halfpenny. When Wallack and Tom Cooke met one another in the street, they would remove each other's hats, bow gravely and pass on. Charles Young, the classical tragedian, the associate of nobles, was as fond of practical jokes as any of them. He was always abusing Meadows, who resided at Barnsbury, for living so far from the theatre, and every time they met it was, "Well, Meadows, where do you live now ?" One day he was riding towards Regent Street, when he saw the comedian in front of him. Raising his voice (and it was a most powerful organ) he shouted out, "Meadows, where do you live ?" "At No.- Belgrave Square," cried out the actor, and quick as lightning disappeared up Jermyn Street, "before," says Planché, to whose "Recollections" I am indebted for this anecdote," an emphatic impeachment of his veracity rolled like thunder over the heads of the amazed but amused pedestrians from Waterloo Place to Piccadilly." "The last time he called upon me (Planché), he left his card, upon which was inscribed, 'Tis I, my lord, the early village cock!'"

JOHN FAWCETT, OXBERRY, "LITTLE"

KNIGHT,

BLANCHARD, BARTLEY, JOHN REEVE, would be names

worth dwelling upon, did space permit.

CHAPTER IX.

THE LAST OF THE FAMOUS ACTRESSES.

Miss O'Neill-Her First Chance-Her Exquisite Performance of Juliet Description of her Acting - Her Marriage - Maria Foote Her Entanglement with Colonel Berkeley-"Pea Green" Hayne-Public Caprice-Her Marriage-Miss Kelley-Mrs. Glover Her Sad Domestic Life-Madame Vestris.

THE

HE line of great tragic actresses, which was unbroken from the days of Elizabeth Barry, terminated with MISS O'NEILL. We have had excellent actresses since, to enumerate a few-MISS DUNCAN, afterwards Mrs. Davison, MISS SMITH, MRS. BUNN, MRS. HENRY SIDDONS, MISS HELEN FAUCIT, but none have risen to those superior heights where genius towers above talent. Perhaps even Miss O'Neill scarcely merits a place besides Mrs. Pritchard, Mrs. Crawford, Mrs. Siddons-her pedestal should be placed a little lower, but still she was of them-one of that glorious band to

which each generation for nearly one hundred and fifty years, added one or more, but of which, it would seem, must now be written-all told.

She was the daughter of an Irish strolling manager, and was brought up to the stage from childhood. What strolling life was in England I have endeavoured to picture in the first chapter of this volume; it was even a harder lot across the Channel. But while still very young, accident rescued her from this life of drudgery and privation. Miss Walstein, the leading lady of the Theatre Royal, Dublin, presuming upon her great popularity, had placed the manager in such a dilemma that it almost necessitated him closing the theatre, when some one suggested Miss O'Neill, who happened to be in the city with her father at the time, as a very clever girl. Glad to snatch at any chance which offered escape, the manager engaged her. As Juliet her success was very great. There she remained, an immense favourite both as a lady and an actress, until John Kemble saw her, offered her an engagement for three years at £15, £16, and £17 a week. Her first appearance at Covent Garden was as Juliet, on October 6th, 1814.

Macready speaks rapturously of her performance. "The charming picture she presented," he says, was one that time could not fade from my memory. It was not altogether the matchless beauty of form and face, but the spirit of perfect innocence and

MISS O'NEILL'S ACTING.

321

purity that seemed to glisten in her speaking eyes and breathe from her chiselled lips." He highly commends her artless unconsciousness, her freedom from affectation, her fervid Italian passion in the balcony-scene. "Love was to her life: life not valued if unsustained by love. . . . Throughout my whole experience hers was the only representation of Juliet I have ever seen." Her success was almost a repetition of the Siddons' furore. "Her beauty, grace, simplicity, and tenderness were the theme of every tongue. Crowds were nightly disappointed in finding room in the theatre to witness her enchanting presentations. Juliet, Belvidera, Mrs. Beverley, Mrs. Haller, were again realities upon the scene, attested with enthusiasm by the tears and applauding shouts of admiring thousands."

"In all her acting," says a critic of the day, "she was a very woman. There was little in it of a meditative cast, little of calm, meditative grandeur, yet every look, movement, gesture, and tone was gracefully feminine, her pathos was most irresistible and sweet. Nothing in their kind could exceed the exquisite propriety and modest loveliness of her Mrs. Haller, the conjugal sweetness of her Belvidera, and the womanly heroism of her Evadne. Her Juliet in the early scenes was perhaps too light and playful. The affection, in this

VOL. II.

Y

delicious character, is throughout deep, serious, and intense. The passion that is boundless as the sea' leaves no time for elegant trifling or graceful coquetry. In the latter scenes Miss O'Neill gave full glorious vent to the tide of love and sorrow. Her highest effort, perhaps, was in portraying of a tremulous and giddy joy, a rapture bordering on frenzy, an inspiration of delight, portentous of sudden and fearful disaster. We never remember to have been more delighted by her acting than when we have seen her in Isabella, at the return of Biron, clasp him in wild rapture, forgetting her dreadful condition, gaze on him with eyes lit up with strange fire, and reply to his questions by laughter in which horror and transport mingled. She mistook her powers when she resorted to shrieks, rattlings in the throat, and all the terrors of physical agony. She was worthy to express all the best sympathies and noblest triumphs of her sex. In the delineation of confiding love, of generous rapture, of feminine elevation of soul, she has had no equal within our memory, and can never have a superior." It was said that in tenderness and grief she at least equalled Mrs. Siddons in her first year. But Mrs. Siddons' passion was combined with a lofty imagination and commanding intellect. Miss O'Neill owed everything to extreme sensibility. She herself up gave entirely to the impression of the moment, was borne