This season of 1706-7 was a memorable one for Oldfield.  She then played for the first time with the chaste Anne Bracegirdle,[A] whom she quickly cast into the shade.  So apparent, indeed, was the shadow that the elder of the two retired from the stage in the course of a few months, in the very prime of her beauty.  It was a pathetic incident, and yet the cloud had its silver lining.  How often are we called upon to pity players who linger before the footlights long after they should have made their exits; instead of departing at the right moment, leaving behind them charming memories, they die by inches in full view of the audience.

[Footnote A:  “Mrs. Bracegirdle was perhaps a woman of a cold constitution,” says Genest.]

[Illustration:  MRS. ANNE BRACEGIRDLE]

Perhaps poverty keeps them at work, but, be that as it may, the public gives a sigh of relief when the few remaining sparks of genius are at last snuffed out.  When one of them is taken from us, and we read of the death in the morning paper, we murmur, “Poor old Jones!  Well, it’s certainly time he shuffled off.”  Then we drink our coffee placidly, turn to some other news, and never think of him again.  Many a once-beloved actor gets this cruel epitaph.

There was nothing superannuated about Bracegirdle when she made her exit, for the actress still displayed that comeliness which had, until recently, held the attention of London.  “She was of a lovely height,” says Tony Aston, “with dark brown hair and eyebrows, black, sparkling eyes, and a fresh, blushy complexion; and, whenever she exerted herself, had an involuntary flushing in her breast, neck, and face, having continually a cheerful aspect, and a fine set of even white teeth; never making an exit, but that she left the audience in an imitation of her pleasant countenance.”  When Aston wrote Mrs. Bracegirdle was still living.  “She has been off the stage these 26 years or more, but was alive July 20, 1747, for I saw her in the Strand, London, then—­with the remains of charming Bracegirdle.”  Poor old Diana!  Time brought her at least one revenge; she had outlived Nance Oldfield these many years.[A]

[Footnote A:  Bracegirdle died in September 1748.]

“Bracey,” as Cibber loved to call her, had just left the boards when George Farquhar’s lively comedy, “The Beaux’ Stratagem,” was produced at the Haymarket.  Perhaps she saw the performance from the audience side of the house, and was generous enough to admire the sparkle of Oldfield as Mrs. Sullen; and perhaps, as she was a very charitable body, Mistress Bracegirdle went to pay a last visit to the brilliant author of the play.  For poor, worn-out Farquhar was dying, nor could the laughter with which the theatre re-echoed bring much merriment into that poverty-stricken home which he was so soon to leave for a world where there would be neither guineas nor debts.