Anne Oldfield by Frederick Wedmore — Read

‘Mrs. Oldfield, the celebrated comedian,' is the title inscribed by a contemporary -- who knew how the lady should be spoken of -- upon the copper which Edward Fisher engraved in mezzotint from the picture by Richardson. A photogravure reproduction from this rare, desirable print -- which shows the lissome grace and flexible charm of a young woman who enchanted the town, and who was the delight of Mr. Mainwaring before she was the delight of General Churchill -- forms the frontispiece to the slight and gossipy and unscientific, but by no means disagreeable volume which Mr. Robins has compiled -- we cannot say written -- about the actress whom he dubs familiarly ‘Nance. ' A cheaper reproduction of another portrait of her -- the original also by Richardson -- is to be found upon a later page. In both portraits she is represented _in propria persona_, of which we need not complain, but which it is expedient to chronicle, inasmuch as such portraiture throws no direct illumination upon the achievements of her art. Deprived of any such assistance as might well have been given, at all events had the compiler of the volume been dealing with a comedian of later time -- with Garrick, say, whose Abel Drugger is known to us by the canvas of Zoffany; with Siddons, who not only as the ‘Tragic Muse' reveals the characteristics of her power; or even with Mrs. Abington, whose performance as Miss Prue in _Love for Love_ we seem to witness by dint of familiarity with Sir Joshua's picture -- we are thrown back entirely, for our acquaintance with Mrs. Oldfield, upon the written records produced for our survey.

These are remarkably scanty. Of the life of the fascinating woman much remains in mystery. Of the achievements of the actress there is what is called, in stilted language, ‘a consensus of opinion,' but singularly little of definite chronicle. Certain passages in the _Spectator_ discuss the appropriateness of her delivery of a comic epilogue to a tragic play -- for it was the fate of Mrs. Oldfield to act Tragedy sometimes, though she preferred, upon the whole, that the management should ‘give such things to Porter' -- and a few other contemporary allusions to her were printed in her day; but her day was before the era of very penetrating criticism, either professional or not professional: no Lamb, no Hazlitt, had the chance of making her a peg for whimsicality or pungent brilliance; and the appreciative amateur who, a generation before her, had, in the diary that the world cherishes, chronicled his sense of the delightfulness of Mrs. Knipp and of Nell Gwynne -- ‘all unready, pretty, prettier than I thought' -- was deprived by Fate of the occasion of waxing cordial over the personal grace of Mrs. Oldfield.