CHAPTER IX. SPRANGER AND ANNE BARRY OUTSIDE the five and thirty years of Barry's professional life, little is known of him. As of Betterton, it may be said, he labored, loved, suffered losses, and died. It is the sum of many a man's biography. I Spranger's professional career is traced in preceding pages; but may add to it, that Dublin is to this day, and with reason, proud of Spranger Barry, and of Margaret Woffington; for mere human beauty they have never been surpassed; for talents and for genius, with respect to their profession, they have not often been equalled. Spranger of the silver tongue, was the only actor who ever shook Garrick on his throne; but lacking the fulness of the perfection of Garrick, Barry only shook him for an instant; he never dethroned him. He is remembered as the vanquished wrestler is remembered, who has wrestled his best, given a heavy fall or two, has succumbed in the last grapple, and is carried from the arena on loving arms, amid the acclamations of the spectators, and with the respect of his conqueror. In the Irish silversmith's accomplished son, born in 1719, there was very good blood, with some of the disadvantages attached to that possession. Of fine personal appearance and bearing, an aristocratic expression, and a voice that might win a bird from the nest, Spranger Barry had expensive and too magnificent tastes. He was a gentleman; but he lived as though he were the lord of countless thousands, and with an income on which an earl might have existed becomingly, with moderate prudence, Spranger Barry died poor. From the very first, Barry took foremost ground; and Mrs. Delaney may well expatiate on the delight of seeing Garrick, Barry, and Sheridan, together in one piece. Such a triad as those three were, when young, in the very brightest of their powers, and achieving triumphs which made their hearts beat to accomplish something higher still, perhaps, never rendered a stage illustrious. From 1747 to 1758, Barry was, in some few characters, the best actor on our stage. After the above period, came the brilliant but ruinous Irish speculation with Woodward. During the time of that disastrous Dublin management, Barry's powers were sometimes seriously affected. He has been depicted as reckless; but it is evident that anxieties were forced upon him, and a proud man liable to be seized by sheriffs' officers, ere he could rise from simulated death upon the stage, was not to be comforted by the readiness of his subordinates to murder the bailiffs. Mrs. Delaney had been enraptured with him in his earliest years; but she found a change in him, even as early as 1759. The gossiping lady thus exhibits to us the interior of Crow Street, one night in February, of the year just named, when, despite the lady's opinion, the handsome and manly fellow was not to be equalled in the expression of grief, of pity, or of love. "Now what do you think? Mrs. Delaney with ditto company went to the Mourning Bride to see the new playhouse; and Mrs. Fitzhenry performed the part of Zara, which I think she does incomparably. The house is very handsome, and well lighted; and there I saw Lady Kildare and her two blooming sisters,-Lady Louisa Conolly (the bride) and Lady Sarah Lennox,"—(the latter lady reckoned among the first loves of George III.),—“ who, I think the prettiest of the two. Lord Mornington" (afterwards father of the Duke of Wellington) "was at the play, and looked as solemn as one should suppose the young lady he is engaged to" (Miss Hill) "would have done! The play, on the whole, was tolerably acted, though I don't like their celebrated Mr. Barry; he is tall and ungainly, and does not speak sensibly nor look his part well he was Osmyn. Almyra was acted by a very pretty woman, who, I think, might be made a very good actress. name is Dancer." Her Barry did make her an excellent actress, and his wife to boot. Nevertheless, the Dublin speculation failed; and I find something characteristic of it among the properties enumerated in the inventory of articles made over by Barry to his successor, Ryder. For instance :-"Chambers, with holes in them;" "House, very bad;" VOL. II-5 "One stile, broke;" "Battlements, torn;" "Garden wall, very bad;" "Water-fall, in the Dargle, very bad." The same definition is applied to much more property; with "woods, greatly damaged;" "clouds, little worth;" "wings, with holes, in the canvas;" or, "in bad order." "Mill, torn;" "elephant, very bad;" and Barry's famous "Alexander's car," is catalogued as "some of it wanting." Indeed, the only property in good order, comprised eighty-three thunder-bolts! Of Barry's wardrobe, he seems to have parted only with the "bonnet, bow, and quiver, for Douglas;" but Mrs. Barry's was left in Crow Street. It consisted of a black velvet dress and train; nine silk and satin dresses, of various hues, all trained; numerous other dresses, of inferior material; and "a pair of shepherd's breeches," which Boaden thinks were designed "for the dear woman's own Rosalind, no doubt.” The only known portraits of Barry represent him as Timon and Macheath. They were taken before he entered upon his last ten years, in London ;-years of gradual, noble, but irresistible decay. Like Betterton, Barry suffered excruciatingly from attacks of gout; but, like Betterton, and John Kemble in this respect resembled them both,-he performed in defiance of physical pain: mind triumphing over matter. On the 8th of October, 1776, he played Jaffier to the Pierre of Aikin, and the Belvidera of his wife. He was then only fiftyseven years of age; but there was a wreck of all his qualities,save indomitable will. The noble vessel only existed in ruins, but it presented a majestic spectacle still. Barry, on the stage, was almost as effective as he had ever been; but, off the charmed ground, he succumbed to infirmity and lay insensible, or struggling, or waiting mournfully for renewal of strength, between the acts. He continued ill for many weeks, during which his chief characters passed into the hands of Lewis, the great grandson of Harley's secretary, Erasmus Lewis, but himself the son of a London linendraper. Lewis, who had now been three years on the London stage, played Hamlet, and Norval, Chamont, Mirabel, Young Bevil, and Lord Townley; but on the 28th of November, Barry roused himself, as if unwilling that the young actor, who had excelled Mossop in Dublin, should overcome, in London, the player who had competed, not always vainly, with Garrick. night, as I have already recorded, he played Evander to his wife's Euphrasia, in the "Grecian Daughter;" but he never played or spoke on the stage again. On January 10th, 1777, he died, to the great regret of a world of friends and admirers, and to the awakening of much poetry of various quality. One of the anonymous sons of the Muse, in a quarto poem, remarks : "Scarcely recovered from the stroke severe, When Garrick fled from our admiring eyes, "He dies: and with him sense and taste retreat; The fervid transport? or the soft desire?" The poet then fancies gathering around the player's tomb, led thither by the Tragic Muse, the Moor, "with unrivall'd grace;" ill-fated Anthony; injured Theseus; feeble Lusignan ; woe-stricken Evander; heart-bleeding Jaffier; and, chief of all, Romeo, with "melting tears," "voice of love, and soothing eloquence." Thalia, too, brings in Bevil and Townley;— "And oh! farewell she cries, my graceful son! !" This was especially Graceful, but pathetic as he was graceful. the case when, in his younger days, he played with Mrs. Cibber,Castalio to Monimia,-at which a comic actor, once looking on, burst into tears, and was foolish enough to be ashamed of it. No two (so critics thought) played lover and mistress, wife and husband, as they did. Mrs. Cibber, said these critics, who forgot her Beatrice to Garrick's Benedick, could, with equal, though different effect, be only the daughter or sister to Garrick ;—Cordelia to Garrick's Lear, but a Juliet to Barry's Romeo, a Belvidera to his Jaffier. When Mrs. Bellamy acted with him, the effect was less complete. Colley Cibber was in the house on the night of his first appearance as Othello-did what he was not accustomed to do,applaud loudly; and is said to have preferred Barry, in this char acter, to either Betterton or Booth. In Orestes, Barry was so incomparable, that Garrick never attempted the part in London. His Alexander lost all its bombast, in his hands, and gained a healthy vigor; while, says Davies, "he charmed the ladies repeatedly, by the soft melody of his love complaints, and the noble ardor of his courtship." The grace of his exit and entrance was all his own; though he took lessons in dancing, from Desnoyers, to please the Prince of Wales. Barry was a well-informed man, had great conversational powers, and told an Irish story with an effect which was only equalled by that with which he acted Sir Callaghan O'Brallaghan. In that accomplishment and this character, Garrick owned that Barry was not to be approached; but, said the former, "I can beat Barry's head off in telling all stories, but Irish ones." 66 It was in pathos on the stage, not in humor off of it, that Barry excelled. "All exquisitely tender or touching writing," says an anonymous contemporary, came mended from his mouth. There was a pathos, a sweetness, a delicacy, in his utterance, which stole upon the mind, and forced conviction on the memory. Every sentiment of honor and virtue, recommended to the ear by the language of the author, were riveted to the heart by the utterance of Barry." Excessive sensibility conquered his powers. His heart overcame his head; but Garrick never forgot himself in his character. Barry felt all he uttered, before he made his audience feel; but Garrick made his audience feel, and was not overcome by his own emotions. Churchill describes the lofty and admired Barry as possessing a voice too sweet and soft for rage, and as going wrong through too much pains to err. The malignant bard alludes to the "well-applauded tenderness" of his Lear; to the march of his speeches, line by line; to his preventing surprise by preparatory efforts; and to his artificial style, manifest alike in his passions as in his utterance. This dark portrait was limned with the idea that it would please Garrick, whom it could not please. The two actors respected each other. "You have already," writes Barry, in 1746, to Garrick, "made me happy by your friendship. It shall be the business and pleasure of my life to endeavor to deserve it; and I would willingly make it the basis of my future fortune." This |