“Which, by some devilish cantrip sleight,”
played round the old beau's slow movement, without being at variance with it. As for the character of this ladylike performance, it was clear, brilliant, and loud as blacksmith.
The folk laughed; Vane was shocked. “She profanes herself by whistling,” thought he. Mr. Cibber was confounded. He appeared to have no idea whence came this sparkling adagio. He looked round, placed his hands to his ears, and left off whistling. So did his musical accomplice.
“Gentlemen,” said Cibber, with pathetic gravity, “the wind howls most dismally this evening! I took it for a drunken shoemaker!”
At this there was a roar of laughter, except from Mr. Vane. Peg Woffington laughed as merrily as the others, and showed a set of teeth that were really dazzling; but all in one moment, without the preliminaries an ordinary countenance requires, this laughing Venus pulled a face gloomy beyond conception. Down came her black brows straight as a line, and she cast a look of bitter reproach on all present; resuming her study, as who should say, “Are ye not ashamed to divert a poor girl from her epilogue?” And then she went on, “Mum! mum! mum!” casting off ever and anon resentful glances; and this made the fools laugh again.
The Laureate was now respectfully addressed by one of his admirers, James Quin, the Falstaff of the day, and the rival at this time of Garrick in tragic characters, though the general opinion was, that he could not long maintain a standing against the younger genius and his rising school of art.
Off the stage, James Quin was a character; his eccentricities were three—a humorist, a glutton and an honest man; traits that often caused astonishment and ridicule, especially the last.
“May we not hope for something from Mr. Cibber's pen after so long a silence?”
“No,” was the considerate reply. “Who have ye got to play it?”
“Plenty,” said Quin; “there's your humble servant, there's—”
“Humility at the head of the list,” cried she of the epilogue. “Mum! mum! mum!”
Vane thought this so sharp.
“Garrick, Barry, Macklin, Kitty Clive here at my side, Mrs. Cibber, the best tragic actress I ever saw; and Woffington, who is as good a comedian as you ever saw, sir;” and Quin turned as red as fire.
“Keep your temper, Jemmy,” said Mrs. Woffington with a severe accent. “Mum! mum! mum!”
“You misunderstand my question,” replied Cibber, calmly; “I know your dramatis personae but where the devil are your actors?”
Here was a blow.
“The public,” said Quin, in some agitation, “would snore if we acted as they did in your time.”
“How do you know that, sir?” was the supercilious rejoinder; “you never tried!”
Mr. Quin was silenced. Peg Woffington looked off her epilogue.
“Bad as we are,” said she coolly, “we might be worse.”
Mr. Cibber turned round, slightly raised his eyebrows.
“Indeed!” said he. “Madam!” added he, with a courteous smile, “will you be kind enough to explain to me how you could be worse!”
“If, like a crab, we could go backward!”
At this the auditors tittered; and Mr. Cibber had recourse to his spy-glass.
This gentleman was satirical or insolent, as the case might demand, in three degrees, of which the snuff-box was the comparative, and the spy-glass the superlative. He had learned this on the stage; in annihilating Quin he had just used the snuff weapon, and now he drew his spy-glass upon poor Peggy.
“Whom have we here?” said he. Then he looked with his spy-glass to see. “Oh, the little Irish orange-girl!”
“Whose basket outweighed Colley Cibber's salary for the first twenty years of his dramatic career,” was the delicate reply to the above delicate remark. It staggered him for a moment; however, he affected a most puzzled air, then gradually allowed a light to steal into his features.
“Eh! ah! oh! how stupid I am; I understand; you sold something besides oranges!”
“Oh!” said Mr. Vane, and colored up to the temples, and cast a look on Cibber, as much as to say, “If you were not seventy-three!”
His ejaculation was something so different from any tone any other person there present could have uttered that the actress's eye dwelt on him for a single moment, and in that moment he felt himself looked through and through.
“I sold the young fops a bargain, you mean,” was her calm reply; “and now I am come down to the old ones. A truce, Mr. Cibber, what do you understand by an actor? Tell me; for I am foolish enough to respect your opinion on these matters!”
“An actor, young lady,” said he, gravely, “is an artist who has gone deep enough in his art to make dunces, critics and greenhorns take it for nature; moreover, he really personates; which your mere man of the stage never does. He has learned the true art of self-multiplication. He drops Betterton, Booth, Wilkes, or, ahem—”
“Cibber,” inserted Sir Charles Pomander. Cibber bowed.
“In his dressing-room, and comes out young or old, a fop, a valet, a lover, or a hero, with voice, mien, and every gesture to match. A grain less than this may be good speaking, fine preaching, deep grunting, high ranting, eloquent reciting; but I'll be hanged if it is acting!”
“Then Colley Cibber never acted,” whispered Quin to Mrs. Clive.
“Then Margaret Woffington is an actress,” said M. W.; “the fine ladies take my Lady Betty for their sister. In Mrs. Day, I pass for a woman of seventy; and in Sir Harry Wildair I have been taken for a man. I would have told you that before, but I didn't know it was to my credit,” said she, slyly, “till Mr. Cibber laid down the law.”
“Proof!” said Cibber.
“A warm letter from one lady, diamond buckles from another, and an offer of her hand and fortune from a third; rien que cela.”
Mr. Cibber conveyed behind her back a look of absolute incredulity; she divined it.
“I will not show you the letters,” continued she, “because Sir Harry, though a rake, was a gentleman; but here are the buckles;” and she fished them out of her pocket, capacious of such things. The buckles were gravely inspected, they made more than one eye water, they were undeniable.
“Well, let us see what we can do for her,” said the Laureate. He tapped his box and without a moment's hesitation produced the most execrable distich in the language:
“Now who is like Peggy, with talent at will,
A maid loved her Harry, for want of a Bill?
“Well, child,” continued he, after the applause which follows extemporary verses had subsided, “take me in. Play something to make me lose sight of saucy Peg Woffington, and I'll give the world five acts more before the curtain falls on Colley Cibber.”
“If you could be deceived,” put in Mr. Vane, somewhat timidly; “I think there is no disguise through which grace and beauty such as Mrs. Woffington's would not shine, to my eyes.”
“That is to praise my person at the expense of my wit, sir, is it not?” was her reply.
This was the first