Wit h the severeness of a somewhat Prim school-marm, Claire Tomalin
warns us in the introduction to this altogether enthralling biography that there is a special tone which creeps into eulogies of actress- es, presenting them as lovable wayward creatures and striking them stone dead in the process. It is an encouragement that Mrs Jordan's Profession will be no stage- struck hagiography of the best beloved and most admired comic actress of her time (1761-1816), indeed, perhaps, of any time. Yet only a few pages on, Mrs Tomalin memorably nails Dora's elusive magic when, as a 14-year-old in Dublin, she appears in a transvestite production of Sheridan's The Duenna:
A perfect girl-boy in her young man's breech- es that showed her slim waist and pretty legs. She was not shy and she was not bawdy; she was easy and natural. Her face was finely expressive, her singing voice untrained and all the more captivating for it — her laugh bubbled up 'from the heart', they said; and when she laughed the audience laughed back, helpless and delighted, like a whole house full of lovers, and her charm infused the theatre from pit to upper gallery.
For another 40 extraordinary years, she sustained this natural charm, fought a hard bargain, earned a phenomenal wage and, although she never married, had 13 healthy, handsome children by three different fathers, including the Duke of Clarence (later William IV), with whom she lived for 20 years in rare domestic bliss and intimacy. All this is the more remarkable when you consider the distraught lives of so many of her contemporaries, both in and out of her fickle trade, who faced the daily reality of death in childbirth and infant mortality; when Irish women, in particular, were starving to death on the streets of London and if the pox didn't get you, the gin would. So it was something of a jolt to hear some feminist go on on Woman's Hour producing Dora Jordan as an archetypal victim of male perfidy. What our sisters lack in historical perspective, they certainly make up for in hysterical twaddle. This wrath would seem to stem from the admittedly brutal behaviour of the Duke of Clarence who abruptly dumped her when she was 50 and, reportedly, 'stout, matronly and short of breath', to search for a possi- ble consort and legitimate heir. When he first courted her at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, he felt neglected by his par- ents, without a role or focus to his life. Although the infinitely shrewd Horace Walpole pronounced him lively, cheerful, manly, well-bred and sensible, his eldest
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