Peg Woffington | Page 8

and bade him not dilute the excuse.
Now Mr. Vane had as much to say as either of them, but he had not the
habit, which dramatic folks have, of carrying his whole bank in his
cheek-pocket, so they quenched him for two minutes.
But lovers are not silenced, he soon returned to the attack; he dwelt on
the grace, the ease, the freshness, the intelligence, the universal beauty
of Mrs. Woffington. Pomander sneered, to draw him out. Cibber smiled,
with good-natured superiority. This nettled the young gentleman, he
fired up, his handsome countenance glowed, he turned Demosthenes
for her he loved. One advantage he had over both Cibber and Pomander,
a fair stock of classical learning; on this he now drew.
"Other actors and actresses," said he, "are monotonous in voice,
monotonous in action, but Mrs. Woffington's delivery has the compass
and variety of nature, and her movements are free from the stale
uniformity that distinguishes artifice from art. The others seem to me to
have but two dreams of grace, a sort of crawling on stilts is their
motion, and an angular stiffness their repose." He then cited the most
famous statues of antiquity, and quoted situations in plays where, by

her fine dramatic instinct, Mrs. Woffington, he said, threw her person
into postures similar to these, and of equal beauty; not that she strikes
attitudes like the rest, but she melts from one beautiful statue into
another; and, if sculptors could gather from her immortal graces,
painters, too, might take from her face the beauties that belong of right
to passion and thought, and orators might revive their withered art, and
learn from those golden lips the music of old Athens, that quelled
tempestuous mobs, and princes drunk with victory.
Much as this was, he was going to say more, ever so much more, but he
became conscious of a singular sort of grin upon every face; this grin
made him turn rapidly round to look for its cause. It explained itself at
once; at his very elbow was a lady, whom his heart recognized, though
her back was turned to him. She was dressed in a rich silk gown, pearl
white, with flowers and sprigs embroidered; her beautiful white neck
and arms were bare. She was sweeping up the room with the epilogue
in her hand, learning it off by heart; at the other end of the room she
turned, and now she shone full upon him.
It certainly was a dazzling creature. She had a head of beautiful form,
perched like a bird upon a throat massive yet shapely and smooth as a
column of alabaster, a symmetrical brow, black eyes full of fire and
tenderness, a delicious mouth, with a hundred varying expressions, and
that marvelous faculty of giving beauty alike to love or scorn, a sneer
or a smile. But she had one feature more remarkable than all, her
eyebrows -- the actor's feature; they were jet black, strongly marked,
and in repose were arched like a rainbow; but it was their extraordinary
flexibility which made other faces upon the stage look sleepy beside
Margaret Woffington's. In person she was considerably above the
middle height, and so finely formed that one could not determine the
exact character of her figure. At one time it seemed all stateliness, at
another time elegance personified, and flowing voluptuousness at
another. She was Juno, Psyche, Hebe, by turns, and for aught we know
at will.
It must be confessed that a sort of halo of personal grandeur surrounds
a great actress. A scene is set; half a dozen nobodies are there lost in it,
because they are and seem lumps of nothing. The great artist steps upon
that scene, and how she fills it in a moment! Mind and majesty wait
upon her in the air; her person is lost in the greatness of her personal

presence; she dilates with _thought,_ and a stupid giantess looks a
dwarf beside her.
No wonder then that Mr. Vane felt overpowered by this torch in a
closet. To vary the metaphor, it seemed to him, as she swept up and
down, as if the green-room was a shell, and this glorious creature must
burst it and be free. Meantime, the others saw a pretty actress studying
her business; and Cibber saw a dramatic school-girl learning what he
presumed to be a very silly set of words. Sir C. Pomander's eye had
been on her the moment 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