Mrs Jordan's Profession

by Claire Tomalin

  So Dublin had not changed very much after all in the years she had been absent. But Dora had, and the Lord Lieutenant was no Daly; he had only attempted something ridiculous. Of course she had to tell the Duke: he was the person with whom she shared her secrets, and who should know that she could still be paid even such a dubious sexual compliment as this, and by a fellow duke. By waiting before she told him, she allowed it to become more of a joke than an affront. ‘Lucy and I laugh at it whenever we think of it,’ she added. Surprising, perhaps, that she should have discussed it with an unmarried daughter, but Lucy could clearly take these things in her stride; and her mother was teaching her a basic lesson of comedy. It could defuse humiliation and terror, and turn tears into laughter. Instead of allowing the Duke of Richmond to be a figure of menace, he was turned into a figure of fun.

  Dora’s account of the Lord Lieutenant’s behaviour had a close parallel in England this year, when Sheridan’s old love, Harriet Bessborough, went through a similar ordeal with a still more highly placed admirer. She was the same age as Dora, had been married for nearly thirty years, and was also the mother of several children, two of them by Lord Granville Leveson-Gower, who now decided to end their liaison and take a young wife. On hearing this, the Prince of Wales hurried round to Lady Bessborough, ‘threw himself on his knees, and clasping me round, kiss’d my neck before I was aware of what he was doing,’ – so wrote Harriet to her faithless lover.

  I screamed with vexation and fright; he continued sometimes struggling with me, sometimes sobbing and crying… Then mixing abuse of you, vows of eternal love, entreaties and promises of what he would do… had not my heart been breaking I must have laugh’d out at the comicality… that immense, grotesque figure flouncing about half on the couch, half on the ground… After telling him for two hours that… I never could or would be on any other terms with him than the acquaintance he had always honour’d me with, we came to a tolerably friendly making up, and he kept me two more telling me stories…27

  Harriet Bessborough, like Dora, chose to make a funny story out of an experience that, at the time, was not so amusing. The two letters stand together as pieces of female reporting on a world in which men took themselves, and were taken, very seriously indeed. In one the Prince of Wales becomes a grossly comic figure, in the other the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland an absurd creature who demonstrates his supposed power by the crudest and most inept of insults to a celebrated visitor. Both were cases ‘too ridiculous to be kept as a secret’. The men saw themselves as Lovelaces or Lotharios. The women presented them as Don Juans or Falstaffs, their great figures deflated by the scratching of that womanly weapon, the pen.

  It is not too surprising that Dora missed the charm of Dublin, and was glad to see the last of it. She never went back again. The Barringtons saw her off, and she took their son with her; he was going to prepare for the army, starting at school with her younger sons. At Bushy she had the great joy of finding Henry home at last, and everyone well and in good spirits; Frederick, FitzErnest, the Duke of Cumberland’s son, and all the girls were planning to go to the horse races, and there was cricket in the park. Although she and Lucy set off northwards once more, it was with a more comfortable feeling; and in October she was back, and put in some performances at Richmond again, while the Duke went to Windsor to celebrate the jubilee of his father’s accession with a roast ox, a water pageant, incense, fireworks and a grand supper, all organized by the Queen. The court ladies were got up in white satin cloaks, and a large crowd gathered, but the King himself went to bed early. His eyesight had almost failed, and he was tired.

  16

  ‘I am a better actress at this moment than I ever was’: 1810

  The Christmas of 1809 was one of rejoicing. ‘My two beloved boys are now at home… We shall have a full and merry house at Christmas; ’tis what the Duke delights in. A happier set, when all together, I believe never yet existed,’ wrote Dora to Barrington. She was writing to let him know that her big sons had gone to visit his boy at school; Barrington was a friend, but not an intimate, and this was her formal, public voice. She was well aware that her letters to him might be quoted or shown to other people, and she added, ‘The ill-natured parts of the world never can enjoy the tranquil pleasures of domestic happiness.’1 For a moment she sounds more like a moralizing novelist than her usual self.

  There is no doubt that Bushy was a place of domestic happiness that Christmas. Every room in the top floor had its complement of children, though two of the children were now seasoned fighting men. George was recovered from his wound and dysentery, and Henry had just been safely plucked back from the disastrous Walcheren expedition that had left so many others dead. The Duke and his sons could swap battle stories, and go out hunting and shooting together, and Dora would keep her dislike of guns and hatred of cruelty to herself. Indoors, firelight and candlelight cast their cheerful red and yellow circles all through the house, the maids and kitchen staff working at full tilt to keep every room bright and warm, and everyone well fed from morning to night.

  There were frosty morning carriage rides across the park to church at Hampton village, and great consumption of beef and pheasant, mince pies and plum pudding afterwards. Nixon and the Lloyd family were in attendance, and the curate Dr Morgan; Lucy played her part of good and helpful elder sister. The Duke’s old friend, Colonel Hawker, who had suffered the double blow of losing his mistress and being wounded at Talavera with George, came to be cheered up, bringing his grown-up daughter Julia. There was music, dancing, whist, billiards, reading aloud and family games, and almost certainly an expedition to the pantomime at Covent Garden. Mely was just beginning to run about, a stout little figure in her red riding hood, Tuss and Ta were petted, curly-headed four- and five-year-olds; the older girls had new dresses and trinkets, and went out on their well-behaved ponies in the winter sunshine; tough Freddles raced his pony against all comers, went coursing for hares, and came in joyously covered in mud.

  But now a paradox: from all this domestic happiness Dora departed even before the new year. She embraced the children and the Duke, and set off once again with Lucy; they were on their way to Manchester, then Halifax, Bradford, Leeds and York. She knew this was a perverse thing to do, and felt she had to explain to the Duke that it was neither ‘avarice nor inclination’ that impelled her; to leave ‘the comforts of dear Bushy’ and her adored children for long coach journeys, dirty lodgings and drudgery was something she did only because she felt she had to.

  Why did she do it? She had given him part of a reason and part of a resolution before Christmas, when she told him she only wanted to get out of debt and stay at home, now that her three elder girls were provided for; and that, ‘however you may joke about it you surely cannot doubt for a moment my being thoroughly tired of my profession’.2 She also said she thought herself ‘too burdensome to you’ and was determined never to ask him for more than the allowance he gave her. The mystery is how she ran up debts, and why she was never able to pay them off. She went on talking about these eternal debts, and about her tax problems and life insurance policies; and she also went on sending the Duke money. She promised repeatedly that this would be her last tour, her last absence from home, her last self-inflicted misery; and it never was. After a few months, or weeks, or even days at home, she would set off again.

  In 1810 she was away for the whole of January, then for June, and then again from September until Christmas. Sometimes she joked about it – ‘it is a pity that like other professions I cannot have assistants’3 – but on the whole her letters home offer a rich anthology of regrets. She invokes Goldsmith’s The Traveller: ‘I may well say that when I quit you all I drag at each remove a lengthened chain.’4 ‘I long to make this my last appearance more than ever I did to make my first,’ she writes from her York dressing room, a portrait of Tate Wilkinson looking down on her.5 Setting off northwards again, she explains, as though to reassure, ‘I find I can by getting up at five and travelling till 10, go 130
miles a day. This will in some degree shorten this long absence.’6 At Warrington she cannot ‘help thinking of my dear little room at Bushy’. In Leeds she finds ‘the only clean and good bed I have lain in since I gave up mine to dear Lolly,’ but it is not enough to make up for what she is missing; even ‘Lucy, with all her quietude and philosophy, begins to allow this is a very comfortless and weary life.’7 They do their best to cheer themselves up: ‘We have got books from Leeds, and are endeavouring to make this a little home for a few days.’ More cheering even than books is the renewed ‘idea that this is the last separation from you all’; it is ‘a comfort to my mind beyond what I can express’.8 But a false comfort, as it turns out. In Edinburgh, suffering from swollen ankles, she writes to George, ‘I must soon give up the profession… I have neither health nor spirits to continue much longer.’9 Then to the Duke again, ‘I merely want to get out of debt, but something always happens to prevent this long wished for event.’10 She misses the children painfully, and reproaches herself for losing so much of Mely’s development, and her ‘dear innocent prattle’ And always, like a litany, ‘Oh my God, how I do long to return home.’

  If it was only money that drove her on, you have to ask why, after all her efforts, she remained always in debt, and why the Duke’s advisers did not sort out the problems. It was a matter of understandable pride to her to have earned for her three elder daughters, but why was she trying to save money for Sophia too? Why was she sending the Duke money, and her sons?

  For one thing, she could never resist the generous gesture, as her sons-in-law so quickly discovered and turned to their own account. Then, because she had always earned so much, she had not needed to insist on prudence and economy, and she had forgotten how to say no when asked for money. She saw herself as the provider, the benefactress who could solve everyone else’s problems. For herself, she was not extravagant; she had no expensive habits, made her stage costumes last till they were in shreds, insisted on sobriety at Bushy. On the other hand she was clearly marked out as someone to be overcharged and exploited by family, tradesmen, servants, innkeepers and lodging-house people alike.

  The Duke, by general agreement, had no sense or understanding of money at all. He relied on what he could squeeze out of Parliament, on the generosity of various bankers, on any credit he could raise; and he was wholly in the hands of his men of business. If they, who were in the counsels of the royal family, were beginning to think of how to separate the Duke from Mrs Jordan, they may have seen the question of their finances, joint and separate, as a promising area in which to operate. Since they were dealing with her tax, they must have had a good idea of her financial situation and problems, and been in a position to advise her; and even if she resisted their advice, they could surely have helped to disentangle her from debts once and for all. The fact that they did not choose to do so suggests that they were less than devoted to her interests.

  Her money problems were real; which does not mean money was the only thing that kept her touring. When the Duke joked about whether she was really as tired of her profession as she claimed, he was making a shrewd point. Her letters to him naturally say more about the drawbacks than the pleasures and satisfactions; but she did sometimes touch on them too. When she does, you sense at once how important this other half of her life remained to her, where she was not a domestic creature, not an anxious, loving mother, not even a sexual being; where she was simply the best comic actress in the country. In that world she was among friends and fellow workers: Robert Elliston, who invited her to Manchester where he was running the theatre, had been Rolla to her Cora in Sheridan’s Pizarro at Drury Lane; John Bannister was in Manchester just before her, and wrote for news of her as soon as he heard she was to be there. She took pride in what she could do with an audience; ‘It is astonishing how good acting refines the mind of an audience,’ she wrote.11 She also felt revived when she acted: ‘A fresh audience gives me fresh spirits. I suppose it has the same effect as you gentlemen experience in riding a fresh horse,’ she explained to the Duke, seeking the right analogy to make him understand.12

  At home, she was a matron. He saw her as the mother of his children, and no longer as the irresistibly seductive companion she had once been. She may have felt sexually weary herself by now. But on stage, in her working life, she was the same as she had always been; the inner self that remains, simultaneously child, girl, young woman and old woman, could find expression still as the Country Girl, as Beatrice, as Nell. It is not surprising that she did not want to suppress this part of herself; that there was a real battle going on inside her head between her wish to be at home with her family and her other wish – and need – to work.

  One of the most important letters she ever wrote gives expression to this division, her pride in what she had achieved in her profession and her acknowledgement of the price she and her family had to pay for it. It was sent to the Duke early in 1811, when she was acting in Bath.

  The Theatre last night was greatly crowded, and from the applause and admiration one would think that [I] had but started in the profession instead of being near the end of the race – but with regard to acting when I can for an hour or two, forget you all and the various anxieties that in general depress my spirits, I really think, and it is the opinion of several critics here that have known me from my first appearance in London, that I am a better actress at this moment than I ever was. You would be surprised to see with what eagerness all the performers treasure up any little instruction I give them at rehearsals; many of them make memorandums of them in their pocket books… I drive you all from my mind as much as I can during the time I am employed, but then you all return with double force and my dreams are confused and disturbed to a degree.13

  It is a statement that sounds like the exact truth: she was equally distressed at her separation from her family and proud of her achievement in the theatre.

  Other people observed how acting put life into her. A man who saw her in Liverpool this year described how he

  accompanied Mrs Jordan to the green-room… She went thither languid and apparently reluctant; but, in a quarter of an hour, her very nature seemed to undergo a metamorphosis; the sudden change of her manner appeared to me, in fact, nearly miraculous. She walked spiritedly across the stage two or three times, as if to measure its extent; and the moment her foot touched the scenic boards, her spirit seemed to be regenerated. She cheered up, hummed an air, stepped light and quick, and every symptom of depression vanished! The comic eye and the cordial laugh returned upon their enchanting mistress, and announced that she felt herself moving in her proper element.14

  Macready’s account of working with her at this period also shows what her stage presence and authority meant at a rehearsal to a novice, and an exceptionally intelligent and well-educated one:

  When the cue for my entrance as Felix was given, it was not without embarrassment that my few first words were spoken; but her good nature soon relieved me, for when I expressed the love that wrestled with a suspicious temper in the words, ‘True love has many fears, and fear as many eyes as fame; yet sure – I think – they see no fault in thee!’ she paused, apparently in a sort of surprise, and with great emphasis, said ‘Very well indeed, Sir!’ This gave me again my perfect self-possession, and I was able to attend to all her remarks and treasure up the points, in which she gave prominence to the text.

  He went on, ‘I have seen many Violantes since, but where was there one who could, like her, excite the bursts of rapture in an audience…? The mode in which she taught Flora to act her parts was a lesson to make an actress.’15 To Macready and all her fellow professionals, as well as to her audiences, she was a fabled creature, as cunning in her arts, and as ageless, as Cleopatra.

  Only at Bushy her magic was fading. It flickered for a last time in the summer of 1810, when the Duke remembered again that she was indispensable to him. She travelled up to Edinburgh at the end of May, anxious as ever about leaving, but getting good reports on everyone
at home. The Duke was off to the races at Epsom; Alsop saw him looking very well. She wrote home teasingly saying he must expect her back like the bad penny, and that she trusted this would be her very last departure from home. In his reply the Duke took a new tone, saying he saw no reason at all for her to give up the stage just yet. This disconcerted her: ‘I was sorry to perceive… that you do not seem to feel the necessity and propriety of my quitting the stage, as much as I could wish.’16 But she moved on to Glasgow, as arranged. Suddenly, at the end of June, a message was brought, asking her to return to Bushy at once. The Duke was seriously ill; his annual asthma attack had come on so badly that he thought he might be dying. Fifteen-year-old Sophy was nursing him, but in his panic he wanted only Dora at his bedside.

  Without a moment’s hesitation she set off, travelling day and night without stopping for food or rest. The four hundred miles were covered in two and a half days –sixty-four hours, according to her own account to George – a journey that would have taxed anyone’s strength, and for a woman of her age a remarkable feat. The Duke, mercifully, was no longer dying when she arrived at Bushy; he was already past the worst, and she was probably the more exhausted of the two. As soon as he was well enough, he wrote to George: ‘Your most excellent mother flew to me from Glasgow in sixty three hours the moment she heard I was unwell.’ He added that she had given up ‘a very fine engagement’ and was now tired. She thought of returning to Scotland, and it is a relief to know she did not, but remained at Bushy for the rest of the summer.17

  The Duke, however, once fully recovered, departed without her for Brighton. If this was a trifle ungallant, ‘les Princes… sont peu scrupuleux en tout ce qui regarde leurs plaisirs’, as Harriet Bessborough observed, and his gratitude for Dora’s dash to his sickbed was quickly dissipated.18 At his brother’s birthday celebrations ‘he was on very hard duty as to drinking’, she told George. He went on to Oatlands, the Duke of York’s Surrey estate, for more festivities; and when it came to his own birthday there was, for the first time in many years, no celebration at Bushy.