Eva Marie Veigel - Mrs David Garrick
(1724 - 1822)
Garrick And His Wife, engraving by H. Bourne 1855,
after
David Garrick and his wife, Eva-Marie Veigel , 1757 by William Hogarth (1697 - 1764). [Original work in the Royal Collections, London].
Print from Famous British Artists A Series Of Engravings On Japan Paper 19.7 x 23.5 cm
One French biography of her life claimed she was known to be one of the most beautiful women in all of Europe.
She emigrated to London in 1746, speaking little English. It is rumoured that the Empress sent her there as a banishment, after noticing the Emperor taking too great a fancy to her for her beauty, though this story is often thought unlikely. She became the guest of the Earl and Countess of Burlington, who on her marriage to Garrick, are reputed to have settled on her £6,000. Garrick also settled £10,000 on his wife, and 70 pounds a year in pin money.
She married Garrick on June 22, 1749, the couple having to undergo two separate ceremonies as she was a Catholic and he was a Protestant. It has been claimed that Veigel first fell in love with Garrick after seeing him perform on the stage, and their respective entertainment careers caused them to meet socially soon thereafter. He was taken with her just as quickly, but her wealthy patron, the Countess of Burlington (wife of the 3rd Earl of Burlington), discouraged her from marrying him as Veigel had performed in the royal courts of Europe and Garrick was seen as being a match much beneath her.
Reportedly the Countess asked Garrick to use his performance abilities to make Veigel fall out of love with him, which he did attempt. The scheme did not work, but Burlington was nevertheless impressed enough with the effort that she changed her opinion on Garrick and decided Veigel would be well to marry him. This reported incident may have been the inspiration for such plays as Robertson's David Garrick. By all accounts the match between Garrick and Veigel was a happy one. They were childless, and Veigel outlived her husband by forty-three years. On marrying, she retired from dancing.
In his will, Garrick made generous bequests to his relatives. However, his executors mentioned in Mrs Garrick's letter, John Paterson and Albany Wallis, did not have an easy time, partly because of the Drury Lane management under the extravagant Sheridan. Garrick's funeral expenses remained unpaid a year later.
Garrick had made a stipulation in his will that his wife could only benefit from an annuity, if she remained living in England using the houses at Hampton and the Adelphi as her chief residences, and that the annuity was to be for her sole use without the 'intermeddling of any Husband she shall or may marry.'
In the event, Mrs Garrick remained in almost total seclusion for two years after her husband's death, and turned down an offer of marriage from Lord Monboddo, an eccentric Scottish judge, in 1782.
On the advice of her legal advisers in 1807, she initiated proceedings over a clause in Garrick's will stipulating that after all bequests had been met, any surplus should be divided among the next of kin, claiming that she would fall within that category and suing for an equal portion. The application was refused.
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Mrs. Garrick. Engraved by William P. Sherlock after Catherine Read (1723 - 78). Hand-coloured print, 1802.
This hand-coloured engraving is after a portrait of a youthful Eva Maria done in crayon by Katherine Read (1723–1778). Read was a successful theatrical portraitist known for her work in pastels who also made portraits of Susanna Cibber and Peg Woffington. The original pastel is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and a miniature copy can be found at the Garrick Club.
After arriving in England in February 1746, La Violette signed a contract with the Italian company at the King’s Opera House (in Haymarket).
David Garrick was acting in Dublin when the Viennese dancer Mlle Eva Maria Veigel, 'La Violette' made her London debut at the King’s Opera House on March 11, 1746 in a run of celebrated performances that led Horace Walpole to describe her as 'the finest and most admired dancer in the world.'
She moved to Drury Lane later that year, dancing to this minuet at her first appearance, a Command Performance with Giuseppe Salomon and others on December 3, 1746, the year before David Garrick and James Lacy became joint-patentees of that theater. Garrick was still at this point acting at Covent Garden, in this week playing the role of Lothario in The Fair Penitent.
After escaping from the chains of his passion for the beautiful but reckless Mrs. Woffington, Garrick in 1749 married Mademoiselle Violette (Eva Maria Veigel), a German lady who had attracted admiration at Florence or at Vienna as a dancer. She had come to England early in 1746, where her modest grace and the rumours which surrounded her created a furore, and where she found enthusiastic patrons in the earl and countess of Burlington.
Garrick was smitten from the beginning: when he first saw her perform at the King’s Opera House, he was observed switching to the Prince of Wales’ box for a better view. Although their professional paths apparently never crossed, and despite the early disapproval by Eva Maria’s patron, Lady Burlington, the two were married on June 22, 1749 and honeymooned at the Burlington’s villa in Chiswick. Once married, La Violette gave up her dancing career and they are said to have never spent a night apart.
Garrick, who called her 'the best of women and wives', lived most happily with her in his villa at Hampton, acquired by him in 1754, to where he was glad to escape from his house in Southampton Street.
To this period belongs Garrick's quarrel with Barry, the only actor who even temporarily rivalled him in the favour of the public. In 1763 Garrick and his wife visited Paris, where they were cordially received and made the acquaintance of Denis Diderot and others at the house of the baron d'Holbach. It was about this time that Baron von Grimm extolled Garrick as the first and only actor who came up to the demands of his imagination; and it was in a reply to a pamphlet occasioned by Garrick's visit that Diderot first gave expression to the views expounded in his Paradoxe sur le comédien.
After some months spent in Italy, where Garrick fell seriously ill, they returned to Paris in the autumn of 1764 and made more friends, reaching London in April 1765.
Text based on information originally published in Encyclopedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, Volume XI. 1910. And Folger's Shakespeare.