The Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II | Page 7

what Garrick could never reach, coxcombs, and men of
fashion. Mrs. Clive is at least as perfect in low comedy--and yet to me,
Ranger was the part that suited Garrick the best of all he ever
performed. He was a poor Lothario, a ridiculous Othello, inferior to
Quin in Sir John Brute and Macbeth, and to Cibber in Bayes, and a

woful Lord Hastings and Lord Townley. Indeed, his Bayes was original,
but not the true part: Cibber was the burlesque of a great poet, as the
part was designed, but Garrick made it a Garretteer. The town did not
like him in Hotspur, and yet I don't know whether he did not succeed in
it beyond all the rest. Sir Charles Williams and Lord Holland thought
so too, and they were no bad judges. I am impatient to see the Clairon,
and certainly will, as I have promised, though I have not fixed my day.
But do you know you alarm me! There was a time when I was a match
for Madame de Mirepoix at pharaoh, to any hour of the night, and I
believe did play with her five nights in a week till three and four in the
morning--but till eleven o'clock to-morrow morning--Oh! that is a little
too much, even at loo. Besides, I shall not go to Paris for pharaoh--if I
play all night, how shall I see everything all day?
[Footnote 1: Schouvaloff was notorious as a favourite of the Empress
Catharine.]
[Footnote 2: Mdlle. Clairon had been for some years the most admired
tragic actress in France. In that age actors and actresses in France were
exposed to singular insults. M. Lacroix, in his "France in the Eighteenth
Century," tells us: "They were considered as inferior beings in the
social scale; excommunicated by the Church, and banished from
society, they were compelled to endure all the humiliations and affronts
which the public chose to inflict on them in the theatre; and, if any of
them had the courage to make head against the storm, and to resist the
violence and cruelty of the pit, they were sent to prison, and not
released but on condition of apologising to the tyrants who had so
cruelly insulted them. Many had a sufficient sense of their own dignity
to withdraw themselves from this odious despotism after having been
in prison in Fort l'Evêcque, their ordinary place of confinement, by the
order of the gentlemen of the chamber or the lieutenant of police; and it
was in this way that Mdlle. Clairon bade farewell to the Comédie
Française and gave up acting in 1765, when at the very height of her
talent, and in the middle of her greatest dramatic triumphs." The
incident here alluded to by Walpole was that "a critic named Fréron had
libelled her in a journal to which he contributed; and, as she could not
obtain justice, she applied to the Duc de Choiseul, the Prime Minister.

Even he was unable to put her in the way of obtaining redress, and
sought to pacify her by comparing her position to his own. 'I am,' said
he, 'mademoiselle, like yourself, a public performer; with this
difference in your favour, that you choose what parts you please, and
are sure to be crowned with the applause of the public; for I reckon as
nothing the bad taste of one or two wretched individuals who have the
misfortune of not adoring you. I, on the other hand, am obliged to act
the parts imposed on me by necessity. I am sure to please nobody; I am
satirised, criticised, libelled, hissed; yet I continue to do my best. Let us
both, then, sacrifice our little resentments and enmities to the public
service, and serve our country, each in our own station. Besides, the
Queen has condescended to forgive Fréron, and you may therefore,
without compromising your dignity, imitate Her Majesty's clemency'"
("Mem. de Bachaumont," i. 61). But Mdlle. was not to be pacified, nor
to be persuaded to expose herself to a repetition of insult; but, though
only forty-one, she retired from the stage for ever.]
[Footnote 3: Quin was employed by the Princess of Wales to teach her
son elocution, and when he heard how generally his young sovereign
was praised for the grace and dignity of his delivery of his speech to his
Parliament, he boasted, "Ah, it was I taught the boy to speak."]
[Footnote 4: Garrick was not only a great actor, but also a great
reformer of the stage. He seems to have excelled equally both in
tragedy and comedy, which makes it natural to suppose that in some
parts he may have been excelled by other actors; though he had no
equal (and perhaps never has had) in both lines. He was