THE THEATRICAL CAREER OF MARY ANN CANNING, PART 2: MAY 1777 TO DECEMBER 1788.

The first of this series of three articles about Mary Ann Canning (Theatre Notebook 73/2, 70-88) outlined the circumstances that led her to go on the stage in November 1773, and discussed her first three years as an actress, in which she spent the winter seasons at Drury Lane, and the summers in Bristol, where her lover Samuel Reddish used his position as a share-holder in the theatre to promote her career. The first article explained that the main source for Mary Ann's life-story is a long letter, known as "The Packet", which she wrote in 1803 to her son George Canning, who by then was a rising politician. (1) The year 1776 was not kind to Mary Ann. The first blow was the loss of her eldest son George, who had been adopted by her late husband's brother, Stratford (Stratty) Canning. In the summer the Bristol public turned against her and Reddish, driving them to try their luck elsewhere, and in December, when at last she had the chance to appear again at Drury Lane, as Princess Azema in Voltaire's Semiramis, she was hissed throughout the performance. She was ill for the first few months of 1777, and her son James, the second of her five children by Samuel Reddish, died. While recovering from this series of shocks, she wrote a novel, The Offspring of Fancy.

The present article takes up the story in May 1777, and follows Mary Ann's provincial career through to the end of 1788, offering glimpses of the life of a provincial actress at different levels of the profession. At one point Mary Ann finds herself among "a disgraceful Company of Itinerants" (Hunn, "Letters to George Canning", 24 August 1788), which invites comparison with the strolling life described by, for example, Charlotte Charke and Charlotte Deans. Deans, who belongs to the generation after Mary Ann, recalls hair-raising journeys around the Scottish Borders on foot, and performances in a barn where the holes and cobwebs were covered up with miscellaneous pieces of scenery (Marshall 75-77, 57-58). Charke, from an earlier generation, writes contemptuously of her time amongst actors who sounded like cats in labour ("a complete tragical emetic for a person of the smallest degree of judgement") and appeared before country audiences made up of snoring butchers and their chattering wives (113-114,122).

At the end of the 1776-77 season the Drury Lane management declared they would never again employ Mary Ann, and in consequence Reddish refused to renew his articles, signing up instead with the Irish theatre manager Thomas Ryder. Needing to support her parents and sister, Mary Ann decided after some hesitation to accompany him, and to perform as and when a suitable part was offered her (Packet 109). Ryder had a reputation as a generous and easy-going man, but unreliable over money (Oulton 2:94; Bernard 1:299), so that Mary Ann was in some ways better off than Reddish, being paid out of the takings for each night that she appeared.

The Packet describes an incident that occurred as they were preparing to leave (104-105). Despite Mary Ann's efforts, Reddish still owed Drury Lane 176[pounds sterling], (2) most of which he repaid by selling his benefit night to the manager, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who wanted all the nights he could get for his new play, The School for Scandal. Mary Ann persuaded Reddish to free himself by paying the whole amount, against the advice of the theatre treasurer, who encouraged him to let the balance run on. Later it emerged that Reddish was about to be arrested for the debt. Mary Ann may therefore have thwarted a plot to trap him in London.

On 20 May 1777 the Reddishes departed for Ireland (Packet 105), in time for the last few weeks of the season at Dublin's Crow Street Theatre (Saunders's Newsletter 16 and 21 June 1777). Robert Bell, presumably relying on local sources more than half a century after the event, claims implausibly that when Mary Ann appeared in Dublin the Canning family's influence was strong enough to ensure that the boxes were empty (30). After Dublin the company moved to Cork, where Ryder had ambitious plans, with lavish spectacles, a famous London actor in Reddish, and the latest attractions, including Sheridan's opera, The Duenna. Sheridan had sought an injunction to prevent unauthorised performances, which Ryder had evaded in Dublin by adapting and re-naming the opera (Saunders's Newsletter 24 February 1777). In Cork he advertised it under its original title and the Hibernian Chronicle reported that there would be one more performance, with 500 lights, before the "disagreeable order of injunction arrives in this city" (2 October 1777). A further performance was announced on 13 October 1777, suggesting that the injunction scare may have been a misunderstanding, or a fiction to disguise the fact that the dialogue cobbled together by Ryder was inferior to Sheridan's original. (3)

When Reddish or Ryder failed to pay for the play-bills Mary Ann went to the offices of the Hibernian Chronicle to discuss the problem with the printer, William Flyn. She described the meeting in the Packet (unnumbered pages). We do not know what it was that engaged Flyn's interest, whether he warmed to Mary Ann because she was Irish, or was attracted by her beauty, or sympathised with her situation, since she was now six months pregnant. He may well have been impressed by her intelligence, both her practical common sense and her wider intellectual interests. All her life Mary Ann was interested in politics and philosophy - in the 1790s she would be an avid reader of Mary Wollstonecraft (Hunn "Letters to George Canning", 21 October 1792)--and she was always drawn to intelligent and talented men. Most of them, like Reddish, let her down badly, but Flyn, whom she describes as a "respectable man", would prove an exception. When he heard that she had a novel about to be published he offered to take fifty copies to sell on her behalf.

Actors had some say in the choice of programme for their benefit nights (Hogan l:cxxxv; Wilkinson 1:173), and for hers Mary Ann chose James Thomson's Edward and Eleonora (Hibernian Chronicle 1 September 1777). The play, though written in 1739, had been banned, and was not performed until Thomas Hull's adaptation was licensed in 1775; it therefore had the attraction of a new work, and Mary Ann may have been further attracted by the role of Eleonora, who is the sort of conspicuously virtuous character that she favoured. She may also have been influenced by the play's strong message of religious toleration: she had suffered in childhood from the religious bigotry of her Protestant mother and Catholic father, whose bitter arguments about religion (and money) were among her earliest memories (Packet 10).

From Cork, Ryder's company travelled to Limerick, then back to Cork and finally to Dublin for the winter. There Mary Ann's daughter Mary was born (Packet 108). (4) After Dublin, Mary Ann and Reddish worked in Glasgow and Edinburgh, then in Plymouth, before returning to London. They "got a great deal of money in Ireland" but Ryder's improvidence made them unwilling to commit themselves to him in the long term (Packet 110). The Irish tour was the most trouble-free period of Mary Ann's career, and her dealings with Flyn had a positive sequel. She negotiated a similar arrangement with one of the Dublin booksellers (Saunders's Newsletter 30 March 1778). Once back in London she packed up the copies of The Offspring of Fancy and sent them to Ireland (Packet unnumbered page). (5) Flyn's first payment would arrive within a few months.

Reddish was engaged at Covent Garden at twelve guineas a week, more than he had received in his last year at Drury Lane (Packet 109; Hogan 1:9), suggesting that the managers, Thomas Hull and Thomas Harris, had high hopes from his return to the London stage, initially in two Shakespearean roles, the lead in Hamlet and Posthumus in Cymbeline. Although Mary Ann planned to work again in Plymouth the following summer, she did not try to revive her London career. Her earnings from the past year relieved her anxiety over her parents and sister, and as the wife of a well-paid and respected actor she could look forward to a more settled life than she had known for several years.

As Hamlet, Reddish, who had not played the part in London before, was greeted as a "restored favourite", with "Torrents of applause" (Packet 111) until, in the duel scene, Laertes, played by John Whitfield, struck off his wig. (6) The audience, their emotions screwed up to a high pitch by the tragedy, suddenly descended into laughter, which lasted until the curtain fell. Reddish struggled through to the end, but was badly shaken: "professional vanity was his weakest place", Mary Ann wrote (Packet 111). In the twelve days between Hamlet and Cymbeline he was able to rehearse, and Mary Ann hoped the shock had passed, but on the day of the performance, he was unwell. Friends called to wish him well, and those who didn't know him better thought he must be drunk. Hull, who had been an apothecary's apprentice, recommended an emetic, before rushing away to persuade William Brereton to play Posthumus, and the audience to accept the substitution (Hogan 1:210).

To revive Reddish from his state of "almost inanity", Mary Ann showed him their child, Mary, then some ten months old. He smiled, which raised her hopes, but then asked whose little angel it was (Packet 112). Reddish had suffered breakdowns before and had pulled through, for example in Bristol in 1775 (Boaden, Private Correspondence 2: 61), but this time he was not expected to recover. The theatre kept up his salary for several weeks, but towards the end of November the payments ceased. The family was down to its last few guineas (Packet 114).

Mary Ann herself needed medical attention as her seventh confinement approached. A difficult labour was followed by severe illness, and her baby, Charles, only survived thanks to his sister's Irish nurse. As soon as she was well, Mary Ann set about retrenchment, as she had after the death of her first husband and again following her loss of favour at Drury Lane. Her natural resilience was encouraged by three positive events. First, her doctor declined payment for attendance on her (Packet 114). Then William Flyn sent her a first payment of 7[pounds sterling] 10s 0d from sales of her book (Packet unnumbered page). Most importantly, the Theatrical Fund granted Reddish a pension of 70[pounds sterling] a year. (7) This was a substantial help, but not enough for her needs. She would have to work. She and Reddish had enjoyed success at Plymouth in the summers of 1776 and 1778, and planned to return in 1779. When she informed the Plymouth managers of Reddish's condition they replied, to her surprise, that she would be welcome on her own account. But first she needed money: there were debts to settle, and she had to place her parents and sister in lodgings with the two babies, and pay for the journey to Plymouth (Packet 114).

Reddish continued in his state of almost inanity all through the winter. Then, hoping to squeeze one last performance out of him, Mary Ann persuaded the manager of the summer theatre in the Haymarket to give her a benefit night, having first checked with the Theatrical Fund that Reddish would not forfeit his annuity by making a single appearance. When Harris learned that she was negotiating with the summer theatre, he offered her a night, 5 May, at Covent Garden, although he doubted Reddish's fitness to perform (Packet 115-116).

Harris told her to "fix [her] play" and after coaxing Reddish to rehearse Posthumus, and the male leads in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Richard III she found he was best as Posthumus, so chose Cymbeline. She declined the part of Imogen, perhaps from fear of old antagonisms, but also because she would have enough to do preparing Reddish. Iachimo was played by William Smith from Drury Lane. Old animosities towards Reddish were forgotten in his time of trouble. Smith, she recalled, "on that, as I believe on every other occasion behaved like a Man and a Gentleman" (Packet 116), which was an allusion to Smith's nickname, Gentleman Smith (Baugh). She may have been remembering his support over Semiramis.

Reddish's general demeanour was not encouraging, but he was able to respond to cues and deliver his speeches. On the day of the performance sympathetic friends were alarmed to hear him declare that he was to play Romeo. Mary Ann recalled the performance:

The Play went thro as well as Ever it had done--and Smith declared that in one Scene with him, Posthumus never play'd so well!--yet it is a certain Fact, that during the whole of the Night--the poor unhappy Being who was perhaps for my Sake upheld & supported by Superior power--was quite unconscious of the cause which brought him there--did not know it was his own Benefit--nay at several different times during the representation was unconscious the part he was playing and, even supposed he was Acting Romeo!--perhaps a Circumstance so wonderfull in the History of Insanity never was heard of, nor may again? (Packet 116)

The incident was described by one of Reddish's friends, John Ireland, to illustrate his contention that when an actor's understanding fails nature can take over to produce a good performance (57-60). The story was still of interest to theatre historians almost fifty years after the event, when James Boaden reproduced it in his life of John Philip Kemble (xi-xii). It may be that Mary Ann (perhaps influenced by Ireland's version) exaggerated the depth of Reddish's delusion, but her anxiety, her sense that Providence was sustaining Reddish for her sake, has an authentic ring.

It was late in the summer of 1779 before Mary Ann and Reddish set off for Plymouth, calling on George at school in Winchester on the way. Reddish seemed to improve with sea-bathing, and the Plymouth management, keen to use his name, persuaded him to appear, creating an added anxiety for Mary Ann in what she called her "race for public favor" (Packet 117). Soon there was a return of what the doctors called a "confirmed & hopeless insanity" with the added ingredient of violence towards Mary Ann and, since she was pregnant again, her unborn child. She left for the theatre in Dock (Devonport), while friends kept Reddish in restraint. When she returned to Plymouth he came to the theatre during a performance and attacked her. Two friends were in Sir Frederick Rogers's box when they heard the disturbance backstage, and ran to her rescue (Packet 117-118). In consultation with the directors of the Theatrical Fund, Reddish was escorted first to London, where a letter signed by him appeared in the Morning Chronicle asserting his sanity (12 January 1780), and then to York, where he was incarcerated in the new asylum until his death in 1785 (Gentleman's Magazine January 1786: 83).

History has not been kind to Samuel Reddish's memory. Scurrilous anecdotes from the "Memoir of Mr Reddish" were taken over in later accounts of his life, including that given by Philip H. Highfill, Kalman A. Burnim and Edward A. Langhans (12:283). Mary Ann was adamant that he never drank, and that he remained faithful to her (Packet 110). He plainly exploited his position to draw her into a sexual relationship, although she did not make such an accusation, either from discretion or because she did not see the situation in that light. What she complained of was his irresponsibility over money. She congratulated herself on managing his finances for him (Packet 111), took pride in standing by him in his decline (Packet 118), and remembered him with generosity, recalling the time when she first knew him: "I was born with admiration for talent--Mr. R. certainly had infinite genius" (Packet 89).

Among the three theatres of Plymouth, Dock and Exeter there was steady work. With the support of her friends, who were generous on her benefit nights, Mary Ann earned enough over the next three years to support her family. She was a respected figure with contacts among the leading citizens (Packet 117-122). Some, such as Lord Courtenay and Sir Frederick Rogers, were merely supporters in the theatre, but others became close friends, such as Dr Gashing, one of her rescuers at the time of Reddish's attack, and the doctor, poet and playwright Hugh Downman. Reddish's illness accounts for her getting to know members of what she called "the faculty", but all her life she was drawn to medical men. She named three other doctors in her social circle in Plymouth, and emphasised that their wives, and several other Plymouth ladies, called on her.

The actor-manager John Bernard recalled his friendship with Mary Ann (2:235-236). He wrote that the admiration she excited was due to "her domestic rather than her public character", so that by "surrounding her talents with the halo of her becoming principles" she secured greater patronage than her talent alone would have warranted. Mary Ann herself admitted that her difficult circumstances inclined the Plymouth audience to be indulgent: "If I was not always equal, my Solicitude was pleaded for me" (Packet 118). Bernard added that she was best fitted to "sustain the matrons", probably meaning less that she was getting older and stouter, than that she was happiest playing women, like Eleonora, who exemplified the domestic virtues rather than passionate tragic heroines. In 1782 Hugh Downman, in his play Editha (Gale, 157.11:184), provided her with another such part--not a matron, but a young woman whose rational virtues are contrasted with the violent and vengeful passions of the treacherous Gunhilda. Mary Ann's preference for such parts may have arisen from her lack of vocal power, but she was also, no doubt, aware of the tendency of audiences to conflate the actress with the character, and her own recent notoriety made her value a reputation, inside and outside the theatre, for conspicuous virtue.

It was said that Richard Hughes, the manager in Exeter, would "suffer no actor, nor actress to appear on his boards in an improper dress, nor allow those liberties which country performers are too apt to take" (Thespian Dictionary). Tragic heroes and heroines were almost invariably of royal or noble birth, like Editha with her "air above the vulgar" (Downman I. iii), and an actor needed the instincts of a gentleman or lady in order to convince an intensely class-conscious audience. So, at least, it was frequently said in the theatrical criticism of the day, as was evident in the censure of Miss Hopkins as Azema in Semiramis. The social refinement that Mary Ann acquired from her fashionable contacts was invaluable. Not that it was entirely gloss and manner: Mary Ann had enough intelligence and strength of character, enough of the fortitude that the Duchess of Ancaster had recognised, to raise her above the vulgar. These qualities, unsupported by influence, spotless reputation, and superlative talent, had not been enough to secure metropolitan success, but in Exeter they made her a "ruling favourite" (Bernard 2:264).

Dr Gashing's companion in rescuing Mary Ann from Reddish's attack was a draper called Richard Hunn. His father was an Alderman and one of his sisters was married to a naval captain, and although he himself "was undoubtedly a tradesman, yet by a sort of general consent, I think, it appear'd, he moved in the superior circle" (Packet 119). A devotee of the theatre, he wrote critical notices for the local paper; some were too sharply critical for the actors' liking (Bernard 2:264), but he had always praised Mary Ann. He cultivated her acquaintance and when in 1783 he proposed marriage she accepted. Marriage would free her from the "fatal name" of Reddish (Packet 120), and relieve her of the need to work. It was hard to maintain the enthusiasm of ten years before: "from the year 1773, when my own hard fate, and the situation of my Family first brought me into Public Notice--till the year 1783 when I was married to Mr Hunn, were Ten years of such suffering as to retrace in all the minutia of colouring, woud be to suffer over again" (Packet 120). She hoped that marriage to a prosperous tradesman would bring a rest from her labours.

She also hoped that her new situation would lead to a meeting with her son George. It was now seven years since George had been adopted by his uncle Stratty, and apart from the brief meeting in Winchester in 1779 she had seen nothing of him. George himself may have thought that the separation was due only to the distance between Plymouth and London, but she herself must have realised that it would last until Stratty was convinced of her respectability (Packet 120). She begged Stratty to make enquiries to satisfy himself about Mr Hunn, but he was obdurate. Her marriage made no difference to her bad character, on which he "expatiated" to the thirteen-year-old George, telling him that she had at all times consulted her own "pleasure and satisfaction" rather than George's interests. George repeated Stratty's words in a smudged and awkward letter to Mary Ann (28 May 1783).

Equally disappointing was her husband's decision to sell his business and go on the stage himself. He had insufficient talent, and Mary Ann told him so, making a bad start to their married life. In Exeter, within three weeks of their marriage, he appeared anonymously on her benefit night, as Posthumus in Shakespeare's Cymbeline (Packet 121; Gale 157.11:184). (8) Another non-professional appearing that night was the five-year-old Mary Reddish, Mary Ann's daughter, playing the part of Clio in Joseph Reed's The Register Office. (9) How the child reacted to this exposure we can only guess; it was the prelude to a life in which her wishes were subordinated to the stronger will of her mother and, later, her famous half-brother.

Mary Ann judged that her husband's effort was "better than I expected, but not such as to overbalance the many considerations against it" (Packet 121). After appearing twice more in the course of March, he seemed to withdraw, but then he bought a share in the theatres at Plymouth and Exeter, which enabled him to gratify his ambition. Mary Ann admitted that their partnership might have succeeded if only Hunn had recognised his limitations: "tis a Common Error, I think, to mistake one's own talents, as well as to over-rate them" (Packet 121). He was not satisfied with parts requiring no more than "gentleman like manners"; he "languish'd for heroics" (Packet 126). So long as he had money in the theatre he could indulge his delusion and have all the heroics he wanted. John Bernard heard (from John Whitfield, the Laertes who knocked off Reddish's wig) how Hunn, playing Mark Antony in John Dryden's All for Love, outraged the audience with his spindly legs, and Mary Ann had to intervene twice in his favour (2.263). This rough handling, which Bernard claimed was stirred up by resentful fellow-actors, did not improve Richard Hunn's temper, but neither did it cure him of his delusion. Relations with his fellow-manager, a man called Wolf, grew sour, possibly because Hunn failed to produce the full purchase price for his share. In the end he was squeezed out (Bernard 2.263-265; Winston 67; Packet 122). (10)

Hunn therefore made an engagement for himself and Mary Ann at the theatre at Worcester. Mary Ann played her farewell performances in Plymouth and Exeter and was just packing up her trunk of costumes and properties when news arrived that their new manager was bankrupt, and the theatre at Worcester was locked up. Hugh Downman offered to use his influence to have her re-instated in Exeter, but she was tied to Hunn (their first child had been born early in 1785 (11)) and had to suffer the consequences of his quarrel with Mr Wolf (Packet 122).

After leaving Exeter in January 1786 Mary Ann stayed some six weeks in London investigating possible openings there and in Bath. She asked George to ask Stratty to speak to his theatrical acquaintances, who included the Sheridans and John Palmer in Bath. While showing a lively interest in his mother's endeavours, George quoted his uncle's discouraging response: "Interest on such occasions is of very little Use, everything depending on the Merit of the Persons as Actors" (Canning, "Letters to Mary Ann" 2 November 1785). She contacted the managers at both Drury Lane and the Haymarket, and also another John Palmer, who was then trying to establish a theatre in the East End of London (Canning, "Letters to Mary Ann" 5 October 1785 and 27 February 1786; Bull).

It was during this period, in February 1786, that mother and son eventually met again. Thirteen years later George wrote to a friend of the shock of this meeting and the lasting mark it left upon him (Canning "Letter to Lady Jane Dundas" 27 September 1799). Mary Ann, who had been a young woman when he last saw her, now showed the signs of her almost forty years, her many pregnancies and the hardships and disappointments of her career. There is a wistfulness about Mary Ann's own recollection that "the pleasure of seeing you ... proved a Solace to my distant Sorrow" (Packet 122), which suggests that she, too, may have been obscurely disappointed in the meeting.

Unable to wait for Palmer's East End project, the Hunns set off for the north of England in the spring of 1786 (Packet 123). It was new territory, where Mary Ann had no contacts, and she was further handicapped by having to include her husband in any engagement. For the next two years the Packet's account is supplemented by three of her letters to George that have survived: from Harrogate (19 August 1786), Newcastle upon Tyne (11 April 1788) and Lancaster (24 August 1788). In addition there are George's letters to her, which became more frequent as he grew older, although there were still gaps of up to two or three months. The directions and redirections on the covers enable us to chart Mary Ann's movements. For example, his letter of 20 October 1786 was directed to the theatre at Bedall (Bedale), returned from there and re-directed to Northallerton.

Mary Ann first joined the Samuel Butler circuit, and went the rounds of the small theatres of Yorkshire: Beverley, Howden, Ripon, Bedale, Northallerton and Harrogate. Butler, who sensed that a new era was opening up for the provincial stage, was planning two new theatres, in Harrogate and Richmond (Rosenfeld 10). For now, the theatre in Harrogate was a converted barn behind the Granby Hotel (Rosenfeld 12). Compared with Bath the numbers coming to the Harrogate spa were small, and the actors found themselves playing to elegant but often thin houses. Mary Ann told George this was partly because of the inconvenience of the building but doubted whether the new theatre would do much better. She still dreamt of finding work in Bath. All her life Mary Ann believed in the efficacy of personal influence, and since the approach through Stratty had failed she tried another. Palmer's colleague, William Keasberry, had a son-in-law in the cloth trade who had been a business contact of Mr Hunn (Hunn "Letters to George Canning", 19 August 1786). This line also failed, and Mary Ann made the best of where she was.

Much depended on a good benefit. Mary Ann hoped her London experience, in the theatre and among her fashionable friends, gave her something that provincial actresses could not match. Her hopes were raised by a favourable comment that a friend had overheard after an earlier performance. On the day of her benefit an order came from one of the principal inns for forty-two box tickets, but then disaster threatened in the form of a violent thunderstorm. Just before six o'clock the rain cleared, and she dressed in the hope that the audience would brave the muddy streets. The pit and gallery were emptier than usual, she found, but the boxes, whose occupants perhaps came by carriage, were as full as ever (Hunn "Letters to George Canning", 19 August 1786).

About the same time the rising star of Drury Lane, Sarah Siddons, was making a successful summer tour of the North, appearing with Tate Wilkinson's company at York, Leeds and Hull. Wilkinson recalled 1786 as his "Sidonian year", adding ruefully that his costs were so high that it was not a Wilkinsonian year (3.5). In muddy Harrogate, Mary Ann heard of these triumphs, writing to George that Mrs Siddons "was born in one of Fortune's favorite Moments", and adding a qualification that may explain why Wilkinson thought he had had the worse of his bargain with the great actress: "and yet her natural parsimony makes her as miserable as if she had never emerged from the Obscurity in which she was born" (19 August 1786).

From Harrogate Butler's company went on to Bedale, and then to Northallerton, in time for the races. Butler was a disciplinarian (Rosenfeld 6). However much he might value Mary Ann's contribution he would not put up with Hunn, who was made peevish by adversity (Packet 130). "The same scene of contention was renewed in every place", Mary Ann recalled. "The Managers were reluctant to quarrel on my account--but I was, sooner or later forced into the dispute, and we had to seek new quarters" (Packet 122). By November she had left Butler's company and was appearing in South Shields as Mrs Beverly in Edward Moore's The Gamester under the patronage of the local freemasons. The Newcastle Courant described her performance as "in a stile and manner superior to anything of the kind lately seen in the North" (25 November 1786). James Cawdell, who played Beverly, was joint manager of a circuit that stretched from North Shields to Whitby and Scarborough (Watkinson)!2 In February, George addressed two letters to his mother at the theatre in Whitby.

The Hunns did not stay long with Cawdell, and they next turn up in Bury on the other side of the Pennines in a company run by Thomas Bibby. Little is known of Bibby, and Mary Ann does not mention his name in the Packet, and devotes no more than two lines to the dramatic climax to her stay in Bury. The details given here are therefore taken from newspaper reports (The Times, 12 July 1787; Whitehall Evening Post, 10-12 July 1787) and an account written ninety years after the event by a local historian (Barton 18-23). Bibby's "disgraceful Company of Itinerants" (Hunn "Letters to George Canning", 24 August 1788) may have been the target of a graceless advertisement in the Cumberland Paccjuet by a rival manager, Charles Whitlock, who claimed for himself "a more elegant and theatrical stile than can possibly be in the power of any little itinerant company who arrogate to themselves a species of theatrical merit which they are entirely unacquainted with" (quoted Marshall x).

In June 1787 Bibby's troupe was playing in the Moss Lane Bam in Bury. "Playing in a barn" was a glib phrase with which to stigmatise itinerant players, suggesting the dismal conditions described by Charlotte Charke and Charlotte Deans. In some places only the most rudimentary modifications were possible, but elsewhere, as in Harrogate, the former barn might be transformed into a decent, if somewhat uncomfortable, theatre. Moss Lane Barn may not have been fitted out as well as Harrogate's Granby Barn, but it had a gallery and a reasonably sized stage, and attracted a large audience, including some of the town's leading citizens.

On 4 July the company was offering a long programme at the request of the local freemasons. The main piece was King Henry IV with the Humours of Sir John Falstaff, Thomas Betterton's adaptation from Shakespeare, supported by John O'Keefe's pantomime The Lord Mayor's Day, incidental songs and a tableau showing a masonic dinner and featuring local members of the brotherhood. Late in the proceedings (past midnight in Barton's account, about half past ten according to the Whitehall Evening Post) the gallery collapsed, bringing down three of the walls and much of the roof. As many as 300 members of the audience were buried beneath the debris; many were crushed under the weight of the slate roof, with broken limbs, fractured skulls and seven or eight killed outright. The correspondent in the Times, who was present and lost a brother and sister in the disaster, referred to "riotous" behaviour in the gallery, which could mean anything from boisterousness to actual fighting. Barton does not mention this and seems to regard the sheer size of the crowd in the gallery as the principal cause. He does not say on what he based his detailed account of the night, but claims that "evidence of this night's troubles might be seen in limps, and distorted limbs, down until half a century afterwards" (23), which suggests that the story lingered in local legend and, perhaps, in actual disfigured bodies. He provides colourful touches--people climbing on rafters, the stillness of the midsummer night, and the cracks and booms of the tearing and falling timbers--which are plausible enough, but may be the product of his dramatic imagination.

George read of the disaster, but since all his mother's other engagements had been in Yorkshire and the north-east, he did not realise that she had crossed the Pennines. By the time he heard from her she was in more prosperous circumstances (Canning "Letters to Mary Ann" 7 August 1787). From Bury, Bibby's company moved to Wigan, where Mary Ann found an unexpected opening.

In Plymouth she had befriended a young actress called Elizabeth Kemble, daughter of actor-manager Roger Kemble, and sister of Sarah Siddons and John Philip Kemble. Elizabeth's parents considered her less talented than her brother and sister and wanted her to work outside the theatre, but finding her determined to enter the family profession, they sent her to gain experience in Plymouth. Elizabeth was unpopular, giving herself airs and rebelling against the discipline of the theatre, confirming Tate Wilkinson's comment that, when she worked for him in York, she was "wild as a colt untamed" (2:150). Mary Ann, who knew about green-room back-biting, offered protection and advice. Elizabeth did not stay long; her sister helped her to find work in London, which led to her joining Charles Whitlock's company and then marrying Whitlock. The Whitlock circuit covered Chester, Lancaster and Newcastle (Packet 125; Crouch).

Elizabeth and Charles Whitlock met the Hunns in Wigan. Mary Ann was ashamed to be found by her former protegee in what she herself considered disgraceful company. At all times of her life she was apt to talk about her son George, and now she had every motive to use him to divert attention from her humiliating situation. He was seventeen, had left Eton loaded with honours and was waiting to go to Oxford. His brilliance gave her much to boast of, as did his filial affection and generosity,13 but in the light of subsequent events it is likely that what caught the Whitlocks' attention was what she told them about his friendship with Sheridan. They offered her an engagement, with a share of the leading characters usually played by Elizabeth, while Hunn could take any small parts that came his way (Packet 125). This was a generous arrangement, restoring Mary Ann to the professional status she had enjoyed in Plymouth and Exeter.

The company moved on to Chester, from where Mary Ann asked George to ask Sheridan to persuade Mrs Crewe to allow her name to appear on the playbills--the Crewes being the most important family in the county, and personal and political friends of Sheridan (Davis; Salmon), (14) so an approach through Sheridan must have seemed promising. George evaded this embarrassing request by pointing out that Sheridan was preoccupied with the illness of his wife's sister (Canning "Letters to Mary Ann" 7 August 1787). (15) The season proceeded without the formal patronage of Mrs Crewe, although she took her house-party to the theatre. The party included Elizabeth Sheridan, who had known Mary Ann in her London days, but did not recognise her until someone mentioned that the leading actress of the night had been one of the Mrs Reddishes. Like George she was shocked by what she saw: a middle-aged woman who had struggled to scrape a living for more than ten years, much of it on the road, and was pregnant for the tenth time. When she reported the encounter to Mehitabel Canning, Elizabeth put the ravages of time, childbearing and poverty down to Mary Ann's "vices". She was particularly horrified to see Mary Ann yoked to a man like Elunn (Hunt 75).

From Chester the Whitlock company moved to Newcastle upon Tyne, where Mary Ann's daughter Maria was born (Packet 125). The company was about to leave for Lancaster, so the baby was put out to nurse. In her younger and more prosperous days Mary Ann had been a devoted believer in suckling her own babies, but now the exigencies of her profession prevented it. This may have saved the baby's life, because during the summer in Lancaster the Europe-wide influenza epidemic of 1788 caught up with the Whitlock company. The disease was fatal for many, particularly the poor, but Mary Ann survived both the disease and the cure, which she described to George as "an enormous blister and the nauseous regimen of bark and port" (24 August 1788).

In the same letter Mary Ann once more asked George to seek Mrs Crewe's patronage for her Chester benefit. He was himself invited to Crewe Hall, so she hoped he would approach his "amiable friend" directly as well as working through Sheridan. When George heard from Mary Ann's sister that it was customary for actors to make a personal appeal to a prospective patron, he begged Mary Ann not to call on Mrs Crewe, but to leave it to him; Sheridan was optimistic, he declared (26 September 1788). He wrote to Mrs Crewe to decline her invitation, telling her frankly that it was because of his mother, and asking her to support Mary Ann's benefit night. He told his aunt and uncle, Bess and William Leigh, what he had done and of his embarrassment and uncertainty (Canning "Letters to William and Elizabeth Leigh", 26 September 1788). Mrs Crewe refused allow her name appear on the play-bills, for fear of damaging her husband's political position in the county. Three days after his confident assurances, George sent Mary Ann a copy of Mrs Crewe's letter of refusal, and wrote that he was sure she was sincere. If Mary Ann was more sceptical, she may have been right, since John Crewe's position in the county was impregnable: he was returned unopposed at every election between 1768 and 1802 (Davis). This incident set a pattern that was to be repeated for the rest of Mary Ann's life. She remained convinced that George's powerful friends could help her if they would only try, while he hated having to ask for favours and was irritated by her constant solicitation. (16)

At the end of 1788 Whitlock told the Hunns that he would not be taking them to Newcastle, a blow that was "very unlook'd for" (Packet 126). The incompetence and peevishness of Mr Hunn must have been a factor, but it is also likely that Whitlock felt Mary Ann had gained her place under false pretences. Twice now her supposed influence with Mrs Crewe had proved illusory, so there was no reason to keep her on. Mary Ann had no savings: her salary had gone on day-to-day costs, with her benefits consumed by school-fees for her Reddish children. Stranded and penniless in Chester, equidistant between George in London and her baby in Newcastle, she sold some of her costumes and raised enough for Hunn to get to London and for herself to retrieve Maria from her nurse (Packet 125-126).

Mary Ann's experiences on the provincial stage, even with Bibby's "disgraceful company", do not appear to have brought her down to the level at which, according to Charlotte Charke, acting was less reputable than "cinder-sifting at Tottenham court" for a groat a day (113). Nonetheless it had been a hard and sometimes dispiriting period, far from the "first rate style" that she had hoped for when she prepared for her debut at Drury Lane. Charke wrote satirically, but her respect for her craft was genuine; she hated to see it debased. Mary Ann likewise was a dedicated professional who had performed alongside great actors like Garrick and Reddish, and worked for exacting provincial managers like Hughes in Exeter and Butler in Yorkshire. Acting, she knew, was an art that demanded judgement and genius. She was appalled at the depths to which her husband's vanity and folly had reduced her.

In the final part of this three-part essay we shall consider Mary Ann's withdrawal from the stage and reflect on the wider significance her story has for our understanding of the theatre of her time.

Julian Crowe encountered the story of Mary Ann Canning in 1994 when he inherited the papers of the late Cedric Collyer, the historian responsible for cataloguing the Canning archive at Harewood House. Fascinated by Mary Ann's struggles, he has spent 25 years researching her life and her relationship with her son, George Canning the politician. He has been able to devote more time to the work since retiring from his job in the computing service at the University of St Andrews. His book George Canning Is My Son will be published by Unbound at the end of 2020.

Notes

(1) The Packet, along with the other Canning family letters referred to in this article, is held among the Canning Papers at Harewood House. I am grateful to the Earl of Harewood for permission to quote from them.

(2) From a notice in the Public Advertiser (4 June 1774) it seems that the theatre had bought up some of Reddish's debts, either to secure him from arrest or to gain a hold over him, or both.

(3) The story of the pirating of The Duenna was unravelled in a 1925 article in the Times Literary Supplement (Rhodes).

(4) The direct testimony of the Packet corrects the circumstantial evidence which led Gale to assume that Mary was born after Mary Ann's marriage to Richard Hunn (157.12: 202).

(5) The agreement with Bew, the publisher, allowed Mary Ann one hundred copies of the book to sell on her own account (Packet unnumbered page).

(6) Press reports say that Reddish was well received, and confirm Mary Ann's account of the accident (for instance Gazetteer and General Advertiser 13 October 1778).

(7) A Theatrical Fund for the benefit of impoverished old and infirm actors was established at Covent Garden in 1765, and at Drury Lane the following year. Both funds were secured by Act of Parliament in 1776 (Hogan 1: cxxxiv).

(8) Gale quotes the announcement from the Exeter Flying Post (6 March 1783) saying that for Mary Ann's benefit a gentleman new to the stage would be playing Posthumus. Presumably this was Mr Hunn, since the Packet records that he first appeared on Mary Ann's benefit night.

(9) There is no character called Clio in Reed's farce. The announcement quoted by Gale says there was to be "an additional scene", which presumably included this extra character.

(10) Bernard himself had dealings with Wolf, and suggests he was unscrupulous (2:267).

(11) Their son Richard was baptised in Exeter on 30 March 1785 (England Births and Christenings 1538-1975, FHL file 917101). He appears to have suffered from a congenital disability, and died in his early teens (Packet 106; Canning "Letters to Mary Ann" 22 April 1785; 16 December 1799).

(12) The Newcastle Courant describes him as "Mr Cawdell from the North-side", suggesting that his usual circuit did not include South Shields.

(13) George now enjoyed a small inheritance and had begun to pay his mother an allowance of 50[pounds sterling] (Canning "Letters to Mary Ann" 2 February, 7 August and 12 November 1787).

(14) In the ODNB entry for Mrs Crewe, Salmon cites a letter written by Elizabeth Sheridan "to her friend Mary Ann Canning". Elizabeth's friend was not Mary Ann, but Mehitabel.

(15) Elizabeth Sheridan's sister, Mary Tickell, died of tuberculosis in July 1787 (Aspden).

(16) It is a constant theme in his letters. In 1819 he complained to Mary Ann about pressure to use influence on behalf of her son Frederick Hunn, and threatened to put an end to it by swearing not to ask anything more for Frederick (Canning "Letters to Mary Ann" 6 March 1819).

Works cited

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Bernard, John, Retrospections of the Stage. 2 vols. London: Colburn & Bentley, 1830. Boaden, James, Memoirs of the Life of John Philip Kemble Esq, London: Longman; Philadelphia: Small, 1825.

--ed. The Private Correspondence of David Garrick with the Most Celebrated Persons of his Time. 2 vols. London: Colbourn & Bentley, 1831-2.

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Highfill, Philip H., Kalman A. Burnim, and Edward A. Langhans, eds. A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and other Stage Personnel in London 1600-1800.16 vols. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1973-1993.

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Author:	Crowe, Julian
Publication:	Theatre Notebook
Geographic Code:	4EUIR
Date:	Oct 1, 2019
Words:	7994
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