oric page, and still their
battle continues year after year. All readers know the sleepy voice and
horrid sigh of Mrs. Pritchard in Lady Macbeth's awful scene of haunted
somnambulism; the unexampled and unexcelled grandeur of Mrs. Yates in
Medea; the infinite pathos of Mrs. Dancer (she that became in succession
Mrs. Spranger Barry and Mrs. Crawford) and her memorable scream, as Lady
Randolph, at "Was he alive?"; the comparative discomfiture of both
those ladies by Mrs. Siddons, with her wonderful, wailing cry, as
Isabella, "O, my Biron, my Biron," her overwhelming Lady Macbeth and her
imperial Queen Katharine. The brilliant story of Peg Woffington and the
sad fate of Mrs. Robinson, the triumphant career of Mrs. Abington and
the melancholy collapse of Mrs. Jordan--all those things, and many more,
are duly set down in the chronicles. But the books are comparatively
silent about the Old Women of the stage--an artistic line no less
delightful than useful, of which Mrs. G.H. Gilbert is a sterling and
brilliant representative. Mrs. Jefferson, the great-grandmother of the
comedian Joseph Jefferson, who died of laughter, on the stage (1766-68),
might fitly be mentioned as the dramatic ancestor of such actresses as
Mrs. Gilbert. She was a woman of great loveliness of character and of
great talent for the portrayal of "old women," and likewise of certain
"old men" in comedy. "She had," says Tate Wilkinson, "one of the best
dispositions that ever harboured in a human breast"; and he adds that
"she was one of the most elegant women ever beheld." Mrs. Gilbert has
always suggested that image of grace, goodness, and piquant ability.
Mrs. Vernon was the best in this line until Mrs. Gilbert came; and the
period which has seen Mrs. Judah, Mrs. Vincent, Mrs. Germon, Mary Carr,
Mrs. Chippendale, Mrs. Stirling, Mrs. Billington, Mrs. Drew, Mrs.
Phillips, and Madam Ponisi, has seen no superior to Mrs. Gilbert in her
special walk. She was in youth a beautiful dancer, and all her motions
have spontaneous ease and grace. She can assume the fine lady, without
for an instant suggesting the parvenu. She is equally good, whether as
the formal and severe matron of starched domestic life, or the genial
dame of the pantry. She could play Temperance in _The Country Squire_,
and equally she could play Mrs. Jellaby. All varieties of the
eccentricity of elderly women, whether serious or comic, are easily
within her grasp. Betsy Trotwood, embodied by her, bec