Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 41.djvu/79

 a known money-lender), of the little theatre in Tottenham Street, then named the Queen's. Elton and Morris Barnett were in the company, which included Miss Vincent, Miss Murray, Mrs. Chapman, and Miss Jane Mordaunt, her sister. On 16 Feb. 1835 she played Esther, the leading female part in the ‘Schoolfellows,’ a two-act comedy, by Douglas Jerrold, supported by her two sisters. Mrs. Honey and Wrench joined the company, and the ‘Married Rake,’ by Selby, in which she played Captain Fitzherbert Fitzhenry, and ‘Catching an Heiress,’ in which Mrs. Nesbitt was very popular as Caroline Gayton, were produced. In November Mrs. Nisbett and the company went with the Bonds to the Adelphi, where she was, 21 Dec. 1835, the original Mabellah in Douglas Jerrold's ‘Doves in a Cage.’ She soon returned to the Queen's, which she reopened with five light pieces, in three of which she played.

In 1836 her name was still attached to the management of the Queen's Theatre. But she had then played at various other theatres. In Gilbert A'Beckett's burletta, the ‘Twelve Months,’ given at the Strand in 1834, she was Nature. Here, too, under W. J. Hammond, she obtained much applause in ‘Poachers and Petticoats.’ Engaged by Webster for the Haymarket, she obtained, as the original Constance in the ‘Love Chase’ of Sheridan Knowles, 10 Oct. 1837, one of her most conspicuous triumphs. After the close of the season she visited Dublin, playing at the Hawkins Street Theatre. On 30 Sept. 1839 she was with Madame Vestris (Mrs. C. J. Mathews), at Covent Garden, opening in ‘Love's Labour's Lost.’ In the ‘Merry Wives of Windsor’ she was Mrs. Ford, and, 4 March 1841, she was the original Lady Gay Spanker in ‘London Assurance,’ by Lee Moreton (Dion Boucicault). On the collapse of the Covent Garden management in 1842 she returned to the Haymarket, but reappeared at Covent Garden in Jerrold's ‘Bubbles of the Day’ later in the year. At this period she was more than once disabled by illness. On 1 Oct. she was Rosalind to Macready's Jaques at Drury Lane.

Reports concerning forthcoming marriages of Mrs. Nisbett were frequent at the time. ‘Actors by Daylight,’ 2 Feb. 1839, has the startling assertion that she ‘has formed a second matrimonial connection with Feargus O'Connor, the late Member of Parliament for Cork.’ On 15 Oct. 1844 Mrs. Nisbett married, at the Episcopal Chapel, Fulham, Sir William Boothby, bart., of Ashbourne Hall, Derbyshire, receiver-general of customs. Sir William, then sixty-two years of age, died on 21 April 1846. On 12 April 1847 she reappeared at the Haymarket as Constance in the ‘Love Chase.’ On 3 July she played Lady Restless in a revival of Murphy's ‘All in the Wrong.’ Lady Teazle was repeated on 2 Oct. for the reopening of the theatre, and on the 5th Mrs. Nisbett was Helen in the ‘Hunchback’ to the Julia of Miss Helen Faucit (Lady Martin). James R. Anderson included Mrs. Nisbett in the company with which, 26 Dec. 1849, he opened Drury Lane. With her sister, Miss Jane Mordaunt, as Helen, she played Julia in the ‘Hunchback’ at the Marylebone, on 21 Nov. 1850. At the same house she was, 30 Nov., Catherine in Sheridan Knowles's ‘Love,’ her sister playing the Countess. She also played Portia and other parts. At Drury Lane she soon afterwards played in Sullivan's ‘Old Love and the New.’ On 17 March 1851 she was Mrs. Chillington in Dance's ‘Morning Call,’ imitated from Musset's ‘Il faut qu'une porte soit ouverte ou fermée,’ and was prevented by illness from taking part in ‘Queen of Spades,’ Boucicault's adaptation of ‘La Dame de Pique.’ As Lady Teazle she made, 8 May 1851, her last appearance on the stage. Her health had quite broken down, and she retired to St. Leonard's-on-Sea, where, after undergoing some domestic bereavements, she died of apoplexy on 16 Jan. 1858.

Though deficient in tenderness and passion, she had in comedy supreme witchery. Tall, with a long neck, a lithe and elastic figure, an oval face, lustrous eyes, and a forehead wide and rather low, surmounted by wreaths of dark hair, she was noted for her beauty, dividing with Madame Vestris the empire of the town. She had more power than Vestris of entering into character, had boundless animal spirits, and an enchanting gleefulness. Her laugh was magical. Westland Marston's earliest recollections of her are in the ‘Married Rake’ and Caroline Gayton in ‘Catching an Heiress,’ in which and in other parts he praises her ‘winning archness,’ ‘the spirit with which she bore herself in her male disguises, and by her enjoyment of the fun.’ He supplies an animated picture of her performance of a reigning beauty and heiress of the days of Queen Anne in the ‘Idol's Birthday,’ played at the Olympic in 1838. Her Beatrice was gay and mischievous, and carried one away by its animal spirits, but it lacked poetry. She was a ‘whimsical, brilliant, tantalising Lady Teazle, without much depth in her repentance,’ and an ideal Helen in the ‘Hunchback.’ Her greatest part was Constance in the ‘Love Chase.’ So free and wild in this were her spirits, ‘that animal life by its transports, soared into poetry, and the joys of sense rose into emotion’