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MADAME VESTRIS.
Arch, easy, impudent, pert, sprightly, and agreeable,
with a handsome face, a delicious person, a rich,
musical voice, and an inexhaustible fund of self-possession,
this vivacious lady has pleased, and continues
to please on every stage, and in every department
of the drama in which she appears. She suits
all tastes. It is impossible for any one to dislike her;
and just as impossible, I should think, for any to
become enthusiastically fond of her acting. There
is no depth, nor power, nor sensibility about her.
Neither is there the aping or affectation of these
things. She is, emphatically, a clever actress, which
stands in about the same relation to a great actress
as an epigrammatist to a poet; or a shrewd, worldly
man to a wise one; and her being a more universal
favorite than others of a higher order of merit, is
only another proof of what has been proved some
thousand times since the world began—that success
reason, that the more the kind of merit is upon a
level with the intellects of the majority of the judges,
the more likely it is to be appreciated. The lady's
talent is purely executional, and has nothing to do
with the higher province of conception—indeed the
characters in which she generally appears are not
conceptions but copies, or copies of copies of the
ephemeral whims and vagaries of the passing hour
—trifling and agreeable, and well suited to the prevailing
light and superficial taste in theatrical matters;
for, without cant, it is light and superficial.
I have been told that she plays Rosalind. I should
like to see her do so for curiosity's sake; for I cannot
imagine a more pleasant and amusing performance,
and at the same time more decidedly different from
what it ought to be, than Madame Vestris's Rosalind.
She will be the arch, lively, free-spoken, well-bred
lady of the French court to the life; but any
thing rather than the wild, daring, susceptible, romantic
Rosalind.
Two-thirds of Madame Vestris's notoriety has
arisen from the facility with which she can un-sex
herself, and the confident boldness with which she
makes her bow to the audience in breeches. It is
all very well that she does so—half measures are
very perplexing and disagreeable; and if a lady
either in public or private, the more decidedly and
gracefully she does it the better; but still there must
be some affectation in the raptures of the town at
witnessing the same. To be sure, no one buttons a
coat, adjusts a cravat, wears a hat, handles a cane, or
draws a pair of gloves on in the true spirit of knowing
and irresistible coxcombry equal to Madame
Vestris; and it is really pleasant to sit and see those
manly airs and graces played of by a woman,
affording, as it does, conclusive evidence that such
deep-laid schemes to ensnare the admiration of the
fair sex do not always escape detection; yet still
the skill and observation requisite to do this may be
rated too highly. But Madame Vestris has better,
though perhaps weaker claims than this, on the
public favor. She has the ability to make wearisome
common-place passable, frivolity agreeable,
and sprightliness fascinating—a never-flagging joyousness
of spirit, and an almost promethean power
of imparting a portion of her exuberance of life and
animation to the walking, talking, mechanical blocks
by which she is occasionally surrounded. To use a
striking, technical phrase, she “keeps the stage
alive.” Her motions are graceful in the extreme,
and like a greyhound or a thorough-bred racer, she
chambermaids have an archness inexpressible; and,
if it be a merit, (a stage one it certainly is,) no one
equals her in a certain quiet and unutterable mode
of giving a double entendre. As a singer, Madame
Vestris is deservedly admired. There is a hearty,
sensible, straight-forwardness in her manner, and
an absence of quackery and pretension in her style
that is extremely agreeable. She is a good enough
tactician to know exactly what she can do, and
though a spoiled favorite, discreet enough seldom to
attempt more than she can, with credit and safety
go through with—a rare merit. Her voice is none
of your common, thin, clear, unsubstantial organs,
but of a full, round, rich, satisfying quality; her
manner of giving the arch, and what may be called
dashing songs, she is in the habit of singing, is
charming, and the effect of the whole—voice, look,
and action—delightful.
There is another particular in which Vestris is
unrivalled, though, from the extraordinary notions
of delicacy prevalent in the western hemisphere,
wherein you are located, I almost despair of making
myself understood. I mean as regards the symetry
of those portions of the human frame which are
situated between the knees and ankles, but which
it is the custom of the country never to name by
of inferior animals, such as dogs and horses; though
wherein consists the harm, even when speaking of
a lady, of plainly using the monosyllable beginning
with an l and ending with a g, with an intermediate
vowel, I cannot say, but leave it to people much
better acquainted with delicacy and metaphysics,
than I pretend to be, to determine. But this I can
say, that after having repeatedly looked upon those
two unmentionable pieces of humanity belonging
to Madame Vestris in the most critical manner, I
think them, as far as my judgment goes, perfect
in every point. Madame Vestris is also highly
accomplished in other matters, being mistress of
both French and Italian.
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