she entered, and he watched keenly the effect of Vane's eloquent eulogy; but apparently the actress was too deep in her epilogue for anything else. She came in, saying, “Mum, mum, mum,” over her task, and she went on doing so. The experienced Mr. Cibber, who had divined Vane in an instant, drew him into a corner, and complimented him on his well-timed eulogy.
“You acted that mighty well, sir,” said he. “Stop my vitals! if I did not think you were in earnest, till I saw the jade had slipped in among us. It told, sir—it told.”
Up fired Vane. “What do you mean, sir?” said he. “Do you suppose my admiration of that lady is feigned?”
“No need to speak so loud, sir,” replied the old gentleman; “she hears you. These hussies have ears like hawks.”
He then dispensed a private wink and a public bow; with which he strolled away from Mr. Vane, and walked feebly and jauntily up the room, whistling “Fair Hebe;” fixing his eye upon the past, and somewhat ostentatiously overlooking the existence of the present company.
There is no great harm in an old gentleman whistling, but there are two ways of doing it; and as this old beau did it, it seemed not unlike a small cock-a-doodle-doo of general defiance; and the denizens of the green-room, swelled now to a considerable number by the addition of all the ladies and gentlemen who had been killed in the fourth act, or whom the buttery-fingered author could not keep in hand until the fall of the curtain, felt it as such; and so they were not sorry when Mrs. Woffington, looking up from her epilogue, cast a glance upon the old beau, waited for him, and walked parallel with him on the other side of the room, giving an absurdly exact imitation of his carriage and deportment. To make this more striking, she pulled out of her pocket, after a mock search, a huge paste ring, gazed on it with a ludicrous affectation of simple wonder, stuck it, like Cibber's diamond, on her little finger, and, pursing up her mouth, proceeded to whistle a quick movement,
“Which, by some devilish cantrip sleight,”
played round the old beau's slow movement, without being at variance with it. As for the character of this ladylike performance, it was clear, brilliant, and loud as blacksmith.
The folk laughed; Vane was shocked. “She profanes herself by whistling,” thought he. Mr. Cibber was confounded. He appeared to have no idea whence came this sparkling adagio. He looked round, placed his hands to his ears, and left off whistling. So did his musical accomplice.
“Gentlemen,” said Cibber, with pathetic gravity, “the wind howls most dismally this evening! I took it for a drunken shoemaker!”
At this there was a roar of laughter, except from Mr. Vane. Peg Woffington laughed as merrily as the others, and showed a set of teeth that were really dazzling; but all in one moment, without the preliminaries an ordinary countenance requires, this laughing Venus pulled a face gloomy beyond conception. Down came her black brows straight as a line, and she cast a look of bitter reproach on all present; resuming her study, as who should say, “Are ye not ashamed to divert a poor girl from her epilogue?” And then she went on, “Mum! mum! mum!” casting off ever and anon resentful glances; and this made the fools laugh again.
The Laureate was now respectfully addressed by one of his admirers, James Quin, the Falstaff of the day, and the rival at this time of Garrick in tragic characters, though the general opinion was, that he could not long maintain a standing against the younger genius and his rising school of art.
Off the stage, James Quin was a character; his eccentricities were three—a humorist, a glutton and an honest man; traits that often caused astonishment and ridicule, especially the last.
“May we not hope for something from Mr. Cibber's pen after so long a silence?”
“No,” was the considerate reply. “Who have ye got to play it?”
“Plenty,” said Quin; “there's your humble servant, there's—”
“Humility at the head of the list,” cried she of the epilogue. “Mum! mum! mum!”
Vane thought this so sharp.
“Garrick, Barry, Macklin, Kitty Clive here at my side, Mrs. Cibber, the best tragic actress I ever saw; and Woffington, who is as good a comedian as you ever saw, sir;” and Quin turned as red as fire.
“Keep your temper, Jemmy,” said Mrs. Woffington with a severe accent. “Mum! mum! mum!”
“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.
“Bad as we are,” said she coolly, “we might be worse.”
Mr. Cibber turned round, slightly raised his eyebrows.
“Indeed!” said he. “Madam!” added he, with a courteous smile, “will you be kind enough to explain to me how you could be worse!”
“If, like a crab, we could go backward!”
At this the auditors tittered; and Mr. Cibber had recourse to his spy-glass.
This gentleman was satirical or insolent, as the case might demand, in three degrees, of which the snuff-box was the comparative, and the spy-glass the superlative. He had learned this on the stage; in annihilating Quin he had just used the snuff weapon, and now he drew his spy-glass upon poor Peggy.
“Whom have we here?” said he. Then he looked with his spy-glass to see. “Oh, the little Irish orange-girl!”
“Whose basket outweighed Colley Cibber's salary for the first twenty years of his dramatic career,” was the delicate reply to the above delicate remark. It staggered him for a moment; however, he affected a most puzzled air, then gradually allowed a light to steal into his features.
“Eh! ah! oh! how stupid I am; I understand; you sold something besides oranges!”
“Oh!” said Mr. Vane, and colored up to the temples, and cast a look on Cibber, as much as to say, “If you were not seventy-three!”
His ejaculation was something so different from any tone any other person there present could have uttered that the actress's eye dwelt on him for a single moment, and in that moment he felt himself looked through and through.
“I sold the young fops a bargain, you mean,” was her calm reply; “and now I am come down to the old ones. A truce, Mr. Cibber, what do you understand by an actor? Tell me; for I am foolish enough to respect your opinion on these matters!”
“An actor, young lady,” said he, gravely, “is an artist who has gone deep enough in his art to make dunces, critics and greenhorns take it for nature; moreover, he really personates; which your mere man of the stage never does. He has learned the true art of self-multiplication. He drops Betterton, Booth, Wilkes, or, ahem—”
“Cibber,” inserted
