Strange, is it not, that the wife who could be so full of constancy, and all the other virtues, previously lived a notoriously loose existence?  For it had been the fate of Santlow to stand continually in the glare of that fierce light which beats upon the stage, and never, perhaps, did she give the town more to talk about than by her celebrated rencontre with Captain Montague.  The story affords a glimpse of the free-and-easy manners which sometimes prevailed in theatres, and will bear the telling, ere we bid farewell to its fair heroine.

“About the year 1717,” writes Cibber, “a young actress of a desirable person (Santlow), sitting in an upper box at the Opera, a military gentleman (Montague) thought this a proper opportunity to secure a little conversation with her, the particulars of which were probably no more worth repeating than it seems the Damoiselle then thought them worth listening to; for, notwithstanding the fine things he said to her, she rather chose to give the Musick the preference of her attention.  This indifference was so offensive to his high heart, that he began to change the Tender into the Terrible, and, in short, proceeded at last to treat her in a style too grossly insulting for the meanest female ear to endur unresented.  Upon which, being beaten too far out of her discretion, she turn’d hastily upon him with an angry look and a reply which seem’d to set his merit in so low a regard, that he thought himself oblig’d in honour to take his time to resent it.

“This was the full extent of her crime, which his glory delay’d no longer to punish than ’till the next time she was to appear upon the stage.  There, in one of her best parts, wherein she drew a favourable regard and approbation from the audience, he, dispensing with the respect which some people think due to a polite assembly, began to interrupt her performance with such loud and various notes of mockery, as other young men of honour in the same place had sometimes made themselves undauntedly merry with.  Thus, deaf to all murmurs or entreaties of those about him, he pursued his point, even to throwing near her such trash as no person can be suppos’d to carry about him unless to use on so particular an occasion.

“A gentlemen then behind the scenes,[A] being shock’d at his unmanly behaviour, was warm enough to say, that no man but a fool or a bully could be capable of insulting an audience or a woman in so monstrous a manner.  The former valiant gentleman, to whose ear the words were soon brought by his spies, whom he had plac’d behind the scenes to observe how the action was taken there, came immediately from the pit in a heat, and demanded to know of the author of those words if he was the person that spoke them? to which he calmly reply’d, that though he had never seen him before, yet since he seem’d so earnest to be satisfy’d, he would do him the favour to own, that indeed the words were his, and that they would be the last words he should chuse to deny whoever they might fall upon.