Garrick, Quin, Mrs. Cibber, and Mrs. Pritchard, acting in the same piece, at Covent Garden! No wonder that Walpole, in 1746, says, "Plays only are in fashion," and calls the company, which included Woodward, Ryan, and Mrs. Horton, as "the best company that, perhaps, ever were together." In Mrs. Pritchard's Beatrice, as in Mrs. Clive's Bizarre, Garrick, as Benedict to the first, and Duretete to the second, had an antagonism on the stage which tested his utmost powers. Each was determined to surpass the other; but Walpole intimates that Mrs. Pritchard won in her contest, and states that Garrick hated her because her Beatrice (which he preferred to Miss Farren's) had more spirit and originality than his Benedict. Walpole also praised her Maria ("Nonjuror"), and only smiled at her Jane Shore when she had become so fat, that for her to talk of the pangs of starvation seemed ridiculous. But the highest mark of his, never easily won, estimation of this great actress consisted in his refusal to allow his "Mysterious Mother" to be acted, as Mrs. Pritchard was about to leave the stage, and there was no one else who could play the Countess.
Walpole knew her as a neighbour as well as a player, for Mrs. Pritchard purchased Ragman's Castle, a villa on the Thames, between Marble Hill and Orleans House, which she bought against an opposing bidder, Lord Lichfield, and resided in it till Walpole took it of her, for his niece, Lady Waldegrave. The actress was occasionally his guest, and he testifies to the becomingness and propriety of her behaviour; but sneers a little at that of her son, the Treasurer of Drury Lane, as being better than he had expected.
Johnson said that it was only on the stage Mrs. Pritchard was inspired with gentility and understanding; but Churchill exclaims,
"Pritchard, by Nature for the stage designed,
In person graceful, and in sense refined,
Her wit, as much as Nature's friend became,
Her voice as free from blemish as her fame,
Who knows so well in Majesty to please,
Attempered with the graceful charms of ease?"
And contrasting her great qualities with the increasing figure which, perhaps, offended, in her later years, "the eye's too curious sense," Churchill adds,