In his private life Garrick was most happy.  He was fortunate enough to find for his wife a simple-minded, loyal woman, in a quarter which some people would deem very unpromising.  Mrs. Garrick was, as is well-known, a celebrated danseuse, known as Mademoiselle Violette, whose real name was Eva Maria Weigel, a Viennese.  A more affectionate couple were never seen; they were not blessed with children, but they lived together in the most uninterrupted happiness, and their house was the scene of many social gatherings of a delightful kind.  Mrs. Garrick survived her celebrated husband, and lived to the ripe age of ninety-eight, retaining to the very last much of that grace and charm of expression which had won the actor’s heart.

Time will not allow me to dwell on the many points of interest in Garrick’s career; all of which are to be found in Mr. Percy Fitzgerald’s Life of Garrick.  On returning to London after a visit to the Spensers at Althorp in January, 1779, he was struck down by a fatal attack of his old malady, the gout, and died at the age of sixty-three.

He was buried in Westminster Abbey with ceremonies as imposing as ever graced the funeral of a great man.  The pall-bearers were headed by the Duke of Devonshire and the Earl Spenser, while round the grave there were gathered such men as Burke and Fox, and last, not least, his old friend and tutor, Samuel Johnson, his rugged countenance streaming with tears, his noble heart filled with the sincerest grief.  The words so often quoted, artificial though they may seem, came from that heart when, speaking of his dear Davy’s death, he said that it “had eclipsed the gayety of nations.”

Garrick’s remarkable success in society, which achieved for him a position only inferior to that he achieved on the stage, is the best answer to what is often talked about the degrading nature of the actor’s profession.  Since the days of Roscius no contempt for actors in general, or for their art, has prevented a great actor from attaining that position which is accorded to all distinguished in what are held to be the higher arts.

Nearly nine years after the death of Garrick, on November 4th, 1787, a young woman, who had run away from home when little more than a child to join a company of strolling players, and who, when that occupation failed, earned a scanty living as a hawker in the streets of London, gave birth, in a wretched room near Gray’s Inn, to an illegitimate child.  This woman was Nancy Carey, the grand-daughter of Henry Carey, the author of the “National Anthem.”  She was the great-grand-daughter of George Saville, Marquis of Halifax, whose natural son Henry Carey was.  A compassionate actress, Miss Tidswell, who knew the father of the child, Aaron Kean, gave her what assistance she could.  Poor Nance was removed to her father’s lodgings, near Gray’s Inn, and there, on the day before mentioned, Edmund Kean was born.