Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 62.djvu/290

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her, showing her generally as a vivacious, good-hearted woman with unequalled power of fascination, but subject to ‘tantrums.’ Garrick bought the wedding-ring for the purpose of marrying her, but hung back, and at last quarrelled with her. Making allowance for one essentially feminine error, Murphy credited her with the possession of every virtue, ‘honour, truth, benevolence, and charity,’ and with abundance of wit. She took great care of her sister's education, allowed her mother through life, and settled on her, a pension, and built and endowed almshouses at Teddington. She lent her dresses to the beautiful Misses Gunning, facilitating thus their conquests.

‘A Monody on the Death of Mrs. Woffington’ by John Hoole [q. v.] appeared in 1760, and she has been commemorated in our own day in the successful drama ‘Masks and Faces’ (1852) by Tom Taylor and Charles Reade. In December 1852 Charles Reade inscribed ‘to the memory of Margaret Woffington’ the ‘dramatic story’ of which she is the heroine.

Many fine portraits of Margaret Woffington are in existence. These show her generally in her own hair, with a long and rather pensive face. Her portrait as Penelope, by Reynolds, was lent by Lord Sackville to the Guelph Exhibition. Portraits of her by Hogarth, Mercier, and Wilson are in the Mathews collection in the Garrick Club. She was also painted by Vanloo and by Zoffany (Cat. Second Loan Exhib. No. 378, Third Loan, No. 745). Smith's ‘Catalogue’ mentions ten, and reproduces one by Pond (now in the National Portrait Gallery, London), engraved by Ardell. Augustin Daly printed in sumptuous form, and in a limited edition, a life of Woffington, in which he reproduced many portraits, including one by Hogarth as Sir Harry Wildair, one from the Kensington Gallery, and others as Phebe (by Van Bleeck, 1747), and as Mrs. Ford (by Edward Haytley [q. v.], 1751, engraved by J. Faber). A portrait by Hogarth is at Bowood. In Daly's book numerous references to her in prose and verse are collected, and the whole, in spite of some errors in printing, is a fine and unfortunately, as regards the general public, almost inaccessible tribute (cf. Saturday Review, 2 June 1888). Mr. Austin Dobson contributed to the ‘Magazine of Art’ (viii. 256) a paper on portraits of ‘Peg’ Woffington.

[The chief separate biography is Augustin Daly's Life of Peg Woffington, Philadelphia, 1888, privately printed. Another modern compilation is the Life and Adventures of Peg Woffington, by J. Fitzgerald Molloy, 1884, 2 vols. 8vo. Genest's Account of the English Stage and Hitchcock's History of the Irish Stage are responsible for most of the facts preserved concerning Mrs. Woffington. Biographies are in the Georgian Era, Galt's Lives of the Players, and the Managers' Note-book. Tate Wilkinson in his Memoirs supplies many important particulars, as do the Lives of Garrick by Davies and Murphy. Among other works which have been consulted are Walpole's Letters, ed. Cunningham; Hanbury-Williams's Works, 1822, vol. ii. passim; Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill; Doran's Stage Annals, ed. Lowe; Chetwood's History of the Stage; Memoirs of Lee Lewis; Wheatley and Cunningham's London; Thorne's Environs of London; Smith's Catalogue of Mezzotinto Portraits; Marshall's Cat. of National Portraits; Clark Russell's Representative Actors; Davies's Dramatic Miscellanies; Dibdin's English Stage; Campbell's Life of Siddons; Boaden's Life of Jordan; O'Keeffe's Recollections; Victor's History of the Stage and Letters; Fitzgerald's History of the Stage; Bellamy's Apology; Lowe's Bibliography of the Stage; Notes and Queries, 6th ser. vols. vi. vii.]

J. K.

WOGAN, (Sir) CHARLES (1698?–1752?), Jacobite soldier of fortune, known as the Chevalier Wogan, born about 1698, was the second son of William Wogan and his wife, Anne Gaydon. His great-grandfather, William Wogan of Rathcoffey (1544–1616), was twelfth in descent from Sir John Wogan [q. v.], chief justice of Ireland. In 1715 Charles and his younger brother Nicholas (see below) took service under Colonel Henry Oxburgh [q. v.], whose force ignominiously surrendered to General Wills at Preston on 14 Nov. In the following April the grand jury of Westminster found a true bill against Wogan, and his trial for high treason was appointed to take place in Westminster Hall on 5 May 1716 (cf. Hist. Reg. Chron. Diary, p. 221). At midnight on the eve of the trial Wogan took part in the successful escape from Newgate planned by Brigadier Mackintosh. He was one of the lucky seven (out of the fifteen) who made good their escape, and for whose recapture a reward of 500l. was vainly offered (Griffith, Chronicles of Newgate, i. 313). He succeeded in getting to France, where he took service in Dillon's regiment until 1718. In that year he followed the chevalier to Rome. At the close of the same year he served with Ormonde on a diplomatic mission to win a Russian princess's hand for the exiled prince. He failed, and selected Maria Clementina Sobieska, granddaughter of the famous John Sobieski, deliverer of Europe. Clementina, on her way to join the chevalier at Bologna, was arrested