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"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.
"Madam!" cried he, with a jaunty manner, "you have inspired a son of Thespis with dreams of eloquence, you have tuned in a higher key a poet's lyre, you have tinged a painter's existence with brighter colors, and and " His mouth worked still, but no more artificial words would come. He sobbed out, "and God in heaven bless you, Mrs. Woffington!" and ran out of the room. Mrs.
He then went on to say that he had only this morning heard that the intimacy between Mrs. Woffington and a Colonel Murthwaite, although publicly broken off for prudential reasons, was still clandestinely carried on. She had, doubtless, slipped away to meet the colonel. Mr. Vane turned pale. "No! I will not suspect. I will not dog her like a bloodhound," cried he. "I will!" said Pomander. "You!
Woffington, whose lynx eye had comprehended all at a glance, and who had determined at once what line to take, came flying in again, saying: "Wasn't somebody inquiring for an angel? Here I am. See, Mr. Triplet;" and she showed him a note, which said: "Madam, you are an angel. From a perfect stranger," explained she; "so it must be true." "Mrs. Woffington," said Mr. Triplet to his wife. Mrs.
She delivered her lines with a hard, Southwestern accent, and I liked fancying her having come up in a simpler-hearted section of the country than ours, encouraged by a strong local belief that she was destined to do Juliet and Lady Macbeth, or Peg Woffington at the least; but very likely she had not. "Her performance was followed by an event involving a single character.
I used to be a very hearty laugher," whined she; "but I haven't laughed this two years." "Oh, indeed!" said the Woffington. "Then the next two years you shall do nothing else." "Ah, madam!" said Triplet. "That passes the art, even of the great comedian." "Does it?" said the actress, coolly. Lucy. "She is not a comedy lady. You don't ever cry, pretty lady?" "Oh, of course not." "Comedy is crying.
Vane, he began to look into himself; he could not but feel that he was a mere child in this woman's hands; and, more than that, his conscience told him that if his heart should be made a football of it would be only a just and probable punishment. For there were particular reasons why he, of all men, had no business to look twice at any woman whose name was Woffington.
The water rushed to his eyes, but his heart was now wholly his wife's; and gratitude to Mrs. Woffington for her noble conduct was the only sentiment awakened. "You must repay her, dearest," said he. "I know you love her, and until to-day it gave me pain; now it gives me pleasure. We owe her much." The happy, innocent life of Mabel Vane is soon summed up.
It was about 1852 when he began to write, or at least to publish, novels; and between the Peg Woffington of that year and his death on 1st April 1884 he produced nearly a score, diversifying the publication with law-suits, eccentric newspaper correspondences, and other things.
Siddons, with her wonderful, wailing cry, as Isabella, "O, my Biron, my Biron," her overwhelming Lady Macbeth and her imperial Queen Katharine. The brilliant story of Peg Woffington and the sad fate of Mrs. Robinson, the triumphant career of Mrs. Abington and the melancholy collapse of Mrs. Jordan all those things, and many more, are duly set down in the chronicles.
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