Lovely Nancy Oldfield, who quitted the bar of the Mitre, in St. James’s Market, then kept by her aunt, Mrs. Voss, became, towards the end of the seventeenth century, the great attraction at Drury Lane. Her intimacy with General Churchill, cousin of the great Duke of Marlborough, obtained for her a grave in Westminster Abbey. Persons of rank and distinction contended for the honour of bearing her pall, and her remains lay in state for three days in the Jerusalem Chamber!
We referred above to the attempt made by Captain Hill to carry off Mrs. Bracegirdle. Hill had offered her his hand and had been refused. He determined to abduct her by force. He induced his friend Lord Mahun to assist him. A coach was stationed near the Horseshoe Tavern in Drury Lane, with six soldiers to force her into it, which they attempted to do as she came down Drury Lane about ten o’clock at night, accompanied by her mother and brother, and a friend, Mr. Page. The attempt was resisted, a crowd collected, and Hill ordered the soldiers to let the lady go, and she was escorted home by her friends. She then sent for her friend Mr. Montford, who soon after turned the corner of Norfolk Street, where Hill challenged him, as he attributed Mrs. Bracegirdle’s rejection of him to her love for Montford, which suspicion, however, was groundless, and ran him through the body before he could draw his sword. Hill made his escape; Montford died from his wounds.
Even in more recent days actresses have made good matches. Miss Anna Maria Tree, of Covent Garden, in 1825 married James Bradshaw, of Grosvenor Place; in 1831, Miss Foote, the celebrated actress, became Countess of Harrington; Miss Farren, Countess of Derby; Miss Brunton, Countess of Craven; Miss Bolton became Lady Thurlow; Miss O’Neill married a baronet; Miss Kitty Stephens became Countess of Essex; Miss Campion was taken off the stage by the aged Duke of Devonshire. The list might be greatly extended, even to our own times; but the instances quoted are sufficient to show the prizes ladies may draw in the theatrical matrimonial lottery; and there are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it.
The Virtuoso Club was established by some members of the Royal Society, and held its meetings at a tavern in Cornhill. Its professed object was to ’advance mechanical exercises, and promote useful experiments’; but, according to Ned Ward, their discussions usually ended in a general shindy, and results not to be described by a modern writer. The club claimed the merit of the invention of the barometer; but, for all that, its proceedings afforded fine sport to the satirists: thus, the members were said to aim at making beer without water, living like princes on three-halfpence a day, producing a table by which a husband may discover all the particulars of the tricks his wife may play him. The ridicule showered on the club at last reduced it to a little cynical cabal of half-pint moralists, who continued to meet at the same tavern. Convivially-disposed members of other learned societies have occasionally formed themselves into clubs. Thus some antiquaries, many years since, formed a club styled ’Noviomagians.’ Mr. Crofton Croker was its president more than twenty years, and many other distinguished men were members.