Peg Woffington | Page 5

of the pen and the brush ferreted patrons,
instead of aiming to be indispensable to the public, the only patron
worth a single gesture of the quill.
Mr. Vane had conversed with Triplet, that is, let Triplet talk to him in a
coffee-house, and Triplet, the most sanguine of unfortunate men, had
already built a series of expectations upon that interview, when this
note arrived. Leaving him on his road from Lambeth to Covent Garden,
we must introduce more important personages.
Mr. Vane was a wealthy gentleman from Shropshire, whom business
had called to London four months ago, and now pleasure detained.
Business still occupied the letters he sent now and then to his native
county; but it had ceased to occupy the writer. He was a man of
learning and taste, as times went; and his love of the Arts had taken
him some time before our tale to the theaters, then the resort of all who
pretended to taste; and it was thus he had become fascinated by Mrs.
Woffington, a lady of great beauty, and a comedian high in favor with
the town.
The first night he saw her was an epoch in the history of this
gentleman's mind. He had learning and refinement, and he had not
great practical experience, and such men are most open to impression
from the stage. He saw a being, all grace and bright nature, move like a
goddess among the stiff puppets of the scene; her glee and her pathos
were equally catching, she held a golden key at which all the doors of
the heart flew open. Her face, too, was as full of goodness as
intelligence--it was like no other farce; the heart bounded to meet it.
He rented a box at her theater. He was there every night before the
curtain drew up; and I'm sorry to say, he at last took half a dislike to
Sunday--Sunday "which knits up the raveled sleave of care," Sunday
"tired nature's sweet restorer," because on Sunday there was no Peg
Woffington. At first he regarded her as a being of another sphere, an
incarnation of poetry and art; but by degrees his secret aspirations
became bolder. She was a woman; there were men who knew her; some
of them inferior to him in position, and, he flattered himself, in mind.
He had even heard a tale against her character. To him her face was its
confutation, and he knew how loose-tongued is calumny; but still-- !
At last, one day he sent her a letter, unsigned. This letter expressed his

admiration of her talent in warm but respectful terms; the writer told
her it had become necessary to his heart to return her in some way his
thanks for the land of enchantment to which she had introduced him.
Soon after this, choice flowers found their way to her dressing-room
every night, and now and then verses and precious stones mingled with
her roses and eglantine. And oh, how he watched the great actress's eye
all the night; how he tried to discover whether she looked oftener
toward his box than the corresponding box on the other side of the
house. Did she notice him, or did she not? What a point gained, if she
was conscious of his nightly attendance. She would feel he was a friend,
not a mere auditor. He was jealous of the pit, on whom Mrs.
Woffington lavished her smiles without measure.
At last, one day he sent her a wreath of flowers, and implored her, if
any word he had said to her had pleased or interested her, to wear this
wreath that night. After he had done this he trembled; he had courted a
decision, when, perhaps, his safety lay in patience and time. She made
her _entree;_ he turned cold as she glided into sight from the prompter's
side; he raised his eyes slowly and fearfully from her feet to her head;
her head was bare, wreathed only by its own rich glossy honors.
"Fool!" thought he, "to think she would hang frivolities upon that
glorious head for me." Yet his disappointment told him he had really
hoped it; he would not have sat out the play but for a leaden incapacity
of motion that seized him.
The curtain drew up for the fifth act, and!--could he believe his
eyes?--Mrs. Woffington stood upon the stage with his wreath upon her
graceful head. She took away his breath. She spoke the epilogue, and,
as the curtain fell, she lifted her eyes, he thought, to his box, and made
him a distinct, queen-like courtesy; his heart fluttered to his mouth, and
he walked home on wings and tiptoe. In short--
Mrs. Woffington, as an actress, justified a portion of this enthusiasm;
she was one of