same play was very good; not but that the wild rabbits are better than tame ones. Though Mrs. Barry was so great in her day, yet Mrs. Siddons-stewed and smothered with onions either of them are delicious. Mrs. Pope was admirable in Queen Elizabeth—a man I had here made a very good Oroonoko; not but I would always advise you to have a calr's head dressed with the skin on, but you must always bespeak it of the butcher yourself; though the late bespeak of Lord Scarborough did nothing for me, nothing at all-the house was one of the worst of the whole season; with bacon and green-not twenty pounds altogether, with parsley and butter." To speak of the idiosyncracies of actors suggests an endless string of anecdotes, not the least amusing of which has for its hero the solemn and sagacious William Bensley, an ideal Malvolio and an impressive Ghost in Hamlet. Bensley had been in the army and we are told that when he thought proper to unbend from his dignified stateliness he was prone to the relation of his moving accidents by flood and field. Whenever the name of any foreign station occurred in conversation Bensley would exclaim, "I was there in -such a year, and served under (such a General) as lieutenant," etc. Charles Bannister (against whose punning propensities Bensley waged war) had noted down all these assertions for many months, and on one particular evening, after a coolness for some days be* Records of a Stage Veteran. tween the tragedian and himself, proposed his health in the following words: "Gentlemen, I rise to drink the health of one who has sought the bubble reputation even in the cannon's mouth; who, quitting the field of fame, bespoke her trumpet to bray forth his eulogies in the path of the drama. The scenic power of my friend, Mr. Bensley, you well know, you all appreciate [loud plaudits, and Bensley, overcome by gratitude, fervently squeezing Bannister's hand] but, Gentlemen, it is as a defender of his country that I rise to drink his health; he has fought, he has bled for Old England [tremendous applause, and Bensley bowing his acknowledgments]. He was captain in the at Calcutta in regiment He was at in He led in 17 [Here Bannister enu the forlorn hope at merated all the places Bensley had ever mentioned in his moments of exhilaration, to the tragedian's dismay.] Gentlemen," concluded Charles, "my friend's age is but forty-six, he has been twenty years on the stageI find, therefore, by accurate calculation that he must have carried a pair of colors when eighteen months old ---an instance of precocity, power, and courage unexampled in the history of the world." * Poor Bensley might prose on about his martial experience and act with force as well, and the witty Ban * Ralph Wewitzer tells of a country gentleman, who having fallen asleep while Bensley was repeating a long speech in "his usual croaking voice,” suddenly started up and cried out: "Hullo! reach me my blunderbuss this instant; I thought I had shot that croaking devil yesterday." nister could conjure large audiences by the spell of his sweet voice and amusing burlesque of Italian singers, but neither of them held the same warm place in the public heart as did the estimable Mrs. Pope. What a host of associations cluster about her name. The friend and colleague of Garrick, in whose company she figured so conspicuously, and a player at Drury Lane, for many years, she represented all that was best in the school with which she was so pleasurably identified, and when she died in 1797, another link was lost between two great theatrical epochs. Her maiden name was Younge, and she came of a very respectable but impecunious family. Just as she was preparing to earn her own living, as one historian curiously informs us,* "a dignified Professor of the Long Robe paid his devoirs to her. This gentleman being early bred an apothecary, and afterwards pursuing the Law (with whose quibbles he soon became very conversant) it is not to be expected he should be a connoisseur in the mysteries of Cupid." But it seems that "short was the date" of this paradoxical love-affair" where the hearts did not unite." In brief, "the natural moroseness of his temper breaking out, removed the artificial affection she was induced to shew him; and despising a settlement so incompatible with happiness, she really dissolved a connection in which her hand, not her heart, consented." Miss Younge, now fancy free, determined "to be *The Secret History of the Green Room. the carver of her own happiness," and having a strong liking for the works of the English dramatists concluded that she might do worse than play in some of them herself. She procured a note of introduction to Garrick, who took an interest in her ambitions, and was soon a prominent member of his company. Her salary was next raised to three pounds, and at the end of the season she was disporting herself in comparative luxury to the tune of five pounds a week. She was an attractive woman, with superb neck and shoulders, and a face that had great beauty of expression, although her features were not actually handsome, nor did she lose anything by being frequently compared to the famous Lady Sarah Lennox. Lady Sarah was probably the only woman that honest, phlegmatic George III. ever passionately loved; he would have married her had he not been unfortunate enough to be a King, and he was himself one of the first to notice the strong resemblance between the actress and his one-time sweetheart. There is, indeed, a pathetic little story as to how, many years later, when the charms of both women were faded, His Majesty attended a performance at Drury Lane and seeing Mrs. Pope on the stage, (in middle life she married Pope, the actor, who was young enough to be her son,) he startled the Queen by muttering in a melancholy, preoccupied manner, "She is like Lady Sarah still." Miss Younge was unusually valuable in that she could play both tragedy and comedy, going from Lady Macbeth and Juliet to Rosalind, and then descending below-stairs to the atmosphere of dancing chambermaids, with ease and success. But she shone more brightly in comedy than in the serious roles; she had a dry humor that proved irresistible, and as Hazlitt said, was "the very picture of a duenna, a maiden lady, or antiquated dowager-the latter spring of beauty, the second childhood of vanity; more quiet, fantastic and old-fashioned, more pert, frothy and light-headed than anything can be imagined." She owed not a little of her effectiveness to the training of Garrick, whose temper she could disturb just as well as did several more of his feminine supporters. There is a rather foolish legend that the squabbles of the actresses hastened his retirement from the stage, and that a certain undignified contest over a petticoat, of which Miss Younge and Mrs. Vates were the heroines, gave the coup de grace to his determination to quit the boards forever. Garrick was too experienced a manager to be driven off by these tempests in a teapot, although some wiseacres would have it so, nevertheless, and one of them wrote the following epigram entitled The Manager's Distress. "I have no nerves,' says Younge, 'I cannot act.'" |