Mrs. Jordan

“ Jordan, however, was positive. “I beg your pardon. I happen to know.”
Her disciple faltered but an instant. “Do you mean through Mr. Drake? Do they tell him these things?”
“A good servant,” said Mrs. Jordan, now thoroughly superior and proportionately sententious, “doesn’t need to be told! Her ladyship saved—as a woman so often saves!—the man she loves.”
This time our heroine took longer to recover herself, but she found a voice at last. “Ah well—of course I don’t know! The great thing was that he got off. They seem then, in a manner,” she added, “to have done a great deal for each other.” ”

“ Jordan. In her there was no guile; her heart was conspicuous in every word—her feelings in every action; and never did I find, in any character, a more complete concentration of every quality that should distinguish a mother, a friend, and a gentlewoman.
The outlines of Mrs. Jordan’s public life during her connexion of twenty-three years with a royal personage are too well known to require recital here. ”

“ Jordan, making a feint of retiring from the room.
‘Oh no,’ pleaded William Henry involuntarily.
‘Well, upon my life,’ cried Mrs. Powell, ‘you are a most complimentary young man! However, I’ll leave you, which considering the company you are in, will be quite revenge enough.’ She stood at the door, drawn up to her full height like a tragedy queen; then suddenly altering her tone, her air, her voice, and becoming as if by magic the very picture of pity, she added ‘Poor Margaret!’ and was gone.
‘She is a queer mad creature, but means no harm,’ said Mrs. Jordan consolingly. ”

“ She was so boxed up with her young men, and anything like a margin so absent, that it needed more art than she should ever possess to pretend in the least to compass, with any one in the nature of an acquaintance—say with Mrs. Jordan herself, flying in, as it might happen, to wire sympathetically to Mrs. Bubb—an approach to a relation of elegant privacy. She remembered the day when Mrs. Jordan had, in fact, by the greatest chance, come in with fifty-three words for Lord Rye and a five-pound note to change. ”

“ Mrs. Jordan was all exuberance and grace’ (Dramatic Essays, pp. 49–50, ed. 1851) . Leigh Hunt, after praising her artless vivacity, says: ‘Mrs Jordan seems to speak with all her soul; her voice, piquant with melody, delights the ear with a peculiar and exquisite fulness and with an emphasis that appears the result of perfect conviction’ (Critical Essays, p. 163) . Though admitting that she is not sufficiently ladylike, he holds her ‘not only the first actress of the day,’ but, judging from what he reads, the first that has adorned our stage (ib. p. 168) . Lamb's praise is not less high. ”

“ Jordan’s redemption had materially made of that lady, giving her, though the years and the struggles had naturally not straightened a feature, an almost super-eminent air. There were women in and out of Cocker’s who were quite nice and who yet didn’t look well; whereas Mrs. Jordan looked well and yet, with her extraordinarily protrusive teeth, was by no means quite nice. It would seem, mystifyingly, that it might really come from all the greatness she could live with. It was fine to hear her talk so often of dinners of twenty and of her doing, as she said, exactly as she liked with them. ”

“ MRS. JORDAN IN FRANCE. Decline of Mrs. Jordan’s health—Description of her cottage and grounds at Boulogne-sur-Mer—Madame Ducamp and her servant Agnes—Their account of Mrs. Jordan’s habits and manners—Removal of that lady to Versailles and subsequently to St. Cloud—Account of her illness and last moments.
The circumstances which induced Mrs. Jordan to repair to the continent were of such a nature, that the reader need not think it extraordinary that a deep impression was made upon her health ”

“ As an actress in comedy Mrs. Jordan can have had few equals. Genest says that she had never a superior in her line, and adds that her Hypolita will never be excelled. Rosalind, Viola, and Lady Contest were among her best characters (viii. 431–2) . Hazlitt, in unwonted rapture, speaks of Mrs. Jordan, ‘the child of nature whose voice was a cordial to the heart ... ”

“ Jordan went down with her guest to the door of the house. Here again the younger lingered, reverting, though three or four other remarks had on the way passed between them, to Captain Everard and Lady Bradeen. “Did you mean just now that if she hadn’t saved him, as you call it, she wouldn’t hold him so tight?”
“Well, I dare say.” Mrs. Jordan, on the doorstep, smiled with a reflexion that had come to her; she took one of her big bites of the brown gloom. “Men always dislike one when they’ve done one an injury.” ”

“ Jordan sat alone. He marched into the room with muddy boots, flung his hat and overcoat into a chair, and poked the fire violently. His wife's eye was fixed on him, and she first spoke—in the quiet voice that he dreaded.
'What do you mean by carrying on like this, Archibald?'
'I shall carry on as I like in my own house—hear that?'
'I do hear it, and I'm very sorry too. It gives me a very bad opinion of you. You will not do as you like in your own house. Rage as you please. You will not do as you like in your own house.'
There was a contemptuous anger in her eye which the man could not face. ”

“ She bore up, however, in a way that began by exciting much of her young friend's esteem; they perhaps even more frequently met as the wine of life flowed less free from other sources, and each, in the lack of better diversion, carried on with more mystification for the other an intercourse that consisted not a little of peeping out and drawing back. Each waited for the other to commit herself, each profusely curtained for the other the limits of low horizons. Mrs. Jordan was indeed probably the more reckless skirmisher ”

“ The communication itself, from week to week, hung fire; but it was to the facts over which it hovered that she owed her power of going on. “They are, in one way and another,” she often emphasised, “a tower of strength”; and as the allusion was to the aristocracy the girl could quite wonder why, if they were so in “one way,” they should require to be so in two. She thoroughly knew, however, how many ways Mrs. Jordan counted in. It all meant simply that her fate was pressing her close. ”

“ Mrs. Jordan's domestic life was brilliant rather than happy, and caused much scandal. By Daly, her first manager, she had a daughter who was known as Miss Jordan, married a Mr. Alsop, came out at Covent Garden 18 Oct. 1816 as Rosalind, was a good actress, and was praised by Hazlitt, but does not appear to have remained very long on the stage; she left her husband, and died a premature and deplorable death in America. By Richard (afterwards Sir Richard) Ford, whose name she bore for some years, she had four children. One daughter married a Mr. ”

“ The chief source of information is the Life of Mrs. Jordan by James Boaden, 2 vols. 1831. ‘The Great Illegitimates: a Public and Private Life of that celebrated Actress, Miss Bland, otherwise Mrs. Ford, or Mrs. Jordan, late Mistress of H.R.H. the D. of Clarence, now King William IV, etc., by a confidential Friend of the Departed,’ was published, s.d., by J. Dunscombe, 19 Little Queen Street, London, 12mo, about 1830, with portraits. It is a somewhat scandalous production, exceedingly rare, of which a reprint, probably with some excisions, has recently appeared. ”

“ Jordan. Mr. Mudge’s form of worship was one of several things—they made up in superiority and beauty for what they wanted in number—that she had long ago settled he should take from her, and she had now moreover for the first time definitely established her own. Its principal feature was that it was to be the same as that of Mrs. Jordan and Lord Rye; which was indeed very much what she said to her hostess as they sat together later on. ”

“ The doctor put the hand to her lips and held it there. It was firm and cool, and there was the same velvety texture which the school-girl of twenty years ago had secretly admired. She echoed the other's words.
"Afraid, Sister?" she said. "Of you? Never in the world. My heart is too full of love and gratitude."
She bent nearer to the other as she spoke, but as she did so the nun's figure drew slightly away. The movement did not hurt her. She understood, and there could be no thought of disappointment in the presence of that steadfast, loving smile. ”

“ Jordan resumed his daily visits to the shop in Upper Street, where he sat as usual among the books and the correspondence, and tried to assure himself that all would henceforth be well with him. No more changing from house to house; a really comfortable home in which to spend the rest of his days; a kind and most capable wife to look after all his needs, to humour all his little habits. ”

“ Elderfield had scrupulously obeyed every direction given by her lodger, Mrs. Jordan was evidently resolved that her husband should live, move, and have his being in the strictest accordance with her own ideal. Not in any spirit of nagging, or ill-tempered unreasonableness; it was merely that she had her favourite way of doing every conceivable thing, and felt so sure it was the best of all possible ways that she could not endure any other. ”

“ She had a friend who had invented a new career for women—that of being in and out of people’s houses to look after the flowers. Mrs. Jordan had a manner of her own of sounding this allusion; “the flowers,” on her lips, were, in fantastic places, in happy homes, as usual as the coals or the daily papers. ”

“ Jordan, on this subject, what she was sure was at the back of Mrs. Jordan’s head; and to get it out of her, queerly enough, if only to vent a certain irritation at it. She knew that what her friend would already have risked if she hadn’t been timid and tortuous was: “Give him up—yes, give him up: you’ll see that with your sure chances you’ll be able to do much better.”
Our young woman had a sense that if that view could only be put before her with a particular sniff for poor Mr. Mudge she should hate it as much as she morally ought. ”

“ No one could have gone to work more prudently, or obtained what she wanted at smaller outlay; for all that, Mr. Jordan, having recovered something like his normal frame of mind, viewed the results with consternation. Left to himself, he would have taken a very small house, and furnished it much in the style of Islington lodgings; as it was, he occupied a ten-roomed 'villa', with appointments which seemed to him luxurious, aristocratic. True, the expenditure was of no moment to a man in his position, and there was no fear that Mrs. Jordan would involve him in dangerous extravagance ”

“ Never was there a better aphorism. Mrs. Jordan adopted it; and most properly satisfied herself with despising, instead of punishing, all her calumniators.
To contribute toward the prevention of all further doubt as to Mrs. Jordan’s unmixed happiness at the period of her residence at Bushy, as well as to exhibit the benevolence of her heart and the warmth of her attachments, I will introduce at this point extracts from some other letters addressed to myself:—
“Bushy. ”

“ Jordan had said, lead to. What he had in mind was not of course what Mrs. Jordan had had: it was obviously not a source of speculation with him that his sweetheart might pick up a husband. She could see perfectly that this was not for a moment even what he supposed she herself dreamed of. What she had done was simply to give his sensibility another push into the dim vast of trade. In that direction it was all alert, and she had whisked before it the mild fragrance of a “connexion.” That was the most he could see in any account of her keeping in, on whatever roundabout lines, with the gentry ”

“ She had the look of a goddess: young, brilliant, queenly, with a noble fire in her glance. Her clothes in their ample majesty and her jewels in their lustre made those of Chrissie appear almost tawdry by comparison. Never until that moment had William Jordan divined, not even in that [186] remote and ill-starred adventure of his childhood, that actual authentic goddesses still walked the earth, clad in their ravishing flesh and blood. As this vision burst upon his gaze William Jordan could scarcely repress an exclamation of awe and wonder and delight. ”

“ The old man seemed to avert his face from that of the boy’s father in a kind of dismay; and his voice pierced the boy with an emotion that he had never felt before.
“It is thirty years since you saw me last,” said the boy’s father.
“In the flesh as an eager-faced young man,” said the school-master. “But every night as I sit by the fire, I summon William Jordan to lead the pageant of my experience. When my spirit is like clay you stand before it, the first among the valiant, so subtle yet so brave. ”

“ Jordan was at present fairly dazzling on the subject of the way that, in the practice of her fairy art, as she called it, she more than peeped in—she penetrated. There was not a house of the great kind—and it was of course only a question of those, real homes of luxury—in which she was not, at the rate such people now had things, all over the place. ”

“ Mrs. Powell and Mrs. Jordan vied with one another in encouraging William Henry, who remained all the evening behind the scenes. The former made a magnificent Edmunda; the latter, of whom the greatest of our dramatic critics writes, ‘Delightful Mrs. Jordan, whose voice did away with the cares of the whole house before they saw her come in,’ surpassed [190] herself. If beauty and vivacity could have saved the piece she would have saved it, single-handed. There was a great deal of opposition, but at first the play went fairly well. ”