My mother, who loved her early home dearly, did not share Illidge’s views respecting the tenants, or visit with her wrath those who liked the place well enough to hire it. So one day, in spite of frowns and angry looks from our hostess, she called on me to go with her to pay our respects to the tenants in question.
“Will you lend me the poem,” I asked in a very conciliatory voice, “to take with me to the house? I think Mrs —— would very much like to see it.” “That she never shall,” said Illidge, in a tone of such defiant exasperation that I was indeed very sorry I had spoken.
Before I go any further, I cannot refrain from telling a story I heard from Illidge’s own lips—indeed I published it in “Notes and Queries,” and more than once imparted it to literary friends. Very little credence has been awarded to this anecdote, but for my own part, I cannot doubt the authority whence it was derived.
The heroine of the little romance I am about to relate was no less a personage than Mrs Garrick, the wife of the eminent tragedian. In the year 1746 the play-going public were thrown into a state of great excitement in consequence of the appearance of a young and beautiful dancer named La Violette. She hailed from Vienna, and had been introduced by the Maître de Ballet at that court with other young ladies, to dance with the children of the Empress Maria Theresa. Her Majesty took a great fancy to the girl, whose family name was Veigel, which in Austrian patois signifies violet, and the Empress gave her the name of Mademoiselle Violette. It is not mentioned in the life of Garrick that she ever appeared on the public stage at Vienna, but she came over to England and made her début as a dancer at Drury Lane on the 3rd December 1746.
ROMANCE OF MRS GARRICK’S LIFE
Horace Walpole in his amusing and gossiping letters, in which he minds everybody else’s business, tells us how the London world, especially the fashionable portion, went mad after Mademoiselle Violette, and how, in particular, the Countesses of Burlington and Talbot rivalled each other in seeking her society and showing her favour; the former having her portrait taken, and carrying her off to Chiswick, and chaperoning her on many occasions. Lord Burlington[[23]] shared in his wife’s predilection for the lovely young Austrian. Lady Burlington, indeed, often played the part of mother to La Violette (attending her to the theatre, and throwing a warm pelisse over her, when she came out), and at length her noble friends invited her to take up her abode at Burlington House. One day as Lord Burlington was passing La Violette’s open door, he was attracted by her singing, and stopped to speak and compliment her on her sweet voice. As he did so, his eyes fell upon a picture, whether miniature or not, I am unable to say, and in an agitated tone he enquired whose portrait it was. La Violette replied that it was her mother’s. Explanations followed, dates were examined, small relics in the girl’s possession inspected, and, if I may be excused a vulgarism, two and two were put together, and it was proved to Lord Burlington’s entire conviction that La Violette was no other than his own daughter—her mother being a beautiful artiste, with whom he had had a liaison on the Continent, but after a violent quarrel, a separation had taken place, and they never met again.
[23]. Richard, fourth Earl of Cork and third Earl of Burlington, K.G., born 1695, died 1753; married Dorothy Saville, daughter of William, Marquis of Halifax.
Of the particulars of her mother’s connection with Lord Burlington, I am entirely ignorant; I merely give the story as it was related to me, with the only details I can recall, by Illidge, who had it from the lips of a niece of Lord Burlington’s housekeeper. The latter, being in his service at the time of the incident, but having secrecy enjoined on her, kept silence till many years after.
On La Violette’s marriage with David Garrick, in 1749, Lord Burlington bestowed on her a dowry of £6,000, and one of the biographers of the great actor says that this generosity on his lordship’s part gave rise to the conjecture that she was his own child, going on, however, to argue, by dates and diaries, that the English nobleman had not been on the Continent at the time specified, and that the girl was the daughter of Viennese parents of the name of Viegel.
It would be useless and tedious to enter into all the minutiæ of that bygone history. I merely mention the facts as related to me by one who thought it necessary to speak of it in a confidential manner, although everybody connected with the little romance had long passed away. The Garrick union was a very happy one, and for thirty years the husband and wife were inseparable. The widow survived him for a long period, and it was my good fortune to see her when I was quite a child. We encountered her in the lobby of a theatre, as she was making her way out between two female attendants, and my father said to me: “That is Mrs Garrick, Mary; some day you will be glad to think that you have seen her.” She wore a strange costume of quilted white silk, somewhat resembling a dressing-gown, and a large mob cap, and though very aged, bore undoubted traces of former beauty. I believe it was shortly before her death. She died at Hampton, having nearly attained her hundredth year, at a house which her husband bequeathed to her, and which still bears the name, if I am not mistaken, of “Garrick’s Villa.”