Three years after, she was acting some solemn part, at York, when Gentleman Smith saw her, and forthwith recommended her to the managers of Drury, as a good second to Mrs. Siddons; and in that character she was engaged. But Dorothy Jordan was not going to play second to anybody; she resolved to be first in comedy, and came out in 1785, as the heroine of the "Country Girl." Her success raised her from four to eight, and then twelve pounds a week. Her next character was among her best; namely, Viola; in which the buoyant spirit oppressed by love and grief was finally rendered. Equal to it was her Hypolita. Rosalind, also one of her great achievements, she did not play till the next season; and Lady Contest ("Wedding Day"), which was born with, and which died with her, she did not create till the season of 1795-96.[94]
When she first appeared in London, she was in her twenty-fourth year. Just previous to the commencement of the Drury Lane season of 1789-90, the season in which she added Polly Honeycombe, Laetitia Hardy, and Lydia Languish, to her parts; and created Little Pickle, in the "Spoiled Child," I find indications of another condition which she had reached. On the 4th of September 1789, Walpole writes from Strawberry Hill to the Miss Berrys:—"The Duke of Clarence has taken Mr. Henry Hobart's house (Richmond), point blank over against Mr. Cambridge's, which will make the good woman of that mansion cross herself piteously, and stretch the throat of the blatant beast at Sudbrook (Lady Greenwich) and of all the other pious matrons à la ronde; for his royal highness, to divert lonesomeness, has brought with him ——, who being still more averse to solitude, declares that any tempter would make even Paradise more agreeable than a constant tête à tête." The Duke's companion is not named; but Mrs. Jordan is supposed to be alluded to. But in September 1791 Walpole writes to the same ladies: "Do you know that Mrs. Jordan is acknowledged to be Mrs. Ford?" They could not know it, for Ford (the magistrate) never married her, though he kept household with her, where all the signs of matrimony at least were abundant.
In the previous March of that year Mrs. Jordan played Cœlia, in an adaptation of the "Humourous Lieutenant," called the "Greek Slave," for her benefit. Cœlia is the mistress to a king's son; and this, coupled with a prophetic allusion in the modern epilogue, to a future condition in her life, which was not then, in the remotest degree, contemplated, is noted in Mr. Boaden's life of the actress, as a coincidence. At whatever period she first became the intimate friend of the Duke, she certainly was never married to Ford. "Her husband," the wits used to say, "was killed in the battle of Nubibus."
When she said that "laughing agreed with her better than crying," and gave up tragedy, she both said and did well. John Bannister declared that "no woman ever uttered comedy like her;" and added, that "she was perfectly good-tempered, and possessed the best of hearts." She partook of the fascination of Mrs. Woffington, having a better voice, with less beauty. She surpassed Mrs. Clive and Miss Farren in some parts, but fell short of the former in termagants, and of the latter in fine, well-bred ladies. Her voice was sweet and distinct, and she played rakes with the airiest grace and the handsomest leg that had been seen on the stage for a long time. Simple, arch, buoyant girls,—with sensibility in them; or spirited, buxom, lovable women,—in these she excelled. She liked to act handsome hoydens, but not vulgar hussies. In later days she grew fat, but still dressed as when she was young. The hints of critics were unheeded by her, as were those of her friends, that "she should assume an older line." Mr. Charlton, the Bath manager, once proposed to her to play the "Old Maid." "No," she answered: "I played it in a frolic, for my benefit, but do not mean to play such parts in a common way."
After a London career of little less than thirty years,—long after her home with the Duke had been broken up, she suddenly left London, without any leave-taking. Her finances, once so flourishing, had become embarrassed,—and the old actress with whom "laughing used to agree," withdrew without friend or child or ample means, to St. Cloud, in France, where she assumed her third pseudonym, Mrs. James. She was neglected, but she was not destitute; for, at the time of her death, in 1815, she had a balance of £100 at her bankers. She was buried without a familiar friend to follow her, and the police seized and sold her effects,—"even her body-linen," says Genest, who wrote her epitaph, "was sold amidst the coarse remarks of low Frenchwomen." Her wealth had been largely lavished on the Duke of Clarence and their family; and she had calls upon it from other children. In the days when she was mistress of the house at Bushey she was often, with more or less ill humour, saluted as "Duchess." When the Duke became King, he ennobled all their children, raising the eldest of Mrs. Jordan's sons to the rank of Earl of Munster, and giving precedence to the remaining sons and daughters. Thus the blood of this actress, too, runs in the English peerage,—in the line of the Earls of Munster, and by her daughter Sophia, whom the King raised to the rank of a Marquis's daughter, in that of the Lords De L'Isle and Dudley. If the portrait of the Monarch hangs from the walls of their mansions, that of Dora or Dorothea Bland should not be absent; for, despite appearances, the worth, the virtue, and the endowments of the mother were, in many respects, greater than those of the sire.
Robert William Elliston, like Mrs. Jordan and some others, belongs to two centuries. Born in Bloomsbury, in 1744, he had, in due time, the choice of two callings,—that of his father, a watchmaker; or of his uncle, the Rev. Dr. Elliston, master of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge,—"the Church." He declined both; and having been applauded in his delivery of a thesis, at St. Paul's School, on the subject: "Nemo confidat nimium secundis," he threw up his own happy prospects, and ran away to Bath, at sixteen, to seek an engagement on the stage. While waiting for it, he engaged himself as clerk in a lottery-office; but he eagerly changed his character, when opportunity was afforded him to act Tressel, in "Richard III." Between that and the Duke Aranza, the greatest of his parts, he had far to go; but his energies were equal to the task.
The first success was small, and Elliston resorted to Tate Wilkinson, at York; where he had few opportunities of playing leading characters; and in disgust and want he came up to London.[95] Kemble advised him to study Romeo, and in that character he charmed a Bath audience, and laid the foundations of a future prosperity. Subsequently, after playing a few nights at Covent Garden, he appeared at the Haymarket, in 1797,[96] as Octavian and Vapour. In the first part, a rival to the throne of Kemble was recognised; in the latter, one who had gifts which were wanting even in Bannister. A few nights later, he played Sir Edward Mortimer, and obtained a triumph in the character in which Kemble had signally failed. From that time, the "greatness" of Elliston was an accepted matter in his lofty mind. But it suffered much mutation between that time and 1826, when, at the end of nearly thirty years, after being proprietor of the Olympic, the Surrey, and Drury Lane, disregarding the prudence of Kemble in refraining from such an attempt, he tried Falstaff, failed thereby to recover his ruined fortunes, and sank again to the Surrey. Famous for putting the best face on everything, he comforted himself, by observing, that he had "quite an opera pit!"
For a brief period after his first appearance, Elliston was held to have excelled Kemble in truth and inspiration. Elliston's Hamlet was accounted superior in two points, the humour of the Dane, and his princely youth;—but in the deep philosophy of the character Robert William was not above respectability. And yet, by his universality of imitation, he was pronounced to be the only genius that had appeared since the days of Garrick. Perhaps he never manifested this more clearly than when, on the same night, he played Macbeth and Macheath!
His soliloquies were too declamatory! he forgot that a soliloquy is not an address to the audience, but simply a vehicle to enable them to be familiar with the speaker's thoughts. His voice was here too pompously deep, and a certain catching of his breath, at the end of energetic words, sounded like sobbing. Nevertheless, it was said that Elliston was not less than Kemble in genius;—but only in manner. With study and a more heroic countenance he would have been on the same level. As it was, in general excellence, he may be said, when in his prime, to have been one of the greatest actors of the day.