Superwomen Part 6

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 mult.i.tude 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 ident.i.ty. 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 s.e.x; 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 s.e.x.

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 bl.u.s.ter. 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, G.o.d! Oh, G.o.d!"

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 pa.s.sed.

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 Caesar, 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 Caesar, aut nullus."

It was a vile thing to say. And Caesar 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 Caesar 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 Was.h.i.+ngton's spelling would not pa.s.s muster in a primary school, though in 1776 he was regarded as a man of high education. While as for Lady G.o.diva--

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.