Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 10.djvu/368

 who in his concern for the affairs of Europe neglected his own business. Happily, his daughter and her brother, Thomas Augustine Arne [q. v.], afterwards distinguished as a composer, turned to excellent account such education as their parents had managed to give them before domestic straits pressed too heavily upon the family. They were both gifted with musical genius, and Mrs. Cibber’s correspondence shows that she had read widely and profited by her reading. Thus a naturally fine voice, of great sweetness, if not of remarkable power, with a cultivated mind to animate and guide it, and a highly sensitive organisation, made her very early a favourite with the public. Her first public appearance was as a singer in 1732 at the Haymar et Theatre as the heroine of Lumpé’s opera ‘Amelia,’ and she continued to appear in opera, rising steadily in public favour on to 1736. On 2 Jan. of that year she made her first essay as an actress as Zarah in Aaron Hill’s version of Voltaire’s tragedy of ‘Zaire,’ and with complete success. Two years before she had married—‘very much against her inclination,’ according to Victor, who knew both families well—Theophilus Cibber [q. v.], then not long a widower, ugly, of small stature, and of extravagant an vicious habits. The natural result followed. Indifference in the pretty young woman turned to disgust as she saw more of her worthless husband. In this mood a Mr. Sloper, a friend of the family and a man of good position, became a not unacceptable wooer, and the wretched Cibber, with a view to extracting damages, threw his young wife deliberately in Sloper's way. What a jury thought of his conduct was shown by their awarding 10l. only as damages in an action tried in December 1738, in which he had claimed 5,000l. Up to this period Mrs. Cibber's reputation rested chiefly upon her powers as a singer. She was a special favourite with Handel. She was the first Galatea in his ‘Acis and Galatea.' He wrote the contralto songs in the ‘Messiah’ and the art of Micah in ‘Samson’ expressly for her. Her studies as an actress had no doubt given to her singing the quality of strong emotional expression, based upon that thorough understanding of the author’s purpose which gives to acting, as it does to singing, its principal charm. How she impressed her hearers, for example, in her treatment of the songs in the ‘Messiah,’ may be gathered from the remark, tinged with that complacent profanity in which churchmen occasionally indulge, of Dr. Delany, the friend and companion of Dean Swift., when that oratorio was produced in Dublin in December 1741: ‘Woman, for this be all thy sins forgiven thee!’ The Sloper trial of 1738 explains, if it scarcely justifies, the exclamation. Mrs. Cibber continued for some years after this period to in oratorios and on the stage. Her voice, naturally small, had been we trained, and., both a head and a heart behind it, reduced powerful effects. ‘She captivated every ear,’ says Dr. Burney, ‘by the sweetness and expression of her voice in singing.’ It has been well remarked (sub voce Mrs. Cibber in Dictionary of Musicians): ‘Passing' by the songs in the “Messiah” which call for the highlest powers of declamation and pathetic narration, we have only to examine the part of Micah in “Samson,” comprising songs requiring not only the expression of pathetic and devout feelings, but also brilliancy and fertility of execution, to judge of Mrs. Cibber’s ability.’ Her reputation as a singer soon, however, became merged in that of the great tragic actress, her rich plaintive voice, her sensibility, and power of identifying herself with the characters she had to portray, having raised her in a few years to great eminence. She seems to have owed her first instruction for the stage to her father-in-law, Colley Cibber. His lessons for a time injured her style. He was an admirer of the demi-chant in declamation, and used to teach his pupils what Victor calls ‘the good old manner of singing and squeezing out their tragical notes.’ She was still under the influence of this teaching when Richard Cumberland, then a mere youth, saw her as Calista in Rowe’s ‘Fair Penitent.’ Mrs. Cibber, he writes, ‘in a key high-pitched, but sweet withal, sang, or rather recitatived, Rowe’s harmonious strain, something in the manner of the improvisatores; it was so extremely wanting in contrast, that though it did not wound the ear it wearied it; when she had once recited two or three speeches, I could anticipate the manner of each succeeding one. It was like a long old legendary ballad of innumerable stanzas, every one of which is sung to the same tune, eternally chiming on the ear without variation or relief.’ The ublic had long been accustomed to these balanced cadences. Quin, the leading tragedian of the hour, in the same lay and on the same occasion, chanted as Horatio a similar descant; and Garrick, whom Cumberland saw on the stage with Quin, and who was to bring back the public and the players to a truer taste, had only begun to make his influence felt. But under this conventional manner the latent fire of the true actress every now and then flashed out. Quin saw of what she was capable, and so early as 1744, when Garrick expressed a doubt of her powers to cope with the character of Constance of Bretagne in ‘King John,’ which was about to be revived at Drury Lane,