have paid for hostile manifestations in order to render them more amenable to discipline, an imputation which Rich publicly repudiated in the ‘General Advertiser’ for 25 Jan. 1751. The season of 1750–1 was that in which Garrick at Drury Lane and Barry at Covent Garden were the rival Romeos, Miss Bellamy and Mrs. Cibber the opposing Juliets, and this was followed in 1755–6 by the famous competition between Barry at Covent Garden as Lear and Garrick in the same part at Drury Lane. On 26 Nov. 1761 Rich died at his house in Covent Garden Piazza, aged, it is said, 79. He was succeeded as manager of Covent Garden by John Beard [q. v.], who married his daughter Charlotte. On his tomb it is stated that ‘in him were united the various virtues that would endear him to his family, friends, and acquaintances. Distress never failed to find relief in his bounty.’
Rich, who lived at Cowley, Middlesex, in a house once belonging to Barton Booth, married as second wife an actress of small note named Mrs. Stevens, whose name occurs once or twice in the bills. She had been originally barmaid at Bret's coffee-house, and was subsequently Rich's housekeeper. She became after marriage a convert to methodism, and seems to have communicated some of her zeal to Rich, thus justifying Smollett's assertion that ‘the poor man's head, which was not naturally very clear, had been disordered with superstition, and he laboured under the tyranny of a wife and the terror of hell-fire at the same time.’ She survived Rich with four children.
As Harlequin Rich seems to have been unequalled. Davies says that after applying himself to the study of pantomimical representation, in which he was very fortunate, Rich ‘formed a kind of harlequinade very different from that which is seen at the opera comique in Paris, where harlequin and all the characters speak’ (Life of Garrick, i. 129). To this superiority Garrick refers when he says:
When Lun appeared, with matchless art and whim,
He gave the power of speech to every limb;
Tho' mask'd and mute convey'd his quick intent,
And told in frolic gesture what he meant.
But now the motley coat and sword of wood
Require a tongue to make them understood.
Churchill disparages ‘Lun’ in the ‘Rosciad,’ but Horace Walpole, who frequently mentions Rich in his ‘Letters,’ speaks with admiration of the ‘wit’ and ‘coherence’ of his pantomimes. Isaac D'Israeli says that Rich ‘could describe to the audience by his signs and gestures as intelligibly as others could express by words,’ an opinion derived probably, as is one equally laudatory by Leigh Hunt, from Davies. The latter declared that in fifty years no man approached him, and that Garrick's action was not more perfectly adapted to his characters than were Rich's attitudes and movements to Harlequin. His presentation of Harlequin hatched from an egg by the heat of the sun was a masterpiece of dumb show ‘from the first chipping of the egg, his receiving of motion, his feeling of the ground, his standing upright, to his quick harlequin trip round the empty shell. Through the whole progression every limb had its tongue, and every motion a voice.’ In pantomime he proved a valuable master to Hippisley and others, but he preferred teaching actors tragic parts. ‘You should see me play Richard,’ he said to Tate Wilkinson.
Rich was uneducated, and was quite illiterate. He talked of ‘larning’ Wilkinson to be a player; told Signora Spiletta to lay the emphasis on the ‘adjutant,’ and said ‘turbot’ for turban. He had some curious affectations. He pretended never to recall a name. Addressing Tate Wilkinson, he would call him in turns Williamskin, Whittington, or whatever other name came into his head. Having called Foote ‘mister’ several times, that somewhat irascible actor grew angry and asked the reason why Rich did not call him by his name. ‘Don't be angry,’ said Rich; ‘I sometimes forget my own name.’ ‘That's extraordinary,’ replied Foote, ‘for though I knew you could not write it, I did not suppose you could forget it.’ Rich does not appear to have been financially successful, though, unlike his father, he paid to the letter his actors and those with whom he made engagements. Dibdin says that he was compelled to take a house situated in three counties in order to avoid the importunity of the bailiffs.
Rich was the founder of the Beefsteak Society, and George Lambert [q. v.], his scene-painter, was an original member. It met at first in a room in Covent Garden Theatre. Among the presidents were Theophilus Cibber, Whitehead, Wilks, Colman, Charles Morris, and George IV when Prince of Wales.
Rich's portrait, with his family, attributed to Hogarth, who also painted a portrait of Miss Rich, is in the Garrick Club, where is another portrait of Rich as Harlequin. Rich's account books of Lincoln's Inn Fields and Covent Garden, from 1723 to 1740, were in the dramatic collection of the late Mr. Lacy, the theatrical bookseller in the Strand.
[Genest's Account of the English Stage; Gent. Mag. 1832, ii. 586 et seq.; Davies's Life
