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In the following June the Inchbalds and Kemble visited Halifax, Mr. Inchbald on horseback, and next day (June 6th, 1779) he suddenly expired, it is supposed from disease of the heart. His wife in her diary calls the day a day of horror," and the week following "a week of grief, horror, and almost despair." It would appear that she was not with him at the time, for she also notes asking Kemble many questions concerning her husband's death.* Their domestic peace had not been unbroken. Mrs. Inchbald was often jealous (Boaden insinuates not without cause), and her light-hearted geniality and love of admiration joined, perhaps, to a spice of retaliative coquetry-often angered him; though it is well known that all her admirers found a hard and fast line beyond which it was impossible to pass; a line defended on one occasion by a basin of hot water thrown in the face of an insolent manager.

But despite passing clouds the Inchbalds' affection for each other was sincere; they had many interests in common; Mr. Inchbald's admiration for his wife and faith in her powers were boundless, and she long and bitterly missed his encouragement and companionship. The first event which roused her from her affliction was the arrival of her stepson George Inchbald, with whom she was on very friendly terms. He became a member of the same company, owing an increased salary to her good offices, and lodged in the same house with her; a few months later he was chosen by Suett the comedian to convey a proposal of marriage to his stepmotherthe seriousness of which she found more amusing than any of his stage jokes. Meantime the world in general, and the theatrical world in particular, married her to Kemble so confidently" that it seemed like disappointing their patrons to avoid or even defer the union." Mr. Fitzgerald, in his Lives of the Kembles, says: "It is probable that Kemble's cautious disposition was not inclined to hamper his career by taking on him fresh responsibilities." Boaden says:

* Kemble wrote a long and eulogistic Latin inscription for his friend's tomb at Leeds. + Vol. i., p. 79.

"We think we know that Mr. Kemble could never have borne with the independent turn of her mind; he could never, we are sure, be blindly fond of any woman; and much as she might have respected him she had a humor

that demanded as much indulgence as that of her husband at least. Even as friends to the end of their lives they had frequent differences, looking very like alienation."

This sounds all very true and reasonable, no doubt-but Kemble's social attractions, fine presence, and dramatic powers had deeply interested Mrs. Inch bald from the first. They had been domesticated together, and the attraction had but grown stronger; and there is the best authority for believing that there would have been no hesitation on the lady's side.

"On one occasion when Mrs. Inchbald was sitting by the fireplace in the green-room, waiting to be called upon the stage, she and Miss Mellon (afterward Mrs. Coutts and Duchess of St. Albans) were laughingly discussing their male friends and acquaintances from the matrimonial point of view. My Uncle John, who was standing near, excessively amused, at length jestingly said to Mrs. Inchbald, who had been comically energetic in her declarations of who she could or would, or never could or would, have married, 'Well, Mrs. Inchbald, would you have had me?' 'Dear heart,' said the stammering beauty, turning her sweet sunny face up to him-I'd have jjjjumped at you !'"*"

Of Mrs. Inchbald's financial position at the time of her husband's death her biographer says quaintly :

"Her circumstances were what is commonly called good, and theatrically perhaps extraordinary. She had £222 Long Annuities, £30 in Consols, and 5s. 3d, in the Reduced Annuities; besides £128 12s. 6d. money in hand."

Her salary was under thirty shillings a week, and for her benefits she rarely obtained more than seven pounds. But her expenses were small, averaging twelve shillings a week for board and lodging. She lived in comparative seclusion for some little time after her husband's death, and busied herself in finishing her "Simple Story." It was shown to Kemble, George Inchbald, and one or two other friends, and after their favorable verdict was sent to Dr. Brodie, who vainly tried to find a publisher for it. Undaunted by this disappoint

*"Record of a Girlhood," by Frances Ann Kemble. Bentley & Son, 1879. Vol. ii., p. 50.

ment, Mrs. Inchbald began to write a farce, scenes from which she read to her friends as she proceeded. She was corresponding with several avowed admirers (Sir John Whitefoord, Dr. Brodie, Colonel Glover, etc.), but had no intention of marrying again.

An engagement at Covent Garden in 1780, although with little advance of salary, opened a new era in her life. She appeared as Bellario, looking extremely handsome in her page's dress, but speaking timidly, and acting stiffly, and causing some amusement by her reluctance to part with her hat, which she wore throughout, even when presented to the Princess, except in the scene in the wood, when she might naturally have kept it on! She was little disturbed by the indifference with which her London début was received, being absorbed in completing three farces on which she built high hopes, destined like those of many of her successors in the same path to speedy and humiliating disappointment. Managers slowly and reluctantly consented even to look at them, and although their unfavorable decisions were prompt enough, there was the usual difficulty and delay in getting them out of their hands.

On her arrival in London Mrs. Inchbald took lodgings at nine shillings a week, where, in spite of limited accommodation and entertainments of the strictest frugality (sometimes, indeed, she mentions that her guests provided their own meals!), she soon gathered round her a large circle of new acquaintances, and rejected lovers whom she generally contrived to turn into staunch friends. One of the latter sent her as a Christmas-box a "History of England," and among the former she numbered the Marquis of Carmarthen. One of her sisters took alarm at this acquaintance, but the greatest indiscretion. into which he led Mrs. Inchbald was accompanying him to a masqueradethe origin of Miss Milner's similar escapade in the Simple Story," as Kemble is believed to have been the prototype of the austere and dignified Dorriforth, and the heroine's fitful temper and self-will to have been revelations of the author's "inner consciousness."

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The next few years were passed in London, Dublin, and the provinces, in

exceedingly hard work, at low salaries, and often entailing the assumption of characters repulsive to her, and what she hated most, "walking in the pantomime." The brightest gleam of encouragement was the purchase of one of her comedies for twenty pounds; the greatest sorrow was the death of her mother in 1783. Through all changes of fortune, her studies were carried on unweariedly. She made fair progress in astronomy, and in her list of books read we find Homer's " Odyssey," Rollin's "Ancient History," Plato's works, Hook's "Tasso," and "The Wars of Jurgurtha.”

In 1784 Mrs. Inchbald made her first hit as a dramatic author, Colman purchasing her farce The Mogul Tale for a hundred guineas. The authorship was at first concealed, and she found great amusement in hearing the green-room criticisms - generally favorable—and compensation for many struggles in its brilliant success with the public. She acted in it herself, and it was noted that her nervous excitement was so great, that on this one and only occasion she stammered on the stage. it was in an expression of surprise and alarm, it probably heightened the effect. In Kemble's letter of congratulation he says :—

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Her friend Davis paid her a more amusing tribute. Next to that immortal man, the late Mr. Garrick," he used to say, "Mrs. Inchbald is lord of the ascendant."

Sir Charles Bunbury now became a frequent visitor at Mrs. Inchbald's humble lodgings. And as his name was not exactly a voucher for propriety, jealous people said ill-natured things, which called forth from Harris, the manager, the indignant reply-"That woman Inchbald has solemnly devoted herself to virtue and a garret."

Her next production, the comedy, I'll Tell You What! accepted and named by Colman, helped her a little way out

of the garret. She received £300 for it, and her faithful friends Kemble and his future brother-in-law Francis Twiss carried her in triumph to the City to invest it in the Three per Cents. Twiss had acted the unpopular part of the "candid friend" in some letters commenting on her plays, and the sums she demanded for them, in which he unmercifully "quizzed" her "vanity and avarice," and while admitting their merits laughed at her for believing the exaggerated praises of her flatterers; but she seems to have taken his strictures quite in good part, and when he returned to town resumed her habit of dining with him and Kemble on Sundays, when their evenings were spent in reading aloud to each other, sometimes

sermons.

In 1786 Mrs. Inchbald's prosperity and popularity were great. As usual she largely helped her family and friends, and her unmarried sister Dolly was sent for to share her rooms, which were so besieged by visitors that she had literally to lock her doors when she required undisturbed quiet for writing. The charming Miss Farren, afterward Countess of Derby, was a favorite friend, so was Mrs. Pope, and old Mrs. Kemble, the Swiss farmer's daughter from whom Fanny Kemble inherited her longing love for the snow-clad Alps. Amongst her lovers was Dr. Wolcot, who suspended his Pindaric odes to write sentimental verses, not of the most refined order, to her. A more desirable suitor-indeed, one to whom there could have been no objection, but the somewhat important one that his affection was not returned -was Mr. Glover, a inan of good character, fortune and family, who had fallen in love with Mrs. Inchbald in the first year of her widowhood, and who twice proposed to her, offering a settlement of £500 a year, and, what was far more essential in her eyes, promising to be as kind to her somewhat exacting and unsatisfactory relations as she was herself.

an

Boaden attributes her final refusal to

unfortunate preference for Sir Charles Bunbury, whose pertinacious attentions, he says, led Mrs. Inchbald to hope that he meant to make her his wife. It is difficult to understand how so intelligent a woman, so well acquaint

ed with all phases of society, and generally so acute a judge of character, could have deceived herself to such an extent. Sir Charles was at that time divorced from his first wife, the lovely Lady Sarah Lennox,* and Mrs. Inchbald might have been assured that, even had his principles been higher, his matrimonial views, as a man of fashion and a politician, would be very different. Five years the intimate acquaintance between them continued, letters being constantly exchanged during the intervals between his frequent visits. Sometimes Sir Charles, offended her by breaking an appointment or by an appearance of indifference, but he was always forgiven, and Mrs. Inchbald indulged her dream until, in 1791, some very serious explanation took place, which made her extremely melancholy, and Sir Charles was relegated to the position of a mere acquaintance.

During these years of delusion Mrs. Inchbald sadly needed the kind and wise support which Mr. Glover might have afforded her. Too warm a heart and too open a hand led her to make some undesirable acquaintances whom she could not be induced to give up on the ground of a prudence which she considered selfish, and made her the prey of all the impecunious. Her brother George, who had married an actress, but quitted the stage on his mother's death for the farm at Standingfield, failed disastrously. Mrs. Inchbald had settled her own share of what her mother had to leave on her sisters, but this by no means relieved her from family calls. Mr. Twiss came to the rescue of her brother, whose difficulties were beyond her unaided arbitration. Her stepson George Inchbald, of whom she had been very fond, made many starts in life, failing in all, and coming

Walpole wrote to Sir Horace Mann in a prophetic vein, on hearing of the engagement of his "chief angel." After describing Bunbury's childish' unreliability and inconsistency in the House of Commons, he adds : "To show himself more a man he is going to marry Lady Sarah Lennox, who is very pretty from exceeding bloom of youth. But as she has no features, and her beauty is not likely to last so long as her betrothed's, he will probably repent this step, like his motions."

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Letters of Horace Walpole." Bentley & Son, edit. 1891. Vol. iii., p. 489.

to her at each crisis for assistance; and her own health had for many years been so fluctuating, and her frequent illnesses so severe, that it is astonishing that she could have found strength for her continuous labors as author and actress.

In 1786 she produced, under Colman's auspices, a successful farce called The Widow's Vow. She was at that time living in the second-floor of the house that had been Buttons', and her sympathetic imagination may have found something inspiriting in the associations with Steele and Addison and their brother wits by which she was surrounded.

Her play of Such Things Are, put on the stage by Harris in the following year, and ordered by George III. and Queen Charlotte on the sixth night, was founded to a certain extent on the career of the then living philanthropist Howard, called by her Haswell. One of the incidents in the play is the theft of Haswell's pocket-book by a slave in a dungeon which he is visiting on his errands of charity. It was an odd coincidence that Howard himself returned to England while this drama was running, and that during the coach journey from Canterbury he was robbed of a case containing papers and jewels.

A translation from the French play Guerre Ouverte, called by Mrs. Inchbald The Midnight Hour, was her next triumph, to the wrath of Lady Wallace and the courteously expressed disappointment of Mr. MacMahon, each of whom was engaged in translating the same comedy.

It is not possible to follow Mrs. Inchbald step by step through the work and pleasure of the next few years, but one entry in her journal for 1788 is too characteristic to be passed over :

"On the 29th of June (Sunday) diced, drank tea, and supped with Mrs. Whitfield. At dark she and I and her son William walked out. I rapped at doors in New Street and King Street

and ran away.

Kemble's "dear Muse" had then arrived at the responsible age of thirtyfive.

Hard-working women-and men too -especially the brain-workers in all departments, frequently find their most disinterested and generous friends in

their doctors; and 1788 also inaugurated Mrs. Inchbald's friendship for Dr. Warren, who, first consulted by her on professional subjects only, soon became one of her most trusted advisers and whom she grew to regard with such romantic tenderness that she would walk up and down Sackville Street at night merely to see whether there were lights in his rooms, and his shadow might cross the windows. Having been told that a certain shop-window contained a portrait of her physician, she ran out before breakfast to look at it; purchased it a few days afterward, and entered in her journal :

"Read, worked, and looked at my print."

Notwithstanding all her toils and all her successes, she was so handicapped by the incessant demands made upon her, principally by her sisters Dolly and Debby (the former apparently helpless, the latter worthless), that her home at this time was a single room up two pairs of stairs in Frith Street, in which she sat with her shutters closed, that no distraction from without should withdraw her thoughts from business. Here her familiar friends were sometimes admitted, while titled visitors and others on ceremonious terms were shown into her landlady's drawing-room.

Soon after settling in London Mrs. Inchbald met that singular man Thomas Holcroft, ex-cobbler, democrat, dramatist, journalist, novelist, who, like every one who saw her, was interested and charmed. He gave her much advice, some good, some bad, with regard to her plays, and introduced her to a large and mixed group of acquaintances. Their friendship knew many vicissitudes. Sometimes they quarrelled, sometimes they parted forever, sometimes he addressed her in verses breathing passionate admiration. On one occasion she broke off her acquaintance with him, disapproving of a novel he had just published. But when, shortly afterward, he was committed to Newgate for high treason, she immediately took Robinson the publisher there to visit him, and see what could be done to soften his captivity.

Godwin, as we have seen, was also a member of her London circle, and she speedily took a prominent place in that

cluster of brilliant and beautiful women, leading unconventional lives under conditions of intellectual and personal independence more unusual then than they would be now, his friendship for whom partook of the jealous ardor of passion, and was in strong contrast to the cold philosophy on which he piqued himself. In 1790 Godwin read and criticised her "Simple Story," and Mr. Kegan Paul says its "plot was in a measure altered in deference to his advice." One would like to know what were the changes made in that charming tale at his suggestion. It was published in the following year by Robinson, who gave her £200 for it, Woodfall (of Junius notoriety) being the printer in the first place; his famous newspaper, according to Boaden, interfered with other business, and Mrs. Inchbald's novel was transferred to Cooper; but she continued on amicable terms with Woodfall, and mentions with pleasure a day spent at his beautiful house at Barnes. The " Simple Story" appeared in February, and a second edition was ordered in March. It has become a classic, and nothing need here be said in praise of its pathos, its knowledge of human nature, and the epigrammatic touches in which it abounds. The novel brought her not only money and fame, but a flock of new friends, among whom were Mr. Phillips, the King's surgeon, and his family, and Mrs. Dobson (the translator of Petrarch), who presented Mrs. Inchbald with an Æolian harp.

In curious contrast with the lists of noble and wealthy admirers who now sought her acquaintance, we read of her distress and perplexity when compelled to leave her Frith Street garret owing to the bankruptcy of her landlady. At last she found an unfurnished room in Leicester Fields in the house of a man appropriately (to her dramatic pursuits) named Shakespeare. The servant was not allowed to give the new lodger any assistance, and she plaintively chronicles-"I was above an hour striking a light; fetched water up three pairs of stairs, and dropped a few tears into the stream as any other wounded deer might do." But there were alleviations. Sir Joshua Reynolds was her

opposite neighbor, and she delighted in the "enclosed plantation, with private walks," which formed the centre of the square.

Mrs. Shelley, in the notes she appended to her father's papers, when she contemplated writing his biography, comments on the conflicting elements which made Mrs. Inchbald's life and character so interesting :

Living in mean lodgings, dressed with an economy allied to penury, without connections, and alone, her beauty, her talents, and the charm of her manners gave her entrance in love and desirous to marry, she continued to a delightful circle of society. Apt to fall single because the men who loved and admired her were too worldly to take an actress and a poor author, however lovely and charming, for a wife. Her life was thus spent in an interchange of hardship and amusement, privation and luxury. Her character partook of

the same contrast. Fond of pleasure, she was prudent in her conduct; penurious in her personal expenditure, she was generous to others. Vain of her beauty, the gown she wore was not worth a shilling. Very suscepti. ble to the softer feelings, she yet could guard against passion; and though she might have been called a flirt her character was unim peached.'

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Her next production was The Wedding Day, written for Mrs. Jordan, who was pleased with it, and purchased by Sheridan for £200. In 1792 she resisted Kemble's persuasions to accept an engagement at Drury Lane, and devoting her thoughts to authorship, wrote herself, at the close of the year"Cheerful, content, and sometimes rather happy."

Her next comedy, Every One Has His Fault, produced at Covent Garden in January, 1793, with brilliant success, was attacked in the True Briton for containing seditious sentiments. She defended herself with spirit in one of Woodfall's papers, and the controversy occasioned an immense sale for the play when published by Robinson.

While living in Leicester Square she received a visit from Mrs. Opie, then Amelia Alderson, who told Mrs. Taylor,

"William Godwin, his Friends and Con

temporaries." King & Co., 1876. Vol. i.,

P. 74.

There was a delay (puzzling to any one unacquainted with Sheridan) in the payment

for this farce. At last Kemble called to explain that the manager had lost it, and if she would send another copy, the money should be forthcoming. For a wonder, it was.

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