Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 05.djvu/383

 subordinated him to Mills, an actor in every way his inferior, Booth had acquired a reputation as a tragedian. Downes, in his ‘Roscius Anglicanus,’ first published in 1708, speaks of him quaintly as ‘a gentleman of liberal education, of form venust; of mellifluent pronunciation, having proper gesticulations, which are graceful attendants of true elocution; of his time a most complete tragedian.' It is difficult to realise in what characters, beyond the Ghost in ‘Hamlet,’ in which he was supposed to be unrivalled, his tragic reputation had at that time been made. Hippolitus in the ‘Phædra and Hippolitus' of Smith is almost the only part of primary importance which had been trusted to him. Not till some years later (17 March 1712) did his performance of Pyrrhus in ‘The Distressed Mother.' Philips's contemptible rendering of Racine's ‘Phédre,' win him the highest honours. A year later (14 April 1713) his impersonation of Cato in Addison’s tragedy brought him to the front of his profession. With the performance of Cato, Booth’s reputation reached a climax. No subsequent performance did anything to raise it, though such characters as Jaffier, Melantius (in the ‘Maids Tragedy‘), Bajazet, Timon of Athens, and Lear now came to him. Something like a reaction, indeed, very easy to understand in the case of a success so rapid, set in, and has since been maintained. No player of reputation equal to Booth has obtained from subsequent times more grudging recognition. Cato was the means of bringing Booth fortune as well as honour. He had always received a large amount of aristocratic patronage, and when acting at Windsor found always, as he stated to Chetwood (General History of the Stage, pp. 92–3), a carriage and six horses provided by some nobleman to ‘whip’ him back to London. To the favour with which Booth was regarded by Lord Bolingbroke it is attributed that Colley Cibber, Doggett, and Wilks, the managers of Drury Lane, received the command of Queen Anne to admit him into the management. Of the revolt which this exercise of royal authority occasioned, Cibber, in his ‘Apology,' gives a long description, The only title on which Wilks, Doggett, and Cibber held their license was their professional superiority. Cibber, writing long after the event, admits that Booth had likewise‘s manifest merit.’ The years which followed Booth’s promotion to the post of manager were undistinguished by many events outside the performance of the principal characters in the drama. An intrigue with Susan Mountfort, the daughter of Mrs. Mountfort, brought upon Booth accusations of mercenariness, from which his biographers have triumphantly acquitted him. In 1719 he married Hester Santlow, a dancer of more beauty than reputation, who was said to have lived under the protection of the Duke of Marlborough, and subsequently of Secretary Craggs. Mrs. Santlow had a considerable fortune, and to this was attributed the act of Booth, who, as Dennis states in his ‘Letter on the Character and Conduct of Sir John Edgar,' knew of her irregular life. A perusal of Booth's poems to his mistress shows, however, that he was genuinely enamoured. Contrary to expectation, the marriage proved signally happy. Booth in his will speaks in handsome terms of his wife, to whom he left his whole estate, consisting of her own money, diminished by about one-third; and she, forty-five years after his death, in her ninety-third year, erected a monument to his memory in Westminster Abbey. As an actress Mrs. Booth was pleasing rather than great. Davies, in his ‘Dramatic Miscellanies,’ says of her Ophelia that ‘figure, voice, and department in this part, raised in the minds of the spectators an amiable picture of an innocent, unhappy maid, but she went no farther’ (iii. 126–7). Theophilus Cibber speaks of her with enthusiasm, so far as regards her moral qualities: ‘she was a beautiful woman, lovely in her countenance, delicate in her form, a pleasing actress, and a most admirable dancer; generally allowed, in the last-mentioned part of her profession, to have been superior to all who had been seen before her, and perhaps she has not been since excelled. But, to do her justice, she was more than all this; she was an excellent good wife; which he has frequently, in my hearing, talked of in such a manner as nothing but a sincere, heartfelt gratitude could express; and I was often an eye-witness (our families being intimate) of their conjugal felicity‘ (Life of Barton Booth, p. 33). Booth continued his theatrical duties till 1727, when he was seized with a fever which lasted six-and-forty days. He returned to the stage and appeared on 19 Dec. as Julio in ‘The Double Falsehood’ of Theobald. He played also in the winter and spring in ‘Cato,’ ‘The Double falsehood,’ and ‘Henry VIII.' A relapse ensued, his illness settled into jaundice, and he appeared no more upon the stage. In spite of the abstinence from drink, which itself was only comparative, he seems to have been a gourmand. He went to Belgium and afterwards lived at Hampstead in the vain pursuit of health, and died on Tuesday, 10 May 1733. In accordance with his own wishes, he was buried at Cowley near Uxbridge.