A dozen more of ladies, all of desert, and some of extraordinary merit, passed away from the stage during the latter portion of the last century. Mrs. Green, Hippisley's daughter, and Governor Hippisley's sister,—the original Mrs. Malaprop, and, but for Mrs. Clive, the first of petulant Abigails, finished in 1779[19] a public career which began in 1730.[20] In the same year,[21] but after a brief service of about eight years, Mason's Elfrida and Evelina, the voluptuous Mrs. Hartley, in her thirtieth year, went into a retirement which she enjoyed till 1824. She was "the most perfect beauty that was ever seen,"—more perfect than "the Carrara," who was "the prettiest creature upon earth." Her beauty, however, was of feature, lacking expression, and though an impassioned, she was not an intelligent actress, unless her plunging her stage-wooers into mad love for her be a proof of it. No wonder, had Smith only not been married, that he grew temporarily insane about this young, graceful, and fair creature.
Then, from the London stage, at least, fell Mrs. Baddeley, at the end of the season, 1780-81. She was a pretty actress with a good voice, and so little love for Mr. Baddeley and so much for George Garrick that a duel came of it. The parties went out, to Hyde Park, on a November morning of 1770. Baddeley was stirred up to fight Davy's brother, by a Jewish friend, who, being an admirer of the lady, wanted her husband to shoot her lover! The two pale combatants fired anywhere but at each other, and then the lady rushed in, crying, "Spare him!" without indicating the individual! Whereupon, husband and friend took the fair one, each by a hand, and went to dinner; and the married couple soon after played together in "It's well it's no worse!"
But worse did come, and separation, and exposure, and Memoirs to brighten Mrs. Baddeley, which, like those of Mrs. Pilkington, only blackened her the more. She passed to country engagements, charming audiences for awhile with her Polly, Rosetta, Clarissa, and Imogen, till laudanum, cognac, paralysis, and small sustenance, made an end of her, when she had lost everything she could value, save her beauty.
The third departure was of as mad a creature as she, Miss Catley—the Irish songstress, all smiles and dimples, and roguish beauty; who loved, like Nell Gwyn, to loll about in the boxes, and call to authors that she was glad their play was damned; and to ladies, to stand up that she might look at them, and to display the fashion of her dress, which those ladies eagerly copied. Her "Tyburn top," which she wore in Macheath, set the mode for the hair for many a day; and to be Catley-fied was to be decked out becomingly.
A more illustrious pair next left the stage more free to Mrs. Siddons, or her coming rendered it less tenable to them; namely, Mrs. Yates and George Anne Bellamy—the former appearing for the last time for the benefit of the latter. More than thirty years before, as Mrs. Graham, young, fat, and weak-voiced, she failed in Dublin. In 1753-54, she made almost as unsatisfactory a début at Drury Lane in a new part, Marcia, in "Virginia," in which she only showed promise. Richard Yates then married and instructed her, and she rapidly improved, but could not compete with Mrs. Cibber, till that lady's illness caused Mandane ("Orphan of China") to be given to Mrs. Yates, who, by her careful acting, at once acquired a first-rate reputation. In the classical heroines of the dull old classical tragedies of the last century, she was wonderfully effective, and her Medea was so peculiarly her own, that Mrs. Siddons herself never disturbed the public memory of it by acting the part.
When Mrs. Cibber died in 1765,[22] Mrs. Yates succeeded to the whole of her inheritance, some of which was a burthen too much for her; but she kept her position, with Mrs. Barry (Crawford) for a rival, till Mrs. Siddons promised at Bath to come and dispossess both. Mrs. Yates recited beautifully, was always dignified, but seems to have wanted variety of expression. With a haughty mien, and a powerful voice, she was well suited to the strong-minded heroines of tragedy; but the more tender ladies, Desdemona or Monimia, she could not compass. To the pride and violence of Calista she was equal, but in pathos she was wanting. Her comedy was as poor as that of Mrs. Siddons; her Jane Shore as good; her Medea so sublime as to be unapproachable. I suspect she was a little haughty; for impudent Weston says in his will: "To Mrs. Yates I leave all my humility!"
In one character of comedy she is said, indeed, to have excelled—Violante, in the "Wonder," to the playfulness, loving, bickering, pouting, and reconciliations, in which her "queen-like majesty" does not seem to have been exactly suitable. Her scorn was never equalled but by Mrs. Siddons, and it would be difficult to determine which lady had the more lofty majesty. In passion Mrs. Yates swept the stage as with a tempest; yet she was always under control. For instance, in Lady Constance, after wildly screaming,
"I will not keep this form upon my head,
When there is much disorder in my wit,"
she did not cast to the ground the thin white cap which surmounted her headdress, but quietly took it from her head, and placed it on the right side of the circumference of her hoop! Mrs. Yates died in 1787.