whether she gives her a fortune or not,' Horace Walpole wrote out to a friend in Florence a few days after the marriage, and speculation has since gone on mystifying what was in itself a very simple affair. The Countess, it is said, looked higher for her young friend than the great player, as a Countess with so celebrated a beauty in hand was likely to do; and it was not without difficulty that Garrick won what proved to be the great prize of his life. He had on one occasion to disguise himself as a woman, in order to convey a letter to his mistress. But the fact of her receiving it bespeaks the foregone conclusion that he had won her heart; and, that fact once ascertained, the Countess was probably too wise to oppose further resistance. How attractive in person the young dancer was her portraits survive to tell us. What her lover thought of her appears from some verses which he wrote in the first happiness of what we cannot call his honeymoon, for their whole married life was one honeymoon. "Tis not, my friend, her speaking face, A gaiety with innocence, A soft address, with manly sense; That this charming picture owed little or nothing to the exaggeration of the lover, is confirmed by the uniform testimony of all who knew her. Wilkes, no mean judge, called her the first,' and Churchill the most agreeable woman in England.' 'Her temper,' says Stockdale, was amiable and festive; her understanding discriminating and vigorous; her humour and her wit were easy and brilliant.' Sterne, seeing her in 1752 among the beauties of Paris who thronged the Tuileries Gardens, said she could annihilate them all in a single turn.' 'To David Hume,' as Madame Riccoboni tells us, elle rappelait au souvenir ces illustres dames Romaines dont on se forme une idée si majestueuse. Beaumarchais speaks of her sourires fins et pleins d'expression. To her husband Gibbon writes, May I beg to be remembered to Mrs. Garrick? By this time she has probably discovered the philosopher's stone. She has long possessed a more valuable secret-that of gaining the hearts of all who have the happiness of knowing her.' Horace Walpole drops his cynicism in speaking of her, 'I like her,' he says, 'exceedingly; · her her behaviour is all sense, and all sweetness too.' Of this 'best of women and wives,' as Garrick called her, he proved himself worthy by a loverlike wakefulness of affection which no familiarity ever dulled. During the twenty-eight years of their married life they were never one day apart. His friends were hers; where he went she went, and by the grace of her presence made his doubly welcome. The beaux esprits of Paris were only restrained from throwing themselves at her feet by the unusual spectacle of a lover husband, l'heureux mari,' as Madame Riccoboni calls him, dont les regards lui disent sans cesse, I love you!' Even Foote, brutal in his contempt of constancy and the home virtues, was touched by the beautiful oneness of their lives. In February, 1766, when he was recovering from his terrible accident, and, face to face with pain and sorrow, could listen to the dictates of his better nature, he wrote to Garrick, 'It has been my misfortune not to know Mrs. Garrick; but from what I have seen, and all I have heard, you will have more to regret, when either she or you die, than any man in the kingdom.' Seven years later, and when he had enjoyed the privilege of knowing her better, the same reckless wit, who spared no friend, however kind, respected no nature however noble, and from whom, as the event proved, a thousand wrongs were unable to alienate Garrick's forgiving nature, wrote of the lady to her husband in these terms:--She has the merit of making me constant and uniform in perhaps the only part of my life-my esteem and veneration for her.' Singularly enough the finest portrait of this charming woman is associated with Foote. It was painted by Hogarth for Garrick, and is now in Her Majesty's possession. It presents Garrick in the act of composition, his eyes rapt in thought, and his wife stealing behind him and about to snatch the pen from his upraised hand. He is in the act of writing, so says the catalogue of his sale, his prologue to Foote's farce of 'Taste.' This supplies the date, 'Taste' having appeared in 1752, just two years after their marriage. The picture is the very poetry of portraiture. The character, as well as the lineaments, of both are there, and it needs no stretch of fancy to imagine Garrick on the point of illustrating the virtuoso's passion for the antique by the line 'His Venus must be old, and want a nose,' when his reverie is broken by the saucy challenge of as pretty a mouth and sweet a pair of eyes as ever made a husband's heart happy. What Garrick owed to the happy circumstances of his marriage can scarcely be stated too highly. In his home he found all all the solace which grace, refinement, fine intelligence, and entire sympathy could give. As artist, these were invaluable to him; as manager, a man of his sensibilities must have broken down without them. In 1747, two years before his marriage, he had, along with Mr. Lacy, become patentee of Drury Lane theatre, to which his performances had been confined, with the exception of a second visit to Dublin in 1745-6, and a short engagement at Covent Garden in 1746-7. So well had he husbanded his means since his debut at the end of 1741, that he was able, with some help from friends, to find 80007. of the 12,0007. which were required for the enterprise. Lacy took charge of the business details, while all that related to the performances devolved upon Garrick. He got together the very best company that could be had, for, to use his own words, he thought it the interest of the best actors to be together,' knowing well, that apart from the great gain in general effect, this combination brings out all that is best in the actors themselves. On the stage, as elsewhere, power kindles by contact with power; and to the great actor it is especially important to secure himself, as far as he can, against being dragged down by the imbecility of those who share the stage with him. Sham genius naturally goes upon the principle of ma femme et cinq poupées; real inspiration, on the contrary, delights in measuring its strength against kindred power. This was Garrick's feeling. At starting, therefore, he drew round him Mrs. Cibber, Mrs. Pritchard, Mrs. Clive, Mrs. Woffington, among the women,-Barry, Macklin, Delane, Havard, Sparks, Shuter, among the men. Later on he secured Quin and Woodward, and, whenever he could, he drew into his company whatever ability was in the market. He determined to bring back the public taste, if possible, from pantomime and farce, to performances of a more intellectual stamp. Johnson wrote his fine Prologue to announce the principles on which the theatre was to be conducted, and threw upon the public, and with justice, the responsibility, should these miscarry, by the well-known lines,— 'The drama's laws the drama's patrons give, For those, who live to please, must please to live.' The public, as usual, fell back after a time upon its love for 'inexplicable dumb show and noise,' and Garrick had no choice but to indulge its taste. But in these early days the array of varied ability which his company presented, backed by his own genius, filled, as it well might, the theatre nightly.* Garrick * We have before us an extract from the books of the theatre, from which it appears Garrick purchased his success, however, by an amount of personal labour, for which only his own passionate enthusiasm for his art could have repaid him. To keep such forces in order was no common task; to reconcile their jealousies, to conciliate their vanity, to get their best work out of them, demanded rare temper, rare firmness, and extraordinary tact. Even with all these, which Garrick certainly possessed, his best efforts frequently provoked the spleen and shallow irritability of those about him. Nor was it only the airs of his tragic queens that upset his plans and put his chivalry to sore trial. Woffington and Clive-one the fine lady of Comedy, the other the liveliest of Abigails-kept him in continual hot water. But his bonhomie was not to be shaken; and when Clive had written him a more scolding letter than usual, he took it as a symptom of better health, and his salutation to her when they next met would be,-I am very glad, madam, you are come to your usual spirits.' Even the fiery Kitty could not resist such invincible good humour. Of course malicious stories in abundance were propagated against him, many of them due, beyond all question, to his very virtues as a manager. He worked from too high a point of view to be understood by many of the people who surrounded him. Excellence was his aim, and he allowed no one to trifle with the work he assigned them. Strict and elaborate rehearsals, under his own direction, were insisted on, much to the annoyance of some of the older actors, who had grown habitually careless as to the words of their parts. His own presiding mind arranged the business of the scene, and ensured ensemble and completeness. He took infinite pains to put his own ideas into the heads of performers who had no ideas of their own, so that his actors often made great hits, which were mainly due to the soul he had contrived to infuse into them at rehearsal. 'Wonderful, sir,' Kitty Clive wrote to him (23rd January, 1774), 'you have for these thirty years been contradicting the old proverb that you cannot make bricks without straw, by doing what is infinitely more difficult, making actors and actresses without genius.' Again on 23rd January, 1776, when the stage was about to lose him, she writes from Clieveden (Clive's Den, as her friend Walpole calls it) with her usual delightful heartiness:— 'I have seen you with your magical hammer in your hand endea appears that the nett profits of the two first years of Garrick's management were 16,000l. The nightly receipts, which varied from 100l. to 150l. when he did not play, invariably exceeded 200l. when he did. Besides his share of the profits Garrick received 500l. a year for acting, 5001. for managing, and 2007. for extras. vouring vouring to beat your ideas into the heads of creatures who had none of their own. I have seen you, with lamb-like patience, endeavouring to make them comprehend you; and when that could not be done, I have seen your lamb turned into a lion. By this, your great labour and pains, the public were entertained; they thought they all acted very fine-they did not see you pull the wires. There are people now on the stage to whom you gave their consequence; they think themselves very great: now let them go on in their new parts, without their leading-strings, and they will soon convince the world what their genius is. I have always said this to everybody, even when your horses and mine were in their highest prancing. While I was under your control, I did not say half the fine things I thought of you, because it looked like flattery; and you know your Pivy was always proud; besides, I thought you did not like me then; but now I am sure you do, which makes me send you this letter.'-Garrick Correspondence, ii. 128. It was only human nature, and not actors' nature especially, that Garrick should be pulled to pieces by the very members of his company to whom he had been most serviceable. Obsequiously servile to his face, behind his back they persecuted him with the shafts of slander. I have not always,' as he wrote in 1764, met with gratitude in a playhouse.' These were the people who whispered about that he was not the great actor the world supposed, but that he maintained his pre-eminence by stifling the gifts of other people, and letting nobody have a chance of popularity but himself. This was singularly untrue. All other considerations apart, Garrick was too good a man of business not to make the very best use he could of the abilities of his company. An opposite course meant empty houses, and a failing exchequer, besides double work to himself as an actor. As he wrote to Mrs. Pritchard's husband (July 11, 1747), in answer to some querulous suspicions that she was to be sacrificed to Mrs. Cibber: It is my interest (putting friendship out of the case) that your wife should maintain her character upon the stage; if she does not, shall not the managers be great losers? . . . I have a great stake, and must secure my property and my friends to the best of my judgment.' But Garrick was also governed by higher motives. He had a true artist's delight in excellence, and a kind hearted man's sympathy with well merited success. His whole relations to his actors prove this. Nor has a word of blame on this score been left on record against him by any of his really great compeers, such as Mrs. Cibber, Mrs. Pritchard, Mrs. Woffington, Quin, Barry, *A friendly nickname, which appears to have been given to her by Garrick. Sheridan, |