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BARBARA S-----
ON the noon of the 14th of November, 1743 or 4, I forget
which it was, just as the clock had struck one, Barbara
S-----, with her accustomed punctuality ascended the long rambling
staircase, with awkward interposed landing-places, which led to
the office, or rather a sort of box with a desk in it, whereat sat the
then Treasurer of (what few of our readers may remember) the Old
Bath Theatre. All over the island it was the custom, and remains
so I believe to this day, for the players to receive their weekly
stipend on the Saturday. It was not much that Barbara had
to claim.
This little maid had just entered her eleventh year; but her
important station at the theatre, as it seemed to her, with the
benefits which she felt to accrue from her pious application of her
small earnings, had given an air of womanhood to her steps and to
her behaviour. You would have taken her to have been at least
five years older.
Till latterly she had merely been employed in choruses, or where
children were wanted to fill up the scene. But the manager, observing
a diligence and adroitness in her above her age, had for
some few months past intrusted to her the performance of whole
parts. You may guess the self-consequence of the promoted
Barbara. She had already drawn tears in young Arthur; had
rallied Richard with infantine petulance in the Duke of York
and in her turn had rebuked that petulance when she was Prince of
Wales. She would have done the elder child in Morton's pathetic
alter-piece to the life; but as yet the " Children in the Wood"
was not.
Long after this little girl was grown an aged woman, I have seen
some of these small parts, each making two or three pages at most,
copied out in the rudest hand of the then prompter, who doubtless
transcribed a little more carefully and fairly for the grown-up
tragedy ladies of the establishment. But such as they were,
blotted and scrawled, as for a child's use, she kept them all; and
in the zenith of her after reputation it was a delightful sight to
behold them bound up in costliest Morocco, each single -- each
small part making a book -- with fine clasps, gilt-splashed, &c.
She had conscientiously kept them as they had been delivered to
her; not a blot had been effaced or tampered with. They were
precious to her for their affecting remembrancings. They were her
principia, her rudiments; the elementary atoms; the little steps by
which she pressed forward to perfection. "What," she would
say, "could Indian rubber, or a pumice stone, have done for
these darlings?"
I am in no hurry to begin my story -- indeed I have little or none
to tell -- so I will just mention an observation of hers connected with
that interesting time.
Not long before she died I had been discoursing with her on the
quantity of real present emotion which a great tragic performer experiences
during acting. I ventured to think, that though in the
first instance such players must have possessed the feelings which
they so powerfully called up in others, yet by frequent repetition
those feelings must become deadened in great measure, and the
performer trust to the memory of past emotion, rather than
express a Present one. She indignantly repelled the notion, that
with a truly great tragedian the operation, by which such effects
were produced upon an audience, could ever degrade itself into
what was purely mechanical. With much delicacy, avoiding to
instance in her self-experience, she told me, that so long ago as
when she used to play the part of the Little Son to Mrs. Porter's
IsabelIa, (I think it was) when that impressive actress has been
bending over her in some heart-rending colloquy, she has felt
real hot tears come trickling from her, which (to use her powerful
expression) have perfectly scalded her back.
I am not quite so sure that it was Mrs. Porter; but it was some
great actress of that day. The name is indifferent; but the fact
of the scalding tears I most distinctly remember.
I was always fond of the society of players, and am not sure that
an impediment in my speech (which certainly kept me out of the
pulpit) even more than certain personal disqualifications, which are
often got over in that profession, did not prevent me at one time of
life from adopting it. I have had the honour (I must ever call it)
once to have been admitted to the tea-table of Miss Kelly. I have
played at serious whist with Mr. Liston. I have chatted with ever
good-humoured Mrs. Charles Kemble. I have conversed as friend to
friend with her accomplished husband. I have been indulged with
a classical conference with Macready; and with a sight of the
Player-picture gallery, at Mr. Matthews's, when the kind owner, to
remunerate me for my love of the old actors (whom he loves so
much) went over it with me, supplying to his capital collection,
what alone the artist could not give them -- voice; and their living
motion. Old tones, half-faded, of Dodd and Parsons, and Baddeley,
have lived again for me at his bidding. Only Edwin he could not
restore to me. I have supped with -----; but I am growing a coxcomb.
As I was about to say -- at the desk of the then treasurer of the
old Bath theatre -- not Diamond's -- presented herself the little
Barbara S-----.
The parents of Barbara had been in reputable circumstances.
The father had practised, I believe, as an apothecary in the town.
But his practice from causes which I feel my own infirmity too
sensibly that way to arraign -- or perhaps from that pure infelicity
which accompanies some people in their walk through life, and which
it is impossible to lay at the door of imprudence -- was now reduced
to nothing. They were in fact in the very teeth of starvation, when
the manager, who knew and respected them in better days, took the
little Barbara into his company.
At the period I commenced with, her slender earnings were the
sole support of the family, including two younger sisters. I must
throw a veil over some mortifying circumstances. Enough to say,
that her Saturday's pittance was the only chance of a Sunday's
(generally their only) meal of meat.
One thing I will only mention, that in some child's part, where in
her theatrical character she was to sup off a roast fowl (O joy to
Barbara!) some comic actor, who was for the night caterer for this
dainty in the misguided humour of his part, threw over the dish
such a quantity of salt (O grief and pain of heart to Barbara!) that
when he crammed a portion of it into her mouth, she was obliged
sputteringly to reject it; and what with shame of her ill-acted part,
and pain of real appetite at missing such a dainty, her little heart
sobbed almost to breaking, till a flood of tears, which the well-fed
spectators were totally unable to comprehend, mercifully relieved
her.
This was the little starved, meritorious maid, who stood before
old Ravenscroft, the treasurer, for her Saturday's payment.
Ravenscroft was a man, I have heard many old theatrical people
besides herself say, of all men least calculated for a treasurer. He
had no head for accounts, paid away at random, kept scarce any
books, and summing up at the week's end, if he found himself a
pound or so deficient, blest himself that it was no worse.
Now Barbara's weekly stipend was a bare half guinea. By
mistake he popped into her hand a -- whole one.
Barbara tripped away.
She was entirely unconscious at first of the mistake: God knows,
Ravenscroft would never have discovered it.
But when she had got down to the first of those uncouth landing-places,
she became sensible of an unusual weight of metal pressing
her little hand.
Now mark the dilemma.
She was by nature a good child. From her parents and those
about her she had imbibed no contrary influence. But then they
had taught her nothing. Poor men's smoky cabins are not always
porticoes of moral philosophy. This little maid had no instinct to
evil, but then she might be said to have no fixed principle. She
had heard honesty commended, but never dreamed of its application
to herself. She thought of it as something which concerned grown-up
people -- men and women. She had never known temptation, or
thought of sparing resistance against it.
Her first impulse was to go back to the old treasurer, and explain
to him his blunder. He was already so confused with age, beside
a natural want of punctuality, that she would have had some
difficulty in making him understand it. She saw that in an instant.
And then it was such a bit of money! and then the image of a
larger allowance of butcher's meat on their table next day came
across her, till her little eyes glistened, and her mouth moistened
But then Mr. Ravenscroft had always been so good-natured, had
stood her friend behind the scenes, and even recommended her promotion
to some of her little parts. But again the old man was
reputed to be worth a world of money. He was supposed to have
fifty pounds a year clear of the theatre. And then came staring
upon her the figures of her little stockingless and shoeless sisters.
And when she looked at her own neat white cotton stockings, which
her situation at the theatre had made it indispensable for her
mother to provide for her, with hard straining and pinching from
the family stock, and thought how glad she should be to cover their
poor feet with the same -- and how then they could accompany her
to rehearsals, which they had hitherto been precluded from doing,
by reason of their unfashionable attire -- in these thoughts she
reached the second landing-place -- the second, I mean from the top
-- for there was still another left to traverse.
Now virtue support Barbara!
And that never-failing friend did step in -- for at that moment a
strength not her own, I have heard her say, was revealed to her -- a
reason above reasoning -- and without her own agency, as it seemed
(for she never felt her feet to move) she found herself transported
back to the individual desk she had just quitted, and her hand in the
old hand of Ravenscroft, who in silence took back the refunded
treasure, and who had been sitting (good man) insensible to the
lapse of minutes, which to her were anxious ages; and from that
moment a deep peace fell upon her heart, and she knew the quality
of honesty.
A year or two's unrepining application to her profession
brightened up the feet, and the prospects, of her little sisters, set
the whole family upon their legs again, and released her from the
difficulty of discussing moral dogmas upon a landing-place.
I have heard her say, that it was a surprise, not much short of
mortification to her, to see the coolness with which the old man
pocketed the difference, which had caused her such mortal throes.
This anecdote of herself I had in the year 1800, from the mouth
of the late Mrs. Crawford,* then sixty.seven years of age (she died
soon after); and to her struggles upon this childish occasion I have
sometimes ventured to think her indebted for that power of rending
the heart in the representation of conflicting emotions, for which in
after years she was considered as little inferior (if at all so in the
part of Lady Randolph) even to Mrs. Siddons.
[Footnote] * The maiden name of this lady was Street, which she
changed, by successive marriages, for those of Dancer, Barry,
and Crawford. She was Mrs. Crawford, and a third time a widow,
when I knew her.
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