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ON the noon of the 14th of November, 1743 or 4, I fet which it was, just as the clock had strue, Barbara S-----, with her aced punctuality asded the long rambling staircase, with awkward interposed landing-places, which led to the office, or rather a sort of box with a desk in it, whereat sat the then Treasurer of (what few of our readers may remember) the Old Bath Theatre. All over the island it was the , and remains so I believe to this day, for the players to receive their weekly stipend ourday. It was not much that Barbara had to claim.This little maid had just entered her eleventh year; but her important station at the theatre, as it seemed to her, with the bes which she felt to accrue from her pious application of her small earnings, had given an air of womanhood to her steps and to her behaviour. You would have takeo have been at least five years older.
Till latterly she had merely been employed in choruses, or where children were wao fill up the se. But the manager, a diligend adroitness in her above her age, had for some few months past intrusted to her the performance of whole parts. You may guess the self-sequence of the promoted Barbara. She had already drawn tears in young Arthur; had rallied Richard with infaulan the Duke of York and iurn had rebuked that petulance when she rince of Wales. She would have dohe elder child in Mortons pathetic alter-piece to the life; but as yet the " Children in the Wood" was not.
Long after this little girl was grown an aged woman, I have seen some of these small parts, each making two or three pages at most, copied out in the rudest hand of the then prompter, who doubtless transcribed a little more carefully and fairly for the grown-up tragedy ladies of the establishment. But such as they were, blotted and scrawled, as for a childs use, she kept them all; and in the zenith of her after reputation it was a delightful sight to behold them bound up in costliest Morocco, each single -- each small part making a book -- with fine clasps, gilt-splashed, &c. She had stiously kept them as they had been delivered to her; not a blot had been effaced or tampered with. They were precious to her for their affeg remembrangs. They were her principia, her rudiments; the elementary atoms; the little steps by which she pressed forward to perfe. "What," she would say, "could Indian rubber, or a pumice stone, have done for these darlings?"
I am in no hurry to begin my story -- indeed I have little or o tell -- so I will just mention an observation of hers ected with that iing time.
Not long before she died I had been disc with her on the quantity of real preseion which a great tragic performer experiences during ag. I veo think, that though in the first instance such players must have possessed the feelings which they so powerfully called up in others, yet by frequeition those feelings must bee deadened i measure, and the performer trust to the memory of past emotion, rather than express a Present one. She indignantly repelled the notion, that with a truly great tragedian the operation, by which such effects were produced upon an audience, could ever degrade itself into what urely meical. With much delicacy, avoiding to instan her self-experience, she told me, that so long ago as when she used to play the part of the Little Son to Mrs. Porters IsabelIa, (I think it was) when that impressive actress has been bending over her in some heart-rending colloquy, she has felt real hot tears e trig from her, which (to use her powerful expression) have perfectly scalded her back. I am not quite so sure that it was Mrs. Porter; but it was some great actress of that day. The name is indifferent; but the fact of the scalding tears ..I most distinctly remember. I was always fond of the society of players, and am not sure that an impediment in my speech (which certainly kept me out of the pulpit) even more thaain personal disqualifications, which are often got over in that profession, did not preve oime of life from adopting it. I have had the honour (I must ever call it) oo have been admitted to the tea-table of Miss Kelly. I have played at serious whist with Mr. Liston. I have chatted with ever good-humoured Mrs. Charles Kemble. I have versed as friend to friend with her aplished husband. I have been indulged with a classical fereh Macready; and with a sight of the Player-picture gallery, at Mr. Matthewss, when the kind owo remue me for my love of the old actors (whom he loves so much) went over it with me, supplying to his capital colle, what alohe artist could not give them -- voice; and their living motion. Old tones, half-faded, of Dodd and Parsons, and Baddeley, have lived again for me at his bidding. Only Edwin he could not restore to me. I have supped with -----; but I am growing a b.
As I was about to say -- at the desk of the then treasurer of the old Bath theatre -- not Diamonds -- presented herself the little Barbara S-----.
The parents of Barbara had been iable circumstahe father had practised, I believe, as an apothecary iown. But his practice from causes which I feel my own infirmity too sensibly that way tn -- or perhaps from that pure infelicity which apanies some people in their walk through life, and which it is impossible to lay at the door of imprudence -- was now reduced to nothing. They were in fa the very teeth of starvation, when the manager, who knew and respected them ier days, took the little Barbara into his pany.
At the period I enced with, her slender earnings were the sole support of the family, including two younger sisters. I must throw a veil over some mortifying circumstances. Enough to say, that her Saturdays pittance was the only ce of a Sundays (generally their only) meal of meat.
Ohing I will only mention, that in some childs part, where iheatrical character she was to sup off a roast fowl (O joy to Barbara!) some ic actor, who was for the night caterer for this dainty in the misguided humour of his part, threw over the dish such a quantity of salt (O grief and pain of heart to Barbara!) that when he crammed a portion of it into her mouth, she was obliged sputteringly to reject it; and what with shame of her ill-acted part, and pain of real appetite at missing such a dainty, her little heart sobbed almost to breaking, till a flood of tears, which the well-fed spectators were totally uo prehend, mercifully relieved her.
This was the little starved, meritorious maid, who stood before old Ravenscroft, the treasurer, for her Saturdays payment.
Ravenscroft was a man, I have heard many old theatrical people besides herself say, of all me calculated for a treasurer. He had no head for ats, paid away at random, kept scary books, and summing up at the weeks end, if he found himself a pound or so defit, blest himself that it was no w<bdo>?9９ｌib.</bdo>orse.
Now Barbaras weekly stipend was a bare half guinea. By mistake he popped into her hand a -- whole one.
Barbara tripped away.
She was entirely unscious at first of the mistake: God knows, Ravenscroft would never have discovered <var>.</var>it.
But when she had got down to the first of those uncouth landing-places, she became sensible of an unusual weight of metal pressing her little hand.
Now mark the dilemma.
She was by nature a good child. From her parents and those about her she had imbibed no trary influence. But then they had taught her nothing. Poor mens smoky s are not alorticoes of moral philosophy. This little maid had no instinct to evil, but then she might be said to have no fixed principle. She had heard hoy ended, but never dreamed of its application to herself. She thought of it as something which ed grown-up people -- men and women. She had never knowation, or thought of spariance against it.
Her first impulse was to go back to the old treasurer, and explain to him his blunder. He was already so fused with age, beside a natural want of punctuality, that she would have had some difficulty in making him uand it. She saw that in an instant. And then it was such a bit of money! and then the image of a larger allowance of butchers meat oable day came across her, till her little eyes glistened, and her mouth moistened But then Mr. Ravenscroft had always been so good-natured, had stood her friend behind the ses, and even reended her promotion to some of her little parts. But again the old man was reputed to be worth a world of money. He was supposed to have fifty pounds a year clear of the theatre. And then came staring upohe figures of her little stogless and shoeless sisters. And when she looked at her ow white cotton stogs, which her situation at the theatre had made it indispensable for her mother to provide for her, with hard straining and ping from the family stock, and thought how glad she should be to cover their poor feet with the same -- and how then they could apao rehearsals, which they had hitherto been precluded from doing, by reason of their unfashioire -- ihoughts she reached the sed landing-place -- the sed, I mean from the top -- for there was still another left to traverse.
Now virtue support Barbara!
And that never-failing friend did step in -- for at that moment a strength not her own, I have heard her say, was revealed to her -- a reason above reasoning -- and without her own agency, as it seemed (for she never felt her feet to move) she found herself transported back to the individual desk she had just quitted, and her hand in the old hand of Ravenscroft, who in sileook back the refureasure, and who had been sitting (good man) insensible to the lapse of minutes, which to her were anxious ages; and from that moment a deep peace fell upon her heart, and she khe quality of hoy.
A year or twos unrepining application to her professihtened up the feet, and the prospects, of her little sisters, set the whole family upon their legs again, and released her from the difficulty of discussing moral dogmas upon a landing-place.
I have heard her say, that it was a surprise, not much short of mortification to her, to see the ess with which the old man pocketed the difference, which had caused her such mortal throes.
This ae of herself I had in the year 1800, from the mouth of the late Mrs. Crawford,* then sixty.seven years of age (she died soon after); and to her struggles upon this childish occasion I have sometimes veo think her ied for that power of rending the heart in the representation of flig emotions, for whi after years she was sidered as little inferior (if at all so in the part of Lady Randolph) even to Mrs. Siddons.
[Footnote] * The maiden name of this lady was Street, which she ged, by successive marriages, for those of Dancer, Barry, and Crawford. She was Mrs. Crawford, and a third time a hen I knew her.
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