Mrs Jordan's Profession

by Claire Tomalin

  Although George had been privately christened as ‘FitzClarence’ at Petersham in 1794, it was during the Bushy years that the children began to be publicly known as the FitzClarences. There is a reference to them as such in a newspaper in 1802, and another in 1804, when the artist Henry Edridge reported on a visit from the Duke and Mrs Jordan, presumably to commission portraits of their offspring: ‘It is sd. the Children are to bear the name of Fitz: clarence.’ This was between the birth of the eighth, Augusta, and the ninth, Augustus. At the end of the same year another diarist uses the name Fitz Clarence, in a passage that gives an attractive view of the Duke as father, accompanying his children to Christmas parties:

  Among the company were the Duke of Clarence and his eldest son by Mrs Jordan, Master Fitz Clarence, a fine boy of eleven, with a promising and even distinguished countenance. The next evening the Prince brought four, viz. this and another boy and two little girls, to Mrs Riddell’s. His care of these children and marked affection for them is certainly very amiable. Si sic omnia.4

  Once settled at Bushy, Dora had no more miscarriages, and the rate of arrival of the babies speeded up to become almost an annual event. No sooner did she get back to Drury Lane, accompanied by the new one, than she was pregnant again; small wonder that Sheridan was not always polite about the Duke. Girls and boys alternated with perfect regularity. All were named after the Duke’s royal brothers and sisters except Henry, who had his father’s second name, but most were given cosy pet names en famille. Henry was followed by Mary, born at Christmas 1798, Frederick (‘Freddles’, a particularly fine baby) at Christmas 1799, Elizabeth (Eliza) in January 1801, Adolphus (first ‘Molpuss’, then ‘Lolly’) in February 1802. Then, at a slightly slower rate, came Augusta (‘Ta’) in November 1803, Augustus (briefly ‘Stump’, then ‘Tuss’ or ‘Tus’) in March 1805 and Amelia (‘Mely’ or ‘Milly’) two years later, in March 1807. They were born in her bedroom on the first floor, with the local doctor, Mr Nixon, in attendance, while the Duke sat composing letters to his friends and brothers in his study; and even if it was late in the evening, he would summon either Lloyd or a local clergyman to christen each of ‘the Babbs’, as their mother called them, on its arrival.

  Dora mentions Nixon’s distress over another of his patients dying in childbirth in one of her letters, and she must have felt, in common with all her contemporaries, that she was embarking on something hazardous and unpredictable with each pregnancy; but she was not faint-hearted. If she wrote letters of farewell before giving birth, as some women did, they were not preserved as Fanny D’Arblay’s to her husband was, and the Duchess of Devonshire’s to her son: these were letters to be read in the event of their death in childbed. They were both unnecessary, as it turned out, but are still affecting to read, because they make you understand how real the danger felt. For Dora the terrors and rigours of childbirth may have grown less by sheer force of repetition. There was no way of reducing pain, other than alcohol; and since antiseptic procedures were unknown, the best thing by far was for the mother to remain at home and for the doctor to intervene as little as possible, which is how she and Nixon managed things. The Duke generally seems to have kept calm. In one letter, written at eleven in the evening as a baby was about to be born, he merely mentions that she has been ‘complaining’ since six. On a different occasion, he wrote to the Prince of Wales: ‘since seven this morning Nixon has been with Mrs Jordan who I sincerely trust and hope will be safe in bed before morning’, though it seems to have taken rather longer than he expected.5 Yet another time Dora had fever, and needed to be blooded and blistered, the all-purpose treatments of the age: then he did become anxious about her, and called in the Prince of Wales’s surgeon, Mr Dundas. Luckily Dundas did no harm; but for a terrible moment William found himself wondering what he would do if his children should be made motherless: ‘I need not inform you with nine children a mother is absolutely necessary: not forgetting an intercourse of uninterrupted happiness for more than thirteen years,’ he wrote to his old friend and confidant, Coutts.6

  Happily the absolutely necessary mother remained strong and resilient. She rarely stayed in bed for long, and did not expect to take more than a few weeks off from work. The fact that every one of the babies arrived during the busy winter season in the theatre was a major inconvenience to her professionally, as well as an annoyance to Sheridan; it meant she usually missed the Christmas productions at Drury Lane, and may partly explain why she became willing to travel out of London to perform in the provincial theatres in summer. Yet if you look at the record of her Drury Lane attendances during her first ten years at Bushy, you would not easily guess she had another life as a mother in the country: during the years 1798 to 1805 she was still acting several times a week through the spring and the autumn. She added Miss Hardcastle in She Stoops to Conquer to her repertoire in 1800, Lady Teazle and Miss Sullen in The Beaux’ Stratagem in 1802; and in 1803 and 1804 the Widow Belmour (The Way to Keep Him) and the Widow Cheerly ( The Soldier’s Daughter) – the last one of her most vivacious parts, played with Bannister for thirty-five performances in the season. On top of this, as always, she gave many extra performances for charity.

  Charitable work was consistently important to her, particularly help to poor women, and women with children. She appeared in benefits to support lying-in hospitals; and it was while she was at Bushy that a free school for local girls was built and endowed close to the Hampton gates of the park. The girls were taught reading, writing and needlework under the supervision of a matron, and given clothes every Easter. The historian of Hampton, writing in the 1880s, says it was funded in 1803 and built in 1805 by the ‘generosity of the Duchess’: but since there was no Duchess at Bushy until 1818, the true founder of the school was surely the non-Duchess, Mrs Jordan. The same account is given of the foundation of a local Female Friendly Society in 1810, an insurance club for women, who paid in pennies and received help when they gave birth or fell ill; again, the benefactress must be the lady presiding over Bushy when the society was begun.7

  Dora’s own girls – the three eldest – were growing up: Fanny was twenty in 1802, and her mother bought a London house for her to share with Dodee and Lucy, in Golden Square. They kept Gifford Lodge too; Dora mentions their enjoyment of a day’s boating party on the Thames, and their joining in many Bushy activities. But they began to find their aunt Hester’s temper as trying as Dora had done, and refused to go on living with her; for some months they went to Wales without her, and enjoyed themselves so much they asked permission to stay longer than planned. They were accompanied on this occasion by a Mrs Sinclair, an aunt of Dora’s on her father’s side, who appeared at Bushy in the early days and remained in attendance for many years, further evidence of the Bland family’s revised view of Dora. Another faithful attendant, something between nurse and governess, was Miss Sketchley, who became a permanent fixture: ‘Poor soul, she has not much brains to spare but I think she always means well,’ wrote Dora of her, divided between generosity and impatience.8 There was also a Mrs Cockle, who wrote poetry, and helped with the girls’ education.

  By the time Dora was forty, in 1801, she had pretty well achieved the difficult feat of overcoming the scandalous stories and cartoons of ten years earlier. Her phenomenal energy meant that her fame still increased; her name was a household word, but not an automatic subject for sneers or chuckles. She was too industrious and, when not acting, lived too quietly and domestically at Bushy for that. In 1799 she played Cora in Sheridan’s Pizarro, for which she had to appear on stage with a baby in her arms; Mary was then five months old, and by tradition at any rate she carried her on, and was painted with her in action by the theatrical portraitist Samuel de Wilde. At this point she was already pregnant again. The following May (1800), when Frederick was the baby and she was expecting another, she was in the royal command performance when the King was attacked in the theatre by a madman with a pistol. He had asked for She Would and She Would Not, with one of Dora’s best-known r
oles as the dashing Hippolita who disguises herself as an army officer to win her lover; and he came with the Queen and all the Princesses, ‘who were naturally anxious to see Mrs Jordan in particular, who had appeared to justify a permanent attachment in one so dear to them, and to retain his respect, as well as his affection’.9

  The Duke of Clarence was in the theatre, and Sheridan was officiating behind the scenes when, as the King and Queen entered their box, a man in the pit fired at the King, narrowly missing him; the Queen thought the noise came from backstage, until the King said, ‘Do not come forward. A man in the pit has fired at me,’ and himself advanced to the front of the box to show the audience he was unharmed – an act of considerable courage. After a period of confusion, ‘an actress’ (as the Queen wrote) announced the assailant was in custody. Then Sheridan, in a brilliant gesture, handed Dora a paper on which he had written down a new verse for ‘God Save the King’, and Dora passed it to Michael Kelly, who led the entire company and audience in singing. Sheridan’s verse, beginning ‘Our father, prince and friend’ was repeated three times in a great burst of loyalty and relief, before the play proceeded. The Queen pronounced Sheridan ‘un Ange’, and the King invited him to come to court next day, and to bring his wife and son.10 George III particularly enjoyed meeting children; although it does not appear that Dora was invited to bring hers.

  The royals also came to see her at Richmond, in another of her popular parts, Letitia Hardy in Mrs Cowley’s The Belle’s Stratagem, in the autumn of 1802:

  Their Majesties George III and Queen, accompanied by the Five Princesses… honoured the Richmond Theatre, for the first time, with their presence, to see The Belle’s Stratagem and The Miser… The House was crowded with all the beauty and fashion of Richmond and its Neighbourhood and had to boast of the most brilliant audience that ever graced the Theatre.11

  We may note in passing too that in 1801 Jane Austen commiserated with her sister Cassandra, who showed ‘noble resignation’ about having to put off her visit to London, ‘Mrs Jordan and the Opera House’; the same year Fanny D’Arblay was pleased when her brother Charles ‘procured a Family Box for the whole party to see Mrs Jordan tonight’.12 Mrs Jordan was also the obvious choice for the ceremony when a silver cup was presented to Garrick’s old comedian and her old friend Tom King, retiring at the age of seventy-two: he had been the original Sir Peter Teazle, and in his last appearance he played the part again to Dora’s Lady Teazle.

  Dora was in her prime: as busy as she had ever been, and with talents and interests ranging wider than ever. During these years, for instance, she turned composer. For a long time her name had appeared as a performer on printed songs, published with the words ‘as sung by Mrs Jordan’ and often ‘to her own accompaniment on the lute’ on the front page. Now, in 1800 and 1801, two of her own songs were published. One was a setting of a poem by William Shenstone, ‘Go Tuneful Bird’: ‘The Melody compos’d by Mrs Jordan together with an Accompaniment for the Lute.’13 It is an easy, attractive tune, with some birdlike jumps and trills, marked as optional on the score for those who could not manage them, that suggest her voice was a soprano. The Shenstone setting is quite forgotten, but the other song was an immediate and overwhelming success, became one of the most popular tunes of the nineteenth century, and is still well known today: ‘The Blue Bell of Scotland’, with patriotic words about the Highland Laddie going to fight the French for King George. The 32-bar melody, naïve but haunting, was printed and reprinted in edition after edition, in London and in Dublin, arranged for harp, flute and pianoforte and made into variations and duets of all kinds, and still appears in collections of popular songs. Curiously, it gradually detached itself from its composer and began to be ascribed to Anon. It is hard to see why, unless this is yet another piece of Victorian censorship.

  Her interest in music and poetry was so well known that poets sent her copies of their work; and in this way two of the greatest young writers of the age made contact with her. In December 1800 Coleridge, who had admired her as an actress since he had begun theatre-going as an undergraduate in the early 1790s, told his publisher Thomas Longman that he and Wordsworth were sending her the second edition of Lyrical Ballads. She was the only actress so honoured; other copies went to Fox and the Duchess of Devonshire – ‘people of eminence’, Coleridge calls them – but the most interesting remark he makes is that Mrs Jordan has already said she ‘intended to sing stanzas of the Mad Mother in Pizarro if she acted Cora again’.14 The poem Coleridge calls ‘the Mad Mother’ is not by him but by Wordsworth (though the whole volume was published anonymously in its first edition). To find Dora acquainted with the work of Wordsworth, and ready to appreciate Lyrical Ballads, is another striking proof of her taste and range of interest. ‘The Mad Mother’ – more commonly known by its opening words as ‘Her Eyes are Wild’ – is quite a long poem, in ten stanzas, the first a description of a woman travelling alone with a baby; the rest is her monologue, a powerful and moving one. She has been abandoned by the child’s father (‘Thy father cares not for my breast,/’Tis thine, sweet baby, there to rest’); she has also been mad, and may be again, but she feels the baby and his needs now keep her sane. As he sucks at her breast, she says, he draws the pain away from her heart and loosens the ‘tight and deadly band’ she feels constricting her. It was a bold poem for Wordsworth to write and publish, with its theme of a suffering, poor, awkward, unglamorized female victim; and Dora’s interest, and her idea of using some of it in her performance in Pizarro, is remarkable too. It shows both her openness of mind to the subject, and her readiness to listen to a new voice and manner in poetry.15

  Title-page of ‘The Blue Bell of Scotland’, published in 1800, giving Mrs Jordan’s name as composer.

  If she did ever use some of Wordsworth’s lines when playing Cora, there is no record of it; but for Coleridge she remained a name to conjure with. In May 1804, when he was sailing to Malta, he had a dream of some wonderful words: ‘abomination! The full moon came thundering down from Heaven, like a Cannon Ball; & seeing that nothing could be done went quietly back again!’ He wrote them down in his notebook, adding: ‘Put ’em into a Mrs Jordan’s mouth, ridiculing some pompous moral or political Declaimer.’16 Clearly he ranged her among the opponents of pompous and high-toned public declarations; and she remained a heroine to him to the end of her life. In 1815 he praised her verse-speaking, especially of Shakespeare, in a letter to Byron, as the best he had ever heard.17

  Appearing in Pizarro, she had every excuse to have her most recent baby with her. It was what she liked. When she had to be away from Bushy without the children, she said every baby reminded her of her youngest, every boy and girl of George and Sophy.18 A letter of 1802 shows she has the current one, Adolphus, with her in town, and some of the others too:

  The dear little ones committed to my care are very well particularly Adolphus – The play went off last night with increased Eclat – Sheridan was there and appeared highly pleased – I almost wish the weather would drive you to Town – I was very unwell during the play last night, and slept but little – I never heard so tempestuous a night, everybody talks of Peace – I am now going to lay down – I would have sent you Books, but I wont for that is providing amusement for you, and defeating my own wishes, however whether you come to Town or not – God bless you and the dear Children.19

  This is a characteristic letter to the Duke, unstudied, light-hearted and affectionate, following her thoughts as they run from one subject to another and back.

  In 1804 the baby in town with her was Augusta, ‘a great comfort to me in my banishment’; in 1805 it was Tuss, ‘the dear little Boy’ whose health she reports on in her letter home, spiced with theatre gossip:

  Sheridan was at the theatre the whole evening and told me that Dr Pierson did not by any means think him out of danger as late as 8 oclock – I got through the night very well, and indeed I believe if I had not played something very serious would have taken place – Sheridan was very sen
sible of this and of course felt himself much served… I play every night and therefore hope I shall see you in town – Sheridan wanted to see you last night – Fox was at the play and appeared much pleased – indeed the House was very great… I am much obliged for the venison…Frederick [at this time aged five] went with Mrs Sinclair and Lloyd to the Play and was in bed with me this morning by 7 and gave me a full account of my dress and part of the Play – he is certainly one of the most affectionate children in the world – he knows I am writing to Bushy and desires his love to all…20

  Her letters to the Duke were spontaneous and private, yet she often apologized for their hasty scrawl and asked the Duke to ‘excuse the unconnected way in which I write… I believe nobody but yourself could read my Letters.’21 She had no eye on posterity; they were purely family letters, with family news. George, when aged three, asked by his mother to put a kiss in the note she is sending his father, ‘immediately spit in it’.22 Sophy wrote her first letter to her mother, away acting in Canterbury, at the age of six: ‘I have reed. my dear Sophy’s first dear letter.’23 Mary became a particularly good and affectionate letter-writer, but Frederick could hardly put pen to paper, and George was reproached by his mother at the age of eight for his reluctance to write to her. Eliza was so proud of her own early attempt at a letter to her father that ‘she said it over half a dozen times to me – no one dictated a word to her’. Lolly rejoiced in a letter from his absent father. Like all working mothers, Dora sent or brought back presents when she was away: a work-box for Sophy, a writing case for George, a new kind of lanthorn (i.e., lantern – they were made of horn) for Henry; on another occasion, two dolls for ‘Ta and Milly’, frocks for the girls, wooden soldiers for the boys, a parrot for the whole family.