CHAPTER THREE

PEG WOFFINGTON

IRISH HEART CONJURER

A throng of people--barefoot peasants, modish idlers, tradesfolk, riffraff--stood in a Dublin courtyard one day in 1727, providing the much-admired "sea of upturned faces." All eyes were raised, all necks were back bent. Every one was looking aloft to where a taut wire was stretched between two post tops.

Along the wire walked a harlequin, taking mincing dance steps and balancing across his shoulders a pole from whose extremities dangled two huge baskets. To make the feat the more interesting by adding a spice of possible peril, announcement had been made that each basket contained a live child.

The chance of a triple tragedy in the event of a misstep made the tight-wire walk a right diverting spectacle, and thrilling withal, to the good folk of Dublin. But half way between the two extremity posts, still a new element of interest was added.

For, at that point, the top suddenly popped off one of the baskets, and a big-eyed, laughing face beamed down, over the edge, at the crowd. The face of a seven-year-old child--a girl. A roar of applause followed upon the youngster's unrehearsed appearance.

Thus did Peg Woffington, a queen of her century's actresses and consummate heart conjurer, make her professional debut.

Peg--her full first name, which nobody dreamed of using, was Margaret--was the daughter of an Irish bricklayer who had one point in common with certain modernists in that he was rabidly opposed to all doctors.

And the medical guild had in due time its revenge on the sacrilegious brick artist. For once, when Woffington fell ill, he fiercely refused to have a physician summoned. And he rapidly grew better. As her husband was convalescing, Mrs. Woffington sought to make assurance doubly certain by calling in a doctor. The pill juggler looked at the invalid and pronounced him out of danger. Next day Woffington died.

Peg was just learning to walk at the time of her lamented father's tilt with the cult of Æsculapius. She and her baby sister, Mary, at once set about helping to earn their own living, by toddling on either side of their mother when the widow hawked watercress through the streets, and shrilly piping in duet the virtues of her wares.

To Dublin, when Peg was seven, came one Madame Violante, with a troupe of tumblers and rope dancers. Peg was apprenticed to Madame Violante. But her term of service as a baby acrobat was short. Her employer had better use for her.

It was Madame Violante who originated the ever-since-popular custom of producing famous plays and operas, with child actors filling all the roles. Her "Liliputian Troupe" scored a big success in Dublin and the provinces. Much of this success was due to Peg, who almost invariably was cast for old-woman parts, and who "doubled in the brass" by doing quaint little step dances between the acts.

It was cruelly hard work for a growing child; nor was the early eighteenth-century theater the very best sort of nursery and moral training school for little girls. But apart from other and less creditable lessons acquired, she learned stage presence and practically every art and trick of the profession.

From the "Liliputian Troupe," Peg graduated into the more lucrative and equally moral pursuit of theater orange vender. In slack seasons, when no cargo of oranges chanced to have landed recently from the Americas, she acted, off and on; playing, at twelve, mature roles in provincial theater comedies, and exhibiting a rollicking humor that carried her audiences by assaut. At seventeen, she was playing--at seven dollars and fifty cents a week--~Ophelia~ and other exacting parts.

Incidentally, on both sides of the footlight candles--as actress and as orange girl in the pit--she had long since made herself the toast of the Dublin beaux. She was pretty--though not strikingly so. She had a ready, and occasionally flaying, Irish wit. She had, too, the magic, if still undeveloped, fascination of the super-woman. As to her morals--they were the morals of any and every other girl of her environment and upbringing. She was quite as good as she knew how to be. There was not a grain of real vice in her whole cosmos.

But there was a blazing ambition; an ambition that was cramped and choked in the miserable, makeshift provincial playhouses. She burned to be a famous actress. There was no chance for her in Ireland. So she came to London.

It was a case of burning her bridges behind her. For she carried a worn purse that held seventeen shillings. And the not-overnew dress she wore was her sole wardrobe. These were her tangible assets. On this capital and on genius and pluck and ambition and good looks and the charm that was daily growing more and more irresistible, Peg relied to keep her going.

To manager after manager she trudged. Not one would find work for her. In all, she made nineteen applications. And she scored just precisely nineteen rank failures.

Finally, half starved and wholly discouraged, she succeeded in interesting the manager of the Covent Garden Theater. And he gave her, or sold her, the chance she sought--the chance to appear before a London audience.

Her first appearance on the metropolitan stage was all that was needed to prove her worth. At once she caught the public fancy. Soon she found herself the most popular actress in England.

An air of mingled sadness and gayety in her stage work, an audacity and fresh youthfulness--and the mystic charm--carried her straight to the front. At this period she touched nothing but comedy--at which she had no peer--and preferably played male roles. Masculine attire set forth her stunning figure, and she played devil-may-care, boyish parts as could no other woman.

One night, after the first act of "The Constant Couple," wherein, clad in small-clothes and hose, she was playing ~Sir Harry Wildair~, Peg ran laughing and triumphant into the greenroom. There she chanced to find her bitterest friend and rival, Mistress Kitty Clive, a clever but somewhat homely actress. Said Peg in delight:

"They applauded me to the echoes! Faith, I believe half the men in the house thought I was really a boy."

"Perhaps," sneered envious Kitty. "But it is certain that at least half of them knew you weren't."

Peg stopped short in her gay laugh and eyed Kitty's plain visage quizzically.

"Mistress Clive," observed Peg, in irrelevant reflection, "did you ever stop to consider how much utterly useless modesty an ugly woman is responsible for unloading upon this poor world of ours?"

Kitty did not again cross swords with Peg. Indeed, after the first encounter, few people did.

The fops, the wits, the macaronis, the bloods, the Corinthians--all had discovered Peg long before this time. She was their darling, their idol. As this poor article is too brief in scope to contain a transcript of London's Social and Club Register of the day, most of Peg's minor conquests must be passed over without a word. One or two alone stand out as worth a few sentences.

Macklin, matinee favorite and really great actor, fell heels over head in love with her. So did Hallam, the doctor-author. Macklin, having no hope of winning Peg's favor, was content to watch over her and to guard her like a faithful bulldog. Hallam was not so humble.

Peg did not inherit her father's hatred for doctors, for she flirted lazily with Hallam and amused herself with his admiration. In time she tired of him and frankly told him so.

Hallam, lacking the game, sought the name. Furious at his dismissal, he was still eager to be considered a successful wooer of the famous actress. So he took to boasting loudly at White's and the Cocoa Tree that Peg cared for him alone, and that she had written him reams of burningly ardent love letters.

Peg heard of the boast and was foolish enough to run to the devoted Macklin with the story, entreating him to punish the braggart.

Macklin did not wait to write a challenge, or even go home for his sword, which he did not happen to be wearing that day. Snatching up his cane, he rushed to a near-by coffeehouse where he knew Hallam was likely to be found at that hour. There he discovered the author-doctor drinking with a circle of friends, to whom he was descanting upon Peg's worship of himself.

Macklin sprang at Hallam, seized him by the throat, and caned him unmercifully. Hallam writhed free and whipped out his sword. Macklin, forgetting that he himself was wielding a cane and not a sword, parried Hallam's first thrust and lunged for the doctor's face.

The ferrule of the cane pierced Hallam's left eyeball and penetrated to his brain, killing him instantly--an odd climax to one of history's oddest duels.

Macklin was placed on trial for his life. But he was promptly acquitted. And Peg's renown glowed afresh, because, through her, a man had died.

A pamphlet, written by still another vehement admirer, contains a description of Peg Woffington, written about the time of Hallam's taking off. Part of this word picture is worth repeating verbatim. You will note that, though contemporary, it is in the past tense. Here it is:

Her eyes were black as jet, and, while they beamed with ineffable luster, at the same time revealed all the sentiments of fair possessor. Her eyebrows were full and arched, and had a peculiar property of inspiring love or striking terror. Her cheeks were vermilioned with nature's best rouge, and outvied all the labored works of art.

Her nose was somewhat of the aquiline, and gave her a look full of majesty and dignity. Her lips were of the color of coral and the softness of down and her mouth displayed such beauties as would thaw the very bosom of an anchorite. Her teeth were white and even. Her hair was of a bright auburn color. Her whole form was beauteous to excess.

In the heyday of her glory, Peg went "to drink a dish of tea" with a party of friends one afternoon. Among the guests was a slender little commercial man, a wine merchant, in fact; shrewd, stingy, and smug. How such a character as his could have awakened the very faintest response in impulsive, big-hearted Peg's is one of the innumerable mysteries of hearts.

But at first glance she loved the little man; loved him as never before she had loved, and as she would never love again. She had met the love of her life.

She asked to have him introduced. The little vintner, tickled that the great Mistress Woffington should have deigned to notice an unknown nonentity, was duly brought up and presented.

Peg, her head swimming, did not at once catch his name and bade him repeat it. Obediently, the dapper youth replied:

"David Garrick, madam."

In the hour that ensued, Peg led Garrick to talk about himself--a never-difficult task. He told her that he hated his trade and that he was not making money thereby. Peg, appraising the man's appearance as well as a woman newly in love could hope to, saw that, though short, he was graceful and strikingly handsome. Also, that he had a marvelous voice.

Abruptly, she broke in on his soliloquy by suggesting that he go on the stage. Garrick stared. She spoke of the glories of a star's life. Garrick yawned. She mentioned that successful actors drew large salaries. Garrick sat up and began to listen. When she went on to speak of the fabulous receipts that awaited a star, Garrick feverishly consented to her plan.

Peg set to work, using to the straining point all her boundless theatrical influence. She got Garrick a chance. She coached him in the rudiments of acting. She found that the little wine seller had a Heaven-sent gift for the stage. So did the managers. So, in short order, did the public.

Garrick's success was as instantaneous as had been Peg's own. Peg rejoiced unspeakably in his triumph. So did he. The lofty motives that actuated Garrick's stage work may be guessed at from this entry in his diary October 20, 1741:

Last night played Richard the Third to the surprise of all. I shall make nearly three hundred pounds a year as an actor, and that is what I really dote on.

But he made infinitely more than the prophesied one thousand, five hundred dollars a year. For he speedily became an actor manager. His business training and his notorious stinginess were splendid assets. Money flowed in, beyond his wildest dreams of avarice. And he held on to it all.

Peg was inordinately proud of his achievements. So was Garrick. Peg loved him to distraction. He graciously consented to be loved. Indeed, it is probable that he cared for Peg as much as he could care for anybody except David Garrick. A swarm of women fell in love with him when he made his stage success. In spite of this, he still loved Peg. Even if not exclusively.

Then Peg and Garrick appeared for the time as co-stars. And, with him, she returned to the scene of her early struggles at Dublin. At the Smock Alley Theater there, the two acted in repertoire.

The pair were an enormous hit. So much so that they were forced, by popular clamor, to play straight through the summer. It was one of the hottest summers on record, but great crowds jammed the theater at each performance. An epidemic swept Dublin. A good many of the playgoers caught the infection at the playhouse and died; which caused the epidemic to receive the sinister nickname, "the Garrick fever."

Peg was no less popular than was her colleague. Together they toured Ireland, then came back to London, as openly avowed lovers. They were engaged to be married; but the marriage was from time to time postponed. Always at Garrick's suggestion.

Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, a suitor for Peg's favor at this time, was the author--among half a bookful of odes, sonnets, and so forth, to her charms--of "Lovely Peggy," a popular song "hit" of the day, a stanza of which runs:

Once more I'll tune the vocal shell, To hills and dales my passion tell, A flame which time can never quell, That burns for lovely Peggy. Ye greater bards the lyre should hit, To say what subject is more fit, Than to record the sparkling wit And bloom of lovely Peggy.

But Sir Charles wooed her in vain. She had thoughts for no one else but Garrick. One day, reproached by the poet with her greater regard for his rival, and not wishing to cause needless pain to the loser, Peg sought to evade the charge by saying that she had not seen Garrick for an age.

"Nay," contradicted the luckless Sir Charles, "I know you saw him only yesterday."

"Well," she retorted, "and is not that an age?"

She and Garrick had a singular rule for maintaining their antemarital establishment. It was arranged--by Garrick--that each should bear the monthly expenses alternately. When it was Peg's turn, it was noticeable that much better food was provided and that many more dinner guests were invited to the house than during the alternate months when Garrick was running the place.

Once, during a Garrick month, a crowd of people dropped in unexpectedly to tea. Garrick eyed them with scarce-disguised hostility. Peg was delighted to see them. But no more so than if their call had come on her month for paying the bills, for she was lavishly hospitable, and was always generous--even prodigal to a fault; traits that caused her thrifty lover much pain.

To-day, as usual, Peg brewed the tea. Glancing at his own new-filled cup, as Macbeth might have glared at the imaginary Banquo, Garrick groaned aloud:

"Peg, you've made this tea so strong it's as red as blood. Zounds, ma'am, d'ye think 'tis to be bought at a penny the pound that you squander it so?"

It has ever been the fashion of romantic chroniclers, in writing of this strange union, to paint Peg as a suffering saint and Garrick as a crank. The latter picture is flawless. The former, unluckily, is not.

For, though Peg loved the actor manager and--temporarily--loved no one else, yet it was not in her superwoman nature to rest meekly content with the attentions of one man. Even though that man chanced to be the celebrated Davy Garrick. Running through the warp of her love was a woof of flirtations.

For one instance, Lord Darnley, a rich and notorious Piccadilly gallant, proclaimed himself her adorer. Flattered at so famous a nobleman's love, Peg flirted outrageously with Darnley. She even denied to him that she cared for Garrick.

Once Darnley found Garrick's wig in Peg's boudoir and railed at her infidelity to himself. Peg explained that she had borrowed the actor's wig and had brought it home in order to practice in it a masculine role she was soon to play at the Drury Lane.

Garrick, in jealous wrath, protested against her affair with Darnley. So she swore to Garrick that she had dismissed his rival--and gayly continued to meet Darnley on the sly. In time, Garrick found her out and the discovery led to their separation. Afterward, in remorse, Peg is said to have dropped Darnley. But then, as usual, it was too late for her renunciation to do any good except to punish herself.

Time after time Garrick had set back the date of the wedding. When at last the Darnley crisis came, Peg asked him frankly if he meant to keep his pledge or not. He replied gloomily that he did. And he went out and bought a wedding ring. He sighed in utter misery as he slipped the gold loop on her finger. Out flashed Peg's Irish temper.

"If you had ten times the wealth and repute and ability that the world credits you with," she declared, "I would not become your wife after this silent confession."

Almost at once she repented her rash words of release. But Garrick held her to them. He considered himself freed. And they parted. Peg sent back all Garrick's presents. He refused to return hers--they included a pair of diamond shoe buckles she had given him--on the tender plea that they would serve him as reminders of her.

Peg wrote an angry letter, pointing out very clearly the wide gulf between sentiment and graft, and telling Garrick on exactly which side of that gulf his action in regard to the presents placed him. Garrick retaliated by blackening her name on every occasion. She made no reply to any of his dirty slurs; nor spoke of him save in praise.

Thus ended the great love of Peg's life. But there were a host of minor loves to help take its place. Next came Spanger Berry, a fiery Irish actor who, to revenge Peg's supposed wrongs, did his level best on the stage to crowd Garrick out of several of the latter's favorite roles. He did not wholly succeed in this loverly attempt, but he caused Garrick many an hour of uneasiness, and wounded him severely by causing a drop in the actor manager's box-office receipts.

Then came a succession. To quote a biographer who wrote while Peg's name was yet fresh:

An infatuated swain swore that if she did not return his love, he would hang, drown, or shoot himself; and in order not to be responsible for his suicide, she consented to listen to his sighs. Then there came along a gentleman with money who won her affection. Another next presented and outbid the former. Another offered, and she received him in her train.

A fifth appeared, and was well received. A sixth declared his suit, and his suit was not rejected. In a word, a multitude of love's votaries paid their adorations to the shrine of their fair saint, and their fair saint was not cruel.

Then, according to the same chronicler and another, came into Peg's life "a personage." There is no hint as to his identity. Whether she was true to him or not is debatable. But she soon discovered that he had grown tired of her. It was borne to her ears that he was paying court to an heiress; intending to break with Peg, by degrees, if his suit were successful.

The heiress gave a masked ball in honor of her birthday. Peg gained admittance, in male costume, to the affair, and contrived to become her rival's partner in a minuet.

"When she straightway poured so many and such vile stories anent the gentleman's character into the lady's ears that the latter fainted and the ball broke up in confusion."

But Peg had gained her aim, by hopelessly discrediting with the heiress the recreant lover. The match was broken off. Peg felt herself right cozily revenged.

The next wooer was a "person." Not a "personage." He was Owen McSwinney, a buffoon. He was the premier clown of his day and a local celebrity.

McSwinny was fairly well to do. And, when he died soon afterward, it was found that he had left his whole estate--some two hundred pounds a year--to Peg.

It was not long after this that Richard Brinsley Sheridan, in his early prime, engaged Peg at four hundred pounds a season, to play at his theater. Sheridan was fervid in his admiration of the Irish beauty. Perhaps this fact, as well as the marked success she scored in his plays, led "The Rivals'" author to double her salary after the first season.

Yearly she grew more popular with her audiences. Having won a matchless reputation as a comedian, she turned for a time to tragic characters, and won thereby a wholly new renown as one of England's foremost tragedians. But comedy was her forte. And to it she returned.

Peg always vowed she hated the society of her own sex; a lucky thing for her, since she was not received by ladies of quality, as were many of her fellow actresses, and since her sharp tongue and the fact that men went wild over her made her hated by these fellow actresses. But her popularity with men endured, and she wasted few tears over women's dislikes. Few superwomen have been popular with their own sex.

Peg was elected president of the famed Beefsteak Club, and she always presided at the board in man's attire.

All this time she had been supporting her mother in a luxury undreamed of in the days of the medicophobic bricklayer. And she had educated and jealously safeguarded her younger sister, Mary.

Mary became engaged to Captain George Cholmondeley, son of the Earl of Cholmondeley; a glittering match for a bricklayer's daughter. The earl was justly indignant and posted away to Peg to break off the affair, if need be, by bribing her and the entire tribe of Woffington.

Peg met the irate old fellow with the full battery of her charm. In a trice she had him bewildered, then half relenting. Feebly he tried to bluster. Peg cut him short with:

"My lord, I'm the one to complain; not you. For now I'll have two beggars, instead of one, to feed."

It was a true forecast, for the earl, despite Peg's blandishments, withheld for a time his check book. And in the interim she gave the new-wed pair a house to live in and the money to run it.

And now for the last "big scene" of Peg's stage career: For some time she had been ailing. But she kept on with her acting.

On the evening of May 17, 1757, when she was at the very acme of her career, she played Rosalind at Covent Garden. Throughout the comedy she was at her scintillant best. The house was hers. Wave after wave of frantic applause greeted her, as, still in Rosalind's male habiliments, she stepped before the curtain, flushed and smiling, to deliver the epilogue.

Gayly stretching out her arms to pit and stalls, she began the familiar lines. With a gesture of infinite coquetry she continued:

"I would kiss as many of you as had beards that pleased me; complexions that liked me--that liked me----"

She faltered, whitened under her make-up, skipped three full lines, and came to the "tag:"

"----when I make curtsy--bid me--bid me--farewell!"

The last line haltingly spoken, she threw her hands high in air and screamed in a voice of abject terror:

"Oh, God! Oh, God!"

It was a prayer, not an oath. Reeling, the actress staggered to the wings, and there fell, swooning, leaving the packed house behind her in an uproar of confusion.

Kindly arms bore her from the stage she was never more to tread. Next day, all London knew that Mistress Peg Woffington had been stricken with paralysis and that from the neck down she was dead. Only the keen-witted brain lived, to realize the wreck of the beautiful body.

Sorrowing crowds blocked the street in front of her house for days, momentarily expecting news of her death. But Peg did not die. She did not die until three tedious years had passed.

Little by little she partly regained the use of her body. But she was feeble. Her rich beauty was wiped out as an acid-soaked sponge might efface a portrait.

Out of the gay life that had been the breath of her nostrils, feeble as an old woman, plain of face and halting of speech--she nevertheless retained enough of the wondrous ancient charm to enslave another adorer.

The newest--and last--wooer was Colonel Cæsar, of the Guards. On learning that Peg in her stricken state had infatuated the gallant colonel, a coffeehouse wit sized up the situation by cruelly quoting:

"Aut Cæsar, aut nullus."

It was a vile thing to say. And Cæsar hunted up the humorist, so runs the story, and thrashed him within an inch of his life.

Some time later, Tate Wilkinson, an "impersonator" of that era--yes, there were pests on the earth, even in those days--was scheduled to give a series of humorous impersonations of famous actors and actresses at the Drury Lane; then managed and partly owned by David Garrick.

Peg feared she might be held up to ridicule by the mimicry. The fear preyed on her mind, to a pathetic extent. Colonel Cæsar went to the theater and there informed Garrick that if he permitted Wilkinson to impersonate Mistress Woffington, the colonel would first give him a public caning and would then call him out.

The impersonation of Peg had been mysteriously lost from the imitator's repertoire when the performance was given.

Peg died in 1760, at the age of forty. She left more than five thousand pounds. She left it to charity. And, as a testimonial to her, a range of low-roofed, wistaria-covered cottages was built for the exclusive use of the poor. The dwellings were known as "The Margaret Woffington Cottages."

Samson's costume would start a panic on modern Broadway, yet it was doubtless deemed correct in his time. Queen Elizabeth's table manners would cause her speedy ejectment from any civilized restaurant, yet she was sixteenth century's model for etiquette. George Washington's spelling would not pass muster in a primary school, though in 1776 he was regarded as a man of high education. While as for Lady Godiva--

New times, new ways. Won't you remember that, in dealing with Peg Woffington? She was a product--and a fine product--of her generation and surroundings. Think of her only as an unfortunate, warm-hearted, beautiful girl, whom men adored almost as much for her lovable qualities as for her siren fascinations.

She merits a pedestal in the temple of superwomen. If I have failed to establish her right to it, the fault is mine, not hers.