A Simple Story | Page 4

22. Saw Mr. Griffith's picture.
Jan. 28. Stole it.
Jan. 29. Rather disappointed at not receiving a letter from Mr.
Inchbald.
A few months later she did the great deed of her life: she stepped
secretly into the Norwich coach, and went to London. The days that
followed were full of hazard and adventure, but the details of them are
uncertain. She was a girl of eighteen, absolutely alone, and
astonishingly attractive--"tall," we are told, "slender, straight, of the
purest complexion, and most beautiful features; her hair of a golden
auburn, her eyes full at once of spirit and sweetness;" and it was only to
be expected that, in such circumstances, romance and daring would
soon give place to discomfort and alarm. She attempted in vain to
obtain a theatrical engagement; she found herself, more than once,
obliged to shift her lodging; and at last, after ten days of trepidation,
she was reduced to apply for help to her married sisters. This put an end
to her difficulties, but, in spite of her efforts to avoid notice, her beauty
had already attracted attention, and she had received a letter from a
stranger, with whom she immediately entered into correspondence. She
had all the boldness of innocence, and, in addition, a force of character

which brought her safely through the risks she ran. While she was still
in her solitary lodging, a theatrical manager, named Dodd, attempted to
use his position as a cover for seduction. She had several interviews
with him alone, and the story goes that, in the last, she snatched up a
basin of hot water and dashed it in his face. But she was not to go
unprotected for long; for within two months of her arrival in London
she had married Mr. Inchbald.
The next twelve years of Mrs. Inchbald's life were passed amid the
rough and tumble of the eighteenth-century stage. Her husband was
thirty-seven when she married him, a Roman Catholic like herself, and
an actor who depended for his living upon ill-paid and uncertain
provincial engagements. Mrs. Inchbald conquered her infirmity of
speech and threw herself into her husband's profession. She
accompanied him to Bristol, to Scotland, to Liverpool, to Birmingham,
appearing in a great variety of rôles, but never with any very
conspicuous success. The record of these journeys throws an interesting
light upon the conditions of the provincial companies of those days.
Mrs. Inchbald and her companions would set out to walk from one
Scotch town to another; they would think themselves lucky if they
could climb on to a passing cart, to arrive at last, drenched with rain
perhaps, at some wretched hostelry. But this kind of barbarism did not
stand in the way of an almost childish gaiety. In Yorkshire, we find the
Inchbalds, the Siddonses, and Kemble retiring to the moors, in the
intervals of business, to play blindman's buff or puss in the corner.
Such were the pastimes of Mrs. Siddons before the days of her fame.
No doubt this kind of lightheartedness was the best antidote to the
experience of being "saluted with volleys of potatoes and broken
bottles", as the Siddonses were by the citizens of Liverpool, for having
ventured to appear on their stage without having ever played before the
King. On this occasion, the audience, according to a letter from Kemble
to Mrs. Inchbald, "extinguished all the lights round the house; then
jumped upon the stage; brushed every lamp out with their hats; took
back their money; left the theatre, and determined themselves to repeat
this till they have another company." These adventures were diversified
by a journey to Paris, undertaken in the hope that Mr. Inchbald, who
found himself without engagements, might pick up a livelihood as a

painter of miniatures. The scheme came to nothing, and the Inchbalds
eventually went to Hull, where they returned to their old profession.
Here, in 1779, suddenly and somewhat mysteriously, Mr. Inchbald died.
To his widow the week that followed was one of "grief, horror, and
almost despair"; but soon, with her old pertinacity, she was back at her
work, settling at last in London, and becoming a member of the Covent
Garden company. Here, for the next five years, she earned for herself a
meagre living, until, quite unexpectedly, deliverance came. In her
moments of leisure she had been trying her hand upon dramatic
composition; she had written some farces, and, in 1784, one of them, A
Mogul Tale, was accepted, acted, and obtained a great success. This
was the turning-point of her career. She followed up her farce with a
series of plays, either original or adapted, which, almost without
exception, were well received, so that she was soon able to retire from
the stage with a comfortable competence. She had succeeded in life;
she