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advantage of pertaining legitimately to fashion and quality, while she was but an actress. In those days the drawing-rooms were not far behind the green-rooms in point of laxity of manner and corruptness of principle. Mrs. Oldfield is lauded by Chetwood because "she never troubled the repose of any lady's lawful claim, and was far more constant than millions in the conjugal noose." Early in her career she captivated a certain Mr. Arthur Maynwaring, a toping gentleman from Shropshire-toping was then very much in vogue-but intelligent withal, owning a taste for letters and the drama, a correspondent of Steele's, and the friend of Godolphin, by whose favour he secured a sinecure as Auditor of the Imprest. He was the author of sundry prologues and epilogues, and is said to have benefited the actress by his instructions and advice upon the subject of her art. He was of infirm constitution, however, and having dissipated his fortune, he died in 1712 of consumption. Society was much affected by his illness and death, and "the greatest lady in England" is said to have honoured him by weeping at his bedside. But even the tears of the illustrious, and the exertions of such physicians as Dr. Radcliffe, Sir Samuel Garth, and Sir Richard Blackmore, proved unavailing to save the sufferer. After his departure Mrs. Oldfield seems to have been generally viewed as his lawful widow; but they were never married. Offers of marriage, however, the actress certainly received. It was probably about 1715 that, as the story went, Sir Roger Mostings, one of the handsomest men in the kingdom, well-bred, witty, and the owner of a fine estate, in vain sued Mrs. Oldfield to become his wife. But she "would not give her hand without her heart." Moreover, Sir Roger was in disgrace; he had been He comcommanded to quit the Court and retire to his estate. manded the fourth troop of Life Guards, and he had been overheard speaking too freely in favour of the rebel lords condemned to die upon Tower Hill. The Duke of Bedford also made advances to the lady; but it is not so clear that his Grace contemplated marriage. Lord Hervey was at one time a fond admirer. Mrs. Delany writes in 1728: "Lord Hervey is recovered, I guess, for I met him one day last week with Mrs. Oldfield in her coach." It was whispered that Mrs. Oldfield had become the wife of Brigadier-General Churchill, a natural son of the brother of the great Duke of Marlborough. One day the Princess of Wales, afterwards Queen Caroline, mentioned the report to the actress, and frankly inquired as to its truth. Was she really married to the General? "So it is said, may it please your Royal Highness," answered Mrs. Oldfield in her grandest manner, "but we ave not owned it yet. The General keeps his own secrets." The

royal family received the actress at their levées. She was to be seen on the terraces of Windsor in company with the most illustrious in the land; the duchesses and countesses of the time welcomed her and made much of her; "and the whole gay group might be heard calling one another by their christian names." It is thus, says Davies, that Mrs. Oldfield “acquired her elegant and graceful deportment in representing women of high rank." Walpole, discussing certain amateur performances at Richmond House, demanded, "who should act genteel comedy perfectly but people of fashion that have sense? Actors and actresses can only guess at the tone of high life, and cannot be inspired with it. . . . . Mrs. Oldfield played it so well because she not only followed but often set the fashion. . . . . Miss Farren is as excellent as Mrs. Oldfield because she has lived with the best style of men in England." Mrs. Oldfield invariably maintained an air of social dignity. Visiting Dublin in 1728, it was only "to oblige Lady Carteret" that she consented to play her famous character of Lady Townley. "She topped her part," notes Mrs. Delany; "it was admirably acted." Her Lady Townley was held, indeed, to be an unrivalled performance. No one approached her in the part until twenty-two years later, when the beautiful Mrs. Woffington came to remind the middle-aged of her renowned predecessor. "Mrs. Woffington did Lady Townley better than I have seen it done since Mrs. Oldfield's time," writes Mrs. Delany. Upon her success in "The Provoked Husband," the management presented her with a purse of fifty guineas in excess of her salary, which was not considerable; at the most, three hundred guineas ayear, with a benefit, the receipts of which usually doubled that amount. Mrs. Oldfield, says Davies, was "generous and humane, witty, well-bred, and universally admired and beloved; in variety of professional merit she excelled all the actresses of her time." She was loth, however, to give her services upon the benefit nights of her playfellows, and her airs of self-importance entailed upon her some ridicule. It is related that when she happened to be on board a Gravesend boat, which appeared to be in a position of danger, and the other passengers were loudly expressing their apprehensions and lamenting their probable fate, she told them with conscious dignity that their deaths would be only a private loss, "whereas," she added, "I am a public concern." Her professional importance may be inferred also from the story Walpole tells of Mrs. Bracegirdle coming to breakfast with him in 1742, when she must have been nearly eighty, and, looking for her clogs as she prepared to depart, observing to him: "I remember at the playhouse

they used to call for Mrs. Oldfield's chair! Mrs. Barry's clogs! and Mrs. Bracegirdle's pattens!"

By her will Mrs. Oldfield left the bulk of her property, including her house in Grosvenor Street, to her son Charles Churchill, with remainder to her son Arthur Maynwaring. An annuity of sixty pounds was bequeathed to her mother, and legacies of small amount were left to her aunt Jane Gourlaw, and to her friend Margaret Saunders. Lord Hervey and Mr. John Hedges, of Finchley, and General Churchill were appointed executors of the will. In the inventory of her effects many valuable articles of jewelry are described, her pictures by Holbein, Cooper, Vandyck, and Kneller, and after certain old masters, with her statues, one in marble of her son Charles Churchill, busts and medallions, china, curiosities, and valuables, including "six gold stay-buckles and tags." Mrs. Oldfield's descendants, it may be noted, occupy a place in the peerage of to-day. Her son Charles Churchill married Sir Robert Walpole's natural daughter, to whom was given the rank of an earl's daughter upon her father obtaining his peerage in 1742, when the child of "Moll Skerritt" became known as Lady Mary Walpole. Of this marriage was born a daughter Mary, who, in 1777, became the wife of Charles Sloane, first Earl of Cadogan. Their daughters, Emily and Charlotte, married Gerard and Sir Henry Wellesley, brothers of the Duke of Wellington. Charlotte's marriage was dissolved and she became the wife of the Marquis of Anglesea. Her son by Sir Henry Wellesley became Lord Cowley, for some time English Ambassador at Paris. Among her children by the Marquis of Anglesea have to be counted Lords Alfred and Clarence Paget.

Mrs. Oldfield's General Churchill, the stanch friend of Sir Robert Walpole-they had become connected by the union of their natural children is humorously described in a poem by Sir Charles Hanbury Williams :

The General, one of those brave old commanders
Who served through all our glorious wars in Flanders.

His old desire to please is still expressed;
His hat's well cocked, his periwig's well dressed.
He rolls his stockings still, white gloves he wears,
And in the boxes with the beaux appears.
His eyes through wrinkled corners cast their rays,
Still he looks cheerful, still soft things he says;
And still remembering that he once was young,
He strains his crippled knees and struts along.

Mrs. Oldfield's histrionic repertory numbers upwards of eighty characters.

DUTTON COOK.

171

THE POETS'

POETS' BIRDS.

II. DOVES AND EAGLES.

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OW those quarrelsome and loosely conducted birds, the doves, would coo satirically under their wings at our romantic ascription to them of innocence and fidelity!" says the author of "False Beasts and True." And how, if the doves could ever read English poetry, they would put their tongues in their cheeks and wink at each other, and how the worse-conditioned of them would. explode with laughter! For the poets, adopting the Mosaical "purity" of the dove as true in every sense, and remembering, perhaps, how sacred the Mahomedan East still holds them, have conspired to represent this bird as of an extraordinary innocence of character and. blameless life. Once or twice, as in Dryden's "Hind and Panther," "the spleenful pigeon" is hit off with natural fidelity, and "wanton" is not an infrequent epithet. But it is used in a kindly sense, and as equivalent to "amorous "-as the Birds of Venus, the dove-drawn Paphian, who

Mounts her car and shakes her reins,
And steers her turtles to Cytheria's plains,

ought to be. Nor does it in any way preclude them, even when in the goddess's service and "harnessed to bright Venus' rolling throne," from being called "guiltless," "gentle," "constant," and "chaste"!

Indeed, a volume of serious size might be filled with the poets' compliments to the virtues of the pigeon-folk, but the tenor of the whole may be guessed from the following:

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Romances and the turtle dove

The virtue boast alone.-Parnell.

Peace, Plenty, Purity, Justice, Pity, Christian Love, are all symbolised by different poets under the emblem of "the dove," and both "the meek ethereal Hours," and "the Morn," borrow its eyes and wings. It is the synonym for surpassing constancy, fidelity, and truth, for infinite softness, tenderness, and conjugal devotion. There is no mildness like a dove's-it is "serenely mild "-no such fidelity during life, no such constancy under bereavement. To be true "as a dove " is the highest ambition of a widow; as fond "as a dove" of every lover, and as gentle as a dove" of every Christian man or woman, child or dog. When doves are forlorn, their forlornness is superlative; and nothing in nature is so pale, so solitary, so lone, so utterly all-by-herself, as the female pigeon-when she has no companion. To be as white and at the same time as iridescent "as a dove" is beyond the hope of anything but a phoenix, and for a similar confusion of sexes we may not look lower than the angels. To imitate the dove is the zenith of virtue; to think of doing it wrong, the very nadir of crime. As the antithesis of the serpent—

Frank and yet cunning, with a heart to love
And malice prompt-the serpent and the dove;

as the bird of the Ark, when

Hope on her wing, and God her guide,

The dove of Noah soared;

and as "the Dove of Heaven," the poets are pursuing "points of high prescription." But with their characteristic religion in such matters, they follow also every hint about the bird that the traditions of the past afford them, and make the bird "gall-less," the prey of vultures, and lift its head after every draught "to thank the Giver." This flattery of the pigeon reaches the climax of absurdity in Eliza Cook's line

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Linnets teach us how to love, and ringdoves how to pray!

Apart from "the dove" general, the poets employ doves particular-the ringdove, stockdove, and turtledove. But what relation each species bears to the other the poets never considered themselves at liberty to determine. Watts makes "the turtle" the opposite sex of " the dove"-" no more the turtle leaves the dove"Fidelity in love.

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"Like the dove born without a gall.”—Oldham.

"A gall-less dove."-Cowley.

As a matter of fact, pigeons have not this prettily significant gesture. It is reserved for the cock-and-hen tribes.

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