"At variance set, inflexible, and coarse,
Ne'er know the workings of united force,
Ne'er kindly soften to each other's aid,
Nor show the mingled pow'rs of light and shade."
But "Cits and grave divines his praise proclaimed," and Macklin had a large number of admiring friends. In his private life, he had to bear many sorrows, and he bore them generally well, but one, in particular, with the silent anguish of a father who sees his son sinking fast to destruction, and glorying in the way which he is going.
Ten years before Macklin died, he lost his daughter. Miss Macklin was a pretty and modest person; respectable alike on and off the stage; artificially trained, but yet highly accomplished. Macklin had every reason to be proud of her, for everybody loved her for her gentleness and goodness. As a child, in 1742, she had played childish parts, and since 1750, those of the highest walk in tragedy and comedy, but against competition which was too strong for her. She was the original Irene, in "Barbarossa," and Clarissa, in "Lionel and Clarissa," and was very fond of acting parts in which the lady had to assume male attire. This fondness was the cause, in some measure, of her death; it led to her buckling her garter so tightly that a dangerous tumour formed in the inner part of the leg, near the knee. I do not fancy that Miss Macklin had ever heard of Mary of Burgundy, who suffered from a similar infirmity, but the actress was like the Duchess in this,—from motives of delicacy she would not allow a leg which she had liberally exhibited on the stage, to be examined by her own doctor. Ultimately, a severe operation became necessary. Miss Macklin bore it with courage, but it compelled her to leave the stage, and her strength gradually failing, she died in 1787,[17] at the age of forty-eight, and I wish she had left some portion of her fortune to her celebrated but impoverished father.
Miss Macklin reminds me of Miss Barsanti, the original Lydia Languish, whose course on the London stage dates from 1777.[18] The peculiarity of Miss Barsanti,—a clever imitator of English and Italian singers,—was the opposite of that which distinguished Miss Macklin. She had registered a vow that she would never assume male attire; nevertheless, she was once cast for Signor Arionelli, in the "Son-in-Law," a part originally played by Bannister. This was after her retirement from London, and when she was Mrs. Lisley,—playing in Dublin. The time of the play is 1779, but the actress, who might have worn a great coat, if she had been so minded, assumed—for a music-master of that period, in London—the oriental costume of a pre-Christian, or of no period, worn by Arbaces, in Artaxerxes!
Miss Barsanti was an honest woman who, on becoming Mrs. Lisley, wished to assume her husband's name, but that gentleman's family forbade what they had no right to prohibit. Her second husband's family was less particular, and in theatrical biographies, she is the Mrs. Daly, the wife of the active Irish manager, of that name; who is for ever memorable as being the only Irish manager who ever realised a fortune, and took it with him into retirement.
There remain to be noticed, before we pass to the Siddons period, several actresses, of higher importance than the above ladies, as well as actors, whose claims are only second to those of Macklin.