[CHAPTER X.]
EXIT, JAMES QUIN.
The opposition between Garrick and Barry was well sustained during the season of 1752-53. The former had a forcible second and substitute in Mossop, and an attractive lady to woo in comedy, or slay in tragedy, in Miss (or Mrs.) Bellamy; but a more accomplished still in Mrs. Pritchard. At the Garden, Barry was at his very best in health and acting, and Mrs. Cibber in the full bloom of her beauty and powers. It was a pity that such a pair of lovers should be separated, "for no two persons were so calculated to assist each other by voice, manner, and real feeling, as they were;" but, as Wilkinson records, "at the close of this season they separated, never to meet again on the same stage." Meanwhile, fashion patronised Garrick and Mrs. Pritchard, rather more lavishly than the rival pair.
Each had their especial triumphs in new pieces. Garrick and Mrs. Pritchard, in Moore's "Gamester," first played on the 7th February 1753 (Beverley, Garrick; Lewson, Mossop; Stukely, Davies; Mrs. Beverley, Mrs. Pritchard), and Barry and Mrs. Cibber in Jones's "Earl of Essex," produced at the Garden, February 21st. Admirable as Garrick was in Beverley, Mrs. Pritchard carried off the chief honours, so natural, so terribly real, and so apparently unconscious of the audience was she in her acting. She was quite "at home" in this prose tragedy; the severe lesson in which, however, after terrifying, began to displease hearers, who did not relish the caustic laid to their darling vice.
Let me also mention here Young's tragedy, the "Brothers," written thirty years before, previous to his ordination, amended by Lady Wortley Montagu, and now played in March 1753.
As soon as Young surrendered this piece to the players, for the benefit of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, he was immersed in the very thickest of theatrical squabbles, to the disgrace of his clerical profession. George Anne Bellamy, that capricious beauty on whom the delighted town showered fortune, who rode one day in gilded chariots, and the next was lying on the lowest of the steps at Westminster Bridge, wrapped in misery, and contemplating suicide; the irresistible Bellamy was then the idol of the world of fashion, and Young readily acceded to her request that she might read "The Brothers" to the players. The request rendered Garrick furious, although it was grounded on the young lady's personal knowledge of the author. The green-room was in an uproar. Roscius claimed the principal part for Mrs. Pritchard; and when George Anne poutingly offered to surrender the character assigned her by the doctor, Young vehemently opposed it with an emphatic, "No, no!" Mrs. Bellamy accordingly read the piece, and assumed the liberty of criticising it. She expressly objected to the line, "I will speak to you in thunder," as not being in a concatenation with the delicacy of the fine lady who utters it. The reverend author protested that it was the most forcible line in the piece; but Mrs. Bellamy thought it would be more so if it were improved by the introduction of "lightning" as well as thunder.
The good doctor was something nettled at the lady's wit; and he declared that "The Brothers" was the best piece he had ever written. "I am afraid, doctor," rejoined the lady, pertly, "that you will do with me as the Archbishop of Toledo did with Gil Blas on a similar occasion. But I cannot help reminding you of a tragedy called the 'Revenge!'" The author took the remark in considerable dudgeon; but the sparkling young actress, who sincerely esteemed him, exerted all her powers to smooth the plumes that her wit had ruffled; and she did this with such effect, that the doctor, after offering to cancel the line objected to, invited himself to dine with her, and did so in company with Garrick and rough Quin. "The Brothers" was acted to thin houses for eight nights, and then quietly shelved. The author realised £400 by it; to which adding from his private purse £600 more, he gave the handsome sum of £1000 to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. The author was displeased alike with the town and with the players. The truth is, however, that the fault lay as much with himself as with either. The play was not original, but taken without acknowledgment, from various sources. A great portion is almost literally translated from the French piece, Persée et Démétrius. Many of the speeches are taken piecemeal from Livy.
The contest in the third act is splendidly phrased; but the dénouement is so confused and incomplete, that Young was obliged to add an epilogue to explain what was supposed to take place at and after the fall of the curtain! Garrick substituted a coarse epilogue which was spoken by sprightly Kitty Clive, who loved to give coarseness all its point; but it could not save the piece, and it seriously offended the author. Since then, "The Brothers" has descended into that oblivion which fittingly enfolds nearly all the classical tragedies of the last century. It is not without its beauties; but it does not picture the period it affects to pourtray. The "sir" and "madam" sound as harshly as the "citizen Agamemnon," which the French Republic introduced into Racine's plays; and the epithets are only one degree less absurd than the "Oui, Milor," which Voltaire's Beersheba addresses to King David.
Barry's Jaffier, played for the first time on the 21st of November 1752, placed him on an equality with Garrick in that character; but he was not so great in this as in Jones's tragedy, the "Earl of Essex," which he played on the 21st of February, to Smith's Southampton, and the Countess of Rutland of Mrs. Cibber. One sentence in this tragedy, uttered by Barry, seems to have had an almost incredible effect. When the Earl, pointing to the Countess of Rutland in a swoon, exclaimed, "Oh, look there!" Barry's attitude and pathetic expression of voice were such that "all the critics in the pit burst into tears, and then shook the theatre with repeated and unbounded applause." The bricklayer poet, whom Chesterfield brought from Drogheda, only to ultimately die, half-starved, in a garret near Covent Garden, attributed the success of the piece to his own powers, whereas it was due to the wonderful acting of Barry and Mrs. Cibber alone.
With this season James Quin disappeared from the stage. For a year or two he had not acted. The triumphs of Garrick, followed by those of Barry, drove from the scene the old player who, for nearly forty years, belonged to the now bygone school of Betterton, but particularly of Booth, whose succession he worthily held, rather than of Garrick. James Quin stands, however, worthily among, if not on a level with, those actors of two different eras, having something of each, but yet distinct from either. Such a man deserves a few words in addition to those I have already written.