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Among the ten or twelve ladies who have
been raised from the stage to wear coronets, few names stand forth more
pleasantly than that of Harriet Mellon. Some eighty-five years ago that
lady was taking the town by storm by her performance of Volante in
'The Honeymoon,' at Drury Lane Theatre; and, as
it was in the year in which the Battle of Waterloo was fought that she
quitted the stage, she must have been a her zenith just at the same time
with the great Napoleon.
It is not known who was
her father, though probably she had one, and it has been said that he was
a chimney-sweep at Sheffield; her mother. a Mrs. Entwisle, was a celebrity
in her day upon the provincial stage; and little Harriet first saw the
light on the 11th of November, 1777, in a small street near the
Archiepiscopal Palace of Lambeth. It is possible that her father may have
been a certain Lieutenant Mellon of the Madras Army, who came, saw, and
conquered her charming mother, and who, having married her on ‘Twelfth
Day,' 1777, sailed from Portsmouth for India in the following March, and
was never heard of afterwards; and it is equally possible that the said
Lieutenant Mellon was a 'nobleman in disguise.'
This was a mystery constantly alluded to but never cleared up by her
mother, who was a native of the county Cork, and of peasant extraction,
and who probably had paid a visit to the 'blarney stone' in her childhood.
What is known is that when her little Harriet was two or three years old
she took as her second husband a certain Mr. Entwisle (over whose
parentage, too, there hung an air of romance and mystery as well), and
that the husband and wife used to make the provincial circuits from
theater to theater on foot, carrying by turns little Harriet and a large
Cremona violin. Mr. Entwisle does not seem to
have been remarkable in any way either as an actor or as a man; and he
contributed nothing to the prospects of his wife and his step-child,
although we must do him the justice to say that he was both fond and proud
of her.
When very young indeed,
Harriet was the inmate of a fine castle, where she recollected handsome
staircases, fine pictures, and ladies in gay attire, by whom she was
petted and fondled; and when in her mature years, as Mrs. Coutts, she
went as a visitor to that same castle, she at once recalled it as one of
the haunts of her early childhood. Her mother, a woman of high spirit and
passionate temper, appears to have treated her as a child with great
severity, and even harshness; but this she repaid only by kindness and
substantial acts of benefit, a long catalogue of which may be found in the
life of the Duchess, by Mrs. Cornwall Baron Wilson.
It would be tedious and
unprofitable to give here a detailed list of the various provincial stages
on which young Harriet Mellon had appeared before she was eighteen. But
when she was about that age she had been brought into contact with
Sheridan, who first saw her at Stafford, and who urged her to come to town
and try her fortunes on a more ambitious stage, promising her that he
would give her introductions which would ensure her an engagement at Drury
Lane. She, or rather her parents, followed Sheridan's advice. Though they
were driven into serious straits for a time in the metropolis, yet luck
came in its own good time, and during the season of 1795 she made her
debut on ill, boards of 'Old Drury,' as Lydia Languish. It was not,
however, her fate to take the town by storm, as some have done before her
and after her; in fact, it was only by gradual steps that she rose to
become a favorite either in the town or in the country; but before the
commencement of the present century her name was in everybody's mouth as
one of the best of the rising generation of comic actresses. Mrs. Siddons
knew her and admired her; and so did the stars of lesser magnitude who
revolved around that center of theatrical attraction.
It must have been about
the year 1810 that she was first introduced, whilst on a professional tour
at Cheltenham, to the gentleman whose acquaintance most largely influenced
tire rest of her life. Mr. Thomas Coutts was well known as a rich
septuagenarian, who was ‘taking the Cheltenham waters' for his health. He
saw and admired Miss Mellon whilst she was walking with her mother on the
Parade; and one evening he sent her an order for a box, with five guineas
as an enclosure. These guineas she always regarded with religious, not to
say superstitious, reverence, as five pieces of luck, and treasured them
to her dying day. Mr. Coutts forthwith became a frequent visitor at Mrs.
Entwisle's lodgings, and introduced his daughters--Lady Guildford and Lady
Burdett--to the reigning and accomplished actress and her mother. On
returning to London the intimacy was kept up; and Miss Mellon and her
mother were equally constant and acceptable visitors at the great banking
house in the Strand, of which Mr. Coutts was the head.
It happened that at
this time Mrs. Coutts was an invalid; her mind was overcast by mental
disease: she rarely appeared at table, and if she did her memory played
her lamentable tricks. On one occasion she asked the Duke of Clarence,
afterwards William IV, if he were not the father of his Majesty King
George III.
In the first month of
1815 old Mrs. Coutts exchanged this life for a better one, and her husband
at once offered his hand, thus released, to the charming actress, who had
been his daughters' friend, and in whom he thought he should himself find
a true friend and a kind nurse in his declining years. At first Miss
Mellon was strongly inclined to reject the offer, on account of the
disparity of age; but at length she yielded to the importunity of one of
Mr. Coutts's oldest friends and advisers, and her marriage was celebrated
privately at St. Pancras Church, in the following month, the ceremony
being performed by a Mr. Champneys. The union was publicly notified in the
Tines of the 2nd of March. She had retired from the stage at the time of
their union. That, in spite of the recent death of the first Mrs. Coutts,
his family did not disapprove of the new bride may be inferred from the
fact that not very many months had passed by before Harriet Mellon, once
the actress, and now the wife of the richest untitled commoner in the
land, was presented at Court by her own step-daughter, Lady Guildford. The
Prince Regent and the other members of the Royal circle, it was observed,
took especial notice of the new debutante at St. James's Palace.
During the seven years
that she presided over Mr. Coutts's dinner table and drawing-room at
Stratton Street few hostesses excelled her in the highest qualities of
tact, kindness, forethought, and courtesy. She seemed in a manner born to
the situation. But all this ended at Mr. Coutts's death in 1822, which
left her once more at her own disposal. Mrs. Coutts, both as the banker's
wife and as his widow, paid frequent visits to Edinburgh; and the good
people of our `Northern Athens' were not slow in accepting invitations to
her parties, and then abusing her. But even this did not chill her kindly
feelings or set a limit to her invitations. Sir Walter Scott went out of
his way to rebuke some of those who, after accepting her hospitality at
Edinburgh, would give her the ‘cold shoulder' at Abbotsford. She was a
guest at that house in 1825, when the young Duke of St. Alban's was
pressing his suit vigorously with the amiable and wealthy relict; and it
is certain that Sir Walter did his best to bring matters to a satisfactory
conclusion. ‘If the Duke marries her,' he writes, ' he insures an immense
fortune: and if she marries him, she has the front rank. If he marries a
woman older than himself by twenty years, she marries a man younger in wit
by twenty degrees. I do not think he will dilapidate her fortune: he seems
good and gentle. I do not think she will abuse his softness of
disposition-shall I say? or of heart.'
When she had
risen by her second marriage to the highest point of her ambition, the
unthinking world expected to see vulgar display and bad taste in her
dress, her style of living, and her equipages; but in all this they were
grievously disappointed; and her assumption of the strawberry leaves led
to no alteration in externals. The coach of his Grace of St. Alban's was
in no way more dashing from the wealth which she had brought into the
house of Beauclerk. These may be trifles to the eye and ear, but they
bespoke the good sense of the Duchess.
At the
coronation of William IV. and Queen Adelaide in 1831, her Grace was seated
with the other ladies of ducal rank on the front seat on the floor of the
transept. Just before the anointing of the Queen a sealed packet was
presented to her; the three Duchesses on one side of her, and the next
Duchess on the other side then rose to hold the canopy over Her Majesty,
leaving her Grace of St. Alban's seated and passed over. The incident made
not the slightest impression upon her, nor did the color come into her
cheek at what many ladies would have looked on as an affront.
The Duchess, however,
had her little weaknesses, not to say superstitions; and she was so afraid
of ghosts that she always had a maidservant to keep watch in her chamber
at night. From her youth she cherished a belief that the dead visited the
living in the shape of birds. On her death-bed she received her
stepdaughter, Lady Guildford, calmly and placidly remarked, ' I am so
happy to-day, because your father's spirit is breathing upon me, as he
promised; he has taken the shape of a little bird, singing at my window,
just as he said he would come back if he could.' In the hope that such a
belief would be realized, she often throw out food to the birds, and
opened the windows of her boudoir at Holly Lodge that they might come
inside.
In spite of the
grandeur and state of receptions in Stratton Street, it was in Holly
Lodge, Highgate, the country spot where she had fixed her home as Miss
Mellon, that she still especially delighted. There she had the sight of
green trees and of flowers and the song of birds to cheer her; and to
these she returned with a sense of relief when the pleasures of the London
season fatigued and oppressed her. Here, in spite of her marriage, she
gave a home for a few months to her mother, till that mother was called
away by the hand of death, and afterwards to her unthrifty and reckless
stepfather, whose later years were made happy by her care and her
generosity, which gave him the possession of a cottage on the Thames and a
comfortable annuity. To the relations of Mr. Coutts's former wife, who
were in poor circumstances, she was equally, indeed, even more, liberal;
for it was calculated that in the seventeen years after she became Mr.
Coitus's widow, her donations to them amounted to several thousand pounds.
Indeed, the sum total mentioned by Mrs. Wilson would scarcely be believed,
even if the last ' 0' were struck off. And this is the woman whom some of
those who had sought to hang upon the skirt-tails of the wealthy banker,
maligned as unprincipled and dishonest both in her lifetime and after her
death!
Sir Walter Scott, was
not the only literary celebrity whom the Duchess of St. Alban's reckoned
in her list of friends. Southey and Wordsworth both visited her at her
hotel at Ambleside, and Samuel Rogers was one of her most frequent guests
at Highgate. She also entertained at Holly Lodge, both as Mrs. Coutts and
as Duchess, the best society; and on one occasion at least four Royal
Dukes sat down at her dinner table. I say `her' table advisedly; for holly
Lodge was not settled on her by Mr. Coutts or by the Duke of St. Alban's,
but had been purchased by her out of her own earrings when she was plain
Harriet Mellon. To that horse, as I have said, she was much and its
walks, its terraces, its sbrubberies, and its internal arrangements all
bespeak the taste of its first gentle mistress. She was particularly fond
of the room in which Mr. Coutts had breathed his last, on account of its
fender and sacred memories. ‘Let me die in the room in which Mr. Coutts
died,' was one of her last requests when she found herself near the end.
Mr. Coutts, at his
decease in 1822, had left her in round figures some £1,800,000: but this
she regarded so far as a trust and not a gift, that she did not hand it
over, as she had the right and power to do, and as most ladies in her
place would have done, to the Duke of St. Albans and his relatives, the
Beauclerks, who certainly were not rich for the 'collaterals' of a ducal
house. On the contrary, she resolved that the money should go back to the
descendants of him from whose hands it came to her; and, accordingly, when
her will was read it was found that she had bequeathed it to one of the
daughters of Mr. Coutts's younger child, Lady Burdett, coupled with the
instruction that she should take the additional name of the banker of the
Strand. To her also she bequeathed both Holly Lodge and the house in
Stratton Street and whatever interest she owned in Coutts's bank. That
lady is now Lady Burdett-Coutts, thanks partly to the kindness and
goodness of the Duchess.
Of Harriet Mellon's
early days the pleasantest record is perhaps her fine mezzotint portrait
as Volante in ‘The Honeymoon,' which is engraved as a frontispiece to her
memoirs by Mrs. C. Baron Wilson. ' Well do we remember,' writes a
well-known author, the exquisite archness and rich sunlight of her
brilliant features, now, alas? extinguished in the dark tomb.' He speaks
of her truth and justice in all her dealings; of her kindness and
liberality to tradesmen and humble dependants; and of the generous
impulses which she obeyed when she bestowed a part of her great wealth on
those who needed it. Mrs. Wilson goes further still, and commends her
piety, her charity, and her truth as highly as her wit. This life, it
should here be stated, was written owing to the non-appearance, of two
biographies-the one distinctly hostile and offensive and the other perhaps
too partial and eulogistic, but thoroughly authentic-which were announced
for publication shortly after her Grace's death, but neither of which
actually appeared. It only remains to add that the duchess died at her
house in Stratton Street, Piccadilly, on the 6th of August, 1837, and was
buried at Redbourne, near Brigg, Lincolnshire, the seat of her second
husband, the Duke of St. Alban's.
Chapters From the Family Chests, 1887
Chapters From the Family Chest |
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