Woodward. During the time of that disastrous Dublin management, Barry's powers were sometimes seriously affected. He has been depicted as reckless; but it is evident that anxieties were forced upon him, and a proud man liable to be seized by sheriffs' officers, ere he could rise from simulated death upon the stage, was not to be comforted by the readiness of his subordinates to murder the bailiffs. Mrs. Delaney had been enraptured with him in his earliest years; but she found a change in him even as early as 1759. The gossiping lady thus exhibits to us the interior of Crow Street, one night in February, of the year just named, when, despite the lady's opinion, the handsome and manly fellow was not to be equalled in the expression of grief, of pity, or of love.
"Now what do you think? Mrs. Delaney with ditto company went to the Mourning Bride to see the new playhouse; and Mrs. Fitzhenry performed the part of Zara, which I think she does incomparably. The house is very handsome, and well lighted; and there I saw Lady Kildare and her two blooming sisters, Lady Louisa Conolly (the bride) and Lady Sarah Lennox,"—(the latter lady reckoned among the first loves of George III.),—"who I think the prettiest of the two. Lord Mornington" (afterwards father of the Duke of Wellington) "was at the play, and looked as solemn as one should suppose the young lady he is engaged to" (Miss Hill) "would have done!... The play, on the whole, was tolerably acted, though I don't like their celebrated Mr. Barry; he is tall and ungainly, and does not speak sensibly nor look his part well; he was Osmyn. Almyra was acted by a very pretty woman, who, I think, might be made a very good actress. Her name is Dancer."
Barry did make her an excellent actress, and his wife to boot. Nevertheless, the Dublin speculation failed; and I find something characteristic of it among the properties enumerated in the inventory of articles made over by Barry to his successor, Ryder. For instance:—"Chambers, with holes in them;" "House, very bad;" "One stile, broke;" "Battlements, torn;" "Garden wall, very bad;" "Waterfall, in the Dargle, very bad." The same definition is applied to much more property; with "woods, greatly damaged;" "clouds, little worth;" "wings, with holes, in the canvas;" or, "in bad order." "Mill, torn;" "elephant, very bad;" and Barry's famous "Alexander's car," is catalogued as "some of it wanting." Indeed, the only property in good order, comprised eighty-three thunderbolts!