after engaged Mr. Barry and herself at a very considerable salary, and by that act he shewed his wisdom and judgment, for she afterwards fulfilled his prediction to the very
lack of salaries; his purveyors out of doors relinquished their contracts and withheld supplies. Retrenchment became the order of the day, and pervaded all departments; and, to mend matters, he struck out a system of economicks, in the banquetting scenes, never before heard of in the annals of mock-festivity. The stage-suppers were supplied, not by the cook and wine-merchant, but the property-man; the viands were composed of timber and pasteboard painted in character; and small beer and tinctured water substituted the cheering juice of the grape. The musicians deserted the orchestra; and, in short, the whole system of food and payment were rapidly hastening to a state of as "unreal mockery" as any of the fables of the tragic muse.
In this state of things an Opera was announced; the entertainments to conclude with the farce of "High Life below Stairs." The harmonies of the first were entirely vocal, for the fiddlers and other minstrels refused to be instrumental to the entertainment of the night. In the farce, the supper scene was supplied from the pantry of the property-man; and all the wines of Philip the butler,"from bumble Port to imperial Tokay," were drawn from the pump or the beer-cask. My Lord Duke complained to Sir Harry, that the champagne and burgundy tasted confoundedly strong of the water; and the Baronet, in turn, deplored the hardness of the wooden pheasants, and the toughness of the pasteboard pies. In the mock minuet, between Sir Harry and Mrs. Kitty, the Baronet observed, "this was the first time he had the honour of dancing at a ball without music; but he would sing the air."
The gods in the upper gallery took the hint, and called out to the stage company to retreat a little, and they would supply the music. This was done, and in a minute was commenced a concert woful and detrimental, to the great terror of the audience, and the discomfiture of the manager for such a thunder-storm of benches, bottles, chandeliers, and other missiles, covered the stage, that the remainder of the afterpiece was adjourned sine die, and the theatre closed for several weeks.
On Mrs. Siddons' engagement at the rival theatre, she was roused by emulation, and played Belvidera, Isabella, &c. against that lady. The critics, however, were divided in their opinions; in general the competition was thought very unequal, for Mrs. Siddons was then in the zenith, and Mrs. Crawford in the nadir of her powers. It is but justice to her memory to add, that she was universally acknowledged superior to her rival in the pathetic, and inferior to her in the terrific. Her last appearance in London was at Covent Garden theatre in 1797; but the unrelenting hand of time had destroyed those powers that fascinated so many audiences, and she quitted the stage for ever.
Her situation in the close of life, although retired, was by no mean
